Ben, Arlo, Mike, I think Arlo has it about right ... it's the cultural context of the "performance", whatever peoples actual "tastes" for a given musical genre.
Unless Joshua played the same way in the same location many times, the cultural blockage of "oh just another busker after my money, let's hurry quicky past" would always preceed any attention to the actual music. Even with attenton grabbed - the taste aspect for any given genre of music then comes into play. In these threads of the "quality" of music (or art generally), and matters of taste aboout good and bad music, we are using the idea of quality - (different characteristics of the music and it's experience) - quite different from MoQ's intent - as Arlo also points out (and Mike in the other thread). There is a level of "education" in good taste, as Mike's post highlights, not of course as Platt would have us believe in being educated about what is good, but in understanding all the variety and variables involved in creating, perfroming and experiencing music. (What was it Eric Morecambe said ? "All the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order.) Ian On 4/10/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Quoting Ben Golden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > I briefly used this forum about a year ago, but eventually left for reasons > > I'm not going to go into here. > > > > 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. The piece is at > > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html > > > > As I read the article I couldn't help but run some MOQ analysis. What's > > interesting is that Pirsig seemed highly non-elitist with regard to > > observations of quality. He relied upon individuals, rather than experts, > > to determine what had high quality. Thus there seems a clear contradiction; > > Bell is considered a top-notch performer, yet individuals don't detect the > > high quality of his performance. I'd offer the following questions: > > > > 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? > > > > 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 attribute the lack of reaction to a lack of educated taste. The arts are > given short shrift in most schools. It takes some effort to learn the > difference > between good and bad art and artists. > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------- > This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ > 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/ > 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/
