On 10 Apr 2007 at 11:35, Darcy James Argue wrote: > 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.
Actually, I think it's a cultural issue, and not a DC vs. Washington, but a work culture issue. My bet is that you'd find exactly the same kind of workers in a rush if you did this in a NYC subway station on Wall Street. And it might very well be that the results would have been different in a different DC Metro station (in the online chat, the article's author explains that they were very limited in their choice of where and when to do it). But it is a cultural difference -- a difference between people who live their lives on inflexible schedules (and leave no time for anything else) and people who are less rigid about it. One of the reasons I'm self-employed is because I like the flexibility and soon chafe under any regular schedule (I worked a temp gig for nearly 3 months at the end of 2004 where I had to be there 5 days a week from 8:30am, and, boy, was I glad when that was over). I make less money because of that choice, but I'd rather have the flexibility than the money. And I really think that's what the major contribution of the article was -- we should consider how our life choices about work have an effect on our ability to experience and appreciate art and esthetics. > 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. I still am baffled by the repeated response of people that "this experiment proves nothing" because the author does not claim to be trying to prove anything. He discusses a lot of issues raised by the observations. He does not push forward any conclusion as to what it "means". > > 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? Well, perhaps the majority won't, but the ones who really love and understand music will appreciate it wherever they hear it, not because it's Joshua Bell, but because it's good music well-played. > 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? It changes how we react to it, but it does not change the actual artistic merit of what is performed. The fact that context changes people's reactions, sometimes in the opposite direction of what they'd have in a different context, is something to LAMENT, because it shows how shallow is people's actually absorption and appreciation of the art they are responding to. Musicologists are not immune to this criticism. I once saw a famous scholar specializing in 16th-century liturgical music who reacted to a score of Palestrina's Pope Marcellus mass by saying it looked like a good piece. And the 19th-century scholar of piano music who didn't recognize Schumann. And there is, of course, the old experiment where an unknown piece was given to a number of scholars. Some were told it was Haydn, some that it was some unknown composer. The ones who were told it was Haydn evaluated it as being a good piece, the others, that it was a bad piece. Yes, so it goes, in all walks of life. But this is something to be sad about, in my opinion. > 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. The fact that Sting wasn't conducting an experiment aside, you keep returning to the issue of recognition of the *performer*, which is completely beside the point (and wasn't the point of the WaPo article either). Indeed, lamenting that so many miss this point was what you were responding to. The point is not that Sting and Bell were not recognized. It is that people either didn't recognize that their music-making was worthy of attention, or determined that it wasn't worth paying attention to. Did you really miss that or do you really not feel it's worth being concerned about? Sturgeon's Law, I guess? -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
