The violinist’s social experiment on the subway was conducted to show that he looks unansed. It was first performed in 2007 and was repeated after seven years. Its protagonist was the famous violinist Joshua Bell, who proved that the human being knows how to ignore beauty.
The experiment was organized by The Washington Post and is based on one question: is beauty able to capture people’s attention if presented in everyday context and at an inappropriate time?
In other words: are people able to recognize beauty outside the environments in which they expect it to be?
The end result shows that one looks unansed and hears without listening. We get carried away by appearances and are so engrossed that we cannot discover the hidden beauties.
“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone can see it. “Confucius
Joshua Bell is one of the best violinists in the world. Born in Indiana, Usa in 1967, from an early age his parents saw him play the sound of his mother’s piano playing, with elastics, he was only 4 years old.
His father bought him a violin and by the age of 7, the boy was already doing his first show.
The most striking thing about Joshua Bell is his love of classical music and his defense of an idea: it must be accessible to all audiences, it is not of those musicians who thinks that this is only valid in certain environments or for a trained audience.
Bell appeared in Sesame Street and helped create several film soundtracks. In addition, he played the theme song of the film The Red Violin and played the role of double of the protagonist in several scenes.
The Washington Post then thought Joshua Bell was the most appropriate character for his social experience.
The violinist’s experience on the subway was for Joshua Bell to play the violin on a popular Washington subway station at a time of heavy traffic.
Bell wanted to perform the song with his beautiful Stradivaruis violin, valued at more than three million dollars.
The experiment’s creators estimated that between 75 and 100 people would stop to listen to it and also believe Bell would receive at least $100 for the duration of his benefit.
Three days earlier, he had given a concert in which those present had paid $100 to hear it in chairs not very well located.
The scheduled day was January 12, 2007 at 7:51 am Bell, wearing a long-sleeved shirt, jeans and a cap, began by performing a work by Johann Sebatian Bach, then continued his masterful performance with Shubert’s Ave Maria and various other parts.
It quickly became clear that we looked without seeing and heard without listening.
In total, the violin prodigy played for 47 minutes, while 1,097 people passed.
To everyone’s surprise, only six of them stopped to listen, totaling $32 and 17 cents for his performance, Joshua Bell then said the most frustrating thing was to finish his performances and see that no one applauded him.
Only one woman recognized him and a man stopped to listen to him for six minutes. He was a young man in his thirties named John David Mortensen, an employee of the state’s energy department.
He later said the only classics he knew were rock classics. However, Bell’s music seemed sublime and he decided to stop and listen. “I felt peace,” he says.
The proof that we looked without seeing and heard without hearing is that most of those who passed were completely indifferent to the show. For Bell, it was also daunting to feel so ignored.
Thus, seven years later, he played again in the same place, but preceded by great publicity, this time hundreds of people gathered around him.
The goal was to bring classical music closer to young people and Bell did a small didactic concert, lamented that so many people in the world could not identify beauty on many occasions and wanted to do something to overcome this deficiency.