{"id":45919,"date":"2024-08-12T18:17:07","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T16:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a74a715c-81e8-4e99-974c-3f138eedf368"},"modified":"2024-08-12T22:07:15","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T20:07:15","slug":"muzak-the-fascinating-story-of-musics-much-derided-kid-brother","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/muzak-the-fascinating-story-of-musics-much-derided-kid-brother\/","title":{"rendered":"Muzak: the fascinating story of music’s much-derided kid brother"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Monday, 12 August 2024 at 16:17 PM<\/p>

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The year 1934 was a tragic one for music. And not only because it saw the death of three great English composers, namely Elgar<\/a><\/strong>, Delius<\/a><\/strong> and Holst<\/a><\/strong> died. No, 1934 was also the year that saw the birth of… muzak.<\/p>

The 25 best British composers of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>
A US Army general’s bright idea<\/h2>
Actually, that\u2019s Muzak with a capital \u2018M\u2019. In lower-case form, muzak describes the type of bland, background music you hear in shops and elevators, but Muzak is the name of the company that pioneered and developed the genre 90 years ago. It was founded in 1934 by George Owen Squier, a US Army major general who, in his spare time, was a pioneer of multiplexing, one of the wonders of the modern age that allows multiple electrical signals to be transmitted by a single wire or cable.<\/p>
Prior to launching his company, Squier had been using electrical power lines to transmit a choice of three channels of recorded music directly into homes and businesses in the US. Customers paid for the service in their electricity bill. For a time the service had the edge on radio, but as wireless developed and its range of content broadened, so the appeal of Squier\u2019s so-called Wired Radio service declined.<\/p>
Not to be outflanked, in 1934 the major general began booking bands and orchestras to produce exclusive recordings of popular songs that only his customers could enjoy. He also changed the name of his service to Muzak; a combination of music and Kodak, the photographic company whose name he admired.<\/p>
15 badly behaved composers<\/strong><\/a><\/li><\/ul>
A new music to help with stress and leave listeners on a high<\/h2>
Unfortunately, along with Elgar and co, the enterprising Squier died that same year. However, his dream of piped music lived on as, increasingly, Muzak turned its fire on New York\u2019s restaurants and hotels, offering a choice of tailored music, free of jingles and DJs.<\/p>
<\/div><\/figure><p>So far, so smooth, but it was in 1936 that Muzak came of age with the idea that music could make workers more productive. It began to programme 15-minute segments of music that would ease people into their work, free them of stress, boost their productivity and leave them on a high. The idea needed a pseudo-scientific name and in 1940 the company had it: \u2018Stimulus Progression\u2019. Bosses and even their workers testified to its work-enhancing effects and before long the US was toiling and, once it arrived in shopping malls, spending to Muzak.<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-to-avoid-interrupting-workers-activity-performances-were-uniformly-bland\">‘To avoid interrupting workers\u2019 activity, performances were uniformly bland’<\/h3><p>The company\u2019s masterstroke was to insist that Muzak should be specially recorded, arranged and programmed to fit each segment. Crucially, to avoid interrupting workers\u2019 mindless, robotic activity, the performances were uniformly bland. So was born the sound that came to define Muzak. <\/p><p>Very soon, the public demanded its own Muzak at home, not to inspire greater efforts at the sink or in the garden but to accompany a fondue with friends, or a daiquiri at dawn. And so muzak, as a term for that sonic syrup that leaves some people relaxed but many stressed to the point of a myocardial infarction, was born. <\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/1918-2018-20-works-defined-century\/\"><strong>1918-2018: 20 works that defined a century<\/strong><\/a><\/li><\/ul><p>With the arrival of pop in the 1960s and \u201970s, muzak began to emerge from the shadows, loud and proud. Almost overnight Muzak, with its dodgy scientific principles, morphed into muzak, with no principles whatever. The company that once blazed a trail for the likes of Spotify eventually went bust in 2009. It was bought in 2011 by Mood Media, based in Austin, Texas. Tellingly, it decided to drop the Muzak brand name, which had become so toxic, not least to one famous British composer. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Elevator Music -- MUZAK -- Stimulus Progression\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aFH1ryYTDB4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-peter-maxwell-davies-s-dislike-of-muzak\">Peter Maxwell Davies’s dislike of Muzak<\/h2><p>After an exhausting day spent teaching in Canterbury in 2011, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/sir-peter-maxwell-davies-dies-aged-81\">Sir Peter Maxwell Davies<\/a><\/strong>, composer and former <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/who-is-the-current-master-of-the-queens-music-and-what-is-their-role\">Master of the Queen\u2019s Music<\/a><\/strong>, was feeling a little peckish. He surveyed his options in the Kent town and alighted upon a Italian restaurant called The Olive Grove. As he sat down at the table and perused the menu, something began bothering him.<\/p><p>\u2018It was idiotic pop music,\u2019 he told a reporter later. \u2018You just couldn\u2019t hear yourself think, let alone order. It was deafening. I asked the waitress if it could be turned down \u2013 and it was, but then it came back up again. It was like something you would hear in a lift.\u2019<\/p><p>Without further ado, Davies cast aside the menu, stood up and left the restaurant in search of a quieter establishment. The music he was referring to, and which so enraged him, shows no signs of going away. Muzak has gained such a hold that in late 2014, a small group of anti-muzak protesters met to honour the UK\u2019s quietest, muzak-free places \u2013 and name and shame its noisiest.<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/articles\/guide-moog-synthesisers\/\"><strong>A guide to Moog synthesizers<\/strong><\/a><\/li><\/ul><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-pipedown-anti-muzak-crusaders\">Pipedown: anti-muzak crusaders<\/h2><p>The group, called Pipedown, was formed 30 years ago but the 2014 event was its first awards ceremony. The judges included the actress Prunella Scales (who, as Sybil in <em>Fawlty Towers<\/em>, infamously called <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/johannes-brahms\">Brahms<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/brahms-symphony-3\">Third Symphony<\/a><\/strong> a \u2018racket\u2019) and the cellist <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/julian-lloyd-webber-calls-for-end-to-one-to-one-music-tuition\">Julian Lloyd Webber<\/a><\/strong>. Awards were given across a number of categories. The Quietest Supermarket award went to Waitrose and Quietest Department store to its parent company, John Lewis. Foyles won Quietest Bookshop chain and Wetherspoons, Quietest Pub chain.<\/p><p>At the other extreme, the Co-op was voted the loudest supermarket and HSBC the noisiest bank \u2013 all of its branches play HSBC Radio, broadcasting a mix of news, product information and music. A spokeswoman was unaware of Pipedown\u2019s award but said customers enjoyed its service: \u2018We play a live radio station in our branches and have always had positive feedback from customers and staff who say it lightens the atmosphere. Customers also tell us they appreciate some background noise when they\u2019re discussing their banking.\u2019<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-at-the-moment-there-s-little-escape-from-it\">‘At the moment, there\u2019s little escape from it\u2019<\/h3><p>Nigel Rodgers, Pipedown\u2019s founder, claims he and his fellow members, who number 2,000 in the UK, are not \u2018killjoys\u2019 out to silence muzak wherever it is played. \u2018People should be given a choice,\u2019 he says. \u2018At the moment, there\u2019s little escape from it.\u2019 But Pipedown judge Julian Lloyd Webber was stronger in his condemnation. <\/p><p>\u2018I loathe and detest it,’ he stated. ‘As a musician, I have been trained to really listen to music but muzak is another person\u2019s idea of what I should be listening to. I agree it has its place in venues such as the Hard Rock Cafe\u0301 where rock music is part of the experience, but in a bank? I\u2019d have a juke box in a pub, certainly, but one playing John Cage\u2019s 4’33”.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"4'33" by John Cage - John Cage Live at the Barbican - BBC Four Collections\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yoAbXwr3qkg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-where-bach-meets-bacharach\">Where Bach meets Bacharach<\/h2><p>Back in Austin, Texas, thousands of miles from Pipedown\u2019s awards ceremony in London, Mood Music Corporation, which put Muzak safely away at the back of a drawer, continues to offer bespoke selections of background, and foreground, muzak as part of its package of so-called \u2018business music solutions\u2019. The company did not want to talk to <em>BBC Music Magazine<\/em> but its website gives a flavour of the muzak it sells.<\/p><p>Among its sample tracks are selections of classical music loosely bundled under titles including Mezzanine, Intermezzo and Sunday Pops. The latter segues from the first movement of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/johann-sebastian-bach\">Bach<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Keyboard Concerto No. 2 in E major to Burt <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/burt-bacharach-died\">Bacharach<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s \u2018I Say a Little Prayer\u2019. It\u2019s a clash of musical cultures so bizarre that you\u2019d buy that overpriced scent in duty free just to get out of the shop before it comes around again. <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Johann Sebastian Bach Keyboard Concerto in E major, BWV 1053\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fp81bl_pPuA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><\/figure><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/five-best-bach-transcriptions\">Five of the best: Bach transcriptions<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-was-composer-erik-satie-to-blame-for-the-rise-of-muzak\">Was composer Erik Satie to blame for the rise of muzak?<\/h2><p>Which was, perhaps, the idea all along. But one last thought: did Holst, Elgar and Delius really die the year muzak was born, or had they perhaps experienced it without realising? In 1917 <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/erik-satie\">Erik Satie<\/a><\/strong> composed a collection of pieces under the title <em>Musique d\u2019ameublement<\/em>, loosely translated as \u2018Furniture Music\u2019. They were intended to be unobtrusive works performed between acts in a play, as the audience strolled around the theatre. As such, they were to be experienced more as muzak than as works to be enjoyed in their own right. <\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/satie-jail\">‘You’re nothing but an arse’: why Erik Satie was sentenced to eight days in jail<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><p>The composer\u2019s notes accompanying one of the pieces, <em>Carrelage phonique<\/em>, says that it should sound \u2018ordinary\u2019 and can be played during lunch. Being short works Satie suggested they could be repeated indefinitely while the audience relaxed between the play\u2019s acts. Knowing his taste for mischief, and had the term existed, might he have called his collection \u2018Muzak d\u2019ameublement?\u2019<\/p><p><em>This article first appeared in the May 2015 of BBC Music Magazine. Words by John Evans.<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Monday, 12 August 2024 at 16:17 PM The year 1934 was a tragic one for music. And not only because it saw the death of three great English composers, namely Elgar, Delius and Holst died. No, 1934 was also the year that saw the birth of… muzak. 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