satie vs eno no wait where are you going??? come back, please, i promise it’s interesting! wait!

brian eno raised me in a small tin bucket in his backyard filled with cold water like a rubber ducky in a baby's bubble bath.

i have sometimes run into conversation with people who either a) hate ambient music or b) who, when looking at the genre, wanna be the special party boy and tell me erik satie invented ambient music and when i can prove that he didn't, start talking about how music is just sound waves so "wHo CaN rEaLlY tElL?" stop. stop doing that. you're being weird and everyone at the party wants you to leave. and so, i wrote out something explaining the differences. nobody asked for this. nobody wants this. but we still wake up every day

don't we? so take it.

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The conversation around what we identify now as ‘ambient music’ began somewhere around 1975 — with those words. However, many people argue that the inception of ambient music came with the decidedly avant garde composer Erik Satie, who, in 1917, wrote a series of compositions meant to be rearranged by performers to change and adapt to the scenery and mood the compositions were played in. This musical act of Lego’s was incredibly ambitious for its time, and would go on to prove to be quite influential to later avant garde minds such as John Cage who said of Satie “he is immutable.” 

 These projects and compositions were dubbed ‘furniture music’ as much like the furniture occupying the space of any given room, this music could be transported and rearranged according to the area’s necessity. Herein lies one of the two key, fundamental differences between “Furniture Music” and “Ambient Music;” functionality.

 While Furniture Music is intriguing and seemingly not withholding to any preconceptions of music or artistic standard, its functionality is distinctly defined. Not just literally by having a written definition but also in action; furniture music repurposes its components to adhere to the will of its surroundings — forever and always being contained to the material conditions surrounding it. It changes for the world in which it exists, in this way, it conforms to it. Bound to the room it is replicating; it is henceforth, in a way, chained to the conventions we have built for society to live in.

Key to these differences as well is that Satie’s compositions are meant to be largely ignored, dismissed and fall into the background — reduced only to a slightly noticeable texture of the listener’s surroundings. 

 It is also worth pointing out that not only is Satie’s “Furniture Music” bound to its material surroundings, but it is also equally as bound to the structures of at-the-time contemporary classical. With rising strings and definitive keys and notes meant to be played at specific times, in tandem with other components of the composition, it remains tied to the conventional experiences of this area of music. You can still distinctly identify what it is that “Furniture Music” is, that being a classical music piece.

Sheet music for one of Erik Satie's "Furniture Music" installments.

The same is not to be said for the later but arguably more ambitious works of English producer/musician, Brian Eno.

 While Eno ventured into the realm of the ambient a few times before his official adorning of his works with the title in his experiments with King Crimson leader, Robert Fripp, in albums like “No Pussyfooting” [1973] & “Evening Star” [1975]. Though it would not be until the release of “Discreet Music” later in the same month and year as “Evening Star,” that Eno would begin to fully embark upon a less swelling, complex manner of expression. 

 Though perhaps wonky for the time, “Discreet Music'' provides a sort of middling upon the musical line, an opaque vision of a dancer without the score. As if we are watching a performance with headphones on. We are given a broad platform for which we watch this dance embark upon, however it is still, in many ways, an expression of controlled adherence to a typical musical composition; no matter how alien it may seem to a new listener.

 Elements of this record can be compared even to quieter parts of John Coltrane’s later works such as “Kulu Sé Mama” [1967], particularly the track “Welcome,” though definitely a far more delicate and obviously synthetic iteration. It can also conceivably be compared to the compositional structure of Satie’s “Furniture Music,” as Eno had yet to fully stray - even within the framework of his tapeloop strategies - from the identifiable. 

 It wouldn’t be until welcoming embraces from individuals such as David Bowie and the broader West German scene, as well as his make-believe advisories in the genres of Muzak & easy-listening [an aggressor which plagued Eno's brain despite artists in either genre having probably never heard of him], that Eno would break through with what we now hold to be the definition of “Ambient Music.” In 1978, Eno would release the first in the defining works known as Ambient 1 - 4, the first in the Ambient Genre — one which had previously remained more of a concept than an intention. 

This record would be entitled “Ambient 1: Music For Airports” and solidify Eno’s intentions not only with sound but also in words. 

Sheet music for Brian Eno's "Ambient Music : 1 Music for Airports," 1978

In the linear notes for Ambient 1, Eno supports his music with a specific intention: “My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres.”

 Continuing in the same linear notes, in regards to his self-appointed position as amusician distinctly against the disregarded and ignored “Muzak” genre and it’s company; “Whereas the extant canned music companies [Muzak Inc] proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is in-tended to enhance these.” 

 And, in a simple, often quoted, statement Eno ends the linear notes with these six words: “

"… [Ambient Music must be] as ignorable as it is interesting.” 

 It is here where once again where the contrasting purposes lie. Eno’s forte into Ambient Music came with a functionality which was unmistakenly opposed to Satie’s, to be absorbed, experienced alongside your day to day — it can rush in, forwards, towards you, and change and envelop you in a new mood, with new emotional inhabitants. 

 It is meant to fill a space with new life, or perhaps take the previous lodgers outs of said space. To accompany you, and move you. It is not held within the boundaries of a specific time, place, environment, nor mood as neither is the listener; it acknowledges both the music, the atmosphere, and the listener as active participants in the experience. It does as Eno says; enhances. 

 Eno’s Ambient Music also does what Satie fails to do, and while it is worth mentioning that Satie’s compositions were varied and written throughout a long duration of time — therefore being somewhat everchanging, it is still plainly recognisable for what it is. “Ambient 1: Music For Airplanes' ' does not adhere to any accepted forms of structured music, unlike its predecessor, “Discreet Music,” it is now freed from even a stage for which a dance can take place. The gestures and movements of the aforementioned dancer, as well as the dancer themselves, fade into the musical intonations which blend and mix into the space. The piano which dapple upon tracks such as “½” do so without a specific rhyme or reason, in this way, it is unchained — free to bend and breathe wherever it may go.

This is Ambient Music as we know and understand it today. So, with this out of the way, can we shut the fuck up about Erik Satie?