Much has been made of the eccentricities of this flâneur, who was always seen in a grey velvet suit, and yet underlying Satie’s music is his serious desire to create something new. You can hear it in his popular piano pieces: the haunting scales and rhythms of the Trois Gnossiennes written under the spell of Romanian folk music, and the meditative world of Gymnopédies, where, as in a cubist painting, motifs are “seen” from all sides.
Nick Shave, The Guardian