Headstrong and eccentric, Satie consciously distanced himself from the Romantic traditions of the nineteenth century. His three miniatures for piano "Gymnopédies" are the first testimony to his idea of a "New Simplicity": repetitive, steady rhythms that are reminiscent of ancient cult dances have their very own meditative charm. Satie’s principle of stringing together musical units rather than forcing them to develop later proved groundbreaking for many musical movements of the twentieth century. Satie would certainly have appreciated the balanced print image of our Urtext edition, as he took pleasure in the visual design of his musical scores.
G. Henle Publishers stands for Urtext sheet music of the highest quality. The Urtext editions not only provide the undistorted and authoritative musical text but are also aesthetically pleasing, optimised for practical use and extremely durable. And then there is the strong, distinctive blue profile: (almost) all of the Urtext editions are bound in the characteristic blue cardboard.
Musicians trust Henle's blue Urtext editions because they:
- provide an undistorted, reliable and authoritative musical text
- offer superb, aesthetically appealing music engraving
- are optimised for practical use (page turns, fingerings)
- are of high quality and durable (cover, paper, binding)
- contain a short preface that introduces the work (particularly useful for AMEB exams) in German, English and French, as well as explanatory footnotes for particularly interesting passages in the score
- contain a description of the sources, an evaluation of the sources, readings and a documentation of the corrections made (= "Critical Report") in German and English, and often also in French
