Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.

Some sections of the music exist in completed form as follows:
On Photography for Chorus (SATB) harmonium piano. Bryars's music is heard beneath monologues spoken by the Spanish artist Juan Muñoz who talks about methods of cheating at card games. Between 1981–1984 he participated in the CIVIL warS a vast never-completed multimedia project by Robert Wilson.

Richard Gavin Bryars (born 16 January 1943) is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in or has produced works in a variety of styles of music including jazz free improvisation minimalism historicism experimental music avant-garde and neoclassicism.