Determine how many even smaller musical “gestures” or units make up an “episode” (these are my terms, you can use different ones if you wish).

Cinma (Entr’acte symphonique de “Relache”) (1924) http://www.ubu.com/sound/satie_conceptual.html Socrate (1919) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY05gn9j-aw&list=PL95F0ECC7A1111452&index=1 (The three movements of Socrate are the first three tracks on the Naxos page. To follow the text in English it is sung in French in this recording, or to read it separately in advance, go to this wikipedia site and scroll down to find the original source texts from the Plato dialogues in Englitranslation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrate In this writing assignment,
I ask you to resolve the two decidedly dissimilar musical approaches we find in these two compositions. As you listen to Cinma, track the many brief “episodes” that make up the piece. How many such episodes are there in the entire piece? Please count them. And listening to a few individual episodes, determine how many even smaller musical “gestures” or units make up an “episode” (these are my terms, you can use different ones if you wish). Give some sense of an average number of units that add up to an episode. Remember that Satie called himself a “phonometrographer,” and I quote: “I enjoy measuring a sound much more than hearing it.” Thus counting elements in his compositions is very much in his own spirit. Also, counting can be approached as a conscious mode of observation, and you may find yourself observing more than the number of repetitions as you count: instrumentation, harmony, smoothness, sharpness of rhythm, etc. As you listen to Socrate, you will encounter an entirely different sensibility. Satie himself described Socrate as a “symphonic drama,” though one “without the least idea of conflict.” Would you describe this music as being free of contrast, change, variety, dynamic? Or are these qualities present but on a different scale than in Cinma? Could you even count elements in Socrate? Socrate has been described as expressing restraint, austerity, evenness. How are these adjectives to be understood in musical terms? And if Socrate functions on a plane of continuity and evenness, what effect does its duration have on you as listener? Does the music guide your responses, or leave you free? And what sort of state of mind does this listening experience engender? How does it compare to the experience of listening to Cinma? Finally, can you detect a musical relationship between the content or narrative of the sung text and its musical setting? Please address these questions in a kind of dialogue between the two compositions, working out, if possible, where we can locate Erik Satie within or between these two modes. You need not answer every question I have posed, you should weight your writing toward those questions you find most relevant, and you are free to add other questions or observations not suggested by mine.

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