Elon Musk has announced that Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor will feature in Tesla's new alarm system to keep the electric car and its contents safe from thieves.
When the car identifies a significant threat, such as someone breaking a window, music will play at maximum volume. Musk announced on Twitter that the music would be Bach’s iconic Toccata and Fugue for organ. Perhaps jokingly, he added that occasionally this would be the metal version.
This isn’t the first time that classical music has been used to fight crime. In countries like America, England, and even Australia, classical music has been used as a strategy to reduce loitering in public spaces and locations like convenience stores and fast food restaurants. Reasons include a belief that classical music helps to keep people calm or encourages better behaviour. Some justifications were made with an assumption that the demographics loitering wouldn’t like classical music and would not want to spend time where it is being played.
Results of using classical music as a crime and loitering deterrent have been mixed and have been criticised as being embedded with class assumptions as well as discouraging a broad engagement with classical music.
We will have to wait and see if Bach has any impact in discouraging thefts of Teslas.