Avant-dernières pensées: II. Aubade-Stephen Rees

Originally entitled Étrange rumeurs (Strange Rumors), the three pieces comprising Avant-dernières pensées were completed between August 23 and October 6, 1915. Satie dedicated them to three important colleagues:1. Idylle, for Claude Debussy 2. Aubade, for Paul Dukas 3. Méditation, for Albert RousselDebussy was Satie's closest friend for over 20 years, but their relations were growing strained at this time and would end bitterly in 1917. Dukas was a faithful friend to both. Roussel was Satie's teacher of counterpoint at the Schola Cantorum (1905–1908) and guided him through the development of his mature contrapuntal style. In the 1920s Satie vociferously defended Dukas and Roussel against their critics in the French musical establishment.Unlike most of his other piano suites of the period, the pensées contain no musical quotations for parodic effect, nor does Satie attempt to pastiche his fellow composers. In each piece bitonal melodic phrases evolve over an unchanging ostinato played from beginning to end: an Alberti bass in the Idylle, rapid triplets in the Méditation. In the Aubade it takes the form of two arpeggiated chords (the second played twice) that suggest the strumming of a guitar or mandolin. The conclusions of the outer two movements are quietly punctuated with a single chord; the strumming ostinato has the final say in the Aubade.The whimsy of Satie's extramusical commentaries is somewhat subdued here. Each concerns a poet, further described in the Aubade as an "old" poet, calling to mind how Satie categorized composers as either "poets" or "pundits." Robert Orledge has proposed that the texts for the first two pieces are "observations" of the dedicatees. The nature-loving poet of Idylle contemplates a tree-lined creek under sun and moonlight but takes no pleasure in it because, he confesses, "my heart is very small." The morning serenade of Aubade originally bore the subtitle "A fiancé beneath the balcony of his fiancée", and could well allude to Dukas' courtship of Suzanne Pereyra, 18 years his junior, whom he finally married in 1916. Orledge further writes that the Méditation, despite the dedication to Roussel, is a self-portrait: A poet is locked in a tower, where he is beset by winds that are manifestations of the devil (which he mistakes for the spirit of genius) and indigestion brought on by "bitter disappointments."