Music in edicrationweddings in her church. She was distracted from her work and felt
her religion to be insulted.
Thereis noproblemoffeelingthemusicinhigh-levelnoisesuchas punch-
press machines, etc., because of a phenomenon known as ‘boilermaker’s
ears’. A worker develops ability to hear low spoken conversation and
low-level music in great noise. The ideal library is largely made up of
specially-composed ‘mood music’, a small quantity of which is already
used briefly with cinema strips. Here is a challenge for composers.
A maximum of two to two-and-a-quarter hours a day in periods of 10
to 15 minutes at psychologically planned times is recommended for em-
ployees.Where both employees and public are concerned, more is used.
Such use of music is not a new concept. Its history begins in ancient
times. A stone group from the Archaic period in Boetia, in the Louvre,
shows four women kneading dough to the rhythmic accompaniment
of a flute player seated to the left of the group. Quintillian, the Roman
rhetorician and critic, wrote : ‘Every manwhen at work, even by himself,
has his own song, however rude, which may soften his labours.’ We
are all familiar with the work songs of different peoples. Japanese rice
planters worked to the accompaniment of a stringed player and singing.
Due to the so-called Industrial Revolution, mass production has
stepped-up the rhythmic pace. Heavy labour has been decreased by
the use of machines and sedentary activities have increased, as has the
noise involved in production. In 1886, Frank Morton in Chicago
placed girls who could sing to work with other girls in order to help
them sing while they rolled cigarettes. Wanamaker installed an organ
in his Philadelphia store for his employees in 1876. In 1910, an English
engineering firm supplied gramophone recordings of marches for
employees who needed to walk four miles an hour for two consecutive
hours while they inspected and tested apparatus. In 1945 this pro-
gramme was still in use but came from BBC industrial music. England
presented planned ‘Music While You Work‘ programmes for factories.
Jacques Vernes, a French financier and manufacturer stimulated indus-
trial efficiency on a national basis by reviving music in mills and shops
and government projects in France in 1913. Thomas Edison experi-
mented with his cylindrical type of phonogram for machine-made music.
The idea was lost largely because of lack of amplification and loud-
speakers. A follow-up of Edison’s experiments was made by the 0%-
cials of the Gibson company when they installed loudspeakers for
phonograph music in the Gilmore store in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A
difficulty ensued due to patent rights. With technical improvements
and legalities cleared there are now thousands of such programmes in