This piece for solo organ was apparently composed to fulfil a request for a work similar to Dream, a tranquil and repetitive piano piece that Cage wrote in 1948. Unsurprisingly, then, this is one of the most traditional of Cage's indeterminate pieces, with probably the closest analogue to it being his Satie-based pieces. But this is more traditional even than those. Indeed, were indeterminate processes even used in the composition? It doesn't sound like it.
It consists of a number of different parts repeated a few times. As in Dream, most of these parts are fairly pretty, minimal melodies. However, I don't think that this has much of the tranquility of Dream: the large dynamic range, and the monastic sound of the organ, lend something more like an aura of majesty and drama to the music. It's also interesting for its greater variety of timbres: most of the notes on the organ are clean and ethereal, but the lower ones growl, and the higher ones have a scratchy, even quack-like sound. One of the parts draws attention to this by relatively rapidly (relative to the pace of the rest of it) switching between all three.
There is one rather odd, slightly more Cagean part, which consists solely of a deep, low, loud note booming out four times. It doesn't really seem to fit in with the rest of the music and as such is actually somewhat amusing.
Definitely not one of Cage's best, and utterly bizarre in the context of the rest of his work from this time, but it's nice enough I suppose. This would be one to check out if you're into Cage's earlier, pre-chance music (indeed, it's right at home on the fairly accessible collection of early Cage works, In a Landscape).
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