MUSICAL MEN SERIES scj jonnas

Satie, Cage, and Joplin make a wonderfully unlikely piano trinity: each enlarged what piano music could be, but from a distinct musical world—French eccentric modernism, American experimentalism, and ragtime’s brilliantly syncopated popular art. This is a neat, affectionate clerihew that catches the difficulty of placing Satie, Cage, and Joplin in one compact musical frame. “Each progressive in their own way” is its essential insight, while “a trio indeed so difficult to play” is a pleasingly witty close: their music would be impossible to blend straightforwardly, yet the very mismatch makes the imagined trio vivid and amusing. The title’s compressed “Satie Cage & Joplin” also has a crisp, poster-like rhythm—three names, three worlds, one piano lineage.