Elevator music, a style that has maligned, misunderstood, or simply ignored, is here, for the first time, vindicated, explored, and exposed as the ectoplasm that soothes, haunts, and holds our world.

Acclaimed author Joseph Lanza covers every elevator music incarnation: the Aeolian strains of antiquity, Gregorian chant, Erik Satie's "furniture music," Muzak, easy-listening, New Age, and "elevator noir." Emerging as the elevator music conservatory is Muzak Corporation (started in the twenties by a former World War brigadier general), which helped set tone for music's role in today's electronic superhighway.

Not cultivated by a distinct aesthetic school, elevator music evolved partly by accident as it permeated many previously distinct musical genres and became postindustrial life's most authentic art form.

Through in-depth discussion and interviews with such seemingly diverse composer/arrangers as Ray Conniff and Angelo Badalamenti, Elevator Music demonstrates how this moodsong (besides playing in elevators) elevates moods and induces a gravity-free vantage point, where life (like the movies) has soundtracks.