This is a study of historical study of a new form of listening that evolved in the twentieth century, threshold listening, which grew out of turn-of-the century field and laboratory studies in Europe and the United States on the physical and emotional effects of music. This study will explore how this new understanding of the bodily effects of listening despite inattention fueled the development of new consumer products and has come to be one of the main processes by which we navigate our daily environments. Research methods include archival research on internal memoranda, correspondence, and advertising development in the William Maxwell Files of the Edison Papers at the Edison National Historic Park and interviews with musicologists, composers, and recording company executives that were involved in the development of background music products.
Background music is a ubiquitous part of our lives that is, by design, given little attention by those who passively consume it. Yet, those who study, design and produce it understand the ways can affect people?s moods and behavior, for example, increasing work place efficiency or stimulating consumption. This research will provide new knowledge and understanding of the central role that science played in the development of background music and the ways in which music consumption and emotions are intertwined.
is the history of a new type of listening. It is a study of the co-development of background music (or elevator music or Muzak) and the specific type of listening required to process background music. What the project terms "threshold listening" is a form of listening that is neither strictly active nor strictly passive. Threshold listeners may not be fully aware of the sounds their bodies process, yet they respond physically and emotionally. Threshold listening was actively cultivated in the twentieth century, first by psychologists, then by the corporate music industry. The scientific understanding and application of threshold listening was intertwined with the growth and spread of background music in both public and private spaces. This project investigates how music became a technology of mediation, redefining relationships between individuals and the space around them; how consumers were made into threshold listeners and when and why consumers protested, demanding aural autonomy; and how background music became increasingly prevalent while simultaneously increasingly synonymous for artlessness, even torture or mind-control. It is a history of music, science, technology, consumerism, sound, and the environment. To this end, it examines -- through analyses of writings and interviews -- individuals, objects, and music. The funding for this award covered the costs of archival research as well as the release time (from teaching obligations) to do said research and write. In the twelve months covered by this grant, I have been able to gather archival materials from eleven archives (I originally proposed seven). I have also conducted a series of interviews with several composers, some of which are ongoing. I have begun the process of compiling and analyzing my archival findings and interviews and presented some of this material at a conference and three workshops. I have also published some of these materials in peer-reviewed journals (Culture Unbound, Endeavor, and Historische Anthropologie) and contributed to three edited collections of essays (Sounds of Modern History: Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe, Ecomusicology: A Field Guide, and The Art of Listening, all forthcoming). Additionally, I have drafted the first three of seven chapters of a scholarly monograph as well as sketched out a spin-off, monograph project on field scientists and nature sounds (and have received funding from the Fulbright Scholar Program to pursue this research). The proposed plans for the completion and dissemination of my project was to complete the outlined archival research and interviews, present some of these materials at a scholarly conference and/or peer-reviewed publications. My outcomes have exceeded these goals. The intellectual merit of this project rested in its investigation of the central role of science in the co-development of new types of listening and new technologies of background music. The scientific conception of threshold listening was the critical first step towards the diffusion of new listening practices and new sound technologies into society more generally, contributing to new cultural practices. In my research I have found numerous — far more than I’d hoped for — concrete examples of this diffusion process, from science through marketing to the general public. Firmly situated at the intersection of science, technology, marketing, and music culture, my findings are an original contribution to the STS field. Related, the broader impact of this study promised to substantially alter the understanding of the way in which new listening practices come into existence, their role in the development of entirely new sounds, and ultimately, how scientific knowledge fundamentally changes the soundscape. My archival findings, by illuminating clear mechanisms (most especially the institutional and individual collaborations between scientist and marketing experts) through which scientific ideas inform perception itself (not just ideas about perception), will form the foundation of my forthcoming monograph of how listening practices come into existence and the absolutely central role of science in the soundscape and our experience of it.
