🍋Gnossiennes

Piano pieces from around 1890. The first three were published together; three more turned up after Satie's death, which is why some recordings have three and some six. He wrote them without bar lines, and with instructions to the player that read like notes to self. The title is a word he made up.

The Lisbon terrace. 2025-05-20-Tuesday, day four of ✈️ Lisbon and Sintra in May. We had been to the tile museum and climbed four floors with no lift, and Jonas put these on his phone, propped in an empty glass to make it louder. The river was at the end of the street. I read about shipping containers and missed a statistics lecture without a pang.

They are cousins of the Gymnopédies, but stranger. Those sit still. These wander: a melody that sounds as if it came from somewhere further east, over a left hand that keeps time like someone not paying attention.

• The first is the one I would know anywhere now.
• The third sounds like a question asked twice.
• Without bar lines the pianist decides where the breath goes, so no two versions agree. Jonas's is slower than any I have found since.

Seventeen minutes for six. At home it is not the same and I have stopped trying. It needs warm stone, a low sun and nothing to do before dinner.

One of the three rolls of film from that week has the glass with the phone in it, by accident, in the corner of frame nine.