Analysis
Cheap Imitation is a piece in three parts. It consists almost exclusively of a single melodic line, with occasional doublings. The rhythmic structure of the phrases is based on Satie's original, usually on the vocal line, occasionally on the orchestral parts. The pitches were determined using chance operations with the I Ching, through the following questions:
- Which of the seven modes, if we take as modes the seven scales beginning on white notes and remaining on white notes, which of those am I using?
- Which of the twelve possible chromatic transpositions am I using?
- For this phrase for which this transposition of this mode will apply, which note am I using of the seven to imitate the note that Satie wrote?
Cage observed phrase and note repeats present in Satie's melodies, adding them to his imitation. The use of modes was unusual in that Cage used chromatic transpositions; the composer called Cheap Imitation a chromatic modal piece.
The violin version, completed in 1977, was a collaboration with Paul Zukofsky. This transcription is transposed a major third higher than the original (otherwise several notes would be out of range of the instrument) and is identical to it, except for a few passages.
Cage would subsequently write several more pieces based on other composers' works, similarly using chance procedures to alter the originals. These include several solos from Song Books (1970), "harmonies" from Apartment House 1776 (1976), Some of "The Harmony of Maine" (1978) and Hymns and Variations (1979).
Read more about this topic: Cheap Imitation
Famous quotes containing the word analysis:
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)