The composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) came of age in the bohemian sub-culture of Montmartre, with its artists' cabarets and cafés-concerts. These colorful milieux decisively shaped his aesthetic priorities and compositional strategies, from the esoteric of the 1880s to the avant-garde ballets of the 1920s. Whiting makes this radical transvaluation of received artistic values more understandable by placing it in the full context of bohemian Montmartre.