Satie 2025 — Cent ans d'héritage International Conference
9–10 December 2025 — Catania, Italy
Worlds in Contrast: Entr'acte and Berlin Abstract Cinema. A Comparative Analysis of Music-Image Integration
Paper presented at the international conference Satie 2025 - Cent ans d'héritage, organised by the Università degli Studi di Torino (Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici), the Conservatorio "G. Verdi" of Turin, and the Conservatorio "V. Bellini" of Catania, in collaboration with the Institut de Recherche en Musicologie (IReMus, Sorbonne Université), the Società Italiana di Analisi e Teoria Musicale (GATM), and the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin.
Abstract
Erik Satie's score for René Clair's Entr'acte (1924) stands as a singular case of musical interaction with avant-garde cinema. While often analysed within the context of Parisian Dadaism, this study proposes a comparative examination of Satie's approach in relation to the sonic experiments of abstract cinema developed at the Berlin Filmmattinee screenings at the Ufa-Theater.
Where German abstract cinema pursued a synesthetic and structural integration — music conceived as a logical model mirroring the rhythmic and formal logic of the image — Satie's score adopts a posture of calculated autonomy, at times deliberately dissonant with the visual flow. The analysis focuses on his specific compositional choices — harmony, rhythm, mosaic form — and how these relate, or refuse to relate, to the fragmented and surreal narrative of the film.
Through comparison with the aesthetic principles underpinning the Berlin abstract works, the study examines whether Satie's music functions as ironic commentary, as a Dadaist estrangement device, or whether unexpected affinities with the German modernist context emerge. The paper concludes by tracing the model's legacy from musique d'ameublement to the American minimalism of Philip Glass and Michael Nyman.
Conference Details
Event - Satie 2025: Cent ans d'héritage, International Conference
Organised by - Università degli Studi di Torino, Conservatorio "G. Verdi" (Turin), Conservatorio "V. Bellini" (Catania), in collaboration with IReMus/Sorbonne Université, GATM, Museo Nazionale del Cinema
Dates - 9-10 December 2025
Venue - Médiathèque Maurice Delange, Honfleur (31 October 2025) · Università degli Studi / Conservatorio "G. Verdi", Turin (5–6 December 2025) · Conservatorio "V. Bellini", Catania (9–10 December 2025)
Session - Satie et le cinéma (10 December, 15:00)
Format - Paper presentation
Bibliography
C. Beinroth, "Music in German Silent Cinema: Reception in the Film Trade Press 1907–1925", Journal of Film Music 7.2, 2014
F. Finocchiaro, Modernismo musicale e cinema tedesco nel Primo Novecento, LIM, 2017
F. Finocchiaro, "Der absolute Film. Über die musikalischen Metaphern im ästhetischen Manifest des abstrakten Films", in Novembergruppe 1918, Waxmann, 2018
D. W. Gallez, "Satie's Entr'acte: A Model of Film Music", Cinema Journal 16/1, 1976
B. Luise, Nuovi percorsi tonali in Erik Satie, LIM, 1998
M. Marks, "The Well-Furnished Film: Satie's Score for Entr'acte", Canadian University Music Review 4, 1983
S. Miceli, Musica per film, Ricordi–LIM, 2009