Debussy orchestrated the first and third Gymnopédies and left this one alone, so of the three, No. 2 comes down to us in the piano original and nothing else. Satie's marking on it reads "slow, and sad"; the other two say "slow, and painful" and "slow, and grave". The three differ by a single word. The full piano score is on screen, note by note.
Slow and painful, slow and sad, slow and grave — one word apart
The three Gymnopédies were written in 1888, when Satie was twenty-two. They are close to the same length, they move the same way, and their harmony has the same colour — close enough that you might take them for three versions of one piece.
The differences are small, and Satie marked them precisely. The three headings are: No. 1, "Lent et douloureux" — slow and painful; No. 2, "Lent et triste" — slow and sad; No. 3, "Lent et grave" — slow and grave. Three words, three kinds of slow.
He also dedicated each one to a different person. This one is inscribed to Conrad Satie — his brother, a chemical engineer, who spent his life handling the practical business Erik would not.
In the later 1890s Debussy orchestrated the first and the third, and those versions went on to be played more often than the piano originals. He left No. 2 alone. Of the three, this is the one that exists only as Satie wrote it.
The word gymnopédie comes from ancient Greece: a Spartan festival at which young men danced naked. Where Satie read it is disputed and there is no settled answer.
Two bass notes, taking turns for three minutes
The left hand does one thing for the whole piece: a bass note in this bar, another in the next, then back again. That is it — two notes taking turns, with the pair occasionally shifting somewhere else and then carrying on taking turns.
The melody above moves extremely slowly. A note can hang for two or three seconds before the next one, and the gaps between phrases are long. Those gaps are part of the piece, not waiting.
The harmony does not resolve. A chord sits there, the next step is obvious, and it does not take it; by the time you have stopped expecting it, the chord changes into another that also refuses to resolve. So the piece is neither sad nor happy. It is simply present.
In the middle the melody climbs a little higher, as though lifting its head, then settles back. In the last phrases the notes thin out, the bass stops, and it closes at its quietest.
This is a piece to leave playing: nothing here is ever suddenly loud, and there is no point at which it takes your attention away from whatever you are doing.
65 bars held up by one rocking bass
65 bars, 3/4, 378 sounding notes — fewer than six notes a bar on average.
Bars 1 to 4 are accompaniment only: the bass rocks between G and D, the right hand lays out chords, and the melody has not arrived. It enters at bar 5 and runs to bar 14.
At bar 15 the bass pair moves to C, and at bar 18 to F — the furthest the harmony travels, and where the melody climbs highest. Then the G-and-D rocking returns.
From bar 38 the whole opening comes back as it was; bar by bar the note counts and ranges match the passage from bar 1 almost exactly. After bar 48 the C-and-F round comes once more.
From bar 57 there is a coda in which the notes thin out step by step, and the last two bars settle on C.
One fact holds across the whole piece: the right hand plays 313 notes and the left hand 65 — exactly one a bar. All of the weight rests on those 65.
Few notes; the difficulty is making the silences belong
Few notes, small stretches, no runs — the hand difficulty is low and this is playable early on. What is hard is time.
First, the silences. The rests between phrases are long and they have to carry weight. Play them tight and it sounds like a memory lapse; play them loose and the line breaks.
Second, the bass. One note a bar, every one at the same volume, and each has to hold until the next. Any unevenness in the left hand and the floor of the piece moves.
Third, the right-hand chords. They stay under the melody without disappearing — there is no spare texture here to hide in.
Fourth, do not let it speed up. This version is at 60 to the quarter, three minutes twenty. The marking says slow and sad, and the slow part has to be kept.
We rate this 2 out of 5.
The other two, and the other set that also refuses to resolve
No. 1 is the famous one and is already on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EXdaCVEWys ; No. 3 is the heaviest of the three, and Debussy's orchestral version puts it first — coming later.
The six Gnossiennes come from the same period, written without bar lines or time signature, with instructions in the score like "like a toothache" and "open your head".
For more harmony that hangs without resolving: Debussy's Clair de lune, L. 75, also on this channel.
