'Dream' was composed in 1948, so it's an early piano piece (you can find it in volume 3 of 'John Cage: Piano Works 1935-48' published by Peters). The performance note reads: 'Always with resonance; no silence; tones may be freely sustained, manually or with pedal, beyond notated durations' and the tempo marking is crochet = 88 (rubato, but with a 2/2 time signature), plus 'sempre una corda pp'.

The musical material consists of the notes of the phrygian mode beginning on G and most of the piece stays within an octave and a half around middle C. A lot of it can be played with one hand. The form of the piece is fluid at the phrase level, with a tendency for the larger melodic intervals at the start to gradually flatten out, so that by the end of the first 'verse' all the motion is stepwise (as a pupil of mine pointed out to me when I played it to him). The final few bars are played in one long pedal, which blurs the sound and creates a sense of space and distance. The piece ends with a series of six chords. The whole process is then repeated from the beginning twice more, as if there were three verses (0:00, 2:20 and 4:40 for reference).

So much for the 'facts'. What is interesting is the strange atmosphere, the mixture of repetition and sponaneity, rhapsodic narrative strivings held in check by balanced, 'classical' phrasing; the hint of Spanish influence in the use of the phrygian mode and the occasional suggestion of plucked guitar strings, reminding us that Cage's birthplace was not so far from Mexico: above all the intense intimacy of the music.

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