The French composer Erik Satie was born on May 17, 1866, and died on July 1, 1925, was the son of an English mother and a Parisian music publisher. He entered the Paris Conservatory in 1879 but failed to benefit from academic education, which he embarked on again only in his 40th year, when he enrolled as a pupil of Vincent d'Indy and Albert Roussel at the Schola Cantorum. Long before that, however, he had composed a number of short piano pieces, whose eccentric titles and unfashionable and yet convincing simplicity of melody were matched by ....