Sausages, Soups & Operatic Cooks | 3
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David Hackett25. March 2023
This is part 3 of 3 in a series about composers' eating habits, by David Hackett. Read part 1 and 2.
The French musical surrealist, Eric Satie (1866 - 1925), is probably the weirdest foodie-composer on this list.
“My only nourishment,” Satie once wrote, "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)."
As a composer, writer and man, Satie was notorious for hiding behind a veneer of absurdist satire. So how seriously should we take his list?
It may be that he wasn’t entirely joking. One contemporary recalled that every Sunday Satie would make a soup thickened with (white) potatoes which he then poured over some (white) bread and stored in the cupboard. It would apparently last him all week.
But another friend noted that Satie’s diet was less colour-limited if someone else was providing the food.
The food-loving Russian modernist, Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971), lived most of his life as an immigrant, firstly in Europe (after the Russian Revolution) and then in America (after the rise of Nazi Germany). He did not visit his homeland for half a century.
But wherever he, his wife and their entourage of children, servants and nannies settled, they always managed to re-create a little piece of old, imperial Russia.
This was particularly apparent in the way they ate. Dinner at the Stravinskys’ could be like attending an ancient Russian banquet, as Swiss writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz vividly remembered:
We would be brought a snack of very strong coffee, fresh bread, and jam… we certainly earned the nice dinners cooked for us by the old nyanya, and which, having started late… went on until the last train; with vodka (to start) then blinis, and shchi… minced meat, soft pastries sprinkled with hot butter; with combinations of soup and meat as well, and those dark-red beetroot soups which made me think of the mythical times of Russian history when they tell of conquerors drinking, from skulls (we had bowls), the blood of their enemies.
Quite appropriate perhaps for a composer who wrote Russian folktale ballets with sinister themes!
This is part 3 of 3 in a series about composers' eating habits, by David Hackett.
To read more from David Hackett, go to www.musicbytheyear.com.