Éric Alfred Leslie Satie (French: [eʁik sati];^[1] 17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. Satie was an influential artist in the late 19th- and early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.^[2]

An eccentric, Satie was introduced as a “gymnopedist” in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a “phonometrician” (meaning “someone who measures sounds”), preferring this designation to that of “musician”,^[3] after having been called “a clumsy but subtle technician” in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.^[4]

In addition to his body of music, Satie was “a thinker with a gift of eloquence”^[5] who left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391^[6] to the American culture chronicle Vanity Fair.^[7] Although in later life he prided himself on publishing his work under his own name, in the late 19th century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau^[8] and François de Paule^[9] in some of his published writings.

Source: Erik Satie – Wikipedia