A few days ago I was searching for a poem for a class, and began by flipping through my copy of 100 Essential Modern Poems. Now, I think that I have a fairly good understanding of poetry. Not an exceptional one, by any means, but I read a lot of it and think I have a good grasp of some of the underlying principles and the context of many poems. But as I was searching, it occurred to me that although many or even most of the poems in the book I love and recognize the skill of their authors, there are some poems which I simply deplore, and feel like they took five minutes to write. Yet I know that they are good, because this book said so, and it was written by someone who knows more than I do. This led me to think about how much of our culture, particularly with regards to the arts, we know to be good or high quality simply because someone told us so, and not because we actually understand anything about it.
In music, my knowledge is far more limited than it is in poetry, I can read it and play the clarinet, but beyond that I know nothing. Despite this, I can tell you that Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and Mozart were good composers, and could name a few more. I know most of their most famous pieces, and can even claim a favorite - Stravinsky - though it's based off of nothing more than "sounding cool." But if you played me a piece by Bach I didn't know and a piece by some random other person, I would not be able to tell you which was better, so long as the other piece wasn't absolutely horrible. So why do I say Bach is better? Because someone told me so, and I assume they know more than me.
But this is true of many things. I don't actually know anything about the economy, but I say I know it's bad because someone told me so. Yet it seems more ridiculous when people pay good money to go see operas or orchestras which, I admit, some of them may actually appreciate, but many of them probably just agree are good because that's what they know they should think. I'm not saying they don't enjoy the production, just that they would likely enjoy a production of worse music (say, an orchestra playing the Star Wars soundtrack) just as much, and it would probably cost them much less. Most of us couldn't actually tell a good composition from a mediocre one.
My point is very well proven by an experiment done by some person from the Wall Street Journal and a world-renowned violinist named Joshua Bell, who has won a Grammy and often charges $100 per seat at concerts. In the experiment, Joshua Bell took a Stradivarius violin, worth millions of dollars, and went to a New York subway, where he proceeded to play music such as Bach's "Chaconne" (considered not only one of the greatest musical pieces but also one of the most difficult to play - or so the article tells me, I wouldn't know). The result? Almost no one stopped. No crowd gathered, and Bell made about $32 after 43 minutes of playing. Over one thousand people had passed him, and none noticed that they were listening to one of the greatest musicians alive playing one of the greatest pieces with one of the greatest violins.
I don't think that it was because those over one thousand people in the subway were uneducated or idiots. I think it's because many of the people who pay $100 to watch Bell play also wouldn't realize how good he was until someone told them. Most of us simply lack the understanding of music to be able to really discern good from bad. Is this a bad thing? I don't know, but it's hardly likely to change. Even though I don't think you'd have to be anything close to an expert to be able to tell Bach from some random guy, it still takes time most of us don't want to invest. And we would also have to invest it in many other areas - painting, sculpture, poetry, prose, ect. It's not impossible, just maybe not worthwhile to most of us.
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