Over a year ago, I had a brief post here pointing out Gene Weingarten‘s article in the Washington Post entitled “Pearls before breakfast“, in which the Post asked the question of what would happen if a world-class musician (in this case, Joshua Bell), were to perform incognito and out of context, in a Washington subway during the morning rush hour? If you haven’t yet read the article describing the experiment and the outcome, I recommend it to you.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, this article was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Congratulations to Gene, Joshua, and the other Washington Post staff!
[Actually, this article was highly atypical for Gene; he usually sticks to writing a weekly low-brow humour column entitled “Below the Beltway”. By a random coincidence, I, together with Curt McMullen, even have a very minor bit part in one of these columns (on page 2), thanks to a brief phone conversation we each had with Gene.]
7 comments
Comments feed for this article
25 April, 2008 at 7:20 pm
rick
What a brilliant article, thanks for pointing this out
26 April, 2008 at 3:29 am
Harald Helfgott
Actually, Fritz Kreisler did the same stunt in New York about eighty years ago, with similar results. (That is what I remember, at any rate; has anybody got a reference?) I am fairly amazed that this wasn’t pointed out; surely playing on Kreisler’s violin was intentional?
PS. What is dour about Bruch’s Violin Concerto?
26 April, 2008 at 7:04 am
Allen Knutson
Even more recently, there was a similar experiment with paintings.
26 April, 2008 at 11:19 am
Roger
It was an amusing stunt, but keep in mind that he did it during the morning commute, when most people could not stop even if they wanted to. Plus, most people do not even like violin music.
29 April, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Lucie
Very interesting article. Thanks a lot.
I agree it’s kinda cruel, playing beautiful music for anyone to listen for free, but at a moment and a place when most people have to rush and can’t enjoy it. Nice reaction from thr kids too.
4 May, 2008 at 8:00 am
Jonathan Vos Post
Mathematics can be a performing art. This raises the question of what would happen if a world-class mathematician (such as Terry Tao), were to perform incognito and out of context, in an inner city public high school, as a substitute teacher, during a morning class?
5 September, 2008 at 2:00 am
Undercover Busker « Sociomath
[…] here’s the article from which this post came. Oh, and here’s the article in Terrence Tao’s blog which pointed Steve at the WP article. Oh and here’s […]