THE ROLE OF CHOICE IN JOHN CAGE'S ‘CHEAP IMITATION’

Abstract

John Cage’s stated opinion regarding the original version of Cheap Imitation – for solo piano – was that it constituted a breach with what he considered the proper role of the composer to be. Despite the fact that the actual pitch content of Cheap Imitation was derived through consultations with the I Ching, and that the rhythmic and metric structures were appropriated from Satie, Cage reserved for himself a great deal of composerly control dictated only by his personal taste: the particular kind of control which, in 1970, ran counter to what he had been doing and writing about for years. In this sense, Cheap Imitation represents a watershed point in Cage’s career, away from the radical indeterminacy of the 1960s and back toward more traditional ideas of notation and composition, containing a balance between elements that are systematized, appropriated, and randomly generated. The work as a whole does not simply re-embrace determinate notation, though Cage’s composed choices are strikingly reminiscent of similar processes from his much earlier works. As William Brooks notes, ‘Cheap Imitation looks and sounds far more like pieces from the early 1940s than like any of its immediate predecessors.’