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Brian Eno and ambient music

How to manage the listener’s auditory attention so that music becomes the background? Learn about selected background music concepts: artistic and functional ones. This time we meet Brian Eno and ambient music.

“Furniture music”, Muzak and ambient music

Brian Eno’s concept of ambient music is a kind of natural continuation of Erik Satie’s idea of ‘furniture music‘. However, the British composer, in his own peculiar way, seems to be more interested in amplifying and incorporating ambient sounds rather than neutralising them.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Eno presents his idea of filling various types of spaces (including those of a public nature) with artistic (background) music. He proposes activities in opposition, as it were, to the product then being delivered on a mass scale by Muzak and similar companies. To describe the new genre of electronic music, Eno chooses the ambiguous term ambient music, which fits perfectly into the discussion on so-called environmental music.

How to engage many levels of awareness?

As Eno emphasises, the purpose of ambient music is not to impose a particular mode of perception; on the contrary, it creates room for diversity:

Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be ignorable as it is interesting (Eno 1978).

Eno explores the sonic qualities of electronic music in the studio, which he regards as a compositional tool. This is borne out by both Music for Airports (1978) and the earlier Discreet Music (1975), which the composer himself considered his first ambient album. Eno uses various types of studio techniques (including echo, tape delay, looping sound material or manipulating the speed of tape playback to control the pitch or duration of sounds). He employs repetitive patterns. He focuses on the temporal dimension of composition, freed from the drama of events and the dynamics of their development.

Ambient music is music of the environment that blends in and becomes part of its surroundings. Depending on the listener’s preference, it can function on the periphery of aural attention or become the object of active perception.

Ambient under fire

Eno’s experiments in the field of ambient music as early as the 1970s generated quite a bit of interest from fans, critics and casual listeners. Composer’s existing fans were initially outraged by his interest in music of the environment. They could not accept Eno’s move to the ‘dark side’ tainted by the ‘hated’ and ubiquitous Muzak.

Despite much criticism, Music for Airports sounded in the Marine Terminal space at New York’s La Guardia Airport in 1980. Two years later, it filled the space of the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. Unfortunately, many passengers reportedly complained about forced uneasy listening. They demanded the reinstatement of ‘regular background music’. The avant-garde version of Muzak therefore did not appeal to the average listener.

Author: Sylwia Makomaska

 

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In the Music Psychology Zone, you will find out how (background) music affects customers at points of sale. In subsequent publications, we will explain what strategies are used in audiomarketing and why (background) music can also evoke negative emotions.

See also: The effect of “acoustic wallpaper” in audiomarketing and Muzak, or „more than music”
More information:
  • Sylwia Makomaska (2018), How to “furnish” the public space with (artistic) background music… Erik Satie and Brian Eno, w: Proceedings of the 5th International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences & Arts SGEM 2018, Vienna (Austria) 2018, Science & Arts, vol. 5, 487-494.
Brian Eno i muzyka ambient