Auditor Essay

Harmonization and Form In John Cage’s Living Room Music
John Cage has always been known as a controversial and new age composer. Some say that his pieces lack the very structure that makeup classic forms. I argue that John Cage’s work Living Room Music, despite instrumentation with no set pitch, has conclusive harmonies and is in the style of a Baroque suite. This is a strange concept for some because pitch has become such a focal point around harmonic analysis when in reality it can be determined simply by ensemble texture and dominate features. The word harmony in this analysis refers to the relation of different sound sets instead of pitch. The setup for this is featured in Example 1.
Example 1: John Cage Living Room Music, Directions
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As you can see in Example 1, the conclusive and inconclusive idea is enforced by having the right hand accented and the left hand unaccented. This establishes that one beat is going to be more forceful and dominate than another. Another concept that enforces the idea of harmony is the eight different sounds produced. Each player (four players total) has to create two sounds. This doesn’t necessarily mean two instruments but different “pitches” must be established in some form of high to low forming a scale of sorts.
The concept of sound in this work is very general because the sound can be from anything. Instrumentation can range from couches to beer bottles. The intention of the piece is that it can be performed anywhere by anyone, a concept that is not original of a Baroque suite. Previously, suites were only performed in formal settings for people of aristocratic stature. A good quote to summarize the ideology behind the settings comes from Stephen Kenyon, in his article “The Baroque Suite”.
“It was a highly organized and stylized music--despite its roots in the common soil– and was not the sort of music ordinary