Taboo Listening (or, What Kind of Attention?)

The status of background listening in music studies is low. Following the hierarchy in Adorno’s Introduction to the Sociology of Music,1 any kind of listening below the level of ‘structural listening’ is considered to be a symptom of an incorrect attitude towards music. Moreover, as gifted listeners – who can instantly decrypt all underlying structures in the perceived sounds – are obviously able to distinguish ‘bad music’ from ‘good music’, ‘low-level’ listening becomes synonymous with ‘low-level’ music. Music that is received inattentively, not just unwillingly, is considered to be ‘music pollution’. Some say this is ‘passive music’, heard by inattentive listeners just like non-smokers inhale passive smoke. So many discourses about background listening are full of contempt against ‘bad music you can listen to everywhere’ (in bars, shops, on public transport or just the music teenagers listen to while studying – how can they do this?), that suspicions arise about the whole syllogistic machinery being set up to demonstrate – at last! – that art music is good and all other musics are bad. Serious professors, asked to comment on the matter, were heard saying: ‘Once music was art, one would go to a concert and listen. Now we have all this bad music coming out of loudspeakers. See all those young people with their iPods.’ It usually takes some time in the discussion to remind them about other functions of music in mankind’s history; some appear to be amazed when facing the evidence that listening via earphones can be a way of focusing all possible attention on music, while some concertgoers often fall asleep. In other words, some musicologists need to be reminded that the interaction of technology, music’s social and linguistic functions, genres and the semiotics and psychology of music perception is just a bit more complex than dividing the world of sounds in two: good on one side (generally a Brahms or Mozart concerto listened to attentively in a concert hall) and bad on the other (loud pop music broadcast from your neighbour’s radio on the beach, which you hear with disgust).