This is a fascinating and slightly unnerving piece, an attempt, I think, to evoke the sense of frustration from being confined in a room. Of course there are many listeners who will find this utterly boring, and in a way that is the whole point...

I am playing this without the optional preparations (various bolts and paper attached to the strings: detailed instructions are given in the score) and you can find this alternative version easily on YouTube. The perpared piano sounds totally different and transforms the piece.

As in other pieces of this period, Cage uses a strict rhythmic scheme to compose to (not that the listener is aware of this consciously). What one does hear quite quickly is that the piece is constructed out of short patterns of different lengths which are then repeated several times. Other than this there is hardly any literal repetition, so the overall result balances short term predictability against a kind of controlled randomness. This is what makes the piece unnerving. (More detail in 'The Cambridge Companion to John Cage' ed. Nicholls, p.77.)

In fact 'A Room' is part of a more extended work called 'She is Asleep' composed as music to accompany dance moves choreographed by Jean Erdman. This prompts a different interpretation of the music, suggesting to me the sounds of a sleeper breathing: a characteristic mixture of the irregular and the predictable.

You can find this piece in 'John Cage Piano Works 1935-48 Volume 3' (Peters) and the book also contains 'In a Landscape' and 'Dream' (and many more pieces). This volume also includes a facsimile of the first page of 'A Room' on page 2 and you can see that Cage notated it in the alto clef (thankfully replaced by the treble clef in the edited version). Cage's scores are beautifully notated and this is an attractive bonus.

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