In June of 1980, Aki Takahashi was preparing to leave Buffalo, New York. Morton Feldman, knowing her reputation as a pianist specializing in new music, had invited her to be an artist in residence at the university where he taught. But now it was time for her to go back to Japan. At their last meeting, Feldman gave a musical score to Takahashi as a gift. It was a copy of John Cage’s solo piano piece Cheap Imitation with annotations by Feldman. He told her that this was an instrumental version of this piece for flute, piano, and glockenspiel. He signed the title page, just under the original title:

INSTRUMENTAL VERSION (Fl, Pf, Glock)
Morton Feldman
Buffalo, N.Y. Winter 1980
Dedicated to Aki Takahashi

Four different artists were bound up in this single gesture: John Cage, Erik Satie, Morton Feldman, and Aki Takahashi. The story of this gift, a story of memory and connection, unfolds over most of the 20th century.

John Cage was always devoted to the music of Eric Satie. In 1970 Cage was supposed to create a new two-piano transcription of Satie’s Socrate for a Cunningham dance, but he was unable to get permission from the publisher. Even worse, he could not even get performance rights to use the published piano-vocal score of Socrate. Cage’s creative solution was to make a piano piece that maintained the exact metrical and phrase structure of Satie’s Socrate, but with different notes, thus avoiding copyright issues. He called this piece Cheap Imitation. Cunningham responded by calling his dance Second Hand.

Feldman arranged Cage’s piano version of Cheap Imitation for a trio of flute (doubling on alto flute and piccolo), piano, and glockenspiel. This is the same instrumentation that was used in Feldman’s 1978 Why Patterns? and which (somewhat expanded) was the basis for two of his major works in the 1980s: Crippled Symmetry (1983) and For Philip Guston (1984). Feldman made his arrangement by simply taking the piano score of Cheap Imitation and adding indications about which notes were to be taken by the flute and which by the glockenspiel; unmarked notes were for the piano. Why did Feldman make this transcription? Takahashi didn’t know; she was too moved by the gift to ask Feldman any questions about it.

This edition is the first published edition of Feldman’s arrangement. It is a performance score. Three copies are needed for performance. The entire melody is printed in each part to facilitate continuity. The performers are only to play the large notes in their part.