What would happen if one of the world’s greatest violinists, whose playing has been said to do “nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live”, playing a 1713 Stradivari violin worth about $3.5 million, stood in the middle of a metro station in D.C. and played for 43 minutes while 1,097 people passed by?
He would be ignored.
Click here to read more about this performance by Joshua Bell, “arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”
There is a great response to the Joshua Bell article by a NYC subway musician in her blog: http://www.SawLady.com/blog
She interprets the situation differently from the Washington Post reporters… I thought you might find it interesting.
I would have stopped. I would have ruined the experience because I know Josh and Josh’s playing pretty well.
I think that SawLady and the Post may agree more than they think. SawLady’s point was that he was not entertaining enough, not playing to the audience. The Post, I think, is trying to say that people did not stop to recognize beauty as it was (i.e. without pandering, just presenting beauty). They would agree that the people didn’t care so much for shear genius of play or beauty of the music but only wanted to be entertained.
Hey, remember all those musicians we saw in the tubes in London? I think the ones that really stand out in my mind are: The harpist playing “my heart will go on” in the Gotham city-like part of the tubes; the dude who randomly jumped on the train with his guitar and amp; and the blind guy playing the violin. I think we did a pretty good job of enjoying all of the performers, don’t you?
p.s. That’s a fascinating article. That would’ve been a great show.
Euphrony, I agree that most people (like SawLady) are picking on the wrong things in the article. The point for me was not whether people will stop if they’re entertained, but whether they will make time for beauty.
Andrew, that’s the first thing I thought of when I read this article. I’ve mentioned the harpist in the tubes to several people when talking about this.