Ambient Music: sounds for airports or songs for the soul?
Though Brian Eno, the godfather of ambient music, titled his 1978 quintessential masterpiece Ambient 1: Music for Airports, it’s difficult to fathom why someone with such zeal for music and its impact on the human psyche would intend his music merely as background noise. Well, thankfully, Eno didn’t exactly create the album with aural wallpaper in mind. The music is neither suited for dance halls nor waiting rooms; it’s intended for immersive, meditative consumption.
While ambient music was a term allegedly coined by Eno in the late 1970s, the genre originated in the ’60s alongside music’s electronic revolution and the dawn of the synthesiser. Earlier still, French composer Erik Satie embarked on gentle sonic adventures in the early 20th century to create an early form of background music that he described as “furniture music” (in French, “Musique d’ameublement”). His creations were intended as atmospheric dinner party wallpaper and not as the primary focus of attention.
In his own words – via Ambient Music, Beginnings and Implications by Chris Melchior – Satie’s experiments sought music “which will be part of the noises of the environment, will take them into consideration. I think of it as melodious, softening the noises of the knives and forks at dinner, not dominating them, not imposing itself. It would fill up those heavy silences that sometimes fall between friends dining together. It would spare them the trouble of paying attention to their own banal remarks. And at the same time, it would neutralise the street noises which so indiscreetly enter into the play of conversation. To make such music would be to respond to a need.”
Indeed, ambient music is typically void of lyrics; hence, like beholding an abstract painting as opposed to the page of a book, one’s mind is given license to drift and read between the lines. There’s a major distinction between mere background music and ambient music, as championed by Eno and his disciples, such as Aphex Twin. The listener is encouraged to tune into the music, following the emotions and the mind’s eye as if in a dream.
“Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularising environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these,” Eno wrote in the Ambient 1: Music for Airports liner notes. “Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to ‘brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms), Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
If I cast my memory back to the various times I’ve set foot in a Heathrow terminal, I honestly couldn’t say whether any music was playing in the background. In such a place, the sound of fretting parents and frenetic tourists evokes similar levels of distracting anxiety as if I had chugged five espresso shots and put a Slipknot record on. I wonder what would happen if they were to play Ambient 1: Music for Airports over the public address system at Terminal 5. Perhaps everyone would calm down a tad.
“You know what, I’m getting a nice vibe from this place,” you might overhear. “There are always other flights. Let’s just take it easy – if we make it to the plane, we make it; if we don’t, we don’t.”
I’ll admit, that imaginary quote is more likely the result of someone taking a few too many benzodiazepines for pre-flight nerves. That said, I’m convinced that ambient music has powers beyond our conscious enjoyment or, god forbid, flagrant disregard.
A recent study conducted by Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International found that gentle instrumental, classical or ambient music can help reduce anxiety by up to 65%. Delicately arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines were found to help slow a listener’s heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the insidious stress hormone cortisol.
Most people who listen to ambient music will do so while studying, exercising or even entertaining at dinner parties. I’m sure Mr. Eno wouldn’t take issue with such listening habits because, despite the primary focus eluding the music, the atmosphere created will succeed in massaging the subconscious while the listener writes their dissertation or ruminates on a tough piece of steak. I can speak from experience; when a CD, record or playlist suddenly stops during a social gathering, the atmosphere changes on a sixpence, leaving the room colder and emptier.
Admittedly, ambient music isn’t for everyone. Common complaints usually follow the thread of, “It’s so boring” or “It never really got going”. Then again, similar complaints are voiced in relation to yoga and meditation, often alongside, “I simply don’t have the time for that” or “I’m far too busy”. This is rarely the case, however. In reality, many people devote more of their time to physical well-being than that of the mind, which fundamentally resides in the subconscious. Perhaps we should all be feeding our souls with ambient music once in a while.
