Links: Pearls Before Breakfast

A friend sent me an interesting article about an experiment conducted by Joshua Bell, a gifted concert violinist. Here's the setup - would people running through a crowded Metro station pause to listen to some of the best classical music ever written performed on a Stradivarius violin by a talented musician? Apparently, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the answer is "no."

There are a lot of reasons why this same experiment could be performed in dozens of public places with the same outcome. By its very nature, a Metro station is a bad place to stop and listen to someone play a violin - the people are already traveling, and not lounging around. In cities, many people might be used to tuning out street performers, and it's hard to tell how skilled someone is from a ten second snippet of performance.

In the comments to the article, I notice a lot of musical elitism - that classical music is somehow "superior" to modern popular music, and that people are stupid or ignorant for not appreciating it. That rings a bit false, even given my love of classical music. Beauty is in the ears of the listener.