(These are the liner notes from the initial American release
of Brian Eno's "Music for Airports / Ambient 1", PVC 7908 
(AMB 001)


AMBIENT MUSIC

The concept of music designed specifically as a background 
feature in the environment was pioneered by Muzak Inc. in the 
fifties, and has since come to be known generically by the 
term Muzak.  The connotations that this term carries are those 
particularly associated with the kind of material that Muzak 
Inc. produces - familiar tunes arranged and orchestrated in a 
lightweight and derivative manner.  Understandably, this has 
led most discerning listeners (and most composers) to dismiss 
entirely the concept of environmental music as an idea worthy
of attention.

Over the past three years, I have become interested in the use 
of music as ambience, and have come to believe that it is 
possible to produce material that can be used thus without 
being in any way compromised.  To create a distinction between 
my own experiments in this area and the products of the 
various purveyors of canned music, I have begun using the term 
Ambient Music.

An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding 
influence:  a tint.  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.

Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the 
basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their 
acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncracies, Ambient Music is 
intended to enhance these.  Whereas conventional background 
music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and 
uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, 
Ambient Music retains these qualities.  And whereas their 
intention is to `brighten' the environment by adding stimulus 
to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks 
and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body 
rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space 
to think.

Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of
listening attention without enforcing one in particular;  it
must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

                                        BRIAN ENO
                                        September 1978