He said it right here in your quote, Mr. Davis.
"This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music – as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and sound of the rain were parts of the ambience.”
A new way of *hearing* music. In a religious ritual, the gathered faithful practicing their _religion_ is absolutely a part of the ambience. Even as an atheist it is totally possible for me to comprehend that for some, religious ritual can occur assisted by music, and then that music can entirely fall out of primary sensory comprehension once reaching the appropriate state. Whether it is inside or outside of primary sensory focus is up to the individual in that space.
The Qawaal musics in Pakistan achieve the same thing for the Sufi, but people would not call it ambient, I suppose, due to the rhythmic and melodic nature of the practice.
It's clear you've never had such an experience in your life - the kind that the Gregorian chant people were going for. There are many ways of getting there, and I hope that you have access to at least one of those means in your lifetime.
On 12/10/20 1:18 PM, Paul Davis wrote:
On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 10:48 AM Andrew A. Grathwohl <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't know... chant musics are frequently intended to bring on a trance in the listener. Chants are used in the ritualistic events that underpin certain cultures, traditions, religions, etc.
I've been brought to places while in a deep focus (aided by chant musics) that parallel experiences I've had on psychoactive drugs.
In that sense, Eno's description is sort of perfect to me. Gregorian chant was used to induce religious focus, so the music itself does sort of fall out of primary consideration when "used" correctly.
Eno absolutely meant "ignorable" in the normal dictionary way. He did not mean "trance-inducing", or "religiously focused". Eno's coinage had absolutely nothing to with "inducing" anything.
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Eno remembers the event somewhat differently. “After she had gone, and with considerable difficulty, I put on the record,” he recalls. “After I had lain down, I realised that the amplifier was set at an extremely low level, and that one channel of the stereo had failed completely. Since I hadn’t the energy to get up and improve matters, the record played on almost inaudibly. This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music – as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and sound of the rain were parts of the ambience.”
[ ... ]
All this sounds like a recipe for boredom, and for many people that’s exactly the result when they listen to Music for Airports. For others, the fact that the music is so quiet and so content to circulate such thin little scraps is the secret of its appeal. Eno himself describes the album as being “as ignorable as it is interesting”.
-------- (from: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/how-brian-eno-created-a-quiet-revolution-in-music/)
[ and may the universe not react to harshly to me citing the Daily Telegraph ]
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