The Washington Post got world class violinist Josh Bell to play his Stradivarius at a subway stop to see how commuters would react. Turns out they didn’t react much.
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.
“At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.” This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.
The one group who consistently tuned in: kids.
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.
Perhaps related, there’s an interesting anecdote about how Bell started young…real young.
Bell is that he got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.
His subway set began with Bach’s “Chaconne” (here’s a piano version) which he calls “not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history.” The article also quotes what Brahms said about the Bach piece: “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.” [via JK]
Update: The author of the piece writes, “This story got the largest and most global response of anything I have ever written, for any publication…With little or no elaboration, more than 100 readers so far have told me that this story made them cry. It was not a reaction I anticipated, at least not so universally, and it has somewhat taken me aback. Can those of you who had this reaction try to explain it?”
Karl N
on 11 Apr 07I don’t ride the metro, but I like to think I would have stopped. Then again, it doesn’t matter if I get to work a little late.
But I do usually judge a street performer’s ability before deciding to listen to them. Some suck, but some are pretty cool.
In general though, I think most Americans are more concerned with their work than with leisure or beauty.
sent
on 11 Apr 07You can’t fault people for not being able to tell a world class violinst from a mediocre busker. Why should they be able to tell the difference? Classical music has very little meaning to the average person walking through a subway station today.
Put a world class rapper or electronic artist on the street outside a symphony when it lets out and see how many of them stop to recognize brilliance.
VariableData
on 11 Apr 07I would have recognized him for sure, had I looked. I agree to a certain extent with “sent” tho . . .
macournoyer
on 11 Apr 07Found this on http://www.adeolonoh.com/2007/04/10/does-your-product-pass-the-subway-test/ didn’t you ?
Anton Macon
on 11 Apr 07While I understand the basic points of this article, I believe this experiment would have yielded different results later in the day.
7:51 a.m. on a Friday, people are rushing some late to work.
After a long day, on their way home, more people would have stopped.
I see it everyday in New York, commuters ignore the early performer, big crowds gather ‘round 6:00PM performers. Doubt me, check the Union Square Station on almost any day.
Dez
on 11 Apr 07I was thinking the same thing as Anton…
Keeping on the DC track too.. you only need to look at the Trombone Church group that comes out in the evenings near the Dupont Metro throughout the summer to see the difference. They easily have groups of 40 people and up sitting, standing, dancing around them ready to give money.
At 7:51 on a Friday morning, you’re just not going to get the same reaction..
Mark
on 11 Apr 07Hmm. The Kings’s new suit of clothes. I guess that’s why it said ”...from a man who can [sic] command $1k a minute…”.
A rather culturally loaded experiment that presumes everyone’s (a) interested in being forced to listen to unasked-for music as they commute and (b) like Classical music . This strikes me as angst from literati confirming their notions that swine can’t appreciate pearls cast before them.
Those commuting with a decent set of sound-isolating earphones wouldn’t have heard anything except their own choice of music/audio.
( for the record, for me a = no, b = yes)
BW
on 11 Apr 07Completely inspirational… so much beauty around us.
Mark
on 11 Apr 07[sorry about the BOLD – don’t know where that came from]
Karl N
on 11 Apr 07Mark, I agree with your interpretation. Experiments like this are generally loaded to get a result to make people look irrational and stupid on paper, but just doesn’t make sense in the “real world” (to refer to the last post).
They’re assuming people should just stop whatever they’re doing to hear some music, rather than finding a good way for those people to actually hear it (playing at the end of the day instead of the beginning). The music didn’t make sense where they forced it.
Phil Dokas
on 11 Apr 07I find the most amazing part of this the strength and uniformity of kids’ attention. It’s amazing how universal the beginner’s mind is in us all from the get-go and how thoroughly many of us cover it up as we age.
Icelander
on 11 Apr 07This reminds me of a piece by Carl Sagan about how elementary school kids are enthusiastic about learning and somehow this gets lost by high school. I’d imagine that this is another symptom of whatever causes that loss of enthusiasm.
Christopher Hawkins
on 11 Apr 07Mark hit it on the head – this was a total setup. The Post arranged this because they WANTED to get the “oh, look how horrible the unwashed masses are” result.
If they really wanted people to listen they would have positioned Bell on the platform, where people usually spend several minutes waiting for the train and are done with the “omg gotta rush” phase of their journey to the train station.
Lame, IMO. And Karl N is correct – this is a perfect example of the “real world” concept that Jason was claiming to get a laugh out of in his last post. One the one hand you have a (rather arrogant) group of newspaper folks operating from the assumption that people should stop and listen to a world-class musician, and on the other hand you have the reality of people’s daily lives, in which your average commuter a) can’t tell the difference between a world-class musician and any other busker (and why should they? They haven’t the training), and b) by and large do not have the time to do so.
Kind of like you have one group of people espousing the idea of building software without any specs up front, and an entire world of practical and successful software development experience that says otherwise. ;)
Welcome to the “real world”, folks. :D
ML
on 11 Apr 07this was a total setup
I’d read the author’s response to this view before passing judgement.
SH
on 11 Apr 07If you can get through the annoying narration and set up, about 1 minute into this video is some footage of this event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0KdAXLSO0Y
(I suggest watching it with mute on.)
condor
on 11 Apr 07I’m kind of surprised by some of the strong defensive reactions. I would take it for what its worth, and unscientific observation. At that level I find it pretty interesting.
Eddie
on 11 Apr 07Follow up to ML’s link- I pulled the quote most directly related to the skepticism of the time/location- the last important note at the end is a very good point….
Peter
on 11 Apr 07With little or no elaboration, more than 100 readers so far have told me that this story made them cry. It was not a reaction I anticipated, at least not so universally, and it has somewhat taken me aback. Can those of you who had this reaction try to explain it?
Funny you say this, I actually cried at the article. In particular, it was the postal supervisor. I’m not sure why, exactly – it was the combination of recognition of quality and beauty, respectfulness of his response, and the feeling that $5 was totally inadequate even as it was more than one might normally give. I found that completely moving.
John Koetsier
on 11 Apr 07Anyone who says that ordinary average people can’t tell the difference between a street busker and a world-class musician has obviously not listened to very many street buskers
...
and may have a very elitist attitude about the abilities of ordinary average people.
...The key point to me is the kids who wanted to stop and listen.
I think we’d have a better world if we all stopped and listened, smelled, looked, thought, and dreamed a little bit more, rather than rushing from one box (house) to another box (office) in a box (car/subway) and repeating the process in reverse every day.
At least we’d have better people.
Zelnox
on 11 Apr 07I suppose I am one of those that almost cried after reading the article. There was this feeling of relief, almost like catharsis when I read that there was a woman who recognized Bell and stayed until the end and gave him 20 bucks. It’s like I was cheering for him and hoping for a good ending. Before the section about the woman with the 20 bucks, there depictions of other people that help build this up.
Personally, I do not listen to classical music, and half the time I’m in the subway, I have insulating earphones. But I do enjoy beauty.
I also disagree with the casting pearls to swines reference. We are all humans, but not everyone enjoys that kind of music. With pigs, I doubt any would be interested in pearls ever. Improbable vs. impossible.
Rachel
on 11 Apr 07I’m with condor, why all the defensiveness? I didn’t think at all that the writer was saying the masses are dumb. In fact, I think 3 or 4 times he says that from a Kantian point of view, you can’t make any judgments about people from the situation. ie, the hypothetical example from the National Gallery curator. And I think Sent’s post above is true, but I don’t know why he/she seems to think the writer would disagree? I think that’s the point – out of context and in non-optimal situations people can be oblivious to brilliance.
In any case, my eyes actually watered a little too and I think in the same place Peter mentioned – the description of the postal worker and what he said had such a touching combination of admiration and guilt and…something. I don’t know. Plus, every now and then it’s nice to be reminded that we should slow down and appreciate things.
Justin W
on 11 Apr 07There was a quote in the response that hit me:
“John Lane, whom I quoted in the story, wrote a book on this very subject. One of his points is that if you look at a telephone manufactured in, say, 1935, it is a work of art. It could be a museum piece. Today, phones are dreadfully ugly utilitarian things. Same thing with brooms from the 19th century. Beauty used to matter, even in the banal.”
I like to hope that this is changing.
Jake
on 11 Apr 07That story made people cry? Seriously? What about the hundreds of homeless people sleeping in the subway stations that get ignored every day? What about the hundreds of obviously incompetent parents that scream at their kids on the subway that get ignored every day? Josh Bell may be a talented violin player, but is this worth crying over? If he had been setup down by the tracks people might have noticed more, but at least in NYC, no one stops right by the door. Honestly though, when I was in college the barenaked ladies of all bands played an impromptu show in our student center…probably hundreds of people were there watching. I think this story speaks more to the fact that most people just aren’t as affected by classical music. If Bob Dylan had taken an acoustic guitar to the subway I’m sure people would have listened.
Rebort
on 11 Apr 07Let’s say we had done it at evening rush, and large crowds gathered, and we did a story essentially saying that people found time for beauty in their lives. It would have been a non-story in that case, and I doubt the Post would have run it.
Obviously time and location determine results—which is why they didn’t go the other way and had Bell play at 3pm in the afternoon in a public park or a high-tourist area.
So I find the claim that they couldn’t have predicted the results dubious. In the morning rush, people are operating on fixed schedules and not on their own time (eg: I have to get up by 7am in order to catch the 8:15 train so I can get to work by 9. If I catch the 8:20 train, I’m late and my boss yells at me).
Evening rush, it’s the exact oppposite.
brad
on 11 Apr 07In Washington, DC, it doesn’t surprise me. Nor would it surprise me if it happened in New York. But I’m willing to be the story would have turned out quite differently in Boston or Seattle, for example.
In the 1980s, I remember taking a walk in Harvard Square one afternoon and coming upon a small woman with a guitar and a big voice, busking on the sidewalk. Her singing floored me, and her songs were compelling, so I stopped to listen. She sang another song, and just then one of the nearby movie theaters let out and a crowd gathered around her. She finished her last song and started to pack up her guitar but nobody would let her stop. We made her sing for another 45 minutes, and people were dropping $10 bills into her guitar case. Her name was Tracy Chapman. I went to her debut performance at Club Passim (in Harvard Square) about six months later, and there was a line all the way down the street and around the corner; hundreds of people had to be turned away (fortunately I’d gotten in line two hours before the concert). She had never performed anywhere but on the street before that, and built up a huge audience with street performances and a little bit of radio airplay of a cassette she recorded.
Scott Meade
on 11 Apr 07Some of the comments on this blog are another case of drive-by-commenting. Read the story first – then comment. This experiment was meant to answer one question: “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”. The result: No. Simple as that.
To answer the question posed in the experiment, it had to be “a banal setting” and “inconvenient time” and a performer most likely to produce “beauty”. How is this experiment a “setup” any more than any experiment?
Weingarten addressed considerations of context. He interviewed Mark Leithauser, a senior curator at the National Gallery. Quoting:
“Let’s say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It’s a $5 million painting. And it’s one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: ‘Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.’”
Leithauser’s point is that we shouldn’t be too ready to label the Metro passersby unsophisticated boobs. Context matters.” “Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of America’s most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal. “Optimal,” Guyer said, “doesn’t mean heading to work, focusing on your report to the boss, maybe your shoes don’t fit right.”
What is interesting is folks’ varying reactions. Some are drawn to it but too busy. Some find they have a minute to spare and use it to listen. Almost everyone simply passes by. Watch the videos if you have time.
ML
on 11 Apr 07That story made people cry? Seriously? What about the hundreds of homeless people sleeping in the subway stations that get ignored every day?
People cry tears of joy, not just tears of sadness. I think the occasional recognition of beauty by passersby is what elicits tears in readers.
urbanmike
on 11 Apr 07People crying when they read about a violinist being ignored? Are they lamenting the loss of some intangible sense of beauty or artistry? Are they sorrowful about how the city hardens the adult heart? Or are they realizing that the author is painting them in the same light?
The background material to the article (as linked above in the update) is pretty helpful to get a feel for the motivations of the author and the Washington Post in carrying this out.
smeade
on 11 Apr 07“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.”
If you’re a parent, how could this not give you a twinge of regret, reminded of all the times we’ve done the same.
MartinG
on 11 Apr 07I have a rule of never stopping when rushing in a big city. Too afraid of pickpockets and dangerous people. It’s a nice rule that lets me keep my stuff and it doesn’t diminish my life too much. Once a trumpet guy played the theme from godfather. It impressed me, but I never actually stop to take it in.
MartinG
on 11 Apr 07I have a rule of never stopping when rushing in a big city. Too afraid of pickpockets and dangerous people. It’s a nice rule that lets me keep my stuff and it doesn’t diminish my life too much. Once a trumpet guy played the theme from godfather. It impressed me, but I never actually stop to take it in.
MartinG
on 11 Apr 07I have a rule of never stopping when rushing in a big city. Too afraid of pickpockets and dangerous people. It’s a nice rule that lets me keep my stuff and it doesn’t diminish my life too much. Once a trumpet guy played the theme from godfather. It impressed me, but I never actually stop to take it in.
Dave P
on 11 Apr 07The best thing about this post is the large number of comm enters that validate it without realizing it. :-)
re: MartinG
on 11 Apr 07I have a rule of never stopping when rushing in a big city. Too afraid of pickpockets and dangerous people.
Martin, I’ve lived in Manhattan for 10 years now… and NOT in the best neighborhoods. I’m not at all an imposing guy - I’d be a really easy target - and I have NEVER been accosted in any way shape or form. I hear people express this sentiment a lot, and it’s frustrating to me. Cities are great places.
tom
on 12 Apr 07hott? Are you kidding me?
Brad Gessler
on 12 Apr 07I don’t understand the point of this article… of course most people wouldn’t stop and take notice. The human brain has to do this to function… its called “filtering out noise”. Dave,
999,999,999,999 out of 1,000,000,000,000 times of passing a street performer odds are it won’t be a violin virtuoso. If you pay $300 for a ticket to go see Joshua Bell, or any other virtuoso, your odds are greatly increased that you will be hearing great music.
Elsie
on 12 Apr 07It’s true that context affects people’s perception and interpretation, but the article still makes the point that regardless, people in our society are often too busy to just appreciate life. The article was more viewsy than newsy, but that took a lot of time and it was beautifully written. Everyone has a different idea of what’s important, but I agree with the point the author was making as I struggle with this myself: finding the balance between working hard (as I enjoy work) and just enjoying life (people, traveling, music, everything). Thanks for sharing this! :)
michelle
on 12 Apr 07There is a great response to the Joshua Bell article by a NYC subway musician in her blog: www.SawLady.com/blog She interprets the situation differently from the Washington Post reporters… I thought you might find it interesting.
Reed
on 12 Apr 07A grand experiment, but it is fundamentally flawed. It is pretty obvious why people did not stop. People MUST get to work or face consequences. Art vs. making the rent payment is not a fair fight. Enjoying art no matter how exquisite is pretty high up on the Maslovian hierarchy…
Alex K.
on 12 Apr 07I read the article, the comments here and most of the comments/responses on the Washington Post site (I’ll read the rest later). I found it interesting that few had the same reaction as I did to the article. I took it not as a reflection upon the people passing by, nor upon the children who wanted to listen, but as a means of looking at ourselves. Instead of asking the question:”Would I have stopped?” ask yourself, “From now on, will I appreciate the beauties of every day life? Will I stop to listen to a great performer or watch the way the wind flows through the leaves?” I fear if you cannot answer those questions with “I will try” perhaps you should consider trying to slow down your life. You may only live it once, you might as well appreciate every part of life while it lasts.
Joe
on 12 Apr 07Reed, what’s the Maslovian hierarchy?
John A. Davis
on 12 Apr 07I always thought classical music was crap.
Evan
on 13 Apr 07Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a psychological idea formulated by Abraham Maslow. The idea is that people have lots of needs that can be arranged from most human at the top (self-actualization, acting creatively), followed by the esteem of others, and down to primitive needs like food and water at the bottom. The idea is that the satisfaction of a given level of needs leads to striving to achieve the next level of need. (Note: I don’t know much about this; check wiki.)
interested party
on 13 Apr 07Great story, I don’t think I would have stopped, I am always embarrassed to watch street performers, because they expect money and I dont have any to give. I would definitely have let ym kid stay and watch, finally get some culture instead of the crap being pumped into his head by disney and mtv
Sebhelyesfarku
on 13 Apr 07Those kids who stopped and watched 10 years later will listen only to some ghetto shite from some IQ 80 rapper.
ForeclosureFish
on 13 Apr 07I would have stopped if the playing was good enough. I doubt I would have given any money, though, unless I had some extra change on me, which is rare. But if I was in a hurry, I probably would have just kept on walking.
I suppose this story proves that people value free services and performances less than what they make an active decision to pay for. Interesting story, nonetheless.
Sherwood
on 15 Apr 07Being a former restaurant owner, this experiment reminds me of a hard-won lesson: you can’t sell anything into the wrong market.
This discussion is closed.