The significance of the seven pieces brought together here is that they both generate a striking panorama of the intelligence of the material presented, over...

The significance of the seven pieces brought together here is that they both generate a striking panorama of the intelligence of the material presented, over a period of four years, from 1939 to 1943, by the composer whom the critic Fred Goldbeck described as "the greatest Giraudouxian of our age", and clarify in an extraordinarily oblique manner the prehistory of this "automation" of the creative act, towards which one can detect the perpetual temptation in the young Cage.