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About Me
- eudaimonia
- As noted on my bio page, along with the fact that I will occasionally wear a scarf, I work in the communications/media industry. In my other life, I am a grad student and (eek) poet. I live in state-sanctioned holy matrimony with a person of the opposite gender, but we find it more romantic to play like we're just shacking up. Actually, we've been together about 10 years as of today. Politically, I'm a registered Democrat who sometimes votes Libertarian, still mourns the death of the socialist project and thinks Arlen Specter is kind of cute (in that curmudgeonly grandfather kind of way.) Metaphysically speaking, my closest fits right now are secular humanist/religious trivia buff/failed mystic. Re: all this about the Golden Mean, etc., I wish I could say I knew my Classics (much less geometry) inside and out, but what I dig I dig.
4 comments:
I didn't get from the article that it was a distinctly American phenomenon. Do you think it would be different if he played for morning commuters in Paris of London?
I admit I was just being flippant (and unpatriotic) with that title, but honestly, I do think there would be a difference -- maybe not a huge difference, but a difference, particularly in Paris, not so much because they're more civilized (although it could be true, I wouldn't admit to it unless a proper comparison test was done :) but because of what's often described as a more relaxed time sense in Mediterranean countries compared with places like the U.S. and Britain. Quality of life, in an aesthetic rather than commercial sense, seems to be something that's highly valued over there.
But it would be interesting to see it tested.
An online chat with the author of the article is up at the WaPo website.
I wouldn't say it's a distinctly American thing, but I would say it's not surprising. And to say "civilized" versus "uncivilized" to me smacks of elitism and I hate that.
Having said that, I am a classical lover and I feel sorry for people who can't take a moment to appreciate fine musicianship--like Bell in a random D.C. subway, for Christ's sake. It's like they're deaf or blind in a very particular way.
Joshua Bell is huge in the classical scene. I definitely think that dropping him in London or Paris would be like dropping Elvis Presley into some random suburban American highschool dance in the 60's. It would be insane.
I must say that if Joshua Bell were dropped in a random subway station in Toronto, he would probably get better reception than in the article and the reason is very simple. Canada has been noted for a very well put together and widely accessible musical training system, http://www.rcmusic.ca. Kids can even get public highschool credits from its programs. I benefited from it, and I know many other regular kids that did too.
My last season with the Hart House Orchestra (http://www.harthouseorchestra.ca) --a community amateur orchestra based at UofToronto--we did a pretty challenging repertoire including major works by Tchaikovsky, Orff and Bruckner. We're certainly not pro-caliber, but we do a very respectable job that was very well received by the community. (Most importantly, we had a lot of fun doing it.) One of the musical directors attributed the fact that we--a broad mix of ~80 ungrad and graduate students, professors and local working stiffs, none of whom are professional musicians--could pull it off is largely attributable to the 50 or 60 years or so that the RCM has provided regular Canadian kids with early exposure to the arts and solid musical training.
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