Le 30 juin 2017
de 11h30 à 12h00
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
amphithéâtre 5
Séance - Circumscribing the Open: Cage and Pousseur
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Jeffrey Perry
In 1969, John Cage sought permission from Editions Max Eschig to use his two-piano arrangement of Satie’s Socrate as the score for the Cunningham dance Second Hand; denied this permission, he used chance procedures to compose Cheap Imitation, a work that preserved the rhythmic structure of Socrate while changing its pitch content. In terms of Cage’s oeuvre it was at once an anomaly and a way forward. The work Cage created against Satie and for Cunningham’s dance ramifies, multiplies, and problematizes authorship. It was the first of a series of works that proceeded similarly. The process that the work catalyzed allowed Cage to return to working with tones after a decade of more abstract, conceptual projects. Cage’s “imitations” suggest new ways to consider intertextual networks (and the compositional process) in terms of subtraction, filtration, and translation, rather than merely in terms of shared materials. They also provide the source of the monophonic musical surface that predominates in the later Cage of the “number” pieces (1987-92), and provide a means of reappraising the pivotal 4’22” (1952) as well. I present a cartographic summary of Cage’s “Imitations” and “Rubbings” that situates them in the context of the music and literature they draw on, provide homage to, and erase. As I will show, such cartographic analysis opens doors to extrinsic analyses of works not explicitly modeled on prior music as well.
