Erik Satie

Eric Alfred Leslie Satie, who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached.

17 May 1866

Born on the same birth day (17 May): Alan Johnson • Andreas Felix von Oefele • Ben Nelson • Carmen de Icaza, 8th Baroness of Claret • Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua • Francis Tombs, Baron Tombs • Katrina Hart • Keith Bradley, Baron Bradley • Menno Oosting • Pervis Jackson • Simon Hughes • Udo Lindenberg • Valeriya Novodvorskaya

Born in the same month (May 1866): Gopal Krishna Gokhale • John Ringling • Thomas B. Thrige