in 1977 cage was approached by betty freeman, who asked him to compose a set of etudes for violinist paul zukofsky (who would, at around the same time, also help cage with work on the violin transcription of "cheap imitation"). cage decided to model the work on his earlier set of etudes for piano, "etudes australes". that work was a set of 32 etudes, 4 books of 8 etudes each, and composed using controlled chance by means of star charts and, as was usual for cage, the "i ching". zukofsky asked cage for music that would be notated in a conventional manner, which he assumed cage was returning to in "etudes australes", and as precise as possible. 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: