Music in the Office

“I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,” writes Walt Whitman, whose mechanics and carpenters, shoemakers and housewives all sing as they work.Yet Whitman fails to mention the clerks, bookkeepers, or secretaries who occupied the offices of his day. Even then, apparently, music was taboo in the office.

I’m a person who loves to sing. I take voice lessons and sing in various choral groups. At home or in the car or even walking down the street I’m always singing -- everywhere except in the office. Sometimes I even warble out a few soprano bars from an oratorio in the parking structure on my way into work. Yet the minute I pass through the glass doors of our building, it’s as if someone clamped a hand over my mouth. I’m not exactly sure what would happen if I stood in the hallway and sang “Somewhere over the Rainbow” at the top of my lungs, but something tells me it wouldn’t be good. Singing in the office world is a thing one simply doesn’t do.

While singing or playing an instrument may be taboo, probably for good reason, listening has often – though not always – been considered more acceptable. In the 1980’s, my teenage son showed up at my office one day with a small “FM radio” in a wooden cabinet – one of the originals from the 1960s -- that we'd brought back when my mother moved into a retirement place. From then on, my job was a whole new ballgame. Instead of working in silence, I typed and filed to Brahms quartets and Stravinsky tone poems, listening to Detroit’s classical music station, DQRS. This was fine. I had a private office, the walls were reasonably thick, and no one ever complained. Sometimes people who came in to ask me for a research report would stop and try to guess what piece was being played, which would act as a conversation-starter.