The rebellion of the sound-track
The diversion of the sound-tracks of the movies to the everyday life is an example of phenomenon in which a proper element of the fiction ends up by being part of the reality.
In the Classic Greece musician was already used in the theatrical representations, but the sound-track concept, as today we understand it, he is born with the movies. The silent pictures were accompanied of music interpreted directly by a pianist or a small band, or reproduced in phonographs or pianolas. In principle, the motive of this sonorous accompaniment was to relieve the noise that there were producing the devices of cinematographic reproduction of the epoch, but at once it was seen that the music, if it was chosen carefully, could serve as reinforcement or as contrast of the images that were projected. Originally musician of classic composers was used and only further on the musicians began composing pieces especially thought for his execution about rooms of movies. The evolution of the sound-track, like that of almost all the music of the XXth century, it was parallel to that of the technology used for his reproduction. Today there is not released a movie that does not have his sound-track, original or not, in stereo, dolby, quadraphonics or surround, always as regards the images that are projected.
But the question that it is interesting to me to stand out is how the sound-track concept has escaped to the ambience of the cinematographic rooms, that is to say, it has left the territory of the fiction (the movie) there interfered in almost totality of the ambiences that shape our daily reality.
In the 30s the company Muzak was offering environmental music across the phone. It was a question of a music thought to accompany and not to bother, that is to say, calm, instrumental compositions interpreted to low volume. In other terms, music to hear without listening. This style ended up by taking the name of the above mentioned company: Muzak. But there are not these precisely the characteristics that there possesses the music that today forces us itself to be listened in department stores, small commerce, offices, stations, airports, banks, restaurants, hotels, elevators, waiting rooms of dentists, lawyers or notaries and other public spaces. That of now is a modern, sung music, to all volume and that does not serve to accompany anything, but it limits itself to invading our ears, generally without our assent. It is not an environmental music; it is the lack of control of the sound-track and perhaps the end of every music, since it would not be the first time that the overflowing of anything causes its own extinction.
It be observed that after there escape the sound-track of his own ambience, which is of accompanying the actions of a movie, it has lost also all his qualities: it serves neither as reinforcement nor as contrast of anything, is not chosen according to any apparent motivation, except the fashionable songs that they force you to listen in department stores, which alone end can be the promotion of the singer in question. They already will say to me what logical or emotional relation can be had by Madonna or the Pantoja with the sandwichs of the VIPS or with the clothes of El Corte Ingles to sound continuously for the public address system of this commerce.
The life of a contemporary citizen is a life provided with sound-track and this is a quality that the lives of our ancestors did not have. In addition: How many of us do not we contribute to extend the sound-track of our life on having kept the television burning with the high volume, although there is nobody seeing it? So terrifying is for the human being the silence?
On the same topic:
Brief History of the sound-tracks, for Joaquín R. Fernández
History of the sound-tracks, for José Javier Pérez Prieto
Against the environmental music, for Enrique Vila-Matas
Wikio
