27 lost works by Erik Satie heard for the first time, 100 years after the composer’s death

1 July 2025, 08:01 | Updated: 3 July 2025, 09:25

Satie’s forgotten manuscripts and unfinished sketches have been reconstructed and recorded.

A century after the death of the eccentric pianist and composer Erik Satie, 27 of his never-before-heard works are being released.

Pianist Alexandre Tharaud has recorded the pieces, three of which feature Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulović.

The pieces are made up of Satie's unfinished sketches and forgotten manuscripts that were tracked down and reconstructed by Sato Matsui, a Japanese composer and violinist, and James Nye, a British musicologist and composer.

Read more: The best (and strangest) pieces of music by Erik Satie

The album includes pieces that were intended to be for performance in the bohemian cafés of Montmartre, where Satie worked as a pianist in the late nineteenth century. They range from experimental bitonales, to playful cabaret songs and minimalist nocturnes, all turned into fully performable scores.

The previously undiscovered materials were found in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and a private archive in Boston. The lyrics for some of the songs were never unearthed, and in these pieces the vocal line has been replaced by a violin.

Read more: A new piece by Chopin has been discovered after almost 200 years

Alexandre Tharaud said of the album: “Satie remains very much an enigmatic figure today, held in enormous regard at the same time as being largely misunderstood and almost unknown… it is up to us to look beyond the Gnossiennes and the Gymnopédies, to try our sincere best to get closer to the music and to pay real attention.”

Alexandre Tharaud plays Satie’s Mélodie en 9-8 (ft. Nemanja)

Satie was scorned by the establishment around him when he was alive: his music was full of gags, witty titles and was often accompanied by poems or extramusical texts.

And his eccentricities weren’t just apparent in his music. In his book, Memoirs of an Amnesiac, which are filled with satirical commentary, Satie claimed he only ate white foods and kept a strict timetable to his day.

“I rise at 7:18; am inspired from 10:23 to 11:47,” he wrote. “I lunch at 12:11 and leave the table at 12:14. A healthy ride on horseback round my domain follows from 1:19pm to 2:53pm.”

The digital album was released on 27 June 2025, in the lead up to the centenary of Satie’s death on 1 July 2025.