Construction is the title of several pieces by American composer John Cage, all scored for unorthodox percussion instruments.
The pieces were composed in 1939–42 while Cage was working at the Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle, Washington, and touring the West Coast with a percussion ensemble he and Lou Harrison had founded.
[5] The first part of the piece (four units of 16 bars each) was termed "exposition" by Cage, and the ending (which is a separate nine-bar section) "coda".
[5] Both the use of ethnic percussion and the rhythmic proportions technique were inspired in part by Henry Cowell's lectures that Cage attended in New York City in 1933.
[8] Third Construction was composed in 1941 and dedicated to Xenia Kashevaroff-Cage, to whom Cage was married at the time and who played in his percussion orchestra.