One of the most important figures of the Parisian avantgard was Éric

Alfred Satie who was born on 17 May 1866 and died in 1925. He was a
French composer and pianist. His work served as a base for later artistic
movements such as minimalism, Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd.
An eccentric, Satie is considered to be a "gymnopedist", because he
became famous for writing his most famous compositions,
the Gymnopédies. He also referred to himself as a "phonometrician",
preferring this designation to that of "musician".
In addition to his body of music, Satie was "a thinker with a gift of
eloquence" who left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work
for a range of publications and writing an autobiographical novel.
5 facts about Satie

He was a bad pianist

As a teenager, SAtie gained a reputation for being the ”laziest student in the
Conservatoire”, as his teacher Emile Descombes described him. He was dismissed
from lack of improvement, but by 1885 he had graduated to the intermediate
piano class.

Satie founded his own religion

In 1891, Satie started, with the writer Josephin Peladan a secret sect named ”The
Mystical Order of the Rose+Cross of the Tample and Grail”. Satie was the official
composer of the sect and for them he wrot one famous song named ”Fils des
Etoiles”. But in august 1892 Satie broke off relations with Peladan and became
the founder and the only member of the Eglise Metropolitaine d'Art de Jesus
Conducteur.

Satie had strange eating habits

In his book Memoirs d'un Amnesiac, Satie described that he was eating only white
food: eggs, animals fat, coconuts, chicken, rice, only white cheese and some kinds
of fish. He also told that he boiled his wine and drunk it cold mixed with the juice
of the Fuchsia. And he was never talking while eating because he was afraid of
strangling himself.

Satie carried a hammer everywhere he went....just in case

On his walks in Paris, Satie would keep a hammer in his coat to defend himself in
case of something. He also had a violent streak where his music was concerned: in
1892 he challenged the director of the Paris Opera, tu a duel in hopes of having
his ballet Uspud staged.

Satie had only one love affair

Satie and Suzanne Valadon began an affair early in 1893. After their first night
together, he proposed marriage. The two did not marry, but Valadon moved to a
room next to Satie's at the Rue Cortot. During their relationship, Satie composed
the Danses gothiques and Valadon painted a portrait of Satie. After six months
she moved away, and later he said that he was left with "nothing but an icy
loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness".

After years of heavy drinking, his favourite drink was absinthe, Satie died on 1 July
1925 from cirrhosis of the liver.