Score and parts in preparation

Grace’s Amazing Imitation Apartment is about serendipity and symbiosis. In 1969 John Cage wrote Cheap Imitation which combines the rhythm of Socrate by Erik Satie with pitches derived from chance operations. In 1976 Cage wrote his Harmonies (from Apartment House 1776), which use early American hymns as their basis. With a nod to both of these pieces, Grace’s Amazing Imitation Apartment takes the rousing rhythms of Satie’s 5ème Gnossienne, and replaces the pitches with the Sacred Harp hymn Amazing Grace. I’ve adjusted the hymn’s pitches only slightly so that they fit in the harmonic series, such that they can be played on the cello with high natural harmonics. The cello plays throughout, but the piano switches on and off with larger rhythms that I’ve borrowed from Cage’s Imitation I from Apartment House 1976.

The ensemble Apartment House (named after the piece mentioned above) has been one of the primary influences on my aesthetic interests over decades—through performances of Cage and Satie and many others—with the kind of symbiosis that makes the best art scenes thrive. The pitches and rhythms in this dedication piece combine serendipitously, in a way that embodies some part of the joy that I find in Apartment House’s playful experimentalism.

C.M.