Biography
Caroline Potter is Reader in Music at Kingston University, London. A graduate in both French and music, she obtained a PhD at Liverpool University in 1995 for her thesis on the music of Henri Dutilleux and has published widely on French music since Debussy.
A Yankee Book Peddler US Core Title for 2013
'This book is a much-needed addition to the rather sparse offerings in English concerning the innovative and eccentric composer Erik Satie (1866-1925)...most of Satie’s music is heard infrequently and is very little known to the concert-going public...Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.' Choice
'Piano works by the French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) are everywhere... This collection of well-documented articles clarifies that appeal. Erik Satie: Music, Art and Literature usefully demonstrates how Satie’s originality and sometimes ornery eccentricity helped fuel his lasting reputation as a musical genius.' International Piano Magazine
'... collection of nine essays and a transcribed conversation that between them explore many aspects of the composer’s creativity and legacy, as well as his place in French cultural life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taken together, they demonstrate convincingly how far-sighted Satie was during his lifetime. They show how far-reaching his posthumous influence has been on multi-media movements from Dadaism to Fluxus, and why post-Second World War experimental composers such as John Cage (who felt alienated from the ultra-strict serialism that dominated European avant-garde music in the 1950s and 1960s) said of him that it’s not a question of Satie’s relevance. He’s indispensable.’ Modernism/Modernity
'By emphasizing the centrality of Satie’s interart aesthetic, all of the essays in this volume contribute to a better understanding of Satie’s music, including some of its most inscrutable elements. These essays are, moreover, distinguished by their use of archival materials, including Satie’s correspondence and manuscripts.' Contemporary French Civilization
