Brought to you this hour by

Advertising and Web Hosting on Woodwind.Org!

Doublereed Archive - Posting 000092.txt from 2003/11

From: Oboeeee@-----.com
Subj: [DR-L] Quote of the Day
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 20:33:53 -0500

"Whatever else it may be=E2=80=94stimulus, tranquilizer, aural nipple, too
of
executives, Muzak is basically trivializing. It is not simply that it releg
ates music
to the province of wallpaper. Background music never need be banal. When it

is used in support of drama, it can greatly enhance without harming itself.

Mozart was entirely amenable to such films as Elvira Madigan and The French

Lieutenant=E2=80=99s Woman; Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote aptly for The Inva
ders, Arnold Bax
for Oliver Twist, Sergei Prokofiev for Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky
,
Dmitri Shostakovich for others. In such uses, music collaborates with artis
ts,
it becomes an art among arts. But Muzak collaborates chiefly with managemen
t:
it is used as an aural smoke-screen, a form of jamming, a hormone in the
henhouse, an emollient in cemeteries."

-Norman Corwin (b. 1910) American author, editor
=E2=80=9CMusic and Laughter,=E2=80=9D Trivializing America: The Triumph of
Mediocrity, Lyle
Stuart (1986)