Greetings, Ben --
> I recently came across an interesting piece in the Washington Post, where > they had renowned violin soloist Joshua Bell play in a subway station in > DC > and observed people's reactions. With a couple exceptions, no one paid > him > any attention. ... I caught video snatches of Bell's fiddling on the TV news, and also found it interesting. > 1) Does the high quality of Bell's performance come from the social value > of > his celebrity? That is, are his listeners enjoying his performance not > because it sounds any different from a worse performer, but because > experts > have given him social credibility? I didn't read the article, but am led to wonder what was the purpose of holding this stunt in a railroad terminal. I think if he had been playing in an empty concert hall, the janitor or accidental passerby would have paused to enjoy the solo performance, even if they didn't know it was Joshua Bell. The newscaster summed up the incident with the comment that "the public passed him by unnoticed in their haste to get where they needed to go." Well, of course. After all, he was playing in a heavily-trafficked commuting center. I might well have done the same, despite my love of the classics superbly played. > 2) Does the quality of classical music come from a dated social value, > which > says that it's high art? Did people at some point decide that classical > music was high quality without reference, for various reasons, to other > types of music, such as jazz, techno, or Cuban folk music? I would say you've hit it on the head with #2. Can you imagine an American Idol based on classical talent making it to the top of America's reality shows? Would it not astonish you to see long lines of teenagers queing up to see Tosca or La Boheme at Lincoln Center? Yet, they'll pay hundreds of dollars to hear a Barbara Streisand "concert". (My own sister took her daughter to Philadelphia's Academy of Music last week at an exorbitant price to bask in Streisand's particular brand of "culture".) I'm convinced that the "value" of today's pop music is in the "message", and the "talent" of a particular performer is seen as "exhibitionist" skill -- the more outrageous, the better. The public at large is no longer moved by the beauty of music as an art form. It's not "cool", not relevant, therefore meaningless. The same can be said for Shakespeare and Monet. We are all about "having fun" and "doing our thing". And developing a taste for the finer things in life is neither of these. Glad to have you back aboard, Ben. Cheers, Ham moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
