classical-music.com
How Erik Satie liberated music
The day I visited Erik Satie’s grave in Arcueil, the southern suburb of Paris where he lived and died in 1925 – as a ‘great musician, person of heart, and exceptional citizen’, as the epitaph says – there was a single ripe pear placed on top of the austere plinth. Which makes surreal sense, because among Satie’s piano works are his Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear.