The first time I read the article, I thought it was on the condescending side. As someone who lives and works in DC, I know I'm in a rush in the morning and probably wouldn't appreciate a genius playing in front of me until I had my morning coffee. I'm also not too knowledgeable about classical music. I thought it was unfair to the bureaucrats rushing to work.

But I read Gene Weingarten's live chat and watched the video and listened to the tape and went back and re-read the article.

I take back my original impressions.

As someone who knows next to nothing about classical music, I still found what Joshua Bell played beautiful. The one piece he plays sounded incredibly difficult and gorgeous at the same time. I would like to think I could have paused for 30 seconds or a minute to listen.

But I probably wouldn't have. And as the article points out, that's incredibly sad. We're too rushed.

Yes, an original Rembrandt or any painting of obvious beauty would command attention in a subway station. However, no one would "stop and stare" if only bits of colour and brushstroke were evident on a train station's wall. This is the flaw in the experiment: people were only able to hear Bell playing bits and pieces of the chosen songs. This, is a problem because some of the selections Bell chose to play had sections with many long-drawn out notes for many seconds at a time - a commuter who heard Bell playing may not have been around long enough to have been captivated by Bell if he was playing a piece where they would only hear three notes in succession. And while those notes may have been beautifully played, they aren't necessarily enough to stir the soul.

Somehow, hearing only the very ending, or the section after the climax, of a masterpiece seems like the wrong way to appreciate its beauty. The problem was not that beautiful art was taken out of context - it was that not all of the art was presented. This is where visual art and music differs: you can take in a painting all at once, but you have to stick around to hear the music, which is something people don't have time for in early morning rush hour.

Weingarten, I feel, was elitist, especially towards the beginning of his article ("plebian"?), but his real crime was not examining all the variables in his "experiment" more closely, and drawing wide philosophical conclusions from a poorly designed stunt.

In an episode of the the Gilmore Girls, the town troubador was discovered by a record company rep and got a record deal. This resulted in the town being overrun, bit by bit, by singer-songwriter, girl with guitar types on every vacant patch o' grass. The inside joke was that the original troubador was Grant Lee Phillips, and the second wave included Aimee Mann, Yo La Tengo, Sam Phillips and Sonic Youth. The troubador storyline was amusing without knowing who these performers were in real life, but so much richer with that knowledge. I just think that's a nice echo of the Joshua Bell experiment. Yes, I am referring to the Gilmore Girls, a great tv show (not The Illiad) on a third rate network. Wonder what that says about my intelligence?

I'm currently workng part-time as a grocery store clerk. I left a full-time computer support job that I had held for nine years before the grocery store gig. I make a third of my former salary while I try to figure out if I want to try to find a full-time job that I'm not embarrassed to admit I have at a D.C. party. I have more time to do lots of things, but often find I don't do the things I thought I would (travel, go to museums, see the cherry blossoms at 10:30 am on a Tuesday). Instead, I seem to be spending the time reading more stuff like the WaPo article in question, the Salon commentary on it and all the letters about both of those things. I also spend time sending letters like this. I find myself falling down rabbit holes more often, spending hours doing whatever comes across my path or catches my fancy. And that's what I thought the point of the Weingarten article was - that busy working (working, always working) D.C. types miss those rabbit holes. And isn't that a shame. And that's why I may never go back.

I was married to a musician studying at Julliard who often played in the subway and as a result I'm more educated than the average person about classical music. I believe I would've been one of the people who'd stopped and donated money to Bell. But I don't blame the people who didn't. We don't know what they were thinking. Many of them might have appreciated the music but were too pressed for time to stop. Yes, that's sad, but it's a reality for many people. That doesn't mean they don't appreciate beauty in other contexts. It doesn't mean they are dead inside.

Also, to address some points made by other commenters:

I think the Post article was a commentary on how we cut ourselves off from beauty in our daily lives because we are so focused on the daily grind-- not a commentary on the swinishness of D.C. inhabitants.

If it wasn't meant to comment on the swinishness of D.C. inhabitants, why was the headline a play on "Pearls Before Swine?"

God forbid that the cubicle goes unattended or the hamster wheel unspun for twenty minutes while someone enjoys a live musical work by a living master..

A poster during Weingarten's live chat on the Washington Post website said that if he is five minutes late to work it is deducted from his vacation time. A lot of people risk losing their jobs if they are late. And it's really hard to appreciate beauty if you can't pay your rent or afford groceries.

I do think it had more to do with people missing beauty due to being focused on "survival" or "daily life. I think what is lost is that everything has an appropriate time, and people do need to live. The coolness of starving artists who live on beauty is a nice conceit in La Boheme (Rent if you must), etc, but for the rest of us, financially "straight" lives (the ubiquious "day job" keeps us sane and protects those we are responsible for.

Exactly.