Thanks to Macarena who sent me this article about how celebrated violinist Joshua Bell was filmed playing at a D.C. Metro station while largely ignored by over a thousand people.
joshua bell
“It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah…”
The word doesn’t come easily.
“…ignoring me.”
As a classical violinist, I’m not surprised.
You shouldn’t be either.
It’s well known that classical music (and certainly, classical violin) doesn’t have the same kind of mainstream appeal as say, classic rock n’ roll, pop, or the blues. In fact, I’m not even a fan of some of the music he played that day (and I’ve played some of the repertoire myself!) — it’s just not the kind of music I grew up with and not the kind of music that appeals to the Generation X or Y population.
In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I prefer classical guitar over classical violin. There’s a much broader range of musical offerings on classical guitar — especially in the contemporary period. However, violin repertoire is still very much inspired by the rennaissance, baroque, and classical periods. It’s hard to escape this on the violin and the end result is that usually if you dislike Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi — that kind of thing — you’re going to dislike the violin.
Was it an interesting experiement? Sure. Did it surprise me? Not really.
The simple truth is that classical musicians are not rock and roll stars or movie celebrities. Bach’s Chaconne, however beautiful, is not recognizable in this day and age. And sadly, a supermodel flashing the masses at a street corner is likely to draw more attention — however undeserved.
And now who wants to draw the similarities between the mainstream appeal of classical music and that of math?
The link was fixed. What? Nobody bothered to tell me?
Phil’s Proof » Two from the mailbag says,
[...] and Heba wrote to me today regarding my post on Joshua Bell’s incognito performance in the D.C. Metro [...]