John Cage - Cheap Imitation I
Music has its uses. Sometimes you want to play a piece that will do nothing less than drive rational thought away, fast. At times like that I reach for my copy of Cheap Imitation by John Cage. It's a piece that he wrote for Merce Cunningham's dance troupe, based somehow upon Socrate by Erik Satie. What the connection is meant to be I have no idea. For Cheap Imitation is nothing more and nothing less than a series of discrete piano notes played in what sounds very much like a random fashion. Reputedly, Cage used the I Ching to make many of the everyday decisions when it came to composing this. It has a very limited tonal palette. It has a very limited dynamic palette. There are no chords, and the closest it comes to sounding "interesting" is on the few occasions when the sustain from one note carries through to the next. Certainly, this is difficult to listen to. But there is something about this that gets inside you. It's almost like a meditative act, as you feel yourself stepping from one note to the next, calm and unhurried.

John Cage - Cheap Imitation I