Interesting example about Bell. I’m not entirely confident that I could tell the difference between someone with a fairly advanced violin training (for example, my parents’ friends’ daughter from Toronto, who is now 17 and has been playing violin since about age 5) and someone with elite world-class talent. I can tell the difference in singing, but that’s because I have some training, just enough to know that it’s ridiculously hard to project loudly enough to fill a whole opera hall and still stay in key, or to sing fast classical passages, or to get exactly the right tone color to make a particular emotional impression… My speculation is that people with no musical training probably can’t tell the difference between someone with moderate violin training and someone like Bell playing the same piece. (Maybe Bell could play a much harder piece, while the mediocre player would flounder utterly, and maybe to someone with violin training his tone and expression would be noticeably better, but not to the average Joe hurrying through the Washington Metro.)
(Maybe Bell could play a much harder piece, while the mediocre player would flounder utterly, and maybe to someone with violin training his tone and expression would be noticeably better, but not to the average Joe hurrying through the Washington Metro.)
If I remember correctly, Bell did play some truly challenging pieces. No one noticed, except that one guy.
If I remember correctly, Bell did play some truly challenging pieces. No one noticed, except that one guy.
A few of the people who worked there noticed; of particular interest is the shoe-shine lady, who has the police on speed dial to remove street musicians, but decided to let Bell play because he was pretty good.
I thought he was allowed to stay there because the experimenters made an arrangment with the operators of that area beforehand? (Not sure if people were updating on the fact that a musician was strangely not being removed.)
If that is true, it was not mentioned in the article. The relevant section:
On her speed dial, she has phone numbers for both the mall cops and the Metro cops. The musicians seldom last long.
What about Joshua Bell?
He was too loud, too, Souza says. Then she looks down at her rag, sniffs. She hates to say anything positive about these damned musicians, but: “He was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn’t call the police.”
Again, to someone with no training, what is the difference between a moderately and an extremely challenging piece? I’m not sure if I can tell, beyond a certain level; all I can say about pieces is “I could sight-read that”, “I could sing that with a lot of work and practice”, or “there’s no way I can sing that at this level of training”. I’m sure that the repertoire of pieces in the third category is huge, and they’re not all the same difficulty level, but I’m not sure I could tell the difference if I heard them sung.
Also, a piece that’s extremely challenging isn’t necessarily catchy. People tend to react emotionally to songs they know, not obscure-but-difficult violin solo pieces.
Interesting example about Bell. I’m not entirely confident that I could tell the difference between someone with a fairly advanced violin training (for example, my parents’ friends’ daughter from Toronto, who is now 17 and has been playing violin since about age 5) and someone with elite world-class talent. I can tell the difference in singing, but that’s because I have some training, just enough to know that it’s ridiculously hard to project loudly enough to fill a whole opera hall and still stay in key, or to sing fast classical passages, or to get exactly the right tone color to make a particular emotional impression… My speculation is that people with no musical training probably can’t tell the difference between someone with moderate violin training and someone like Bell playing the same piece. (Maybe Bell could play a much harder piece, while the mediocre player would flounder utterly, and maybe to someone with violin training his tone and expression would be noticeably better, but not to the average Joe hurrying through the Washington Metro.)
If I remember correctly, Bell did play some truly challenging pieces. No one noticed, except that one guy.
A few of the people who worked there noticed; of particular interest is the shoe-shine lady, who has the police on speed dial to remove street musicians, but decided to let Bell play because he was pretty good.
I thought he was allowed to stay there because the experimenters made an arrangment with the operators of that area beforehand? (Not sure if people were updating on the fact that a musician was strangely not being removed.)
If that is true, it was not mentioned in the article. The relevant section:
Again, to someone with no training, what is the difference between a moderately and an extremely challenging piece? I’m not sure if I can tell, beyond a certain level; all I can say about pieces is “I could sight-read that”, “I could sing that with a lot of work and practice”, or “there’s no way I can sing that at this level of training”. I’m sure that the repertoire of pieces in the third category is huge, and they’re not all the same difficulty level, but I’m not sure I could tell the difference if I heard them sung.
Also, a piece that’s extremely challenging isn’t necessarily catchy. People tend to react emotionally to songs they know, not obscure-but-difficult violin solo pieces.
Sure you can: Did a rich person pay $1,000/minute for a famous violinist to perform it for them? Then it’s hard.
The problem is that this classifier didn’t come from nature, but is just a local cultural construction.