Prélude de la porte héroïque du ciel
1894 composition for piano by Erik Satie
The Prélude de La Porte héroïque du ciel is an 1894 piano composition by Erik Satie, intended as a musical introduction to the play The Heroic Gate of Heaven by Jules Bois. It is considered one of the finest works of his
"Rosicrucian" or "mystic" period. A typical performance lasts around 6 minutes. Satie was so fond of the piece he dedicated it to himself.
Description
Satie's early pursuit of mystical preoccupations in his art did not end with his break from Joséphin Péladan's Rose + Croix movement in August 1892. For a time he and Claude Debussy were both drawn into the orbit of another Rose + Croix defector, Jules Bois, the occultist writer and publisher of the esoteric journal Le coeur. Bois' 1895 book Le satanisme et la magie (Satanism and Magic) and other "blasphemous" writings pegged him as a Satanist, but he delved into a wide range of ancient and modern religions and superstitions, as well as psychology. While Debussy declined an offer to write incidental music for Bois' play Les Noces de Sathan (1892), the little-known Satie found the association (and the publicity it brought) more congenial. It was in the October 1893 issue of Le coeur that Satie announced the founding of his one-man sect the Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor, and Bois continued to publish items by and about the composer until his journal folded in June 1895. La Porte héroïque du ciel would be their only creative collaboration.
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This entry incorporates text from “Prélude de la porte héroïque du ciel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.