Daniel Barenboim declares War on Muzak

[arensky]

What do y'all think of this?

https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4883612.stm

[Graf Zahl]

When I hear something like "Muzak" in a mall or on some public place, I don't really care about it. I hear it and find it tiresome usually. But most of this music is intended as background-music. What I find disgusting is, when I hear a classical piece of music, which really "deserves" to be listened to with care, as some sort of “aural background”. I once heard the beginning-chords of the Hammerklavier as a jingle in a drugstore. No more Moonlight at the meat-table, no more Claire-de-lune in the underwear-section!

This is my point of view, the view of a musician. What Daniel Barenboim rather means is the effect of the music-pollution on the "not-music-addicted" people. I fear I cannot judge that, so I'll keep my 2cents at my own for now. 

[ted]

I agree with him, but for reasons he would probably consider incorrect. I do not want ANY music forced on me, whether it is Muzak or Beethoven. I think the completely voluntary nature of listening is my moral right. It is only this usurping of individual choice which I object to; nothing to do with the nature of the music itself.

[prometheus]

Finally!

"Active listening is absolutely essential," he says.

Someone 'important' who agrees with me. I have been saying this for a long time. I had no idea other people agreed with this at all, which puzzled me but that is quite common.

[bernhard]

Finally!

Someone 'important' who agrees with me. I have been saying this for a long time. I had no idea other people agreed with this at all, which puzzled me but that is quite common.

Er...

It seems more likely that you agree with someone important...

[jas]

I half agree with him. I agree that Muzak is crap and should be banned from all public places for the rest of time, and that those who inflict it on us should be tarred and feathered and locked in a room with a Muzak CD playing on a loop for a minimum of five years, but I don't necessarily agree that passive listening is always a bad thing. If you're concentrating on something else I don't think there's anything harmful in it.

A late 19th/early 20th century musician/sociologist Adorno believed that passive listening was a way for the "culture industry" to control us by making us think we're getting escapism from the mundanity of everyday life, when in actual fact it's things like mass-produced, consumerist music that are making us feel bored and depressed in the first place, but then we listen to it for escapism, etc., and so it goes round in a circle. He also mentions "pseudo-individualism" - where the industry try to make us think we have our own musical tastes and personalities by dressing bands up differently, giving them different images etc., when in actual fact their differences are so superficial we might as well all be listening to the same one.

However, I think that Muzak's enormous lack of value lies in its vapid, unappealing, boringness rather than its harmfulness. It is quite simply the most worthless rubbish out there, and yet they pump it out into supermarkets and other busy places under the misguided idea that it's inoffensive. They don't have a clue. It's the lowest of the low. Rant, rant ...

Jas

[ahinton]

I agree wholeheartedly with almost everything that has been written in this thread so far - except, perhaps, for the notion in the thread title itself that Daniel Barenboim is "actually declaring war" on anything - for the simple reason that "declaring war" on Muzak and its effects or otherwise is about as tenable a concept as "declaring war" on "terror". "Muzak" itself is not an enemy of anything or anyone - and many people, if questioned about what they had heard in places where Muzak was being relayed, would likely answer that had been unaware that any recorded music was present and audible when they were wherever they happened to be when it was being relayed. The real "enemy" is the purveyors of this musically unnecessary rubbish. Yes I admit to getting irritated by "music" forced upon me when in places where I do not choose to listen to any, but I equally well accept that others who are not professional musicians may be less aware of its existence than I am. Its intended commercial effect (and, of course, Muzak is contrived so as to have no other kind) is purposely dependent upon its ability to operate semi-subliminally, rather than as an obvious manifestation of the kind that might make any one of its victims prepared to admit that "I bought this dress / espresso / dishwasher, etc. with the direct encouragement of the particular Muzak that I heard while I was pondering whether or what to purchase".

I was in a restaurant - a very good one, as it happened - several years ago where my  enjoyment of the main course was being so seriousy marred by the intrusion of the slow movement from Mahler's Sixth Symphony that I actually asked the waiter to call the chef-propriètaire so that I could ask him if it was OK if I committed suicide then and there or whether he preferred me to wait until the thing was over, adding that this question in no way reflected on the contents of the plate before me. I don't want to hear Brahms's marvellous Fourth Symphony in an elevator any more than I want to hear Cole Porter's equally marvellous (in its own terms) song "In the Still of the Night" (each of which I have at one time or another done) while ascending to the umpteenth floor; it's an insult to either to relay their wares in this way; in fact, the nearest I ever want to hear of a Cole Porter song in an elevator is probably a rendition of "Miss Otis Regrets that the Elevator is Unable to Function Today"...even if it hoes happen to be pre-recorded...

Best,

Aliair