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‘Relâche’ is the word used in France to indicate that a theatre has closed or a performance is cancelled. The first performance was indeed ‘cancelled’; the audience arrived on the prescribed night to find the theatre in darkness. The real premiere took place three nights later on 30 November 1924. With a nonsense scenario by Francis Picabia, and the showing of an absurd film by René Clair during the interval (with music by Satie, one of the earliest and most perceptive of film scores – again, the times catching up with him), the score seemed to Satie’s detractors to be his greatest débâcle to date. Virtually plotless, and with a backdrop of enormous gramophone records, how could Satie be taken seriously? Perhaps we should content ourselves with Satie’s own summary of Relâche (and hence his own life) and have done with: ‘I want to compose a piece for dogs, and I already have my decor. The curtain rises on a bone.’ The ballet’s inclusion of a coffin and a hearse was morbidly prophetic: Satie died as he had lived, a humble but egocentric recluse, just seven months later.

from notes by Simon Wright © 1989