Besame Mucho

What good is it to have been one of the greatest composers of all time, one of the great geniuses of humanity, if such recognition is manifested in errant form? Have you noticed how many apartment buildings are named “Mozart”? All kinds of them: low-income projects, commercial buildings, gated communities. When it’s a luxury building or has a neoclassical façade, they sometimes call it the Amadeus Suites instead.

Nevertheless, what really gets me is not seeing Mozart used as a brand of chocolates or liquor or in the name of a building. What bugs me is to see virtually my entire repertory (and that’s more than 600 works) transformed into elevator music. Elevator music may actually be the most unusual of all musical genres, considering it was created specifically not to be heard. The more people ignore it, the more successful it is considered. In general, to create elevator music, a famous composition is rearranged (or de-arranged, if you will) so that it can be recognized but not noticed. The less it is noticed, the better it’s doing its job. It’s the creation of some clever mind that thought it would be a nightmare to ascend to your floor, or fill your supermarket cart, while being forced to listen to the natural sounds around you. So, at that moment, in order to fill such a terrible silence, the sound system strikes up Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as rendered by a Casio keyboard and passed through a food processor.

I’d like to know who produces these things and who, exactly, approves their purchase. Could it be some computer program capable of transforming, in mere seconds, a great work of art into a soundtrack of drivel? Or do they actually hire real musicians to execute (literally) the elevator versions? In that case, imagine the tryouts:

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

“Why?”

“You closed your eyes while performing the Magic Flute.”

The problem is that this musical genre doesn’t place me alongside the Bachs, Beethovens and Schuberts of the world, but with the Richard Claydermans and Kenny G.’s.

One day not long ago, I went to get a massage. And there was one of my pieces, playing alongside sound effects of waterfalls and birds chirping.

The masseuse asked:

“What’s wrong sir? You seem so tense.”

“It’s this damn relaxing music.”