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Erik Satie worked on his Messe des pauvres from 1893 to 1895 but never completed it After Satie's death, Darius Milhaud selected movements from the composer's notebooks and published them in 1929 as the Messe des pauvres for organ and voices. The Mass is missing its Gloria; however, the only contemporary account suggests that the Gloria was in existence in 1895. The object of this article is to propose a new Gloria based on one of Satie's contemporaneous piano préludes. As well, to involve the singers more fully, two very short movements are furnished with Latin texts.
Erik Satie's Messe des pauvres, a work for organ and voices, was composed in the mid 1890s, but published only in 1929 by Rouart, Lerolle & Cie. For reasons unknown, the publisher was given only selected movements of the Mass, and these movements are in various stages of completeness. Robert Orledge remarks that the Kyrie, in its published form, is probably unfinished; that the Gloria is lost; and that the psalm, the prières, and invocations are sometimes slightly confused.1 The printed edition thus may not truly represent Satie's intentions or reflect his own conception of the work.
It is not known for what purpose or occasion the Messe des pauvres was composed; moreover, there is no satisfactory explanation of the meaning of the title. The Mass cannot have been intended for performance at Satie's one-man Église Métropolitaine de l'Art de Jésus Conducteur, for he was not only its sole parcier ("shareholder") and its only maître de chapelle; he was also its only member.2 His fictitious "Abbey" was the small room at number 6, rue Cortot, Paris, where "Monsieur le Pauvre"-as Satie styled himself about 1895lived. Whether the Mass was intended for an actual church in Paris or its suburbs is also unknown. However, if the Mass was originally meant to be a work with movements for organ and voices and movements for organ alone, it is strange that almost half of the movements look like piano transcriptions or arrangements of organ pieces.
The physical layout and general appearance of the printed edition lend weight to Orledge's statement that the Mass is incomplete. The Mass's movements, as determined by Orledge, are:3
Messe des pauvres
1. Prélude4
...