Read it and weep, Sadeeq
The Washington Post performed an experiment of sorts, which involved having one of the world's premiere violinists -- Joshua Bell, dressed in street clothes -- play some of the world's most beautiful music at a subway station during rush hour.
Bell began with one of Sadeeq's all-time favorite pieces of music:
Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won't be cheating with some half-assed version."
Bell didn't say it, but Bach's "Chaconne" is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. Many try; few succeed. It's exhaustingly long -- 14 minutes -- and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound. Composed around 1720, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, it is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility.
If Bell's encomium to "Chaconne" seems overly effusive, consider this from the 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
So, that's the piece Bell started with.
He'd clearly meant it when he promised not to cheap out this performance: He played with acrobatic enthusiasm, his body leaning into the music and arching on tiptoes at the high notes. The sound was nearly symphonic, carrying to all parts of the homely arcade as the pedestrian traffic filed past.
Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something.
A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.
Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.
And here's an interesting tidbit:
There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.
Read the whole fascinating thing, which includes video clips of discrete moments during the performance.
(Via Jonah Goldberg at The Corner)
Bell began with one of Sadeeq's all-time favorite pieces of music:
Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won't be cheating with some half-assed version."
Bell didn't say it, but Bach's "Chaconne" is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. Many try; few succeed. It's exhaustingly long -- 14 minutes -- and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound. Composed around 1720, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, it is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility.
If Bell's encomium to "Chaconne" seems overly effusive, consider this from the 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
So, that's the piece Bell started with.
He'd clearly meant it when he promised not to cheap out this performance: He played with acrobatic enthusiasm, his body leaning into the music and arching on tiptoes at the high notes. The sound was nearly symphonic, carrying to all parts of the homely arcade as the pedestrian traffic filed past.
Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something.
A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.
Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.
And here's an interesting tidbit:
There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.
Read the whole fascinating thing, which includes video clips of discrete moments during the performance.
(Via Jonah Goldberg at The Corner)
posted by Kate Marie | 11:28 AM | Permalink
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6 comments
6 Comments:
CIV and family have been to a Joshua Bell performance, but in a concert hall, not the subway. CIV is quite sure that spouse and rugrat -- huge classical music fans -- would have recognized Mr. Bell.
Perhaps Jeff caught this performance?
This post inspires thoughts at once bleakly despairing and sanguinely violent....NOT! Fiddlestix should have slapped them with some Freebird!
I think people are making a bit too much of this. While it's sad that Americans are increasingly uninformed about classical music (and the arts in general), the L'Enfant Plaza Metro stop is a pretty arid place; it's the gateway to a bunch of government buildings, a mall, and the Postal Service headquarters. It comes as no surprise to me that the dullest Washington bureaucrats had no interest in beautiful music.
If Bell had been playing at my neighborhood Metro stop--or in a public places in specific Maryland or Virginia suburbs--I suspect far more people would have recognized him.
Madman,
Freebird . . . is that Beethoven?
Dear Jeff,
I agree with you that it means less than some people think it means. Some of the people they interviewed for the article make interesting points about context, etc.
But part of what's kind of sad about it is not so much that nobody recognized Joshua Bell, but that so few people recognized that something out of the ordinary was happening.
I don't think it's a harbinger of the end of Western civilization (there are plenty of those elsewhere these days), and I was struck by the article initially because Bell began with one of Sadeeq's absolute favorites, but it did remind me, in a small way, of attending the talent show at Cashew's school. Most of the "perfornmers" lip synced, bumped, and grinded along to "Hannah Montana" songs, and the audience clapped and whooped it up. But the final three girls performed classical pieces (one on flute, two on piano), and the audience -- including most of the adults -- got restless after the first thirty seconds, and I got the impression that most of them had no idea that the talent they were ignoring or shifting restlessly in their seats in response to, was actually of a completely different order than the "talent" that had danced to Michael Jackson's "Beat It" ten minutes before.
But don't mind me. I'm just in "old curmudgeon" mode.
Yo' my name isn't Herman
And no one remembers me
I'm an old crusty German
Who wrote 8 or 9 symphonies
If you play me in the subway
People will just think it's strange
They would rather hear some Britney
And no one will throw spare change.
No, no one will throw spare... chaaaaaaaaaaange!
Lord help me, no spare change!
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