Abstract

This paper will look at the role of two interlocking ideas, first collaboration in the production of musical events, second, the role of classical antiquity in the imagination of composers. It will look at how John Cage worked with Merce Cunningham to produce some of the most important ballet scores of the twentieth century, but also how he worked through the music of Eric Satie to do so. It will further look at how Cage’s “collaboration” with Satie opens into ideas of the “neo-Classical”, central to one strand of modernism, and how the deep history of ancient Greek writing was integral to Satie’s work. Through such a discussion we will explore how the notions of imitation, repetition, adaptation, performance inform the practice and theory of the reception of the past and its role in music, and, more broadly, cultural history.