ABSTRACT
Erik Satie remains an iconoclast who forged his own path with feline independence and cunning, overturning nineteenth-century artistic traditions left, right and centre. After Parade, the sponsorship was repaid when Georges Auric, Louis Durey and Arthur Honegger were so impressed by Satie's score that they organized a concert of their own works around a duet performance of Parade at the Salle Huyghens in Montparnasse on 6 June 1917. This homage to Satie marked the beginnings of the group which progressed through the larger enterprise of Les Nouveaux Jeunes to become Les Six in 1920, though its genesis was far from straightforward and has been subject to many misinterpretations since. Satie's swift withdrawal from each group that formed around him must have been galling for Jean Cocteau, and the extent to which this became like a manipulative game for Satie seems somewhat negative until we remember that Cocteau's motives were as much personal as artistic.
