Alexander Street updated their free download of the week webpage,
in the last day or so, and with that update are making the offer to us of a new group of
free classical pieces.
This week's download features
Trois Gymnopedies by Erik Satie. Here are the three pieces from it that you can get
free:
- Lent et douloreux
- Lent et triste
- Lent et grave
In case you are not familiar with the pieces, all of them are piano pieces (these renditions are performed by pianist France Clidat). To describe them simply and concisely, they are
soft and
slow. Great stuff with which to put you to sleep.
I say that it's great stuff with which to put you to sleep for descriptive reasons and not pejorative ones! It is
calming music. Sometimes, when I want to fall asleep, this is exactly the kind of classical music that I want to hear! These Satie pieces are a perfect illustration of the statement in one of William Congreve's plays, "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast" (often misquoted, "music hath charms to soothe the savage
beast." It may have the power to do that, too (I've never actually tried it to see if it works), but Congreve was talking about soothing the
souls of men and women, not those of wild, vicious animals).
Anyway, to get Alexander Street's weekly freebies you do have to have an account with them.
This webpage is the perfect one on which to sign up, because after you do that, you can go back to
the same webpage to proceed in downloading the
free pieces that you want (after you've signed up, a prominent medium blue button, saying "Download," should appear in the bottom righthand corner of Erik Satie's photo; you'll need to click on it in order to go to the webpage where you actually can download the
free pieces).
ADDENDUM: They are all MP3 pieces.