![]() ![]() ![]() One 2019 documentary showed a caller sobbing to it. If you were an unemployment or benefit claimant and phoned the helpline for the Department for Work and Pensions between 2006 and last year, you would have likely heard the same 30-second excerpt on loop as hold music. Transport for London wasn’t the only British organization to make use of Vivaldi’s quartet of seasonal concertos (published in 1723 and composed a few years before). Since then, the practice has been widely adopted across all kinds of modern metropolitan spaces, deploying classical music as a form of social cleansing. Realizing that piping classical music into its stations was a cost-effective means to deter young people from hanging around, Transport for London started playing Vivaldi, Mozart, and Beethoven in 2006. ![]() Here’s a reason to hate “The Four Seasons”: I last heard “Spring”-unbidden-as I passed through east London’s Walthamstow Bus Station during a routine commute home. ![]()
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