Artform / Sheet music / Satie

Free Satie sheet music

27 Satie scores on Artform's shelf, ordered easiest to read first. Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep.

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Erik Satie (1866-1925)

French composer who treated the seriousness of the Parisian concert world as something to be quietly mocked, giving his pieces titles like "Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear" and instructing performers to play one passage "like a nightingale with a toothache." The Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, spare and strange for their time, sound almost accidentally ahead of their era, anticipating minimalism and ambient music by the better part of a century. He worked for years as a cabaret pianist to pay the rent, and lived in near poverty in a single room that, after his death, was found to contain dozens of identical velvet suits and umbrellas he had never worn or used.

Start with these

The easiest Satie on the shelf, in order. Nothing here is graded and nobody is ranked: the shelf simply puts the pieces that ask less of your hands before the ones that ask more.

Enfantillages pittoresques: III. Marche du grand escalier C major · 2 min Enfantillages pittoresques: II. Berceuse E minor · 1 min Enfantillages pittoresques: I. Petit prélude à la journée A minor · <1 min Valses Distinguees (No. 2 Son Binocle) A minor · <1 min Gnossienne n1 A minor · 2 min Gnossienne No. 3 A minor · 4 min 1ére Gnossienne F minor · 4 min Gymnopédie No. 1 D major · 4 min Goudimel Psalms 015 B♭ major · 1 min Chapitres tournés en tous sens: III. Regrets des enfermés C major · 3 min Gnossienne No. 2 E minor · 1 min Gymnopédie No. 3 A minor · 3 min

Every Satie score

Caresse C major · 2 min Le Fils Des Étoiles C major · 5 min Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois: III. Españaña F major · 3 min Deuxième Gymnopèdie C major · 3 min Gnossienne No. 1 F minor · 3 min Four Ogives A minor · 9 min Spleen C minor · <1 min La grenouille américaine A♭ major · 1 min Trois valses distinguées du précieux dégoûté: I. Sa taille F major · 2 min Chanson du chat B♭ major · <1 min II. Danseuse D major · <1 min Socrate 3 - Mort de Socrate A minor · 16 min Le piccadilly B♭ major · 1 min Air du rat G major · <1 min Allegro G major · <1 min

How the reader works

Each score opens as engraved notation you can read from the stand, and it plays: hear the piece first, then slow it down and loop the bar that is not working. There is nothing to install and no account to make. When you want paper, print it.

Every file is MusicXML, so MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico open them too.

Where to go next

If you are learning Satie rather than only reading, the scale pages cover fingering in every key, the chord pages spell out every chord, and the symbol dictionary explains any mark on the page you do not recognise.

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