A Violinist On The Train: Proof That We Look Without Really Seeing

The violinist by the train was a social experiment that proved that people often look without really seeing what is in front of them. It took place for the first time in 2007 and again seven years later. The main character? The world-renowned violinist, Josh Bell. The experiment seems to prove that humans are good at ignoring beauty.

The Washington Post  organized the experiment to answer a simple question: Is beauty capable of capturing people’s attention if presented in an everyday context and at an inappropriate time? In other words, are people able to acknowledge the beauty in unexpected contexts?

The result of the experiment showed that people look without really seeing and they hear without actually listening. Maybe we put too much into the look or we are so immersed in our own thoughts that we cannot see the diamonds shining among the withered leaves.

Joshua Bell, a true master

Joshua Bell is one of the best violinists in the world. He was born in Indiana in 1967. When he was a very young child, his parents saw him use elastics to mimic the sounds his mother made when she played the piano. Bell was just four years old. His father bought him a violin and Bell gave his first concerto when he was seven years old.

Joshua Bell is known for his love of classical music and his dedication to the idea that everyone should have access to it. He is not a traditionalist who believes that it should only be enjoyed in certain contexts and that it is only for a certain type of audience.

Bell has been on Sesamgade and has helped make celebrity tunes for several films. He actually played the celebrity tune for  The Red Violin  and had several guest appearances in the film. That’s why the  Washington Post  thought Bell was the right person for their experiment.

A violinist by the train

The experiment involved Joshua Bell, who played the violin at a crowded train station in Washington, DC during rush hour. Bell decided to use his Stradivarius violin, which is an instrument with an estimated value of over 20 million Danish kroner.

The people who designed the experiment estimated that between 75 and 100 people would stop and listen to Bell. They also had a hypothesis that he would earn about $700 in the hour he played. Three days before the experiment, Bell had, after all, given a concert where the worst seats cost around DKK 700.

The experiment was performed on 12 January 2007 at 7.51 in the morning. Bell showed up at the train station wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, jeans and a baseball cap. He began playing a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach, followed by Schubert’s Ave Maria.

He continued to play, one perfectly performed song after another. It quickly became clear that people often look without really seeing and hear without really listening.

We look without really seeing and hear without really listening

In the end, the wonderful world-renowned violinist played for 47 minutes. During that time, 1,097 people passed by him. To everyone’s surprise, only six people stopped to actually listen.

In total, Bell earned $217 for his show. He later said that the most frustrating thing about the experiment was when he finished a work and no one clapped.

Only one woman out of 1,097 people recognized him. A 30-year-old man listened to him for the longest time. John David Mortensen, an employee of a government office, stopped to listen to Bell for six minutes.

He later said that the only classical music he listens to is classical rock, but Bell’s music was so beautiful that he stopped listening. “I felt peaceful,” he told reporters.

During the experiment with the violinist on the train, most travelers were completely indifferent to Bell’s performance. They did not notice or stumble at all over a world-renowned musician who gave a free concert right in front of them.

For Bell, it was disturbing to see so many people ignore him. That is why he decided to perform the experiment again seven years later, in exactly the same place. This time, however, there was plenty of publicity before the event.

When Bell returned to the train station, hundreds of people gathered to watch. The goal was to bring young people together with classical music, so Bell performed a kind of learning concert. He was sad that so many were unable to identify the beauty during the first experiment,  and he wanted to do something to change it.