Freeman Etudes

Cage understood the request literally and proceeded to create compositions which would have so many details that it would be almost impossible to perform them.

An example from one of the more difficult etudes follows: In 1980 Cage abandoned the cycle, partly because Zukofsky attested that the pieces were unplayable.

Violinist Irvine Arditti expressed an interest in the work and, by summer 1988, was able to perform Books I and II at a much faster tempo than anyone else, thus proving that the music was, in fact playable.

Inspired by the fact that the music was playable, Cage decided to complete the cycle for Arditti which he finally did in 1990 with the help of James Pritchett, who assisted the composer in reconstructing the method used to compose the works (which was required, because Cage himself forgot the details after 10 years of not working on the piece).

In Books III and IV Cage wrote much more complicated music than in the first half of the work and in fact forcing Arditti to slightly reduce the tempo of each Etude.