Alfred Eric Leslie Satie was born May 17, 1866 in Honfleur, Basse-Normandie, France of Jane Leslie Anton and Alfred Satie. When he was four years old, his family moved to Paris where his father was offered a translator's job. After his mother died in 1872 when Erik was only 7 years old, he was sent, along with his younger brother Conrad, back to Honfleur, to live with his paternal grandparents. There he received his first music lessons. When his grandmother died in 1878, the two boys returned to Paris to live with their father, who remarried a piano teacher shortly afterwards.

Satie entered the Paris Conservatoire1879, but his teachers label him as untalented and he was sent home. He tried again in 1885 but was still unable to make a positive impression on his teachers. A year later he decided to enter the military. This also was short lived and within a few weeks he made efforts to be declared unfit for service and eventually succeeded.
At this time he changed his name to Erik dropping the c in honor of his mother and published Valse-Ballet, his first work. He led a very unconventional life, making his living playing the piano in Paris cabarets and during this time started publishing his Gymnopédies. Satie and Suzanne Valadon, an artist began an affair in 1893. She moved away after six months, leaving Satie broken hearted. This is the only known intimate relationship Satie ever had.

In 1895 he composed his Mass for the poor, and then wrote a series of short musical pieces full of satire and eccentricities with strange titles such as: Unpleasant Glimpses, Genuine Flabby Preludes (for a dog), Old Sequins and Old Breastplates and Dried up Embryos. That same year he inherited some money which allowed him to have more of his writings printed but by the middle of 1896 all his money was gone. In 1899 he began to make a living as a cabaret pianist adapting popular music compositions for piano as well as adding some of his own.
In the fall of 1905, while still working as a cabaret pianist, Satie enrolled in Vincent d'Indy's Schola Cantorum to study classical counterpoint and orchestration. Satie continued the courses for over five years and received his first diploma in 1908.

Erik Satie was considered an outsider in the world of music, an eccentric in his life and in his work. After years of heavy drinking, Satie died on 1 July, 1925, from cirrhosis of the liver and was buried in Cimetiere d'Arcueil, Arcueil, France. After his death his friends found drawings, texts and other memorabilia that Satie had saved throughout his life as well as many compositions that were completely unknown and would later be published. He left behind a legacy of over 150 solo piano pieces, six stage works, fourteen songs, Mass for voices and organ, Socrate and a new tradition in music that was followed by such notables as Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky and Poulenc and many others.