John Cage: Cheap Imitation

Track Listings

1. John Cage

2. Cheap Imitation

3. Ampere 3

Tracks:

Socrate: I. Portrait Of Socrates - Hilke Helling/Deborah Richards
Socrate: II. The Banks Od The Ilissus - Hilke Helling/Deborah Richards
Socrate: III. Socrates' Death - Hilke Helling/Deborah Richards
Cheap Imitation: I. 1/4nt=60 - Herbert Henk
Cheap Imitation: II. 1/4nt=60 - Herbert Henk
Cheap Imitation: III. 1/4nt=72 - Herbert Henk

Amazon.com

Satie's Socrate is a "symphonic drama," in the composer's words, although it's scored for soprano and piano. An adaptation of Platonic dialogues, it demonstrates an altogether childlike simplicity that is entirely charming, and the rich voice of alto Hilke Helling conveys the unmediated sincerity of Satie's conception. The work by Cage that follows--wonderfully titled Cheap Imitation--is a reworking of Satie's composition. Cage distilled Satie's work to a single melodic line for piano with the help of the Taoist oracle I Ching. This radical music makes Socrate seem positively Baroque in comparison. --Joshua Cody

John Cage: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 8 (Hommage à Satie)

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Satie's influence is never direct,in between the lines

John Cage: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 8 (Hommage à Satie)

Manufacturer: MD&G Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
Similar Items:

Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1

ASIN: B000062YLR
Release Date: 2002-04-23

Tracks:

Perpetual Tango
In A Landscape
Suite For Toy Piano (Version For Piano): I
Suite For Toy Piano (Version For Piano): II
Suite For Toy Piano (Version For Piano): III
Suite For Toy Piano (Version For Piano): IV
Suite For Toy Piano (Version For Piano): V
Cheap Imitation: I
Cheap Imitation: II
Cheap Imitation: III
Dream
Swinging
Perpetual Tango

Customer Reviews:

Satie's influence is never direct,in between the lines.......2005-01-27

Satie's influence on contemporary music was far-reaching numerous and transcendant. This reach never obvious or grandiose was through his work,his recluse life as a salon pianist and his music its exquisite,elegantly proportioned piano music He brought a conceptual fluidity,of idea, shape,and design with level of aesthetic subversion. His work always implied much more than the surfaces it produced.His music is always lyrical, captivating, haunted by something, some timeless unknown, parts of his life we may never know.He died in the late Twenties with an apartment hardly known by anyone then entered for years seeing a mound of music manuscript.
Transitionally Debussy and the French(Milhaud, Poulenc, Auric,Honegger. . . )found open pathways with Satie, this simplicity of concept, of approach to making art all within the mileau of Wagnerian domination within music's realms,opera at the transitional points. Satie (within this context)until today remains a "freedom" of sorts. He thought that music should be more than what it thinks it is, and we should finally take Beethoven,the transcendant, apocalyptic, elitist, bourgeous materials off one's writing desk. The eternal Sonata or the transcendant narrative(as German opera) is not worth pondering,when modernist innovation is there of structure and concept waiting for discovery. Satie's free conceptual fluidity,was the birth of modernity for music for as the early"Sarabandes"and "Nocturnes" it was music no one could comprehend,no threads to follow. These were points for composers and artists to follow. Satie's "Vexations" for instance a 9 hour work,is a simple two line fragement piece for piano solo, to be played incessantly hundreds of times,He was also the first to accompany film live "Ent'racte".He could make music for anything and anyone.The musical miniature is his device anti-romantic in content.(Sports et divertissements)
When we come to John Cage,the post-war now you virtually have identical paradigms at work,wars seem to always create ideological beginning points,or points of renewal in art.So now the post-modern,the loss of certainty(Adorno's enigmatic canon) the search now for greater points of accesibility.Cage's creativity sought refuge in the concept,where modern dance welcomed it, and performance art. Much of this music here on these CDs was written for The Merce Cunningham Dance Company,and works quite well, in that the simplicity of timbres makes for wonderful un-accompaniment,screens for modern dance."Dream" here is disarming in beauty, G-minor mode quite a thrill to dance to this harmonic blends,sustain pedal down throughout. Likewise I don't think Satie would have preferred to re-do a Toy Piano work for its parent large piano, it is something very different, more authoritarian. Must have been a lapse of concept for Cage."Perpetual Tango" takes you into the dance hall here a quiet one, subdued.Again Cage learned the beuty of economy from Satie, less is indeed more than enough. All the music on this disk is quite beautiful, disarming,yet you sense the smell of the greasepaint,the theatre. Cage came to think of Satie as a free reservoir to visit now and again in substitution, as :Cheap Imitation: where he alters notes from Satie's original, something composers today in 2005 still practice.Yet again the simplicity is one to devote one;s life to. The British also found fertile ground in Satie, Howard Skempton and John White.

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John Cage: Cheap Imitation

Manufacturer: Ampersand
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00004U8BV
Release Date: 2001-04-24

Tracks:

John Cage
Cheap Imitation
Ampere 3

John Cage: Chorals; Cheap Imitation; Freeman Etudes I-VIII

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John Cage: Chorals; Cheap Imitation; Freeman Etudes I-VIII

Manufacturer: Cp2 Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000009J1L
Release Date: 1995-12-12

Tracks:

Chorals
Cheap Imitation I
Cheap Imitation II
Cheap Imitation III
Freeman Etudes I
Freeman Etudes II
Freeman Etudes III
Freeman Etudes IV
Freeman Etudes V
Freeman Etudes VI
Freeman Etudes VII
Freeman Etudes VIII

Album Description

CHORALS

The Chorals are an arrangement for violin of one of the Solos for Voice in Songbooks following Paul Zukofsky's suggestion to make a continuous music of disparate elements, single tones, unisons, and beatings. The Solo in Songbooks had been composed by placing a transparent staff of a special design over nine of Erik Satie's posthumously published Douze Chorales. The design of the staff was such as to give equal space for each chromatic tone. Thus its five lines were not equidistant, those representing a minor third being closer together than those representing a major third. "Rubbings" were made. When notes were not in the proper position for naturals, flats, or sharps, they were microtonally between these. For the Chorals the staff is again conventional, and accidentals, flat flats, sharp sharps, sharp flats, flat sharps, flat and sharp naturals are used. Which are single tones, which unisons, and which beatings, was determined by means of I Ching chance operations.

CHEAP IMITATION

Cheap Imitation for piano solo was written in December 1969 to take the place of the Socrate of Erik Satie as an accompaniment for Second Hand by Merce Cunningham, the right to arrange the Socrate for two pianos having been refused by the French copyright holder. Becoming attached to the imitation as I had for many years been attached to the original, I arranged it for an orchestra of any size between the minimum of twenty-four and the maximum of ninety-five. In 1975 Paul Zukofsky, encouraged by my use in the Etudes Australes of not graphic but relatively conventional notation, asked whether I would consider making a similar work for the violin. I am now engaged in that work. But in order to do it, I study under Zukofsky's patient tutelage, not how to play the violin, but how to become even more baffled by its almost unlimited flexibility. Cheap Imitation for violin solo is one of the results of this study. I wrote the notes. The editing is Zukofsky's, though he did it in my! presence and often asked me which of several possibilities I preferred. The bowing in the third movement was I Ching chance determined. The three movements of the Socrate are Portrait of Socrates, On the Banks of the Ilissus, and Death of Socrates.

The following information regarding the compositional means of Cheap Imitation appeared with the version for piano solo. The I Ching (64 related to 7, to 12, etc.) was used to answer the following questions for each phrase (with respect to the melodic line and sometimes the line of accompaniment) of Erik Satie's Socrate:

1. Which of the seven "white note" modes is to be used? 2. Beginning on which of the twelve chromatic notes? Then, in I (for each note excepting repeated notes): 3. Which note of given transposition is to be used? In II and III original interval relations were kept for one-half measure, sometimes (opening measures and subsequent appearances) for one measure.

The intonation for the violin is Pythagorean following the definition of this system by Hermann Helmholtz (On the Sensations of Tone, Dover Publications, N.Y., p. 312). Rather than making the Pythagorean comma 24 cents precisely, the violinist should sometimes increase it, even to 40 cents, in order to distinguish tones from one another. The violinist should follow the rule of playing non vibrato but not too strictly. Dotted slurs are phrases, but, unless there is a filled-in slur, every note is to be bowed separately. Asterisks associated with high tones indicate a particularized, even dramatic, pianissimo. Commas associated with filled-in slurs indicated portato, a close togetherness of clearly articulated tones, what might be termed a paradoxical legato or a "philosophical" détaché [reprinted from the preface to the violin solo edition of Cheap Imitation].

FREEMAN ETUDES