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Pearls Before Breakfast
Can one of the nation's great musicians cut thro...
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Pearls Before Breakfast
Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.
It was 9 minutes to eight in the morning on Friday, January 12 in 2007, the middle of the morning rush hour. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job.
On that Friday, outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators one of the finest classical musicians in the world played some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by.
"Well, who was the musician?"
Joshua Bell. Joshua David Bell (born 9 December 1967) is an American Grammy Award-winning violinist in 1993.
Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.
Bell performed on the instrument, the Gibson ex Huberman, which it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master's "golden period". It is worth US$ 3,500,000 now.
Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bach's "Chaconne" composed around 1720 is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master.
So, what do you think happened?
Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something.
A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.
Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.
There was exactly one person recognized Bell, and she didn't arrive until near the very end. For Stacy Furukawa, a demographer at the Commerce Department, there was no doubt. She doesn't know much about classical music, but she had been in the audience three weeks earlier, at Bell's free concert at the Library of Congress. And here he was, the international virtuoso, sawing away, begging for money. She had no idea what the heck was going on, but whatever it was, she wasn't about to miss it.
Furukawa positioned herself 10 feet away from Bell, front row, center. She had a huge grin on her face. The grin, and Furukawa, remained planted in that spot until the end.
"It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington," Furukawa says. "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"
You may be interested the following websites.
1. The original article of Pearls Before Breakfast (By Gene Weingarten from the Washington Posts Staff Writer on Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page W10):
http://www.washin...
2. Listen to Joshua Bells performance on that day:
http://www.washin...
3. Joshua Bells Offical website:
http://www.joshua...
Check them out!
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