Editing Socrate (section)

==Commission – composition==
[[File:Winnaretta Singer10.jpg|thumb|left|Self portrait by [[Winnaretta Singer]], Princess Edmond de Polignac<br /> (Fondation Singer-Polignac, Paris)]]

The work was commissioned by [[Winnaretta Singer|Princess Edmond de Polignac]] in October 1916. The Princess had specified that female voices should be used: originally the idea had been that Satie would write [[incidental music]] to a performance where the Princess and/or some of her (female) friends would read aloud texts of the ancient Greek philosophers. As Satie, after all, was not so much in favour of [[melodrama]]-like settings, that idea was abandoned, and the text would be sung — be it in a more or less [[Recitative|reciting]] way. However, the specification remained that only female voices could be used (for texts of [[dialogue]]s that were supposed to have taken place between men).

Satie composed ''Socrate'' between January 1917 and the spring of 1918, with a revision of the orchestral score in October of that same year. During the first months he was working on the composition, he called it ''Vie de Socrate''. In 1917 Satie was hampered by a lawsuit over an insulting postcard he had sent, which nearly resulted in prison time. The Princess diverted this danger by her financial intercession in the first months of 1918, after which Satie could work free of fear.