ABSTRACT
The Parade team, first reunited in 1923 by the Comte Etienne de Beaumont for the short divertissement La Statue retrouvée, was recalled again by Beaumont in 1924 for the new ballet Mercure, this time with the significant exclusion of Cocteau. Satie's musical style in Mercure is eclectic: we hear popular tunes, avant-garde harmonies with nervous chromatic basses, oases of modal elegance or inspired passages of a neoclassical clarity that could well have sprung from the pen of an eighteenth-century composer. Any critical approach to Satie's contribution to Relâche has to deal with a curious contrast inherent in the work: despite all the explicit emphasis that Picabia put on ephemeral and hedonistic aspects. In fact, both of Satie's last ballets Mercure and Relâche were composed in a hurry, mostly under the pressure of choreographers. Satie, typically reflective and considered, was never a fast composer and detested time constraints.
