Something to think about….
Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approximately. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later:
The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.
10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.
This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.
The questions raised:
*In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
*Do we stop to appreciate it?
*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.
How many other things are we missing?
Thanks Gene
Wow. I can understand people might be busy so that makes it a little more complicated, but I’m almost positive I would stop.
Even if there was a fairly bad one I think I would stop just to show respect for their bravery in playing in front of others because it’s so hard for me.
I would most definitely stop and listen for a length of time to a professional musician.
I think the Big Question is, If they all know it was Joshua Bell, then would they have stopped ..then if they did, that would show how out of touch we are… and shallow we have become…
to stop for a moment, a tip of a hat, a listen even without pay would show one can be human anywhere, any place any time… even for just a moment.
katt
I think I would have stopped to listen, but it mostly would be because I’m a nerd and love classical music.
Do you eat ice cream for breakfast?
No I’m not crazy, the question is topical. I eat ice cream when I want ice cream, usually as a snack after dinner. Even though it’s there in the freezer during breakfast, I boringly trudge past it and to the cupboard and make myself some cereal.
Why is that?
We appreciate things when we seek to experience them. In this study, this great performer was playing in a subway. He was offering a sweet, delicious, auditory treat. But you don’t go into the subway for that. You go into the subway to get to work. You boringly trudge past the treat and into the office.
This doesn’t show anything except that to truly enjoy something, you need to be in the right frame of mind. We are not “missing beauty around us” as people seem to imply. We simply are not looking for beauty all the time. We don’t want it. If everything were beautiful and we were exposed to it all the time, it wouldn’t be special.
I know everybody says they would stop to listen when they read this, and I want to say that also. But honestly, I think I would be like all the people who just went on by. The motions of life overtake us so much and sometimes and we just focus on the next thing we need to do or place we have to be. I’m grateful for seeing this. I’m making my New Year’s Resolution to leave earlier for things and take my time more. Hopefully I won’t miss out on any of the beauty anymore.
This is really interesting but you have to think about the context and the type of people who were passing him. The people who paid $100 a seat for the show the previous evening are probably not any of the hundreds of people that passed him in the subway. What I’m getting at is that most people are not musically educated enough to A) recognize an intricate and difficult piece of music and B) recognize it being played well for that matter.
I think this “perception” experiment shows nothing more than the fact that most people aren’t music savvy enough to differentiate between a random dude with mediocre talent and a really talented guy playing.
I bet if one of the people who had attended the concert the previous evening had walked by they would have stopped and “realized the beauty”
Perception/Understanding/Appreciation are realized when the ‘glass is full’ and the physiological needs are currently being met (i.e. Safety Needs). Do you feel safe in all public transportation? When we are not perceiving we are merely ‘observing’ … the sights of a busy station and a guy dressed in casual black.
over the summer my friends and i listened to this guy jam on the bongos for ten minutes…even though he sucked. then we gave him Ramen noodles!!
Here’s another study that implies that our perception and appreciation of something is influenced by stimuli unrelated to the thing itself. In this study, people appreciate wine more when they think the price is high.
http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13091
I love classical and I love the violin, and probably would have been there listening as long as he was playing. It’s understandable that people just stopped for a short time or didn’t stop at all as they all may have had to get to work and some were shuffling the children to get to school or daycare. However, 2,000 people is a lot of people with such little response to a violinist. We are a society of doing and not one of “being”. We do not seem to take the time to smell the roses – to breath in life as it happens. A moment is present for only a moment and then it is in the past never to be again. Wouldn’t 2010 be a great place to start to change and add more “being” and less doing into our lives?
In my humble view, this is not about anybody’s love for classical music or being polite. It shows the huge role publicity plays in shaping our tastes and views, and how much attention we pay to celebrity status rather then the content. Are we out of touch with reality?
I think we are!
Just “being” and less doing in life is called LAZINESS. if we were to just be, we wouldn’t get anything done. i agree with “It’s about desire”
this is why so many talented street/small time musicians are never recognized. people by the mass want quality spoon feed to them when it comes to music.reason brittney spears ect. so popular.you take the best throw him out there noone even pays attention.with things like mtv ect. the image and name recognition have made it near impossible for people to just listen anymore and so many great musicians get cut out by cut rate hacks that look pretty or have been shot 6 times and know how “real the streets” are. guess politics have come to music full power.ill stop ranting lol.
here’s an experiment in so-called perception: say you took an astonishingly beautiful woman (and to be fair to everyone a man), and had them stand naked on pedestals in this crowded subway. I promise you that many more people would have taken the time to perceive it. it’s in our nature
People usually go into the subway because they need to go somewhere. People passed by without stopping to listen not necessarily because they don’t appreciate music, but because they had somewhere to be. People don’t go to the subway to listen to music, but for the transportation that the subway provides.
I think it would be been more useful to, a few months later, have had him play again at the same day of the week, same time, and this time have a big sign up explaining who he is. He made a lot of money for such a short time, so clearly some people did recognize the beauty–the reason they didn’t stop may have simply been that they felt that they couldn’t–they were late for work, etc. If lots more people stop when they know who he is, then it’s a lot more significant–but it could have the same result even when people know who he is, just simply because of the pace of our lives.
I would have stopped only because i play the violin but also because before reading this article i knew from that profile that was josh bell
I wonder what the response would be if it was a stripper doing a pole dance.
Every experiment needs a “control”.
Seriously. If you didn’t stop for at least a second listen then I would agree. People don’t recognized good music. I suppose everyone has their own taste of what sounds good to them and what doesn’t
What if the music selection were different?
It wouldn’t need to be performed by a pop star. It wouldn’t need to be a song you recognize.
The stuff on our iPods may not have Bach’s name on it, but his influence and that of other masters are certainly present in today’s music. When done right we _will_ stop and listen. I’ve see it happen. It happened to me. I’ll never forget the day in Central Park when I saw a crowd gathering around a small jazz trio doing a cover of Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon. http://lala.com/zQNe
I’d never heard the song before, but the performance was so moving that I talked to my friends about it. One day I was out with my girlfriend. Her friend’s boyfriend was a musician. I mimicked the base line and he recognized it and filled me in on Herbie and another version by Maynard Ferguson http://lala.com/z7xYI
Herbie started out playing Mozart. Other musician’s study classical music too. The impact of classical masters like Bach remain with us today and they have remarkable influence on other students like Quincy Jones and Wynton Marsalis.
We’ve come along way.
Wow… that must have humbled him a bit.
People must listen to him not because they like the way he plays, but because his name is Joshua Bell. I personally have never heard of him, but (unless I was really, really busy) I would have stopped because I like classical music.
Jenna
i work in d.c. see guys playing all the time. some are very good. i don’t think there is one classical musician i’d recognize on sight. heck i sat next to brett micheals once and you seriously wouldn’t recognize him without makeup!
Betcha everybody would’ve stopped if it was Lady-%$&@-Gaga playing out there…Man, Homo Sapiens is so like domestic livestock
Well I hope they taped it and lets hear it. Ahh, looks like it might be posted. Question I have then is how many people who read this article still did not go experience it.
hey he still made 32$ in 45 min…easily enough to piss on the poor people who make 7$ an hour artfully assembling grinded meat puck sandwiches struggling to afford those 100$ a seat violin shows
Interesting, but:
1. Every violin looks the same, unless its made with gold with diamond studded or looks shiny no one sees it. This is the human perception, that is how we were bought up.
2. I do not know Joshua as most of people who are looking at this post.
3. I would say the person who stood and listened to the violin for few minutes and the child are the real listeners, others care about themselves superficially.
My Conclusion:
We are all mindful. People like that listener and the kid are either less mindful or totally free from mind. Mind being grown and influenced by our surrounding stops us from realising the beauty around us.
Two problems with this:
1. Beauty is a completely subjective term; just because he was playing a very complex piece of very old music does not necessarily infer beauty.
2. He was performing in a metro station; a place of transit. More likely than not everyone there had somewhere to be and a specific time that they needed to be there. You cannot expect people who need to get to work, to a date, to anywhere to stop and listen to music when their means of transportation leaves on a fixed schedule. Maybe try a place of leisure, say a park?
It was a cold morning….. people were probably rushing out their door and running to their metro. They probably waited until the last moment to leave their home. Were this experiment done in the evening when most people in the subway are not going to work there may have been more listeners stopping.
The man playing is someone hardly anyone would know in an everyday setting. So they are not losing perception of “Joshua Bell”. Even if someone had recognized who he was, they also may have slowed down and listened for a bit, but they, like all the others have a place they must get to.
The music being played is Bach…. does that really matter who the original composer is? No. Most music is beautiful to individuals.
The violin looks like any violin. Who cares that it was an expensive one? It does not make the moment any better to those who walked by. Most violins sound beautiful.
Some people slowed down to listen. They appreciated the moment but still had life to tend to.
Those who threw money in but did not stop, knew the player was in need, and may have contributed not because of what he was playing, but because some people give to those in need. Or also because they appreciated the sounds they heard and wanted to reward a good musician.
Kids stop because it is something different. They live in the moment and that moment was interesting. Their parents have their reasons for being in the metro and move along for any of the above reasons.
I would hope that this social experiment does not draw negative conclusions about those people who saw him. There are too many variables.
I concur with Huey. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; put a person in an inconvenient place at an inconvenient time and most people will be inconvenienced by them. If I have to be at work soon and my train leaves in 5 minutes, I’m not going to stop and listen to a street musician. The people who spent $100 a ticket to listen to this guy play did so at their leisure and because it suited their interests, and I’m sure some did it just to show all the other rich people that they are rich too. I think it’s safe to say that no matter how beautiful classical music may be, and no matter how talented the musician or how expensive his instrument, if you aren’t interested in classical violin music, you just aren’t going to be interested in listening to the best musician in the world playing one of the most intricate pieces of music ever written on one of the most expensive violins ever made, especially if it could mean losing your job or at least getting in trouble over it.
I like Huey’s idea. Redo the experiment at a more leisurely venue like a park. There are street musicians in Savannah, Georgia that play on River Street. Mostly just people who look like they could be homeless, or at least destitute, but because they play in an area where people go on their own time, they almost always have an audience. And I can guarantee that they are not playing on multi-million dollar instruments, they couldn’t sell out an auditorium at $100 a seat and their tunes are more along the line of Scott Joplin than Mozart or Bach.
Stumbled from Fort Collins, Colorado!
Wow, this raises an excellent point. However, I think it’s a little unfair that the experiment was held in a train station, as apposed to, say, a random street corner. I’m sure that most of the people going through the station were on a tight schedule to make their trains, and many of the destinations (such as getting to work) were important enough that missing their train would have been a big deal. I’m not saying it’s a good thing that we pass up such amazing beauty in order to keep our tightly-wound schedules, but I like to think that there would have been a lot more interest had the musician been playing in a park or some other more leisurely atmosphere. Then again, maybe our perception of a valuable experience is drastically altered by what we’re told.
Whats
We may be missing a lot in life, but if we get late for our job, we may be missing our job… Beauty in life is very important, but to pay the rent and have enough money to eat is even more.
I don’t think my boss would fall for that old excuse: “I’m sorry, I’m late,but Joshua Bell was playing Bach in his Stradivarius in the tube station and I just had to stay and apreciate it!”
Wow:The experiment started on my birthday.
42.66 an hour thats pretty good thats what i perceive.
anyone else just think its cool that children were the ones who wanted to stop and listen?
is saw him at the metro,i stop to Listen…
i examine aLL the peopLe…
it remined me of something is missing
in each in everyone of use.
good thing i have it in me,
even thou shes far away.
Slow down, you move too fast, you’ve got to make the morning last
Just kickin’ down the cobble-stones, lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy
Simon and Garfunkel
Firstly, a lot of people don’t like or appreciate classical music and wouldn’t have stopped even if they knew how acclaimed he was. Secondly, those who do would probably need to be quite in touch with music to realise how good this guy actually is (the difference between one of the thousands of ‘very good’ violin players and ‘The best in the world’ is probably not very obvious to the vast majority). Thirdly, the ‘most intricate pieces ever written’ (as good as they are) probably aren’t the most beautiful. Instead of picking the most advanced pieces perhaps they should have picked pieces that were more easlily appreciated. I don’t think this experiment shows anything except the fact that most people don’t like classical music
Oh my gosh. I mean… What the hell. I am 100% sure I would stop, and not let anyone drag me away.
i think i might jst love this guy. and possibly one of the finest social experiments i have heard of. i think that it shows alot about children being different to audelts in no applying to social conventions.
I wonder if things would be different in other countries or cultures.
What if people taking the subway simply do not like classical music? After all, it is used as a deterrent in a Montreal station to fight panhandlers.
Judith makes a good point. Maybe he is very talented and the music is “intricate,” but many people (myself included) find classical violin music repulsive. The assumption that the music was “beautiful”–and those that did not stop were unable to perceive it because they were in a rush–is flawed. The inconvenient time of the performance was not the only element affecting the perceptions of the passing people. Everyone has their own perception of what is beautiful. Maybe the people who passed by had more than enough time to stop but didn’t because they didn’t hear anything they thought deserved their time.
Never heard of him. He made more than twice as much as I make. I think he kicked ass for $35 in 45 minutes. That is actually more than most people make. And if I knew it was him, I would have stolen that violin.
Don’t you find it interesting that the children responded better than the adults? Children need to experience music young. A child’s brian is literally “working out” while they are listening. Synapses created , shaped and strengthened, thats wonderful. Its sad that parents would rush children away from valuable growth and culture. Give children music
i’m positive i would stop.
after a blazer game, a guy was playing
drums on buckets and it was an african beat
and i stopped and dance along with it.
and cheered him on, and dropped money in
the case he had next too him.
i think music on the streets are amazing.
it makes or world creative.
i know i would have stopped not because he is some famous musician, but because i have real apriciation for all music. All the people who paid for his sold out show mostlikly did it just because the wanted to get into some girls pants not because he had talent. I think the real question should be do people reaconize beauty or is it something that our meadia has trained us to see.This is why the children notice the man playing because there simple mind has not been warped by modern society, where people on the streets are bad and ugly and dont dare make eye contact.
i know i would have stopped along with people who i know also apriciate music because i reaconize real beauty, natural not the beauty that is percived today.
It’s interesting how the children all seemed to notice and appreciate the musician by the sounds of things.
In a cluttered mind with a heavy schedule even breathtaking beauty has to get in the queue.I called on my husband to come and read this.Within seconds of reading he said ‘this is taking too long’,how fitting.I made him finish and he smiled.He was in a hurry to return to what he was doing but on reading it had found it interesting.So yes,we all of us don’t know what we’re missing a great deal of the time.A lack of time rather than a lack of appreciation.