I agree with stewtheking here...the article seemed to be underlining the arbitrary divide between high and low-brow culture way too much. I know I wouldn't have stopped (ER6is beat fancy violin any day), but even if I wasn't listening to music, I still wouldn't be able to recognize a supposedly transcending piece. Sure, I may have noticed the talent, but maybe. I'm just not well versed in violin performance. Maybe I'm just schlepping it around down here with the rest of the rock schmucks. Right now, the music that is popular is rock, pop and hip-hop. Four centuries ago, it would have been classical.
I was thinking, what if it had been some guitar virtuoso, playing on Hendrix's strat, playing one of his tunes? Would people still have stopped? Or, as someone else mentioned, what if it would have been an excellent turn-tablist? I'm willing to bet that, while they would have garnered more attention because of the style of the music (ostensibly what's "in" right now), people still wouldn't have "crapped their pants", except for a select few who recognized the exact song... like, if fake-Hendrix was playing something off Electric Ladyland, my mind would've been obliterated. Anyways, this is just a case, as others have said, of the medium being the message. You can blame technology, you can blame capitalism, consumerism, acceleration of culture, or any of the usual suspects, but the bottom line is that a subway stop where people are rushed, and subways are inherently ambient technology in that we don't stop to think about what we are using, we just get in, off, and on with our lives (like elevators), people aren't going to take time out of their day in order to stop and listen to a piece of music that is supposedly virtuostic, regardless if it's being played on a violin, guitar, or trash can lids.
If he had been playing somewhere that had warranted people stopping, like a park, a mall, etc, I'm sure more people would have stopped. But of course, for this "experiment", which was only done to prove the diminishing interest of high culture, and by extension, the immense capital culture and intellect of those who supposedly would've stopped, even if their pants were on fire at the moment, to work, they had to place it in an area that they knew people wouldn't stop. Because, in the end, the experiment was done to see who would be moved, not who would, in the end, recognize the exact piece. And for one to be moved emotionally, you can't really be moving physically at the time. This article presupposes that everyone, following in the middle-class ethos of leisure time, would have had the time to stop for a couple of hours. Well, in a subway station, chances are, people are on their way somewhere, not just joyriding. This isn't a drive into the country, it's a commute in and out of the city.
For me, this experiment was a pointless exercise in aesthetic narcissism. Of course people weren't going to recognize Bell. They wanted that. This way, they could still say "omg...look at the state of our society today!" and feel completely right in their assertion that, at least, they are on the path to true nirvana. The less people that recognized him the better.