The fourth volume of Cage’s percussion music contains some shocking revelations – at one time Cage wrote in glorious C major! These discoveries are pieces for dance and I suspect that more could be found out about the circumstances of the original performances. Fads and Fancies in the Academy was given in a dance programme at Mills College in 1940 and has some weird titles attached to its seven movements. The first section, ‘The pupil is eager to learn’, sets the tone in Cage’s bouncy rhythmic style. When we get to ‘We deal with the total child’, there’s a C major oom-pah of a kind that could only have occured later in one of Cage’s extravaganzas by accidental tuning in on a radio. Surprises continue with ‘Reactionaries’, a salon piece with only a few surrealist twists; ‘Revolutionaries’ bring noise, symbolising a ‘pitched battle’; ‘Vistas of the future: pessimistic’ are represented by a voice counting up to nine four times then cut off by the pianist with – of all things – a version of ‘O du lieber Augustin’! ‘Vistas: optimistic’ come in C major with clapping.

The Four Dances (1942-43) use folk styles with vocal monody, clapping, swept and plucked piano strings, and the last one is a boogie-woogie – C major to the fore again. Some of this material links to later Cage and it amplifies our understanding of where he came from and points to where things were going with minimalism.

Percussionists haven’t rushed to play 27’ 10.554”. Zoltán Rácz considers its demands to be impossible but, since Cage allows the use of recording, he is able to use multi-tracking effectively. No shocks here – predictably unpredictable Cage. Confident performances throughout and well recorded: the series should be better known.