• silverwhisper said on Apr 13, 2007....

  it's really not at all surprising to me, i'm afraid.
  
  ed

• moonriver said on Apr 13, 2007....

  sw -- i'm neither an american nor a u.s. resident, but extrapolating from what i read and from what i know of the musical tastes of my relatives who have settled down there, yes, it appears that way to me too. the irony is that in china today, the trend is the opposite. this article tells how so.
  
  

• silverwhisper said on Apr 13, 2007....

  o, i'm not surprised--i think there's vastly greater appreciation for classical music in most non-european populations. look at what cultures are churning out all the kids who learn orchestra instruments, you know?
  
  ed

• moonriver said on Apr 13, 2007....

  sw -- i agree, with one exception. i think the younger generations in some countries of eastern europe still enjoy a solid core of enthusiasm for classical music as in earlier times.
  
  

• silverwhisper said on Apr 13, 2007....

  so are we seeing a rise of the appeal of classical music in non-first world nations, perhaps?
  
  ed

• moonriver said on Apr 13, 2007....

  sw -- yes, definitely. that other news article says that in china alone, they have 30 million piano students and 10 million violin students. and they are not just playing music composed by the western masters from bach to bernstein, but their own countrymen's classical-style compositions.
  

• hunter_boyce_chandler said on Apr 13, 2007....

  I believe that music is liquid emotion and is a form of magic in this world.  There is however a bit of snobbery that develops among adoring fans of all ilk.

  The thought occurs- I remember a group of Metallica Fans that rolled their eyes and thought they were far superior to me when I told them I thought Soundgarden was better.

  Joshua Bell is a magnificent talent I am sure, his instrument is a collector’s item worth tons and tons of money.  But for God’s sake why do Classical fans think everyone who doesn’t like their Cheesy Euro-Trash Arias is somehow less civilized that they are?

  I love all kinds of music (except Country and Western, there is not enough alcohol for that).  I do not know every person who owns a fiddle.  Why should I.

  Is he the guy who plays for Dave Matthews??  If not I wouldn't toss a wet spit wad in his fiddle case.  He's just not that important.

  HBC

   

• secretlife said on Apr 13, 2007....

  I am not surprised so few stopped.

  I will think on this today, moon-

  In his 2003 book, Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life, British author John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L'Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said -- not because people didn't have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.

  "This is about having the wrong priorities," Lane said.

  If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?

• hunter_boyce_chandler said on Apr 13, 2007....

  secret,

  Your quote by John Lane implys that anyone who does not have the same taste in music as he must have wrong priorities.

  I say anyone who seeks for judge another person because of his choice in song is an idiot beyond comprehension.

  (except for Country Music....I kind of agree that they are numbnuts)

  HBC

• secretlife said on Apr 13, 2007....

  hunter:  i think the point of the quote has nothing whatsoever to do with the type of music...i venture a guess that if the same experiment were done with different music, there would have been similar results....the point of the quote is really in reference to our loss as a people to appreciate beauty in general...

  the point as i see it is people are too busy to stop for even a minute or two to listen...or to see...or to smell the flowers....

   

   

   

• ninjapirate said on Apr 13, 2007....

  Hunter: "But for God’s sake why do Classical fans think everyone who doesn’t like their Cheesy Euro-Trash Arias is somehow less civilized that they are?" It goes along with your country music hatred ya know. I agree that a lot of people into classical music are snobby and judgemental, which is to bad. Cheesy sometimes, but euro trash good lord no. It's like poetry for the ears, it makes you feel things that have true meaning to life and for whatever reason genereally people don't want to deal with that.

• TinSoldier said on Apr 13, 2007....

  HBC -- I love Country Music, along with Rock and most other kinds of music. Classical, though, usually leaves me cold.

• moonriver said on Apr 13, 2007....

  hbc, secret, ninja, tinsolider -- this thread has taken an interesting turn. you shared some really solid food for thought, and i'd like to explore it further after i finish some deadlines.
  
  hbc -- yes, a chinese calligraphy fanatic shouldn't automatically see all nyc grafitti as mere trash. and vice versa. and hey, thanks for dropping by.
  
  secret and ninja -- somehow i instantly get your point about recognizing beauty for its inner worth, whatever its outside form and circumstance.
  
  tinsoldier -- there is beauty and there is trash in all the various musical genre. the only difference, maybe, is that the beauty of the baroque, classical and romantic periods have somehow survived the ravages of time... ;-)
  
  for now, though, these lines from the washington post article are triggering a heated debate in my own mind:
  
  
  IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD? It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest.
  
  
  i can't help but see some parallels here at sc. i think many of us know the thrill of discovering a gem of a really good blogger no one else has subscribed to or even commented on. as well as that sinking feeling, when we really go all out to pour our thoughts and writing effort into a blog, only to see after a couple of days that it collected a total of 2 comments. on the other hand, i could view those 2 comments as being more precious than the 50+ comments gathered in my other so-so post.
   
  all solid food for thought for today ... ;-)
  
  

• TinSoldier said on Apr 13, 2007....

  Interesting point about good bloggers. I do my best to find them, and I seemed to have gathered a small reading community in my relatively short time here.
  
  Some people I read I enjoy their posts, but I don't really have much to comment on. Especially the poetry ones. I feel somewhat uncreative if I keep saying, "I loved your poem!" every time.
  
  Definitely some food for thought, though.
  

• secretlife said on Apr 13, 2007....

  i was just talking about that with mobil last week moon.  how you can write what you think is something really really good, and you get a couple of views...you write 3 sentences and maybe a survey, and you get 300 views....
  does that make the piece you think is really good any less good? 
   
  no - it just got less views.
   
  i think to that quote from the article---the question -- to me.it's just like the tree falling -   regardless of whether anyone saw or heard, the event took place...regardles of whether anyone stopped to hear the music, i don't think those 1072 people can stop a great muscian playing great music from being good. 

• hunter_boyce_chandler said on Apr 13, 2007....

  great summation moon,

  My point not to be audaciously obvious or anything is that beautiful music is always underappreciated by someone.  I hear that (all hail the holy one) Simon from American Idol said that Dylan was boring.

  I am a great fan of Bach but I don't think it is a great tragedy when someone else is unamused. 

  HBC

  btw

  you never know what topic will set the wayward reader off.  If you did you would already be a rich succesful writer like the Naked Professor.

   

• moonriver said on Apr 14, 2007....

  this issue appears more complex than meets the eye.
  
  there's probably an absolute human standard of beauty -- an instinctive reaction wired into our brains, so to speak -- that makes a 21st century person react with the same primal awe when, for example, modern-day tourists gaze at the paleolithic cave paintings at lascaux and altamira.
  
  those paintings were beautiful then, they still are now, period. it becomes irrelevant whether they remained unseen by human eyes in the intervening millennia.
  
  i agree too that this native or inborn sense of beauty, mixed with childlike awe and seen most purely among children, is soon given more specific shape and behavior responses by other factors of culture. these factors extremely vary across civilizations, eras, generations. thus, most 20th and 21st century peoples perceive the earth-goddess statues of the paleolithic as grotesque, not pretty or sexy. 
  
  even just within our present generation and culture, even with the homogenizing factors of global media, different people will still obviously show different tastes and responses to artistic beauty. (heck, my own musical interests have greatly changed since i learned piano chopsticks at 10. i hated the sound of violin and stravinsky music back then.) clearly, immense cultural variation is a factor in the different reactions of passers-by to mr. bell's arcade concerto.
  
  there is also the typical human response to repeated stimuli, wherein the intense reaction to a new stimulus gradually gives way to desensitization and indifference. thus, foreign visitors find our orchids exotically beautiful, while we natives often take them for granted, as common garden-variety plants. i'd be bored to death too if my cd drive played only classical music 24/7, 365 days a year.
  
  finally: all artists, writers, even communications engineers, know that you may have the most beautiful message in the world. but if your medium somehow fails to connect artist and audience, author and reader, sender and recipient, then somehow you fail to complete the cycle, and the beauty of your message becomes an empty echo in a bare room.
  
  i'm a journalist, in two senses.
  
  on one hand, i maintain a personal journal for my own self-expression and self-clarification. in this sense, i don't care if another person reads them or finds them even mildly interesting. the act of writing my thoughts down is already deeply satisfying or cathartic for me. on the other hand, i write articles to share ideas with other people, to elicit responses from them. in this sense, i will greatly mind how my writings reach and touch other people.
  
  sometimes the first sense of being a journalist is more important to me. sometimes it's the second sense that i want to measure up to. often, it's both, in some fluid proportion.
  
  i'm afraid i'm rambling now.
  
  but one practical implication of the joshua bell experiment, imho, is for classical music enthusiasts to think real hard how to make their kind of music more popular (like "popular music") without sacrificing that precious quality which gave it the name "classical" in the first place.
  
  maybe we need an educational and cultural system that can produce more musicians who can play both concert halls and street crowds in equal measure, and not be hemmed in by celebrity status and a profit-obsessed recording industry.
  
  i'm still rambling....LOL.
  
  
  

• gingersoul said on Apr 14, 2007....

  Moon........this is just a beautiful post....another one from you.....:-)

  I read the article about China's love for classical.

  Did you see the movie "The Red Violin"....its a beautiful movie that tells the story of the last Stradivari violin ever built and the adventures that this exquisite instrument endured during centuries and different nations before arriving to be sold to a Chirstie's aution but being stolen by a music lover.

  The beauty of the sound emating from this ultimate perfect violin is so mesmerizing that people even kill to posses it .....and it keeps perpetuating during the time.....

  At one point the instrument lands in the hands of a music teacher in China during the Revolution. The teacher is persecuted and arrested because refuses to hand over the instrument and stop playing classical music prohibited by the Red Guards because considered not proletarian....somehow a friend rescues the violin that continues its voyage...

  This movie simply tells us that the power and force of classical music just doesn't die despite the changing of taste and cultural trends and trascend the passing of the time.....this is what makes of it a classic.....like the Partenone...you might not knowing the history behind it ...but ..how can you not stand jaw dropped looking at it?   

  This brings me to this.....with all the respect for some country music....there is no way that a Concerto for 2 violins in D minor from Bach can be remotely compared to George Straits (and i do like him.....).

  Music is music but some music just speaks more universally and deeply than other...

  No offense but  i was laughing here when i read something like " Cheesy euro-trash aria?".......well.......sorry but how is possible to throw such judgment against Mozart. Bach, Beethoven, Haendel, Marcello, Albinoni, Corelli, Scarlatti, Pergolesi, Telemann, Chopin, Lizst???

  I dont think i am snobby when sometimes i cry listening to the unbearable beauty of this music. And i know its this beauty that keeps touching the deep core of people all over the world.

  What its a shame is the we have art institutions that are starting to give up on perpetuating a wider availbility of this beauty but then use funds to open a hip hop dance academy somewhere......there is simply no balance here...

  My daughter has been exposed to Vivaldi and Mozart when she was a lot younger.....even though i dont buy the recent crappy commercial trend of "make your baby listen to Mozart and they will grow more intelligent"...i do know she likes them and i am sure that only for this she had enriched her sensibility...

  This is the problem:  its not listening to classical music that makes people prone to be considered cheesy and snobish (even though i admit there are people like this) but its the lack of general appreciation (appreciation that can be built only thru a more "popular"  and meanigful education)  that makes these people "perceived' as snobby because they are simply fewer compared to the millions following American Idol...

  I dont care..i can listening to both type of music ....and this is an advantage...

  I am privileged in this sense...

  Back to the experiment........beauty is also something that doesn't always hit us like a boltering lightning....exactly like the hidden blog wonders we might have in SC and yet are still not seen by everybody...

  I bet that within the people who didnt stop for Bell there have been classical music lover who that morning had a crucial job interview and if late they woudl not have the job, and then would have been late with their bills, and add stress to sress....stress that not even the great music of Bell would have then been able to alleviate.

  Everything is contingent, dear Moon... ..i know you remember "First the bread, then the roses"  .......but the sad reality is now many of us have nor only bread but filet mignon and still .....

  {{hugs}}

• hunter_boyce_chandler said on Apr 14, 2007....

  My statement "Cheesy EuroTrash Aria" was an unfair designation I admit but something has to designate the tendency for wealthy Westernized people to blither uncontrollably at the works of old european white guys who were supported by royal money.

  In the sense that Bach is a wonderful lesson in mathmatical concept of recursion I agree everyone who is learned should appreciate his work.  To somehow claim that one music is more civilized than another is just ethnocentrism.

  Western man is not superior in any way to African, Asian, Indian or any other ethnic group.  Western music is not superior in any way to African, Asian, Indian or any other harmony.  To hold anything else is bigotry.

  Its pretty simple,

  HBC

• gingersoul said on Apr 14, 2007....

  HB......i dont recall anybody here talking about supremacy of classical music compared to other musical expressions....

  I can talk only for myself but i certainly dont consider my love for Baroque Music a sign of ethnocentrism.....

  Actually, i am presently listening to a beautiful cd that contains mostly Indian music (from India)...sitar is a marvelous instrument......i think i like it as much as my beloved cello....if possible...:-)

  And what about the many amazing Native American tribals songs...i have another cd right in front of me....and the touching Chinese music ....i can be mesmerized by the ondulating voices of the Arabian songs ..i can go on and on....

  When i talk about music i am able to appreciate any kind of music, from East, West, South and North....i believe the future of music is actually in its ability to mix different cultural influences...

  I really dont care if the arie sang by Farinelli were composed only for the rich economic class of his period............despite that, their beauty can still talk to the heart of anybody.......  

  There is indeed a new sensibiliy and appreciation toward foreign music.....the influence is getting visible mostly in pop  and rock, even jazz.......In Europe is a trend old of several years, actually....In France the majority of the most appreciated bands plays a mix of ethnic musics, specially from Algerie, Turkey.....because of the majority of immigrants from Middle East and North Africa......

  The problem is here, in America.......still a very ethnocentric country, i agree with you....

• Boonsketti said on Apr 15, 2007....

  LISTEN! I am a classical musician. I go to a school similar to Juilliard but smaller and more selective. For those who are familiar with the incestuous classical music community go ahead and take a guess.
  
  Classical music, in its current, present day form, is dead. This is why so many people did not stop to listen to Joshua Bell, because he was playing 200 year old music on an instrument that was even older, today. 2007.
  
  The modern day human being is not moved, does not even take NOTICE, of this music, because it is so fucking old it needs to be framed and supported gently by an expensive concert hall, usually filled with rich old people. Look around at classical music audiences. How many people going to see the ten millionth performance of Beethoven's 5th Symphony are under the age of 35?
  
  Classical music will die in its present form unless it evolves and adapts to the fact that it must evolve and adapt. The problem is that the institution is so centered around money, corporate or otherwise, and tradition, that it doesn't even know when to begin to change. This is the reason why one of the most successful modern-day violinists could barely attract attention in a big city without a concert hall.
  
  Screw "CLASSICAL music". Even the categorization implies staleness and incest. I say, let's start playing, making, and living real MUSIC - not music from 200 years ago, but music made TODAY. Why rehash the past, when we can create the future.
  

• gingersoul said on Apr 15, 2007....

  Boon......i dont see any reason why dont do both....revive classic music and create new one...

  Its always music...:-)

• moonriver said on Apr 15, 2007....

  ginger -- thanks for "holding the line" while i was out...:-) i totally agree with you on this one, and i think there's an underlying common view that we can all agree on, about the universality of beautiful music even if its actual form or genre is obviously shaped by the times, the country, the social class that created or patronized it. in much the same way, we can all appreciate the grandeur of the pharaoh's palace or the taj majal or the chinese great wall -- without forgetting that they were structures to satisfy elite whims and ambitions, and so many thousands of slaves died to build them.
  
  hey, i see you're a truly avid fan of what's often called "world music". wanna swap mp3 collections? or at least the titles of what we both have... :-)
  
  red violin -- i missed that one, but having read that it was joshua bell's violin in the sound track, i will find myself a copy. the chinese cultural revolution actually  promoted and produced lots of chinese and western classical-style music and instrumentation, under the motto "let a thousand flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend." although there were truly incomprehensible artifact-smashing sprees in the pre-1969 period when many red guard factions went out of control.
  
  hbc -- i get your point, and i think i fully appreciate your concern that western classical music -- by origin as well as by trends in present consumption -- has remained elitist. i think we can agree that steps can be done to reverse this trend, as (hopefully) being done in other countries such as china. and we can do these, without necessarily falling into the trap of musical ethnocentrism.
  
  oh, btw, i appreciate bach not in the sense of his works being a wonderful example of mathematical recursion, but because his pieces bring out the lust in me. lust for life...LOL.
  
  boonsketti -- allow me one guess... uhmm... the one in graz? LOL. there is no great wall that divides classical and modern, in the same way that there is no "police line do not cross" boundary between old-english, middle-english, and modern-english literature. john williams is as awesome as beethoven. heck, even john cage -- if you're into that kind of music... LOL. if a modern vanessa mae wields an electric violin and does a snazzy modern rendition of anna magdalena bach's notebook pieces, then her music is music made today -- not necessarily on a lower or higher scale of beauty, the ability to move people's hearts and guts, than joshua bell's stradivarius renditions.
  
  ginger is right -- reviving classical music and creating new ones are just two aspects of the same complex creative or regenerative process.
  
  
  

• Boonsketti said on Apr 16, 2007....

  Thanks for your comments.
  
  You mentioned Vanessa Mae...I dislike Vanessa Mae's music; I'm sure Ms. Mae is a nice young woman, but what she is trying to do is what I consider kind of immoral. I think that she has precious little musical ability or talent, and is unsuccessfully trying to con the masses with her banal renditions of perfectly good works of art that are difficult to match, let alone improve, 1. due to the fact that many of her bad arrangements stem from masterpieces, i.e. Vivaldi's Seasons, and 2. these masterpieces are difficult to improve on or make more enjoyable to listen to, due to the fact that people are already so familiar with the early versions. Putting a bad MIDI dance beat behind Bach is not going to 1. be popular, or 2. be substantial. She fails on both counts, and makes me cry and die a little bit inside every time I have to listen to her vivacious violin playing to karaoke-style accompaniment.
  
  I suppose the argument could be made that she's trying to "bridge" the gap between classical music and pop music. But I am pretty sure that the reaction from those who don't know anything about classical music, listening to Mae, is something like, "wow, this is sort of groovy!" and then forgetting about it, and the reaction from classical musicians is gagging and vomitting...it fails on both sides to do anything of any real merit, let alone even pretending to partially fulfill any notion of art. It's entertainment, and it's not even able to match something like Beyonce (who I think is a great example of a popular artist who has enormous innate musical ability, and is using it well).
  
  Why did an anachromisnm like Vanessa Mae occur? Because the chasm between classical music and pop music is still fairly wide. However, there has been a definite push, especially in about the last ten years, of young musicians, especially on the east coast, coming up with rock / jazz influenced classical ensembles. Still, this has nowhere near the X factor needed for a sort of movement that a documentary could be made of - something else is needed, further synthesis.
  
  Anyways, the way Joshua Bell is doing it is sort of counter-productive for art in general, I think - it caters to the institution and gives them another reason to keep tending to the animal on life support. But you're right, there is absolutely no reason why I can't do both. It is just a bit discomforting to me to see so many people blindly follow tradition.
  
  No big deal, though.
  

• moonriver said on Apr 16, 2007....

  boonsketti -- thank you for your latest comment. i think we can agree that diversity is a fundamental condition for the arts (including music) to thrive, and that beauty and perfection are dependent on this diversity. let a million joshua bells, yo yo ma's, vanessa maes, sharon corr, and fiddlers who play for dave matthews, bloom in this myriad musical garden.
  
  

• Boonsketti said on Apr 17, 2007....

  Fair! Let the musical chips fall where they may and may great artists appear and inspire us in our lifetimes...

• Gypsyheart said on Apr 18, 2007....

  My father was a record distributer to radio stations during the 70's. It was how he met my mother who was in charge of schedualing the commercials and the dedications on their Friday night dedication show. I was rocked to sleep to Led Zeppelin and Pink floyd, my mom knowing no other lullabyes sang me Loggins and Messina. To add to that my family is deeply rooted in opera as my Grandfather was once a guest Tenor at Carnagie Hall, and His father ran an opera and dance company that toured the world. (They were the Well-off Gypies by that point). I have never not had music of some sort in my house, it mattered not wether it was Puccini or Chopin, Simon and Garfunkle or th Byrds, The cure or Depeche mode, Nirvana or NIN, The killers or Gywn Steffani. I did not have the talent for music myself, but I appreciate those who do. What Joshua Bell proved was not so much a deviation of musical interest, but rather the desire we have to shut out those around us. Afraid to connect even for that one moment, afraid of being hurt or losing ourselves and our "focus" on what we think is right. The gypsy blood sings in me and urges me to travel, take the next plane, follow that road. Society tells me that on that next plane and down that next road lie danger and failure. What the message of that article should be, instead of a lack of appreciation for classical music, is a reconnection with your surroundings and the people and things with in it. In essance, take time to smell the roses, and enjoy the things you DO enjoy.

• brokenandused said on Apr 19, 2007....

  moonriver: this was an interesting post, it doesn't surprise me that not many ppl stopped to listen.  Everything in today's nation is labeled and stereotyped. Classical music is considered "uncool" or "boring". i rather like it! thank you for posting this!

• moonriver said on Apr 21, 2007....

  boonsketti -- yes, i fully agree with you. and let's look for these great artists not only in glitzy concert halls, celebrity mags and billboard charts, but those who are plodding along, creating incredible music without much fanfare, and scraping just enough to fund their next album.
  
  gypsyheart -- exactly. you took the words i was trying to form on my lips, and wrote them down. i recall a chinese fable about a warrior on a horse who was always busy fighting wars, then, in a flash of inspiration and insight, stopped in the middle of a meadow, gazed at a vast field in riotous bloom of many colors, and alighted from his horse to smell a fresh bud. other warriors of other armies saw him, and found their own safe nooks to rest a while. after a year, a few of the warriors have settled in for good. appreciating a field of flowers, one less war to fight as a result... ;-)
  
  broken -- as in all musical genre, in classical music there are uncool and boring works too. but always, so long as we keep our mind's ears and souls open, we can soon separate fine music from the humdrum noise, and pick our choice. thank you for the nice comment.
  
  

• hunter_boyce_chandler said on Apr 21, 2007....

  I have no idea why this post is still getting comments.  I guess I am to blame for my very opinionated view of the utter snobbishness of classical music well beyond the accolades that is deserves. 

  I am going to shut up now, having contributed to the fame and notoriety of the very music that sort of pisses me off.

  I hold the same derision for anyone who tries to speak Latin in my presence.  They need to be sterilized.

  HBC

   

• TinSoldier said on Apr 21, 2007....

  alea iacta est, HBC.
  
  ;-)
  
  (I've already reproduced, so sterilization would be ex post facto.)
  

• moonriver said on Apr 22, 2007....

  hbc -- LOL, no. i think your comment wasn't really way off line. just a matter of different tastes and points of view ... ;-) feel free to come and go in this blog, hunter. you're always welcome :-)
  
  tin -- now i'm at a loss on how to comment in latin, lol. even pig latin.
  
  

• kruuyai said on Sep 11, 2007....

  muun:  Wow!  What a way to start my day (my busy-filled day, between starting a new job and looking for a new flat).  I just couldn't stop reading that article, though.  Believe it or not, I was more impressed by the beautiful written descriptions than by the music I heard on the videos (must have been a poor quality of recording).  The Red Violin is one of my favorite movies, as much for the visual beauty of the different settings and the violin itself and the beauty of all the different languages spoken in it as for the music.  I loved the music in that movie.  But I loved the music in Schindler's List better.  I guess that would be a modern version of classical music.  There was a lot of discussion about beauty in the comments here, and a lot of debate about how it's perceived.  There actually is an objective side to the perception of beauty... at least physical beauty. .. there have been studies done (n time to look for references now) on how babies respond to different facial features, and amazingly, their smiles and positive reactions follow very closely our classical definitions of human beauty (symmetry, etc.).  I imagine the same is true for music and the plastic arts.  Music is somewhat of a science, and although I'm not an expert, there is something about the way that sounds are combined and resonate with each other that makes a piece of music beautiful or otherwise.   So, it's not just snobbism.  I think that the snobbism comes in (and it does exist very widely) in that there are a lot of people who go to classical concerts just because they have some vague feeling that it will make them look sophisticated in the eyes of others, even though they may not get it, or it may bore them to tears.  Better to go with something that truly moves you.  On a side note, I think the standing ovation is way overdone in, at least, Western culture.  I won't get on my feet unless I am truly moved to do so, not just because some idiot started it, and everyone else is playing monkey see, monkey do.
  
  I imagine there would have been a different reaction if Joshua Bell had done this in San Francisco or New Orleans.  I still doubt that he would have been recognized, but the street musicians there are good, and they get a lot more appreciation.  So much more I want to say, but I have to go now.  Hopefully, I'll get back to this.  I want to read the other link you have posted above.  Thanks, muun!
  

• kruuyai said on Sep 11, 2007....

  P.S.  I just noticed the title (again)  Pearls Before Breakfast.  How appropriate for my day.  I'm off to get some breakfast now.  :)

• kruuyai said on Sep 14, 2007....

  muun:  Never underestimate the power of the printed word.  I was so inspired by reading this the other day that I went out and bought myself a violin today.  It's a beaut!  It has a reddish tinge to it and sounds great (at least to me).  I had to get on the internet to find pictures of how to hold the bow, though.  I couldn't remember... lol.  My friend knows a good teacher here in Prague, so I'll be back into the swing of things in no time.  Woo hoo!

• moonriver said on Sep 15, 2007....

  kruu -- i'm so glad this discussion thread led you to rediscover the sonorous beauty of the violin sound. my kid who is studying violin loves to practice a piece by playing an mp3 version on the comp while reading the music sheet and playing along.
  
  

• kruuyai said on Sep 15, 2007....

  muun:  That sounds like a good way to practice.  I think it's something akin to the Suzuki method... or at least part of it.  Would you believe it's been so long since I played a violin that I had to get online last night to see how to hold the bow?  It's going to be a long, uphill climb. Meanwhile, I have half a dozen readers going crazy back at my place, trying to guess what early Christmas present that I bought for myself.  I told them the answer is hidden somewhere on this web site... meaning my last comment here... but no one has even come close to guessing.  lol  This one outdoes my new umbrella by far!
  

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