May
26
Violinist Bell Ignored as He Plays for Pennies
This vintage Washington Post Magazine story generated huge response last April. I'm just catching up with it. Classical violinist Joshua Bell played in the metro in Washingon D.C. and was largely ignored.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?
On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was 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?
The musician did not play popular tunes whose familiarity alone might have drawn interest. That was not the test. These were masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.
The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. Though the arcade is of utilitarian design, a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors, it somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this musician's masterly hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang -- ecstatic, sorrowful, importuning, adoring, flirtatious, castigating, playful, romancing, merry, triumphal, sumptuous.
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if you really want a gauge of modern life go back and find all the people that passed by that day and ask them if it makes any difference that the violinist was joshua bell. i think that, ultimately, the answer would be 'no'.
when every minute counts you don't stop to listen to a violinist, no matter how prominent a musician they may be. scoff if you will but that's the reality
unfortunately, we spend most of our time working, eating, and sleeping. everybody already this
Posted by: Alan Green | May 26, 2007 at 10:44 AM
I thought the point was not that they didn't know he was famous, but that most people now can't tell the difference between an ordinary busker and a world-class musician. It was the playing itself that have stopped people in their tracks.
Posted by: David C. | May 27, 2007 at 02:43 PM
david
could be. might be that people can't tell the difference, might be they don't care -- but...what's the difference?
if joshua bell gives a concert in a big city -- it's a sellout. but, what percentage of the population does that represent? also, if you go to a classical concert you see mostly elderly people.
every year orchestras struggle to remain solvent. sometimes, the players not only agree to postponing pay raises, they accept pay cuts to keep the operation afloat.
in another ten years the (professional) classical orchestra will probably be a thing of the past, except in the largest cities.
if wp repeated the experiment but this time included a sign that identified who bell is, i think they'd get similar results. some people might stop for a couple minutes, but only because the sign said bell is a world-class violinist -- not because they were a fan of classical violin music or could tell fine playing when they heard it.
how many people can tell you the difference between a beethoven violin sonata and a mozart violin sonata? how many people could tell the difference 100 years ago? and, how many will be able to in 20 years?
sorry, whatever exactly the point of the bell experiment was, it's meaning is clear
Posted by: Alan Green | May 27, 2007 at 10:45 PM
When I reviewed this article in April (http://cinerati.blogspot.com/2007/04/different-take-on-critics-vs-audiences.html) I commented on how surprised I was that while Weingarten wanted to stress how the populace ignored high art, he himself ignored the commentary of philosophy overwhelmed as he was with disdain for the commoner.
The "Pearls Before Breakfast" headline is an obvious reference to Pearls Before Swine, and is implying that the ignorant were swine. Yet when Weingarten is told that Kant, a major aesthetic philosopher, thought that the context of where and how art is viewed is just as important as the quality of art itself when it comes to having proper appreciation, Weingarten chooses to ignore the comment and still feel disdain.
He chooses what "cultural artifacts" he respects, and they are those that allow him to look down his nose at the plebeians.
Posted by: Christian Johnson | May 30, 2007 at 11:04 AM