Music critic Rythmik generously offered to share his reading of the Joshua Bell experiment as a guest post, a first for Stingy Kids. The italicized quotes are from the Washington Post article "Pearls for Breakfast." If you haven't read this article yet, I suggest you take a look at it before reading Rythmik's critique.
Ok, well first of all. Joshua Bell is indeed an excellent violinist. As absurd as his little experiment was, we can’t deny him the recognition he’s earned. Serious music reaches a musical level in which an average listener’s mere opinions of like and dislike are no longer relevant. For instance, it’s not hard for anyone to love the sound of a Stradivarius, but if someone were to say that they don’t like it, well then simply put….they just don’t understand. True in this day and age it is now important for those involved in serious music to accept the theory that a casual listener doesn’t have to be musically knowledgeable in order to appreciate. However, as soon as the listener begins stating what is “good” or “bad”, we see that a musical understanding was needed from the start. And that is really the heart of the whole issue at hand.
So the Washington Post attempted to essentially make fools of the general public, mind you the music listening public, modern day American culture, and in the end Joshua Bell concert ticket holders. I think that all they succeeded in doing was waking up the classical/serious music world to their own ignorance rather than waking us up to ours. In “an unblinking assessment of public taste…would beauty transcend?” I ask, should it?
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