The Washington Post conducted an experiment in which world famous violinist Joshua Bell busked a busy Washington, D.C. metro stop during rush hour. The experiment aimed to see how many people would stop and listen if they heard a concert-quality, professional musician performing, even if he appeared at a subway stop. A second outcome indicates that very few people stop to throw money at someone they encounter as a street musician, even if that someone ordinarily commands $100 a seat in a concert venue.
So on Friday morning, January 12, Joshua Bell set himself up at the L'Enfant Plaza in D.C. and began to play Bach's Chaconne on a Stradivarius violin. After 43 minutes, 5 more classical pieces, and 1,097 people passing by, Joshua Bell had made $32.17 (not counting $20 received from one person who recognized him).
The lack of recognition and response surprised the researchers and editors at the Washington Post, who had worried about crowd control. Leonard Slatkin, music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, speculated that a classical musician would get more notice in Europe.
Interpretations of the Bell experiment range from hand-wringing laments over American "backwardness" to eulogies pointing out classical music's "irrelevance."
Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten echoed Kant's words regarding beauty: conditions must be optimal for the recognition of beauty. It is not that Americans are unable to appreciate beauty per se, just that appreciating art while on the way to a busy work day is extremely difficult. In a concert hall, space has been carved out for appreciation: the audience is attentive because they have nowhere else to go.
On the other hand, one could use this experiment to argue that beauty is in fact entirely socially constructed, a concept invented to make a group of snooty elitists feel good about themselves and their music. If no one appreciates Bell in the subway, then the great applause he receives in the concert hall seems somehow inflated, contrived. German musicologist Theodor Adorno once lamented that we love the price we paid for our ticket more than the music itself. Adorno is often dismissed as a pessimistic naysayer, but he raises an interesting point: economic value is related to demand. And populists would argue that economic value is the only kind of value that exists.
Thus, the most intriguing point raised by this experiment is that the aftermath revives tropes that have floated around in our culture for eons: low art versus high art, the masses versus knowledgable elites, science/economics versus inherent beauty. Who knew that centuries of Western Philosophy were lurking in a busy Metro subway that day?
For further information, please read the Washington Post article.
Sarah Canice Funke - Sarah Canice Funke was home-schooled through primary and secondary school in beautiful Colorado. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in ...
