Can You Really Appreciate Beauty?
It was around 8 o’clock, on cold morning in January.
The street musician was standing at the “L’Enfant Plaza” station, in the Washington DC subway playing his violin. Bach to start with, and Schubert, Massenet and Bach again.
He played for about 45 minutes and, at this rush hour, thousands of commuters passed while the artist was playing.
A 3-year old boy stopped but his rushing mother tugged him along hurriedly. However, the kids walked away still looking at the musician.
The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
During the 45 minutes the violonist played, only 7 persons really paid attention and stopped for a while to listen to him.
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition
About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32… which is good for 45 minutes but…
Nobody knew he is Joshua Bell, one of the most famous world’s musician.
He played at the station some of the most difficult pieces on his 3,5 millions dollars Stradivarius!
Two days before his subway performance he was performing a sold-out concert at the Boston theater where the average ticket price was $100.
And… this is a true story.
« Washington Post » organized this subway concert to observe people’s perception as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.
Questions were :
- At an inappropriate time, a in common public space, can we still perceive the Beauty ?
- Do we stop to appreciate it ?
- Are we able to recognize talent if nobody tells us ?
One of my conclusion after reading this article is:
If we do not take the time to appreciate and listen to one of the best World’s Musician playing some of the most beautiful pieces of music, how many beauty are we missing in a life time?
Host Your Blog!
PB,
Amazing. I had heard about this before. I wish someone from a candid angle has videotaped the event and recorded it. What an indictment of the mass psychology.
Lanny
Beauty in itself exists and is constant regardless of who notices, though its effect on people is so much dependent on the presentation (clean, beautiful setting, expectation and more). One cannot control the effect a piece of art has someone nor its meaning. If we could people would not fall asleep during a classical concert of the great masters mentioned!
I am impressed with the challenge to get people out of their routines, though I have no expectations. Maybe Joshua could have/should have played a contemporary piece for our contemporary time…
Philippe,
The story was published in Washington Post nearly 30 months ago but is still very vivid in my mind. For your enjoyment (and others) here is the link to the full article with some clips: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
Look for the paragraph about Little Evan, 3 years old.
Nava
I LOVE IT!
thanks for this post!