''Living Room Music'' is a musical composition by
John Cage, composed in 1940. It is a quartet for unspecified instruments, all of which may be found in a living room of a typical house, hence the title (Pritchett, 1993, 20).
''Living Room Music'' is dedicated to Cage's then-wife Xenia. The work consists of four movements: "To Begin", "Story", "Melody", and "End". Cage instructs the performers to use any household objects or architectural elements as instruments and gives examples: magazines, cardboard, "largish books", floor, the wooden frame of a window, etc. The first and the last movements are
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...
music for said instruments. In the second movement, the performers transform into a speech quartet: the music consists entirely of pieces of
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
's short poem "The World Is Round" (1938) spoken or sung. The third movement is optional. It includes a melody played by one of the performers on "any suitable instrument."
References
* Score: Edition Peters 6786. (c) 1976 by Henmar Press
* James Pritchett. ''The Music of John Cage''. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
* James Pritchett. ''John Cage: Choral music (a timeline)'', 1998
Available online.
External links
''Living Room Music'' two performances: Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Percussionists and Square Peg Round Hole{{John Cage
Compositions by John Cage