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Stamp of the Month: July 2025

Erik Satie


Bosnia-Herzegovina
Serbian Republic 9.12.2016
The French composer and pianist Erik Satie was born on May 17, 1866, in Honfleur. He died on July 1, 1925, in Paris. July 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of his death.
 
Satie received his first music lessons at the age of eight from the organist and choirmaster of the church in Honfleur. His father’s second wife, a concert pianist, composer, and music teacher, recognized his talent and enrolled him in 1879 at the Paris Conservatoire, but Satie dropped out after two and a half years. He began composing in 1884. His first pieces were published by his father’s publishing house. In 1887, he moved to the Parisian artists’ district of Montmartre, where he found a job as a pianist at the cabaret Le Chat Noir. In 1905, he resumed his music studies with Vincent d’Indy and Albert Roussel at the Schola Cantorum. Satie first gained notoriety thanks to his fellow musicians Claude Debussy and
Maurice Ravel, who performed his pieces in 1911. He gained the attention of the Parisian music world in 1917 with the premiere of his ballet “Parade,” created in collaboration with Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and the Diaghilev troupe. He later received further recognition from the young composers of the Groupe des Six, which included Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud.
With his work, Satie influenced new music, jazz, and popular music alike. Key characteristics of his music are the simplicity, clarity, brevity, and straightforwardness, which make Satie a pioneer of minimal music. True to his conviction that the composer has no right to unnecessarily take up his listeners’ time, Satie developed his idea of ​​background music even before the introduction of radio.
Today, Satie’s “Gymnopédies” for solo piano are particularly well known; they are very popular with piano students because of their simplicity.

France 11.4.1992

In Memoriam: Eugen Doga

On June 3, 2025, the Moldovan-Russian, composer Eugen Doga died in Chișinău at the age of 88.
Eugen Doga was born on March 1, 1937, in Mocra (Moldavian Soviet Republic). After seven years of schooling, Eugen Doga went to Chișinău to enroll at the conservatory, which he had heard about on his homemade radio. Despite having no prior training, he was accepted to the “Ștefan Neaga” Conservatory and studied cello from 1951 to 1955. Since paralysis of his left hand prevented him from
pursuing a career as a solo cellist, he continued his studies at the Gavriil Musicescu Art Institute for five years, specializing in composition. After graduating from the conservatory, he was a member of the orchestra of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic from 1957 to 1962, taught at the Stefan Neaga Music Academy in Chisinau from 1962 to 1967, and worked in the Ministry of Culture of the Republic

of Moldova from 1967 to 1972. From 1972 onward, he gave concerts throughout the Soviet Union and, after the collapse of the USSR, also delighted large international audiences.
Eugen Doga composed an opera, ballets, a symphony, string quartets, cantatas, choruses, songs, and romances, as well as numerous waltzes. He also composed music for more than 200 films.


The video shows Eugen Doga playing the piano during a performance of his waltz “Gramophon” with the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ilarion Ionescu on June 21, 2014, at the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest.

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Softener For The Ear

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Sound Pollution

Louis Op t’Eynde 

Bandstand

Jean-Pierre Suys 


Le Cid

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Accordions

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A Century of Musicians

Yme Woensdregt 

Les Ballets Suédois

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Visit to the Opera

Jörg Kiefer 



St. Cecilia

Yme Woensdregt 

Women Writing Music

Yme Woensdregt 



Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel

Louis Op t’Eynde 

Zaha Hadid and Music

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De Stemvork

Louis Op t’Eynde  




500 Years of the Protestant Hymnal


 
“Therefore the printers do very well to print good hymns diligently and make them agreeable for the people with all kinds of ornamentation, so that they are stimulated to find joy in faith and sing with pleasure.” This is how Martin Luther commented on the new initiative of several printers who began to publish the new hymns of the Reformation in small anthologies from 1524 onwards. …
 
Read more about the history of the Protestant Hymnal