Talk:Erik Satie/Archive 2

Section removed from article
I have removed the following unencyclopedic section. I'm placing it in a subpage so as not to clutter this Talk page. It's possible some information could be culled from it to add to the article, but as is, it's not within Wikipedia guidelines:

Softlavender (talk) 13:50, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Can you explain what "unencyclopedic" means? I had an 2007 version of wikipedia in a wikitaxi and was surprised to see how this Satie entry become much less interesting over the years. I think this section you removed was full of hints that may well be an enriching part of a "biography". How "encyclopedic" can you be when you're writing about an eccentric? IIIIIIIII (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

List removed from article
I've removed the following from the article -- this is from the 1919–1925 section. Information from it may be placed into the article within the appropriate section or paragraph, but not as bulleted items or a list or one-sentence paragraphs:

- Softlavender (talk) 14:02, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * This disruptive delete (that made way for an accumulation of cruft, see below) has been undone: there's no reason why a transformation from list information to prose can't be performed in mainspace. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:52, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Downgrading this to a Start class for now
Due to the fact that so much of the article has been removed (see previous two headers), I've downgraded this article to Start class. A lot of the material from the removed sections can be reintroduced into the article, but that needs to be done in encyclopedic and organized sections and headings, not as random bits of disassociated stuff. Softlavender (talk) 16:09, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Better photo?
Must be a better photo to use.

Such as this one: http://imgur.com/5z97tSI CrocodilesAreForWimps (talk) 16:18, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Erik Satie. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130918092808/http://www.eilpianova.fr/les-spectacles/apercus-phonometriques to http://www.eilpianova.fr/les-spectacles/apercus-phonometriques

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 02:12, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

IMDb
User:Ibodile IMDb name  to the external links. User:Classicalfan626 then removed it with the edit summary "Wikipedia is not a link repository. Of what use(s) is IMDb for a classical composer? Please revert if you can provide a valid reason." I think that IMDb link provides a succinct list of Satie's music in films and complies with WP:EL; it should be restored (and considered as a standard link for all composers). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:56, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Erik Satie. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130102053914/http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/erik-satie-his-music-the-vision-his-legacy to http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/erik-satie-his-music-the-vision-his-legacy

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 09:00, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Moved here from mainspace
This is entirely about compositions, not about the composer — even as a reception topic it is completely unbalanced and doesn't give the faintest idea why and how the composer's music became widely accepted. --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:18, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Erik Satie. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.eilpianova.fr/les-spectacles/apercus-phonometriques
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110611170019/http://www.sospeso.com/contents/composers_artists/satie.htm to http://www.sospeso.com/contents/composers_artists/satie.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 20:27, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Guidelines for a complete rewrite?
Hi all,

There are noted problems with this article, and I suggest the article needs a complete rewrite. It would seem that the strategy of minor changes paired with discussion will leave the community with a substandard entry for longer than should be tolerated. What is the conventional wisdom related to full page edits? How should this be approached in a way that engages the community but also improves this page quickly and with consistency?

If active editors on this page don't chime in, I will do my best to adhere to the wikipedia edit guidelines. 77.165.64.198 (talk) 00:35, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Sourced material removed
Some well referenced material was removed from the article. Erik Satie was a well known eccentric, in his later years he only ate white foods. The content is relevant to the article.

"In his later years, Satie lived on a unique diet of exclusively white foods and wore only grey suits. In his book Memoirs of An Amnesiac, he commented that "my only nourishment consists of food that is white: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals, veal, salt, coconuts, chicken cooked in white water, fruit-mould, rice, turnips, camphorated sausages, pastry, cheese (white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (without their skin)."

The removal reason was "none of these sources are mainstream reliable sources on Erik Satie: take to the talk page if you think this minority view deserves a place in Satie's article)", which is incorrect. These are mainstream published sources from respectable publishers (Villard (imprint), University of Minnesota Press). I have a BSc in food science. 90% of my edits are on the subject on this Wiki and I have never run into the problem. I do not add "minority" views. The content I added merely quotes Satie's personal diet, even a personal quote from himself. This is non-controversial content and the removal reason is not valid per policy here at Wikipedia. An entire book does not need to be published on Erik Satie to be included on the article. Those references mention him on a couple of pages. The claim that the sources are not mainstream is incorrect. Professor Cecilia Novero, for example is a published historian, Antidiets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art contains content on Erik Satie. Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:37, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Satie and white foods
This article has the larger quote from Satie's Memoirs of an Amnesiac.

The second paragraph has:"... A healthy ride on horseback round my domain follows from 1:19 P.M. to 2:53 P.M. ..."

The third paragraph has:"... Once a week, I wake up with a start at 3:19 (Tuesdays)."

The fourth paragraph has:"My only nourishment consists of food that is white: ... I boil my wine ..."

The seventh paragraph has:"... Once every hour a servant takes my temperature and gives me another."

The ninth paragraph has:"My doctor has always told me to smoke. ..."

Clue: Satie never had a "domain" (he rented a small apartment), nor a horse, nor a servant (nobody, not even his friends, leave alone "servants", were ever allowed in his apartment during his lifetime). Satie often ate with friends and others who supported him, on their invitation, where he ate what was put before him, and drank his whine without boiling it, and smoked, notwithstanding a chronic lung condition. In sum, no conclusion whatsoever can be drawn regarding his "diet" from the Memoirs of an Amnesiac. One could as well believe that Dante actually met Virgil because he said so in the Divina Commedia.

So, any source that takes Satie's Memoirs of an Amnesiac literally should be rejected out of hand, and content derived from such credulous (in fact: superstitious) source removed from the article on sight. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:38, 21 January 2020 (UTC)


 * We should not be rejecting what reliable secondary sources say for your own original research. We have reliable sources saying Erik Satie only ate white foods, and this was his daily routine in his later years and he wore only grey suits. You are basically telling us to reject reliable sources because you personally disagree with it. What you are doing is not policy based and this should be taken to another avenue so other users can examine this. You are saying content is false from reliable sources, that is a personal opinion and violates WP:OR. It is not up to us to say if content from reliable sources is true or false.


 * You also claim these are "credulous" or "superstitious" sources, which is false. They are mainstream sources, two of them published by qualified historians. Psychologist Guy (talk) 21:02, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

As said, this is a minority view. The material should be weighed against what mainstream reliable sources say: major mainstream reliable sources on Satie, like Orledge and Volta, will not take this literally. So, look up what these sources have to say on the matter, and include it in the article before adding the minority view (i.e. that this should be taken literally). That is WP:NPOV policy: nobody benefits from a distorted WP:REDFLAG view based on rather remote sources (which, I maintain, are probably not very relevant on the matter). --Francis Schonken (talk) 21:33, 21 January 2020 (UTC)


 * No it is not a minority view. You have not given me any reliable sources saying he did not eat white foods. I have given reliable sources saying the opposite. If he did not eat white foods then why are there many sources saying otherwise? Here are some sources that indicate Erik Satie was an eccentric who ate a diet of white foods.
 * "Erik Satie's behavior has earned him the label "eccentric." He appended his signature with "gentle, medieval musician," and it is said that he wore nothing but gray suits, and that he ate nothing but white foods." (Ronald L. Byrnside, Music: Sound and Sense, p. 251).
 * "Erik Satie, when he was working on his oratorio “Socrate” (1917-18), wrote to a friend, “I want it to be as white and pure as antiquity.” On the days when he was composing, he said, he ate only white foods." (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker).
 * "This was a composer who wore identical velvet corduroy suits every day for 10 years; who said he only ate white food; who was friends with some of the most important names in European culture – Picasso, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc. Yet he lived not just in squalor, but in isolation, too." (Ben East, )
 * "He owned twelve identical grey velvet suits – wearing one at a time until it wore out, where he promptly moved on to the next – and was obsessed with eating only white or pale-coloured food. In his dairies, Satie outlines his peculiar dietary requirements with Rain Man-esque precision: “I can only eat white foods: eggs, sugar, scraped bones, fat from dead animals, veal, salt, coconuts, chicken cooked in white water, rice, turnips, things like pasta, white cheese, cotton salad and certain fish." ("The nuttiest composers of all time" Australian Music Examinations Board)
 * "Bowler-hatted Satie spent most of his life pushing the boundaries, so it’s no surprise that he wins the musical laurels when it comes to weird eating habits. When he went out, he wore only grey velvet and he ate only white foods. In this list the composer included eggs, sugar, animal fat, salt, coconuts, rice, turnips, pastry, white cheese, certain kinds of fish and shredded bones. He also refused to speak while eating as he was convinced he would choke to death." ("15 Composers who loved their food", BBC Music Magazine)
 * "Here was a man who bought seven identical yellow corduroy suits, one for each day of the week, so he never had to waste time deciding what he was going to wear. Here was a man who for a time only consumed white foods, in the hope that their simplicity and purity would inform his music. Once I started to research Satie's life in detail, I was captivated by the strangeness and complexity of the man, but also by his fierce resolve to change music forever." ("Erik and Me: Alistair McGowan on Satie", Alistair McGowan)
 * "Among the many eccentricities of the French composer Erik Satie was his diet confined to white foods – eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, coconuts, chicken cooked in white water, rice, cheese (white varieties) and certain kinds of fish (without their skin). Satie thought that white foods got him into the mood for musical compositions that were unimpassioned and lucid". (Steven Shapin. You are what you eat’: historical changes in ideas about food and identity)
 * That last source, is a peer reviewed paper by Steven Shapin published in Historical Research, 2014. As I said before we should just report what the sources say. I couldn't care less about what this man believed or his crank ideas. The references indicate the man was an eccentric when it came to his eating habits and did this strange diet of white foods to develop his compositions, so that it what we should cite. I do not see why one line about his dieting ideas is controversial and should be removed. I am all for removing fringe content but this is not fringe, it is reliably sourced. It appears this is a low-traffic talk-page so this should be taken to another venue so other users can weigh in. Probably here. Psychologist Guy (talk) 22:06, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * "Major mainstream reliable sources on Satie, like Orledge and Volta, will not take this literally." The evidence suggests the opposite. I have not read those biographies but one peer-reviewed paper mentions Ornella Volta's biography of Satie which says he probably ate only white foods, so that is to be taken literally.
 * The following note (reference 29) can be found in the "references" section of (Alice Cotter, 2014), "Satie apparently ate only white foods while writing the piece. See Ornella Volta, Satie Seen. Through His Letters (London/New York: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1989)". Cited in (Miller Cotter, Alice. Socrates: Mark Morris on Death and Dying. Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, vol. 32, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1–22. Psychologist Guy (talk) 01:26, 22 January 2020 (UTC)


 * There are RS and RS. Those produced in favour of the seriousness or truth of Satie's claims are not specialists. This and this are from specialists who clearly don't take Satie's joke literally. Some of the sources above quoted in favour are clearly uncertain and cautious. I note a variety of translations for "fruit-mould" - what is the French - ok des moisissures des fruit - "mould on fruit".  Also disagreement on the colour of the sets of suits, or did he have both grey and yellow sets?  No source seems to produce a witness other than Satie himself, for what would surely have been a conspicuous and rather inconvenient trait, if it had been real.  Johnbod (talk) 03:20, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I note that the article, as written, says nothing about the content of Memoirs of an Amnesiac, including the scholarly evaluation of it. That might be a good way to work in this material. Mackensen (talk) 03:30, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Anyhow, I restored the "Whiteness" section in the Socrate article, which had been removed for lack of references, & which I had written many years before, that is: before Wikipedia had an automated system for numbered footnotes [sic] – for clarity: I added a reference now. I like Mackensen's idea to give some more general treatment of Satie's writings, that is, not only one paragraph of his "La Journée du musicien" from the Mémoires d’un amnésique, but for instance also the articles he wrote for Vanity Fair. Currently we only have the list at Erik Satie, which is a quite meagre treatment of Satie's writings. But, of course, I continue to oppose a treatment that consists of cherry-picking one small aspect of those writings, and then only consider that aspect, quoted out of context, under the narrow (and quite inappropriate) light of what some dietitians have to say about it. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:54, 22 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Have you read Ornella Volta's 1989 biography of Satie? I noticed in the content you restored there on the Socrate article, no page numbers were given. If nobody has access to this source, how do we know the content is accurate? Above I listed a peer-reviewed paper from historian Alice Miller Cotton who cited the Volta 1989 biography of Satie, and she suggests the opposite that Satie probably ate white foods to develop one of his compositions. It looks like Volta is actually agreeing with the other sources I provided and not what you are claiming. This is to be taken literally that he did actually consume white foods according to reliable sources provided here. It is not up to us to say if this is true or false, it is what the sources say. Psychologist Guy (talk) 10:04, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * For clarity, Volta's 1989 Satie Seen Through His Letters, ISBN 071452980X, is not a *biography* (Volta's *biography* of Satie was published in English a year earlier, ISBN 9782850255656). Yes, I read it: it lies on my desk now, that is: its Dutch translation, ISBN 90-257-2436-1, for clarity, translated from the English version (except from the quotes from letters, which are translated from French directly). So I give chapter titles rather than page numbers. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:59, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Johnbod what is a specialist? Do you mean a qualified historian? Are you saying Steven Shapin is not a specialist? According to his article "American historian and sociologist of science. He is the Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is considered one of the earliest scholars on the sociology of scientific knowledge." The Shapin source should obviously be cited on the article because it is reliable. If you have reliable sources saying Erik Satie's white food diet was a "joke", then we can include those as well. Based on what I have seen so far, the mainstream view on this is that Satie did actually eat white foods. The idea that it was all a "joke" is a minority view point and only supported by one historian. Psychologist Guy (talk) 10:21, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * No, Shapin is very clearly not a specialist, on Satie, his period and mileu, music in general, etc. I have given you two quickly-found-by google specialist sources who do think Satie's description in the "Memoirs of an Ammnesiac" (the title is a bit of clue, don't you think?) is a joke. Btw, I imagine the name of one of the "RS" you cite above, Alistair McGowan, means nothing to you. I suggest you read his article. He's very good at what he does, but it isn't the history of music or late 19th-century France. Johnbod (talk) 14:30, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * There is no such thing as a "specialist" on Satie, last time I checked universities around the world are not offering any qualification on that, lol. Shapin is a notable qualified historian, he specializes in history, so that is more than enough. If you want to include your sources on the article to indicate his diet was a joke, go ahead, but there is no reason why we should not also say historians have taken his diet seriously. At least two of Satie's biographers have said he ate white foods. The diet has been taken literally in many RS. You are saying we should ignore all those? I am asking for a single line on the article. Is that really a heavy demand? I rarely use talk-pages, this entire conversation is hilarious. Disagreement over a single line supported by countless reliable sources... made up criteria that one has to be a "specialist" on the person to be included as a source on the article. The comedy continues but I won't be wasting anymore time here. BTW, I never added Alistair McGowan as a source to the article, he wrote an article in The Guardian which is a reliable source, I merely documented it on this talk-page. I noticed you did not comment on the BBC Music Magazine or the Australian Music Examinations Board which take the diet literally. You can read what I added to the article, three sources. Cecilia Novero's book Antidiets of the Avant-garde is a work of scholarship and contains a chapter about composers who ate only white foods. Psychologist Guy (talk) 15:08, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, nor is Sense of Humour Studies offered anywhere, which is a great pity! The BBC Music Magazine or the Australian Music Examinations Board are certainly not sources to use to contradict proper musicologists (now that is a field of study). The article could do with more on Satie's writings, and I would not object to a sensibly-phrased mention of Satie's claimed diet in an expanded section on that. Johnbod (talk) 17:40, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I just received an email from a reliable historian telling me that Satie's biographer Rollo H. Myers took his white food diet as literal. Myers biography of Satie was published in 1948. It was the first biography published of Satie in English. I have not read Ornella Volta's biography but as outlined above, she seemed to think the same thing that he did eat white foods to develop one of his compositions. Psychologist Guy (talk) 10:28, 22 January 2020 (UTC)