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Szabo Cleveland, Ohio Ambient Music as Popular Genre: Historiography, Interpretation, Critique Victor Louis Franco Szabo Cleveland, Ohio B.Mus., Music Theory, University of Michigan, 2007 B.A., Philosophy, University of Michigan, 2007 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Music University of Virginia May, 2015 © Copyright by Victor Louis Franco Szabo All Rights Reserved May 2015 iii ABSTRACT In September 1978, Brian Eno coined the term “Ambient music” to describe a type of audio recording designed to create atmosphere. Ambient music, he proposed, should foster calm while registering doubt, and accommodate various different levels of listening attention. Since Eno’s proposal, Ambient music has become a genre of drone- and loop-based electronic music within the popular music market. This dissertation examines several key recordings in the formation of the Ambient genre of popular music, with focus on releases from the U.S. and England between the late 1960s and early 1990s. Through music analyses of these recordings, as well as media analyses of their promotional rhetoric, this dissertation traces the sonic tropes and social practices discursively organized by the “Ambient” label. It describes how Ambient music serves users as a means of relaxing, regulating mood, and fostering an atmosphere or sense of place. Unlike most extant accounts of the genre, it also explores how Ambient recordings reflect aesthetically upon their instrumentality through musical techniques, metaphors, and moods. A survey of approximately one-hundred Ambient listeners rounds out the study, illuminating from a diachronic perspective how reception practices relate to the production and interpretation of Ambient recordings. Chapters 1 and 3 examine two proto-Ambient recordings from the Environments series of LPs (Atlantic, 1969–78), released by Syntonic Research, Inc. These analyses elucidate the aesthetics and technological uses that have since consolidated Ambient music as a genre, with special focus on shifting attitudes toward consumer technology in the Western environmental and countercultural movements. Chapter 2 compares and contrasts Environments with recordings from the concurrently emerging Acoustic iv Ecology movement. Chapters 4 and 5 investigate various artistic and conceptual practices that informed Brian Eno’s conception of Ambient music. Chapter 4 identifies precedents for Eno’s concept in the experimental avant-garde practices of Erik Satie, John Cage, La Monte Young, and Steve Reich. Chapter 5 analyzes the title recording on Eno’s Discreet Music album (Obscure, 1975), placing its production in the context to 1960s and ‘70s English experimentalism, as well as the research field of cybernetics. It concludes with a media analysis of the record as a consumer product, illustrating how the elimination of authorial intention in experimental composition and cybernetics translates into popular art. Chapters 6 and 7 outline Ambient music’s explicit emergence as a term in the popular music market. Chapter 6 examines Brian Eno’s Music for Airports (Editions E.G., 1978) through a comparative analysis with The Black Dog’s Music for Real Airports (Soma Quality Recordings, 2010), illuminating the relevance of Ambient music’s contexts of consumption to interpretation. It concludes with a brief reading of Eno’s On Land (Editions E.G., 1982), which cemented Ambient music’s significance within private, individualized reception. Chapter 7 concludes the study with an overview of various recordings by The Orb, KLF, Mixmaster Morris, and Pete Namlook in the “ambient house” subgenre of electronic dance music, illustrating their connections with the aesthetic themes and promotional discourses of earlier Ambient recordings. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to thank the faculty at UVa who have deepened, challenged, and broadened my perception of academic scholarship over the last seven years, all the while helping me navigate the winding course to the Ph.D. degree. Seminars and conversations with Scott DeVeaux, Michelle Kisliuk, Eric Lott, Michael Slon, Heather Wiebe, and Richard Will importantly shaped how I understand, write about, and make music. Special thanks to Heather and Michelle for spurring me early on to consider Ambient music as a research focus. Fred Maus has provided invaluable guidance and support from my first day at UVa; I could not have asked for a more caring advisor and mentor. Michael Puri also provided thoughtful mentorship, spiritedly indulging my intellectual curiosities while encouraging expressive clarity. I have immensely enjoyed listening to recorded sounds with Ted Coffey; his passion for the art of craft reminds me to love what I do. Bonnie Gordon has offered not only generous financial support over my last several years at UVa, but also candid advice and humor that has kept me grounded. I would like to thank her for always keeping her door open (literally) to respond to questions and concerns. Finally, I would like to thank Rita Felski for her generosity as a reader, and the confidence she inspires in me to invent and pursue novel theories and concepts. I am grateful to those who have contributed their personal insights and materials toward this project, including Jennifer Ballow, Miriam Berman, Gavin Bryars, Christopher Hobbs, Marco Iacoboni, Dave Swindells, and Zachary Wallmark. Thanks to Mack Hagood for sharing his in-progress work on the Environments series, and to Mark Butler, Sumanth Gopinath, and Martin Scherzinger for their feedback during the early vi stages of this project. Claire Maiers and her colleagues at UVa Sociology generously provided crucial feedback on the listener reception study. The staff at UVa’s Music Library, especially Winston Barham, Stephanie Hunter, and Matthew Vest, eased the research process tremendously, and did so with cheer. Thanks to Thea Giovannini at the Museum of Arts and Design, and Sally DeBauche and Aryn Glazier at The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin, for helping locate and deliver archival materials related to Environments. I consider myself incredibly fortunate for the camaraderie, laughter, and support from my fellow UVa Musgrads. Thanks to my cohort, Matt Jones and Emily Gale, for the fun times, fashion, style, and reminders that things will go my way (if I just hold on for one more day). Sarah Culpeper, Liz Lindau, and Chris Peck have been not only stimulating interlocutors about all things music, but also a blast to hang out with—not to mention dynamite karaoke performers. Kevin Davis lent me an ear during trying times, a couch during lazy times, and a steady hand during tricky graphic notation times (see Chapter 6). Stephanie Doktor read several chapter and conference paper drafts, asking great questions and making me laugh throughout. Kristina Warren (salamé!) provided helpful feedback while I was formulating the Ambient listener survey. Amy Coddington, Craig Comen, Jarek Ervin, and Stephanie Gunst—y’all are cray (in the best possible way). Keep the fun alive in Charlottesville for me! Which reminds me: thanks, Escafé, for the merry moments and terrible tunes. Thanks to Shenandoah Joe Coffee Roasters, Milli Joe, La Taza, and Shark Mountain for providing delicious daily writing fuel and temporary workspaces. And thank you, WTJU, for giving me a much-needed creative outlet every other week. vii Finally, I would like to thank my mother, sister, and brother for believing in me. To the Coyles, thank you for making me feel at home and part of the family. Laurel, Lee, Lauren, Erin, and Robin—thanks for sticking with me throughout this whole grad school thing; here’s hoping we get to spend more time together in the years ahead. Zephyr: you’re a cat! And last, but most of all, I would like to thank my partner, Ian Coyle, for his love, patience, kindness, and willingness to listen to every single one of my academic presentations. Ian, you make me a better, calmer person, and I am very lucky to have you by my side. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................v List of Examples and Figures ........................................................................................... ix Introduction: Ambient Music in an Age of Ubiquitous Listening ......................................1 PART I Horizon Introduction to Part I .........................................................................................................32 1. “Nature Abhors Silence”: Selling Sensuous Seclusion with The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore .............................................................................................................34 2. Designing Acoustic Ecologies: Two Approaches .........................................................62 3. Tintinnabulation and the Missing Countercultural Link between Minimalism and Ambient Music ..................................................................................................................82 PART II Background Introduction to Part II ......................................................................................................126 4. Ambient Music as Experimental Music: Precedents ..................................................128 5. Locating Brian Eno’s Discreet Music .........................................................................165
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