Jarrod Richey is a music educator, choir director, and church musician living in northeast Louisiana. He is a friend of mine. No, that doesn’t really cut it. He is a dear friend of mine. Well, that isn’t quite it either. If ever I was faced with the heaviest providence imaginable that could pass through God’s hand to me, Jarrod would be in that teeny group of five or six men that I would call for comfort and counsel. In so many idiosyncratic and wonderful ways, he and I are like brothers from different mothers. He is an honorary Hale and I am an honorary Richey.
Jarrod writes on music regularly at his Substack. I hope that all of my subscribers head over to Jarrod’s Substack and subscribe, as well. Jarrod’s latest post (at the time I am writing this post) concerns active versus passive listening to music. Jarrod’s main point of his post is that “passive music listening” is suitable for toddlers who are working on something in the corner while the music plays in the background. For adults, Jarrod wants music to be foregrounded so that listeners can actively engage and interact with it. I’m with Jarrod in this line of thinking and wish more people would get away from Spotify playlists like “classical music for studying,” “quiet music for relaxing,” or “music for making a grilled cheese sandwich.” Such behavior is (as Jarrod writes), “…about as useful as putting a foreign language audiobook on in the background while doing the dishes.”
However…
There is a style of music that was created with the express purpose of being in the background or even ignored. Or not being ignored, at the listener’s discretion. That music is the genre that has come to be known loosely as “ambient.” Probably the first foray into this style of music was Brian Eno’s 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports. Another early practitioner of this music was the late composer Harold Budd, who recorded an album with Eno in 1980 called Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror. I am listening to The Plateaux of Mirror as I type this.
Joshua Gibbs wrote a moving tribute to Budd shortly after the composer’s death in 2020. Gibbs admits that Budd is one of two or three musicians that he listens to while writing. Gibbs describes Budd’s music as representing, “…the sort of peace God offers in the rattling swells of cicadas, the aimless songs of birds, the rustling of leaves, the crashing of waves, the murmuring of rivers. As opposed to simply recording the sounds of nature, Harold Budd interpreted, refined, and glorified the sonic consolations of the Earth through his simple compositions.” I think Gibbs has captured here the essence of Harold Budd, Brian Eno, and other ambient composers.1 The presence of their music is to be “felt” more than listened to. As Gibbs says, “Budd’s music is just assertive enough to be felt, but not so forceful as to dominate or confuse my thoughts.”
I too listen to this style of music while writing for a very particular, medicinal reason. If I write in silence in my office, the tinnitus in my head rages. Except for a few respites here and there, it has been particularly aggressive of late. The sound of whooshing and high-pitched noises demands my attention constantly. Most of the time I am able to ignore it. Other times—like when I am working in my office on a sermon for Sunday—the sound is so forceful that it threatens to dominate and confuse my thoughts. Sometimes it is so annoying that it feels like my head is being sucked inward.2
At moments like those, I am grateful for an ambient genre of music that is content to sit there and do very little. It isn’t overly passionate or busy. It is very static harmonically and texturally. It doesn’t demand attentive listening, although it does repay such listening if you are so inclined. I can vouch that it is far more pleasant than listening to white noise. Most importantly, it helps to mask the tinnitus so that I can carry on with my tasks in peace.
I have devoted years of my life to making music and learning how to listen attentively to it. I can sit through the longest symphony or opera and thoroughly enjoy myself. Jazz doesn’t sound like random noise to me. I have played in bands, sung in choirs, and I lead worship each and every Lord’s Day. Long ago I learned the rules and rudiments of reading and writing music. I share wholeheartedly Jarrod’s concerns about passive listening. More people need to know how to listen to and also do music for themselves, especially young students in our classical Christian schools. But when my head rages with squealing, ringing, and whooshing, I am so grateful for music whose sole purpose is to settle in the room like incense and grant me some relief.
Two other ambient composers that I greatly enjoy are Phil Wilkinson and the band Hammock. Another source for this music that I use often is the Ambient Sleeping Pill website (https://ambientsleepingpill.com/).
That sounds weirder than it is. Then again, I don’t really have the words to describe exactly how it feels.