Satie, Erik Alfred Leslie (1866-1925), French composer, born in Honfleur. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire and worked as a café pianist. He composed a number of piano works in the 1880s and 1890s, including the famous Gymnopedies (1888) and Gnossiennes (1890), but, deciding that his formal training in counterpoint was not strong enough, he decided at the age of 40 to return to study under the French composers Vincent d'Indy and Albert Roussel at the Schola Cantorum. He began to compose again, still mostly piano works, often giving them, as before, surreal titles that seemed to bear little relation to the music, such as Limp preludes for a dog (1913), Bureaucratic Sonatina (1917), and Three pieces in the form of a pear (1903, for piano four hands)—actually a set of six piano pieces. As a rebel against the heaviness and complexity of the music of his time and as an innovator in the use of certain harmonic devices, he anticipated the future trend of French music. Many younger composers hailed him as a master, particularly the young innovators known as Les Six, whose attention was brought to him by Jean Cocteau. He also influenced such older French composers as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Among his other works are the ballets Parade (1917), produced by Diaghilev and Cocteau and with sets designed by Picasso, and Mercure (1924); Socrate (1919), for four sopranos and chamber orchestra, based on Plato's dialogues; and Vexations, a short, almost atonal chorale for piano which the player is instructed to perform 840 times without a break.