Strange Mr. Satie: Composer of the Absurd

Author: M.T. Anderson and Petra Mathers

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Originally published by Viking Penguin Group, 2003.

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Summary

Originally published by Viking Penguin Group, 2003.

Description

In a brilliant performance worthy of the composer, M. T. Anderson and Petra Mathers present a picture-book biography of the singular Erik Satie.

Throughout his life, Erik Satie wanted to make a new kind of music, a kind of music both very young and very old, very bold and very shy, that followed no rules but its own.

At first glance, Erik Satie looked as normal as anyone else in Paris one hundred years ago. Beyond his shy smile, however, was a mind like no other. When Satie sat down at the piano to compose or play music, his tunes were strange and dreamlike, his melodies topsy-turvy and discordant. Many people hated his music. Few understood it. But to Erik Satie there was sense in nonsense, and the vibrant, surreal compositions of this eccentric man-child would go on to influence many artists.

About the Author

M. T. Anderson is the author of Feed, a National Book Award Finalist; the National Book Award winner The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party and Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves, which were both Michael L. Printz Honor Books; Symphony for the City of the Dead; Yvain: The Night of the Lion; Landscape with Invisible Hand; and many other books for children and young adults, including The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, cocreated with Eugene Yelchin, which was a National Book Award Finalist. M. T. Anderson lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

Petra Mathers (1945-2024) said, “Even though he walked everywhere he went, Satie was never a pedestrian; he was always a little aloft.” Petra Mathers wrote and/or illustrated more than thirty books for children, four of which won New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books honors. Her first book, Maria Theresa, was awarded the Ezra Jack Keats Medal.