20th Century Ambient

Music journalist Henry continues Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series with this avid debut ode to a notoriously amorphous musical genre. The term “ambient music” was coined in 1975 by producer Brian Eno; while recovering from an injury, Eno was listening to a record of harp music that mixed with the sound of rain outside, sparking an idea for music that was “part of the ambiance of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain.” Henry also gives due to the genre’s forebears, including early 20th-century blues singer Blind Willie Johnson, who didn’t “so much sing as he wordlessly intone[d] with his voice,” and French composer Erik Satie, who introduced the concept of “furniture music,” with “subtle, repetitive, and easily ignored” compositions that “enhance[d] the ambiance of the room.” Tracing the genre’s evolution, Henry provides less of a concrete definition of ambient music than a meditation on the qualities it evokes (a sense of expansiveness) and its relationship with its listeners (ambient “can only exist with someone to hear it... to experience the way the environment and sound intertwine”). Enriched by vivid profiles of the genre’s practitioners and capped by a list of essential tracks, it’s a quirky love letter to an enigmatic sound. Illus. (Nov.)