Richard Bridge said "A contract cannot generally be cancelled by notice, whether it be written or oral."

This is not true of performance contracts, which generally have provisions for cancellation--you could argue that a verbal or oral, or non-written agreement would follow the customary and generally accepted provisions for cancellation.

In order to have a performance agreement in the first place, you need to agree on the following things: date and time of performance, place of performance, and a specific compensation for the performance.   Without that, you've got nothing--