Word: muzak
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Schumann: Quintet in E Flat (Rudolf Serkin, pianist, with the Busch String Quartet; Columbia, 2 sides, LP). Quieter, more flowing music than the Fantasia. In this performance the first movement has some of the innocuous quality of Muzak, but it finishes strongly. Recording: good...
...partnership ended in 1936 when Bill Benton resigned, filled with a sudden zeal for public service and good works. He went to the University of Chicago as vice president, bought the Encyclopaedia Britannica in partnership with the university, also picked up a few other businesses (including Muzak, which pipes canned music into restaurants and cocktail lounges). Shortly after World War II, he became Assistant Secretary of State in charge of selling the U.S. to the world with the Voice of America. Chester Bowles, who left the ad business several years after Benton, went to Washington himself as chief...
...first step in describing silence," says California-born Composer John Cage, "is to use silence itself. Matter of fact, I thought of composing a piece like that. It would be very beautiful, and I would offer it to Muzak...
...Muzak's piped-in music programs had no spot for a composition in dead silence. But last week, hardy Manhattan concertgoers made a spot for Composer Cage's rhythmic, percussive "sounds & silence" music. At Carnegie Recital Hall for two nights in a row, Pianist Maro Ajemian thudded, clanked, bonged and chimed through 16 sonatas and four interludes on a "prepared" piano outfitted with bolts, screws, pieces of rubber and plastic stuck inside to short-circuit the tones. (After the first night, someone unCaged the piano, and the composer himself took three hours getting all the gadgets back into...
Petrillo flew from Chicago to New York to pull out all the stops. Muzak Corp. agreed not to pipe in canned music to silent hotels, A.F.L. electricians pledged themselves not to install jukeboxes. As Petrillo, dressed in two-tone shoes and a cream-colored silk shirt, made the rounds of unmusical bars, another friendly columnist, the New York Post's Earl Wilson, stalked him behind a glass of beer at Toots Shor's non-union spot...