[MD] Joshua Bell piece in the Washington Post

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Ben Golden <theplaidninja at hotmail.com>:

> 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.

 





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