"Sabotage"

Often Satie chose to short-circuit meaningfulness (Diablo 3 Gold). He deliberately assigned odd titles to his piano works. A compositional device of his was to short-circuit the narrative flow of a piece (where 'narrative flow' to me is an indication of best music, and of compositional skill). The story in Parade itself is meant to be plain silly. Thus, he was quite the original dadaist. I don't claim that he wasn't a great composer, but rather than he left little evidence. So perhaps that is because he hadn't the skill, or that he chose not to exercise it by esthetic choice.

(Sometimes Ives does the same thing. He opts to provide passages where his esthetics or his philosophy trumps good compositional practice. Sometimes such boldness achieves wonderful results, and sometimes it doesn't. Experimentalism is welcome in the arts - because succeeding composers can harvest compositonal ideas from it in order to create 'better' music - And have].

I'm a Satie enthusiast. One year I listened to his piano works almost exclusively (Diablo 3 Gold). But I think that he has left little evidence of being even a good composer - and sometimes evidence of being an incompetent composer (perhaps by choice). -

And yet I am an enthusiast - probably because of his unique outsider voice: sort-of a cold consideration of living. Perhaps his best composed piece is Parade simply because of its extended length. Yet I am most intriqued by Danse Travers(?) and the Sarabandes. (One may make a case that the 1888 Sarabandes are the first works of 'modern' music).

And so it is to Satie's credit that his intriquing unique voice persists despite his lax compositional skill and despite his own attempts to 'sabotage' his own reputation | a sort-of amazing manifestation of persistence.