For bounded symmetric domains Ω in n, a notion of “bounded mean oscillation” in terms of the Bergman metric is introduced. It is shown that for ƒ in L2(Ω, dv), ƒ is in BMO(Ω) if and only if the densely-defined operator on L2(Ω, dv) is bounded (here, is “multiplication by ƒ” and P is the Bergman projection with range the Bergman subspace of holomorphic functions in L2(Ω, dv)). An analogous characterization of compactness for [] is provided by functions of “vanishing mean oscillation at the boundary of Ω”.