I just finished reading an interesting piece from the Washington Post (thanks Steve), which basically asked whether "objective" beauty and talent from one of the world's finest musicians, playing one of the world's most expensive instruments, can be demonstrated when seen out of context. More specifically, this was Joshua Bell performing with his Stradivarius posing as a street musician in a busy DC metro station.
It's quite an intriguing experiment, whereby the central question posed is philosophical (and ancient) at heart.
It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?
Anyway, Mr Bell is the sort of musician who can commands fees approaching $1000 per minute, so the piece even queried in its text, "So, what do you think [would] happen?"
One prediction was via Leonard Slatkin, the musical director of the National Symphony Orchestra:
What did he think would occur, hypothetically, if one of the world's great violinists had performed incognito before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people?
"Let's assume," Slatkin said, "that he is not recognized and just taken for granted as a street musician . . . Still, I don't think that if he's really good, he's going to go unnoticed. He'd get a larger audience in Europe . . . but, okay, out of 1,000 people, my guess is there might be 35 or 40 who will recognize the quality for what it is. Maybe 75 to 100 will stop and spend some time listening."
So, a crowd would gather?
"Oh, yes."
And how much will he make?
"About $150."
The reality is that his final haul for 43 minutes of playing was $32.17, with very few people even stopping for a moment to listen. And the piece explores the various reactions (or lack thereof) that were encountered, with an intent to ask why such talent was missed or perhaps worse ignored.
It also kind of brought back into view, some of the notions that were touched upon in previous posts of mine. That is, whether music had a genetically deterministic angle to it - be it related to pitch perception, drumming ability or even in an overall grandiose manner.
Anyway, check out the piece, which also has a few video clips accompanying it. It's worth the read.
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umm, by Stradivinski, you mean Stradivarius, right?
Just checking...
Interesting article, thank you. But who is Stradivinski? :-)
Thanks for the correction. Too much chocolate in the system.
Thank you for bringing this article to my attention.
There is a great response to the Joshua Bell article by a NYC subway musician in her blog: www.SawLady.com/blog
She interprets the situation differently from the Washington Post reporters... I thought you might find it interesting.
Good to see someone blogging about this that doesn't go for the "how elitist is this" argument.
Okay! Sounds like an interesting experiment; but i think it just resolves our curiosity than actually answer a meaningful question. Wow! Way too many factors not being taken into consideration when looking at this experiment. First of all, who is this famous violinist? Is he someone that everyone should recognize? What instrument is he playing? An instrument that people may be able to recognize and appreciate? And also...what was he playing? He is certainly out of what I would like to call a cultural context!