From Eric Satie to Brain Eno: genesis of mass music culture

Mass musical culture is a complex phenomenon undergoing constant changes under the influence of civilizational changes. The history of mass musical culture today is more than a century old, it is covered in a number of authoritative scientific works, however, a number of its aspects still provoke discussions and need deeper theoretical understanding. The purpose of the article is to analyze the “furnishing” music of E. Satie and “Music for Airports” by B. Eno as vivid manifestations of background music, which is one of the directions in the development of mass musical culture in the 20th century. In most modern domestic studies, the work of E. Satie is analyzed from the point of view of belonging to academic music, but here the main emphasis is on those features that later provoked the development of the phenomenon of mass musical culture. The heritage of B. Eno is also not a new topic for domestic art history, however, many of its aspects represent a wide field for research. If in Europe and the USA ambient regularly becomes the subject of scientific works, dissertations, articles, then in Russia it has not yet received due attention and remains outside the scope of most studies devoted to the problems of mass musical culture. Parallel E. Sati – B. Eno» allows us to characterize one of the many ways in the development of mass musical art and, through the analysis of specific compositions, to reveal its specifics.