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Alfred Éric Leslie Satie (Honfleur, 17 May 1866 - Paris, 1 July 1925) was a French composer and pianist. Dating from his first composition in 1884, he signed his name as Erik Satie. Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies . Later, he also referred to himself as a "phonometrograph" or "phonometrician," meaning "someone who measures (and writes down) sounds" — he preferred this definition of his profession to "musician," after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers in 1911. Satie also left a remarkable set of writings: he wrote for publications ranging from the dadaist 391 to the American Vanity Fair . Although in later life he prided himself on always publishing his work under his own name, in the late nineteenth century he appears to have used pseudonyms like Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule for some of his published writings. Satie was one of the colourful figures of the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde. He was a precursor to later artistic ideas like minimalism, repetitive music and Theatre of the Absurd.
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