In the October issue of Limelight, conductor-composer Guy Noble has written about that Washington Post experiment in which renowned violinist, Joshua Bell, busked in downtown Washington. Only one person recognised him. No-one else showed much interest and he ended with the princely sum of  a little over $30, $20 of which came from the person who recognised him and felt sorry that he’d been reduced to busking! The point of the experiment, says Noble, was to see how people would relate to fine art outside a fine art institution like a concert hall…and the answer, it appears, is not too well! In other words, it appears that we need the imprimatur of the concert hall, or art gallery, etc, to have confidence in the quality of what we are hearing or seeing.

Image from Clker.Com (Public Domain Clip Art)

And this made me think of my Review Policy and the question I received regarding why I’ve said that I don’t read self-published works. My answer was that “a book that is ‘formally’ published has gone through some external (to the author) selection and editing process which implies that some sort of standard has been met”. Clearly, I too need the imprimatur of some sort of authority!

Guy Noble concludes his article with the question: “If anyone can record music and anyone can publish themselves on YouTube, who is going to decide for us who is good or not?” My answer is another question: Do we need the imprimatur because we lack confidence in our ability to discern quality, or because in our time-poor world we like to outsource the first stage of the selection process? I like to think it is the latter … but fear it is more often the former. Whatever the reason, the resultant risk is that new “artists” can get lost in the mix. However, I’m sorry to say that this is not going to make me change my review policy! Time is, in the end, too short!