Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc.… Expression has never been an inherent property of music.

Igor Stravinsky, 1936

The classical music world was overturned in the first half of the twentieth century. Various new genres and methods developed, constantly challenging and contrasting the tonality and chromaticism of the nineteenth century romantic era. Composers led and followed several movements throughout their careers. Igor Stravinsky rose to prominence with his ballet The Firebird, before shocking Paris with his rhythmic, atonal ballet The Rite of Spring, embracing religion and neoclassical composition in the twenties, and eventually turning to serialism in the 1950s. In 1936, Stravinsky writes that “music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc…. Expression has never been an inherent property of music.” Given his ever-changing stylistic tendencies, Stravinsky’s notion that music is essentially meaningless seems rational. On the other hand, it’s hard to argue that master works such as Wagner’s Ring Cycle, composed just sixty years earlier, convey no spiritual expression. But the new century brought a new effort to explore the functional purpose of music in society. One composer’s works especially stand out in the attempt to create expressionless music. Erik Satie spent his later years embracing a new ideal for music—creating humoristic works for solo piano, introducing the concept of furniture, or background music, and venturing into surrealism, all while incorporating other art forms into his works. Satie’s artistic and largely experimental works support Stravinsky’s position that music is completely meaningless.

Beginning in 1908, Erik Satie’s compositions were of a “humoristic” style. Eccentric, and generally more peculiar than funny, these works combined music, typically for solo piano, with textual annotations, calligraphy, and illustrations. The removal of barlines and the freeform nature of these compositions contrasts sharply with other composers’ more serious and significant works of the era, including Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. While the addition of other art forms alongside the music increases their artistic scope, the pieces’ subject matter suggests that Satie had no intention for deeper meaning or emotion in his “humoristic” works. Sports et Divertissements (1914)—a set of 21 short pieces for piano complete with illustrations and textual interjections, not to be spoken during performance—is an example. Yes, each piece is named for a specific thing, such as “Golf,” “Tennis,” and “Octopus.” But the subject matter is not serious or consequential to anything. Additionally, the titles do not seem to relate to the music; in fact, the free-flowing harmonic and rhythmic progressions do not seem to evoke any expression or emotion at all, turning in different directions before becoming established in any particular musical pattern. The work is entertaining—especially if the text is read aloud during the performance, against Satie’s orders—but, essentially meaningless. Therefore, Satie’s humoristic period features explorations into the incorporation of other art forms into music, but rather than leveraging the broader artistic canvas to enhance the expressive power of the music, he avoids implying any mood with his strange combination of tonalities.

Satie reached further into the concept of artistic collaboration with the 1917 ballet Parade. Featuring music by Satie, cubist costumes and set designed by Picasso, choreography by Massine, and a concept by Cocteau, the ballet is an assault on the senses. Yet none of the artistic elements evoke a particular expressive purpose. For the audience, it is essentially art for art’s sake. Again, entertaining, but generally uninteresting; purposeful but meaningless. With the music, Satie makes no attempt to leverage the aural experience for any objective, specifically avoiding traditional form and harmonic principles of classical music in the process. Accordingly, he suggests that music can be used for much broader purposes than those in traditional practices; the rules governing harmonic and sequential structure in earlier eras attempt to force expression into music, but, as Stravinsky says, expression is not an inherent property of music. Therefore, Parade shows that Satie’s rejection of traditional practices results in expressionless, meaningless music.

Satie’s score Entr’acte, for René Clair’s film in Satie’s ballet Relâche (1924), features a collection of short, one-bar sequences that are repeated several times in an almost meditative pattern. But rather than expressing anything itself, this music draws the listeners focus to the surrealistic visuals of the film. Through excessive repetition, Satie fades the music into the background of the listener’s consciousness, drawing their focus to other elements of the entertainment experience. In this early experiment with film music, Satie achieves the ideal goal of “furniture music,” now known as background music. Thinking simply, this music cannot express anything because it isn’t actively listened to. Today one would likely argue that background music does in fact influence one’s experience and emotions, but when Satie first introduced the concept, it explicitly intended to be meaningless—sound for sound’s sake. Therefore, Satie’s invention of “furniture music,” implemented clearly in Entr’acte, supports Stravinsky’s notion that music can be expressionless.

Erik Satie’s twentieth century works didn’t always coincide stylistically with those of his contemporaries. But his innovative techniques reflect the increasing diversity of styles in the classical music world. Most notably, he shows us that incorporating other artistic forms can increase music’s entertainment value, without necessarily enhancing its expressive value. In fact, by moving away from traditional form and harmony, Satie demonstrates that standard practice had induced the concept of musical expression. Therefore, Satie’s twentieth century works support Stravinsky’s opinion that music does not carry inherent expressive power or meaning.

And yet, upon reflection, the listener will struggle to assert that the music of either (or any) composer, despite abject absurdity, is meaningless.

This essay was originally written for the course "Music and Culture" at the University of Southern California.