On 10 Apr 2007, at 10:18 AM, David W. Fenton wrote:
So many people have made points about the relative capabilities of musicians, that most people can't tell the difference between the greatest musicians and the garden-variety talented student. THAT'S NOT THE POINT! Even the performance of the garden-variety talented (and charismatic) student is likely to be something worth listening to. The fact that Bell is famous wasn't really the issue -- it's that what he was playing was great music at the highest level of performance, and people ignored it.
I have to say, I still don't see what the big deal is. People, for the most part, had no choice but to ignore it. They were on their way to work, and they can't afford to be late. Perhaps you think that this is a shame, and that employers should be more tolerant of employees who say, "I'm sorry I'm late today, but there was this *amazing* musician in the subway and I just *had* to listen." I'd agree. I'd also like someone to give me a pony. Neither one is going to happen.
If Bell had performed on the Washington Mall on the weekend, or if he had performed on the actual subway platform, or even if he had performed during the evening rush hour, when more people can afford to take a few minutes out of their day for something unplanned, the results would have been completely different. I don't think the experiment as performed proves anything, other than most people are in a hurry to get to work in the morning, and, you know what? I already *knew* that.
And, of course, this was one of the many good points of the article, that people don't actually appreciate artistic expression on its own *merits*, but determine what they should think by the context in which they experience it (did everyone miss the point of the excursion into Kant, et al.?)
I thought this point was totally banal, dressed up in pretentious and misguided philosophical references. Who on earth believes that even classical music fans, people who have paid hundreds of dollars a ticket to hear Josh Bell perform in a fancy concert hall, are going to react the same way to the same player performing the same repertoire, for free, in a subway station? Is there a single person on the planet who, prior to reading this WaPo piece, did not realize that context plays a huge (often determinative) role in how we evaluate a performance?
Years ago (in 1993, IIRC), Sting played the London Underground as a busker, and it was written up in Q Magazine. He had a cap pulled down over his face, but he's still one of the most recognizable musicians on the planet (especially so in London), and he was playing his greatest hits from the Police years -- "Roxanne," "Message in a Bottle" and all the rest. The results were -- predictably -- similar to the Josh Bell experiment. Hardly anyone recognized him, hardly anyone stopped to listen, and he made about £40. But I don't recall any outcries of "O tempora! O mores!" in the wake of *that* experiment.
Cheers, - Darcy ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
