The Church and the ignored violin

It was a morning in January 2007, at L’Enfant Plaza station in Washington, D.C., one of the busiest transport hubs in the American capital. Amid the grey flow of commuters in suits and ties, a man in jeans and a plain T-shirt opened a case, took out a violin and began to play. Over the course of forty-five minutes, thousands of people walked past him. Most did not stop even for a moment.

That man was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest living violinists. The violin he was holding was a 1713 Stradivarius, valued at three and a half million dollars. The pieces he played were among the highest peaks of Bach’s repertoire. Three days earlier, in the same city, he had given a concert with tickets selling for one hundred dollars each. Yet there, in that underground station, he was almost invisible. In forty-five minutes he collected thirty-two dollars. Only a handful of people truly stopped to listen — almost all of them children, pulled away by parents in a hurry.

The experiment, organised by The Washington Post, became a brutal study of how environment shapes our perception of reality. The talent had not changed. The music had not changed. Even the instrument had not changed. The context had changed — and that change had made greatness invisible.