Background music
Background music is unobtrusive music that usually remains in the background of attention for its listeners. As “atmospheric music”, it usually creates a relaxed, pleasant mood and can, within a certain performance framework, encourage activities that are not directly related to this music. In contrast, foreground music demands the listener's attention. The term foreground music emerged as an alternative to background music and is used comparatively rarely.
Background music is mostly used in public places and as part of films and other audiovisual productions. The English name Muzak is also used for background music in department stores and shopping centers - also called department store music - as well as in elevators, restaurants, airports and similar environments .
Certain genres of music, such as smooth jazz or popular classical music , work well as background music. Instrumental music is often preferred because it is believed that human voices and sung lyrics attract too much attention. Singing elements or spoken texts are also missing in the ambient and lounge music . For example, Brian Eno composed ambient music for airports that he wanted to distinguish from music for everyday use (see Ambient 1: Music for Airports ). The effect of background music is controversial in music psychology because it is difficult to objectify.
use
The functional aspect of background music consists in the targeted change of the acoustic conditions at the respective location. Background music is used e.g. B. the superimposition of disturbing ambient noises or the avoidance of an undesirable, perceived as oppressive silence. Background music is intended to lighten the mood and mood of the listener.
Background music is either produced specifically for a specific purpose, or it is music that was composed with a different motivation, but which is used as background music after appropriate arrangement. Examples are Für Elise by Ludwig van Beethoven and The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi . Instrumental versions of pop songs are also particularly popular.
A traditional background music is the table music , which facilitates a casual conversation while eating. In department stores, background music is also supposed to encourage consumption. Background music is used individually for work, reading or learning. The decision about what should remain in the background of attention is always made by the listener. With the bar piano , the freely chosen alternation between ignoring the music and paying full attention, for example to a familiar melody, can make the audience so attractive.
Background music in public and commercial environments
The usually inconspicuous background music is generally known in department stores, restaurants, bars and hotels (there for example in elevators), in airports and some train stations, in waiting areas of hospitals, government offices, office buildings, in hairdressing salons and the like. Music of the same kind is played in telephone queues .
The English term muzak is used especially for background music in such public and commercial environments . More generally, Muzak describes the type of music commonly used for such purposes: undemanding, pleasing, harmless music. Originally it is a brand name of the US company Muzak Holdings , which produced background music and was taken over by Mood Media in 2011.
Background music in public spaces is either perceived as pleasant by many listeners or not noticed at all, while others perceive it as a nuisance because of its “omnipresence”. The double-stop initiative - music without compulsion is committed to the "involuntary consumption of music in everyday life".
aesthetics
Background music sparked an aesthetic debate in the 1920s, when some composers were looking for alternative designs to classical concert music that would question the bourgeois concept of art music . Erik Satie designed with his Musique d'ameublement a strongly repetitive music, which was based on wallpaper patterns. His suggestions have recently been taken up by John Cage and Minimal Music . Obsessive repetitions, however, often seem exhausting and are not necessarily suitable as background music. In some ways, Easy Listening ties in with the aesthetics of background music.
The musique concrète since the 1940s, which already required a well-developed sound recording technique, blurred the difference between atmospheric noise and music. The modern possibilities of sound synthesis with sampling since around 1990 also blur the line between natural and artificial sounds. These suggestions have led to new art forms such as sound installation or soundscape .
Background music can make rooms aesthetic, similar to interior design . The importance of the musical component in rooms was taken up in the concept of the ambient furniture .
equipment
The Cantata 700 was a cassette player and tape media format specifically designed for background music. Rowe Customusic was an endless tape cassette changer with Fidelipac size "C" magnetic tape media . Seeburg 1000 was a duplex interchangeable record player that rotated both the record stack and the turntable against each other. With two pickups (top and bottom) on the tonearms , he could play the top and bottom of the exposed records. A lifting mechanism led the disk stacks up again in order to play all the disks one after the other repeatedly. Other manufacturers made do by using commercially available compact cassettes more densely.
Background music in audiovisual productions
The term background music is also used for acoustic components in audiovisual or multimedia productions that should remain in the background of images, language and texts, for example in a film , a computer game , a presentation or a website . In these areas of application, too, the background music should create a certain atmosphere (see also Mood technology ) without attracting attention. A music bed in a jingle, for example, should not impair the linguistic information, but rather support it. Background music in computer games contrasts with sound effects that underline certain events. It is used, for example, to orientate the listener via a virtual location .
literature
- Paul Randolph Farnsworth: Social Psychology of Music . Enke, Stuttgart 1976.
- Klaus-Ernst Behne: On a theory of the ineffectiveness of (background) music . In: Yearbook of the German Society for Music Psychology , 14, 1999, pp. 7–23.
- Ludwig Greven: DJ mainstream . In: Die Zeit , No. 5/2018
- Joseph Lanza: Elevator Music: A surreal History of Muzak, Easy Listening, and Other Moodsong. 2004, ISBN 0-472-08942-0 .
- Reinhard Copyz , Friedrich Platz, Anna Wolf: The overrated power of music in television news magazines . In: Musicae Scientiae , 17, 2013, No. 3, pp. 309-331, doi: 10.1177 / 1029864913489703 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Muzak . In: Duden online. In the section on origin, the Duden mistakenly states Muzac ® as the English brand name , instead of correctly Muzak ® . Muzak . In: Cambridge Dictionary ; as well as the article Muzak (brand) .
- ↑ Anika Lampe: Purchase decisions through music using the example of the Mall of America ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Presentation at the University of Lüneburg, 2005/06 (PDF).
- ^ Jörg Klußmann: Music in public space. An investigation into the music system at Hamburg Central Station. epOs Music, Osnabrück 2005, ISBN 978-3-923486-67-0 ( abstract ).
- ↑ Noise pollution: The omnipresent sound nzz.ch, May 6, 2013
- ↑ The double-stop initiative against forced music in public spaces
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV2EhEd46BY
