Andrew Waggoner’s recent NewMusicBox essay deals with the perils of entering most public spaces these days due to  the onslaught of pumped-in music,  most of it monotonously pop and largely negligible.   There’s an undertone of anger in the piece the author readily acknowledges,  in that we’re not able to change the situation – so we have to duck out, feeling somewhat impotent, so as to recover the quiet  necessary for hearing inside one’s head.
I’ve also written about this, along with other present-day vexations for a composer, over the past half-dozen years.   (Most recently:  Imaging the Composer Today, published this month in the IAWM Journal, a small tweaking of the Keynote address given last fall at the  College Music Society national conference.) My take though, is a bit different:
I consider it a strength move to boycott the places which are the worst offenders. And I believe it’s an act of confidence to create for oneself personal spaces where serenity, contemplation and the required think-environment — so necessary to beginning a new piece – can prevail.
Lutoslawski observed “People whose sensibility is destroyed by music in trains, airports, lifts, cannot concentrate on a Beethoven quartet.â€Â Largely true. But even as we bemoan the diminishment of the capacity for active listening en masse, we do, each, take steps to preserve that capacity for ourselves.Â
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i remember hearing that in order to reduce loitering in large public spaces such as train stations, classical music is played in otherwise music-less spaces…immediately people leave that space and go somewhere else.
See, classical music still is powerful!
but more seriously i have to say that for the mostpart classical music has been for a smaller crowd, so why not just stay comfortable with that? as long as its affordable for everyone at the same time….oh, now theres a problem..