Biography

After his death, Satie's friends discovered an apartment replete with squalor and chaos. Among many other unsorted papers and miscellaneous items, it contained a large number of umbrellas, and two grand pianos placed one on top of the other, the upper instrument used as storage for letters and parcels.

Satie and Suzanne Valadon (an artists' model, artist, long-time friend of Miguel Utrillo, and mother of Maurice Utrillo) began an affair early in 1893. After their first night together, he proposed marriage. The two did not marry, but Valadon moved to a room next to Satie's at the Rue Cortot. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui and writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet". During their relationship, Satie composed the Danses gothiques as a means of calming his mind, and Valadon painted a portrait of Satie, which she gave to him. After six months she moved away, leaving Satie broken-hearted. Afterwards, he said that he was left with "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness". It is believed this was the only intimate relationship Satie ever had.

From the early 1880s onwards, Satie started publishing salon compositions by his step-mother and himself, among others.

After being sent home for two and a half years, he was readmitted to the Conservatoire at the end of 1885 (age 19), but was unable to make a more favourable impression on his teachers than he had before, and, as a result, resolved to take up military service a year later. However, Satie's military career did not last very long; within a few months he was discharged after deliberately infecting himself with bronchitis.[.

After years of heavy drinking (including consumption of absinthe), Satie died at age 59, on 1 July 1925 from cirrhosis of the liver.