#gnossienne no. 5

[spenglernot]

STORIES TELLING: HOW RECURRING MUSIC IN OFMD CAUSES MENTAL DEVASTATION IN THE VERY BEST WAY

How the Blackbeard theme, Gnossienne No. 5, and Voi Che Sapepte reveal, reinforce and recontextualize the narrative. An in-depth analysis of key scenes throughout seasons 1 and 2.

Much gratitude to pocket friends who were so encouraging and provided valuable feedback while I worked on this.

Meta by these authors (links, below the cut) influenced this video:

@asneakyfox, @asongaboutpirates, @bakasara, @doyoueverstopandthink, @chaotic-neutral-knitter, @forpiratereasons @fresne999 @gaypiratepropaganda, @jaskierx, @medievill, @mxmollusca, @piratecaptainscaptainpirates @veeagainsttheday, @57flagsofdeath

Gnossienne No. 5 doyoueverstopandthink - i will literally never get over about how fantastic the transition from robert schumann's "träumerei" to erik satie's "gnossiennes: no. 5" is

Voi Che Sapete asongaboutpirates - Another little detail about OFMD that makes me go feral

Transformation in OFMD fresne999 - Half way through the journey of our analyses mxmollusca - The transformation from object to subject, from something that has things done to it versus someone with agency.

Ed's & Izzy's Relationship asneakyfox - you have to understand i have always felt the key thing that makes blackhands interesting...

chaotic-neutral-knitter - Izzy telling Stede "I know you think you understand him," and Stede immediately describing Ed's emotional state perfectly accurately... gaypiratepropaganda - On Izzy saying "because of your feelings for Stede fucking Bonnet"

Ed's Arc veeagainsttheday - Ed, Killing, and the Kraken in Our Flag Means Death S1 and S2

piratecaptainscaptainpirates - I've been thinking about how Ed starts directly killing people in s2e8 57flagsofdeath - Still thinking about this scene. Ed lights the fire place, puts a blanket on the floor to lay on, and puts the two cake toppers next to each other before rolling over and bursting into tears. asneakyfox - i've talked a fair bit about how i don't think "anger issues" is a very useful way to describe how the show frames ed's relationship with violence

Izzy's Arc bakasara - Trying to parse my thoughts on Izzy's death and why I had a different reaction to it than I thought I would. forpiratereasons - all right. i'm ready to talk about izzy.

Love & Relationships in OFMD jaskierx - posting some thoughts from the discord about how many 'irl relationship' things they're dealing with in ep7 and how much i am eating my mattress about it medievill - ofmd does not give a fuck about reality or history or anachronism but it draws the line at magic dick.

#The effectiveness and attention to detail of the OFMD sound crew's use of recurring music to emphasize the narrative is incredible #If you love the music in OFMD you'll probably enjoy this #OFMD is an absolute treasure #gnossienne no. 5 #blackbeard theme #voi che sapete #kraken theme #ofmd music #Mark Mothersbaugh #maggie phillips #OFMD sound crew #our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s1 #ofmd s2 #ofmd s1 s2 music comparison

[youshouldseemeinadeerstalker]

#*girls (gn) #I AM LOSING IT #I HAD TO PAUSE #THIS IS IT #WE ARE BACK #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd #gentlebeard #gnossienne no. 5 #ofmds2e4 #blackbonnet #my silly memes

[leithianxx]

Gnossienne No. 5

Gnossienne No. 5, composed by Erik Satie in 1889, is Ed and Stede’s theme. It’s played at each of their important moments throughout Our Flag Means Death. When you listen to the piece in full, it’s like someone keeps starting the piece and messing up a little so they start all over again, and each scene experiments with a different instrument during a different segment of the piece, like flute or harpsichord. It remains tentative but each time it’s a little more hopeful, a little more determined, a little more wistful. Ed and Stede are revealing little bits of themselves to each other, checking in and reaching out towards each other’s vulnerabilities and offering safety, exploring what they mean to each other. But the base notes, their connection and chemistry, always stay a steady anchor. The whole piece is a bit sloppy and giddy and all over the place yet always comes back to the same notes and the same progression. They can’t quite place their finger on what's happening so the music can’t resolve in a satisfying way, but each time it becomes clearer and more complete until the end of the song which is played during the scene where they kiss and they’ve finally figured out how to play all the notes and it’s beautiful. It’s like this culmination of everything the performer has been trying to communicate and finally gets right- but it’s still cut a bit short.

I've talked before about how often the show is in conversation with creative works that signal shifts towards modernism, which is apt for a show that famously and hilariously plays with time periods and shifting 1717 up with anachronistic modernisms. It's true in its references to literature and painting, and it's true of music as well. Satie was experimental for his time, taking inspiration from impressionist painters like Monet who endeavoured to create reflections of the ordinary and the real that were non-static and moving, in both senses of the word. He's sometimes described as the spiritual father of minimalism, whose compositions @unadulteratedkr calls "subversive in its relative simplicity." While giving me some context for Satie, she told me that while his notations indicate that performers should leave room for poetry in their expressions of the music, he insisted the tempo remain modéré, meant at the tempo of the human heart. The bohemian was a truly hopeless romantic who proposed to the painter Suzanne Valadon on their very first night together. He wrote her songs and she painted his portraits, and when she left him after 5 months, he was so devastated that he wrote of being left with “nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness.” She was supposedly his only ever known love affair.

Gnossienne No. 5 dovetails OFMD's minimalist approach to romance, where the sweeping and swelling feeling of falling in love is left to speak for itself in its understated, clumsy simplicity. The piece is experimental in the way that the show is experimental, stripping the queer love story down to its rawest most basic components without being weighed down by oppressive forces or grand expectations. It allows for comedy and lightheartedness and the experimental nature of becoming friends to lovers. It’s their song through and through. I’m sure we can expect it to play at their wedding, and we will all dutifully cry our eyes out.

#our flag means death meta #ofmd meta #our flag means death analysis #ofmd analysis #our flag means death #ofmd #edward teach #stede bonnet #ed x stede #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #gnossienne no. 5 #erik satie #classical music #classical composers #david jenkins

[ignatius-pennyfeather-ix]

stop im actually so emo about them using the same instrumental from s1 in all the tender moments between ed & stede. like I HEAR YOU GNOSSIENNE NO. 5 IN MODÉRÉ I LOVE YOU

#gnossienne no. 5 #lol #also i originally thought there were a lot of more of the same instrumentals #but i was checking the playlists and i guess not? #i know fuck all about music so not shocking #but like it’s actually making me FERAL #ed x stede #blackbonnet #otp: you wear fine things well #gentlebeard #ed teach #blackbeard #stede bonnet #ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2 #also maybe this is really common again wouldn’t know #BUT I LOVE IT EITEHR WAY

[biceratops7]

So first we got a flute, then a soft piano, afterwards some subtle strings, then piano again clearer than ever and with more conviction.

Calling it now, the last time we hear gnossiene no.5 it’s gonna be this grand, beautiful orchestration, we’re talking climax to a Lord of the Rings movie meets bodice ripper. It’s gonna bring Drama, it’s gonna bring Life

#I wanna hear some Rush Garcia type shit #look them up on YouTube they’re so talented #our flag means death #ofmd #stede bonnet #edward teach #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #gnossienne no. 5 #leitmotif #orchestration #biceratops

[whim-prone]

gnossienne no. 5 playing in my head at all times

#i get a little smile on my face #it's THEM #gnossienne no. 5 #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd soundtrack

[wow-its-me]

Guy I’m gonna be honest with you here

As much as I talk about gnossienne no 5

I have no clue how to pronounce it

#ofmd #gnossienne no. 5

[whim-prone-pirate]

it is a very good night to be an erik satie fan. gnossienne no5 is all one needs to live really.

#i'm serious like deadly #i love erik satie #he's been my man since i was eleven #he was my middle school english class soundtrack #right there with zoe keating and a youtube video of unreleased hamilton songs #ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 #erik satie #gnossienne no. 5

[doyoueverstopandthink]

i will literally never get over about how fantastic the transition from robert schumann's "träumerei" to erik satie's "gnossiennes: no. 5" is in episode nine during The Kiss™ 

mark motherbaugh’s usage of satie's gnossienne in the first place is brilliant because (1) erik satie was an aristocrat sorta person and was almost frowned upon for creating this "new style" of classical piano music and (2) in ends on an minor sixth first inversion 

first of all, according to 17th century western european classical music theory, you’re not meant to end a piece on a minor sixth chord. a regular e minor chord would (most likely) be E - G in the bass and a B - E in the treble so that the root of the chord (E) is doubled up. 

erik satie, however, ends it with G (the first note of the major chord) and it's G - B in the bass and octave E's in the treble. the minor sixth combined with this inversion very much so gives it the sense that it should move on and that the piece shouldn't end there, which is why it's so fucking perfect for ed and stede

their relationship, by all means, should keep going on. everything's laid out nicely - they're going to escape, be together, and go to china - but it just... stops. and it's not an abrupt stop, but it's a strange one. and i’m fucking obsessed with it. 

#ofmd #our flag means death #stede bonnet #edward teach #ed teach #blackbeard #blackbonnet #gnossienne no. 5 #traumerei #schumann #robert schumann #erik satie #satie #classical music #piano

[bittythesouthernbaker]

my life is being held together by a thread and that thread is gnossienne no. 5

#gnossienne no. 5 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd 2 spoilers #ofmd spoilers #the repeat of the you wear fine things well!!!!! I’m gonna puke!!!!!!

[spenglernot]

THEY EDIT FINE THINGS WELL: OFMD MOONLIGHT SCENES (S1 E5 & S2 E5) COMPARISON

Both scenes, with audio, play simultaneously. There is interplay with the timing of dialog and music symmetry (Gnossienne No. 5), until about 0:26, where the music falls out of synch for a few seconds (but still sounds lovely). The S1 E5 scene ends with Stede and Ed walking away from each other while S2 E5 scene ends with Ed and Stede together. Love that.

#I can’t say anything effusive enough to adequately describe how much I love every single detail in this show #Obsessed #Does this qualify as meta? #Maybe video meta? #I really need to get back to work now #Ofmd is soup #OFMD brilliant editing #OFMD music #Gnossienne No. 5 #OFMD S1E5 #OFMD S2E5 #OFMD S2 spoilers #Our flag means death #Stede bonnet #edward teach #gentlebeard #blackbonnet #Editor Jochen Fitzherbert #Assistant editor Dan Pavis #Music Supervisor Maggie Phillips #Supervising Sound Editor Damian Del Borello #Assistant Sound Editors Alex Siphahioglu and Benny Jennings #Music Editor Steve Griffen #Given them awards - all the awards

[wengenn]

THERE'S A FUCKING SPOTIFY AD THAT USES GNOSSIENNE N5 I JUST HEARD IT I GOT SO TRIGGERED WHAT THE HELL

#ofmd #our flag means death #gnossienne no. 5 #HELPPP #french Spotify btw

[atomicruinsperfection]

*Gnossienne no. 5 plays*

*Us:*

#ofmd #blackbonnet #gnossienne no. 5 #that song plays and you know something good is about to go down :) #My pretty dumb meme. If it can even be called that. #the crow's nest scene #you wear fine things well scene #the kiss scene

[casebasket]

On the music of OFMD: Gnossienne no. 5

I haven’t seen a lot of discourse on it so thought I’d give it a go!

Gnossienne no. 5 is the sweet melody that plays whenever Stede and Ed share a soft moment. I’ve also read other interpretations of it, such as times when Ed feels good about himself because of Stede, or when Ed is being vulnerable with Stede, etc. Point is, the song plays when they have a Moment: when they share breakfast together the morning after being a lighthouse, still in each other’s clothes; the Moonlight “you wear fine things well” scene; a very quiet bit of it when Ed is crying in the bathtub and Stede comforts him; and of course, the “what makes Ed happy is you” kiss. The slow build up, the leitmotif, the incredibly soft and subtle moments, all culminating into canon romantic love between two middle aged men - this is fanfiction. This all reads as fanfiction, and I love it so much, and my heart hurts from that last episode. But I digress.

Gnossienne is a made up term invented by its composer, Erik Satie, to call a new type of composition he created: characterized by “free (lacking time signatures or bar divisions) and highly experimental with form, rhythm and chordal structure” (wikipedia). It is also often regarded as a dance, and no. 5, quite apart from the other Gnossiennes in the series, distinguishes itself with its relatively upbeat style, which to me sounds almost tentative and hopeful. It is soft, new, simple, gentle, with time signatures up for interpretation. And I believe this complements Ed and Stede’s love perfectly.

Stede and Ed’s relationship, to me, is one of first love: neither really certain of the feeling they have, as neither ever really experienced true romantic love before (my interpretation), so they are slow and uncertain - much like how Gnossienne no. 5 balances between hope and joy, with an undercurrent of wistfulness, sadness(?) that suggests it could easily tilt into melancholic territory. They develop slowly from a friendship (the tentativeness), and is something both incredibly new to them, in the show, and to us (the audience), who gets queerbaited all the time. This natural development of a queer couple who are also the two protagonists complete with their own backstories and character arcs and personality is an unfortunately novel phenomenon in media. And it’s just so SOFT. Much like how Gnossienne was new and experimental and free form, so is Ed and Stede’s relationship, and everything is so soft and lovely and believable and is everything queer representation could be. 

Oh and one more thing - Erik Satie was reportedly influenced by Gnosticism at the time, which “emphasised personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institution”. You know. Queerness over heteronormativity, hegemonic oppression, etc.

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd meta #our flag means death meta #stede bonnet #edward teach #gnossienne #gnossienne no. 5 #who knew gay pirates were going to be the thing to save 2022? #wasn't on my bingo board #meta #text

[ondasyletras]

French 79 – Satie: Gnossienne No. 5 (FRAGMENTS / French 79 Rework)

#french 79 #erik satie #Gnossienne No. 5 #synthesizers #music #youtube #Youtube

[whim-prone]

if gnossienne no. 5 plays in the first episode? babes it's over i won't survive the rest go on without me etc. etc.

#ofmd #ofmd s2 #gnossienne no. 5