by the Hospital Senses Collective
In 1962, The King’s Fund ran a trial of ‘background music’ in the waiting rooms of London hospitals. They asked ‘Which … do you think are most suitable for hospitals (e.g. orchestral; organ; piano; light classical; marches; waltzes; foxtrots; Latin American etc)?’[1] These musical genres seem to have been curated with a specific goal for the waiting room as a space: to be both calming for those waiting anxiously, and sufficiently engaging for those who were bored. Some genres were noticeably absent from the list; as one respondent indicated, ‘(the music offered is) monotonous and dreary’ and they would have preferred ‘pop’ music.[2] In general, though, respondents stuck to the list offered in their responses.
This survey might therefore tell us less about people’s real musical preferences in the 1960s and more about what was thought to be suitable music for a waiting room. This, in turn, raises some important questions around cultural ideas about music, space and wellbeing. Why was pop music not considered appropriate for waiting spaces in the 1960s? Has this changed over time or does classical music endure as the music most associated with healthy acoustic design, and, if so, why?
These responses might have implied some kind of universality, in terms of most people giving answers that aligned with the options offered. In practice, though, patient and staff feedback on the music trialled ranged from ‘irritating’ to ‘therapeutic’. Cultural approaches to environments that aim to be therapeutic evidently have their limits. The individualised nature of responses to music raises further questions. In spaces without the option of individualised listening, whose listening experience matters the most? What have been the power dynamics at play here?
Some members of staff showed willingness to prioritise patient experience over their own preferences, noting in survey responses that ‘I personally don’t like it, but realise that patients mostly do’. Rethinking acoustic environments in this way might be seen as part of the rise of ‘patient- centred’ care or the ‘patient- consumer’, but might also have helped to bring those ways of thinking into being by challenging traditional hierarchies through acoustics.
If we can see waiting room music as part of ‘patient-centred’ healthcare, another question then becomes: in the presence of different preferences between patients, who becomes the ‘model’ patient around whom acoustic design and waiting room music is designed? What does the choice of waiting room music tell us (if anything) about the presumed age, ethnicity, class, and gender of ‘the’ imagined patient for whom waiting room music is designed?
The wide variety of responses to this survey indicates that patients, staff and visitors have always brought their own ideas about ‘good’ music, memories and aesthetic preferences into hospital environments. The acoustic environment is only made meaningful in relation to the people in it; music exists in relation to the emotional experience of waiting, as well as being a tool for people to articulate and engage with their feelings about waiting and illness. The presence of music is also given meaning in relation to what it supplements or removes in the acoustic environment of the waiting room (the equally undesirable acoustic qualities of noise and silence).
In short: surveys of waiting room music warn us against environmental determinism, or the idea that there is one kind of music (such as classical) that is ‘right’ for a specific hospital space. Sound can play an important role in making ‘therapeutic environments’, but as an ongoing process rather than a static ‘one size fits all’ design.
References
- LMA, ‘Background Music in Hospitals’, A/KE/I/01/01/001-019. All quotes in Muzak are from this source.
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