(1) It's relevant to the question of whether modern academic composers (MACs) are learning skills that are entangled with ivory-tower-independent reality, that make distinctions carving reality at its joints, and that simply aren't about impressing an insular clique.

(2) Those examples certainly did not imply (nor were intended to imply) that all of e.g. Mozart's value comes from e.g. EKM. The point is just that someone today can appreciate something like EKM enough to voluntarily listen to it on their own time (when doing so wouldn't enhance their status) or to put it on ringtones, etc.; and that -- this is important -- they do all these things without first having to be indoctrinated by a special priestly order (as someone can appreciate commercial air travel without having to be indoctrinated into aerospace engineering).

(3) I think you're sticking with a misrepresentation of my position that I corrected last time. I don't dispute that Bell is (by the appropriate, unfakeable, non-parochial) metrics better than most other violinists. What I claim is that achieving the skill difference between him and the bottom of the e.g. 95th percentile is way past the point of diminishing returns -- that, while better, it is not so many times better to justify anything close to his proportionally higher income (on musical talent alone).

Therefore, this additional earning power is due to hype: and it is proven, by Bell's very own admission in how no one cares about him when they have something even slightly important to do, or when the Queen hasn't already ponied up $1,000/minute.

What it looks like when someone is hit with the harsh reality of life without your, um, "musical skill" having been "social proof"'ed:

"It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ."

The word doesn't come easily.

"... ignoring me." [...]

"At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change." This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute. [...]

Before he began, Bell hadn't known what to expect. What he does know is that, for some reason, he was nervous.

"It wasn't exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies," he says. "I was stressing a little."

Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?

"When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, "you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence ..."

There are six moments in the video that Bell finds particularly painful to relive: "The awkward times," he calls them. It's what happens right after each piece ends: nothing. The music stops. The same people who hadn't noticed him playing don't notice that he has finished. No applause, no acknowledgment. So Bell just saws out a small, nervous chord -- the embarrassed musician's equivalent of, "Er, okay, moving right along . . ." -- and begins the next piece.

He lived, in other words, how I live every day -- without people being magnetically attracted to me because of hype. He learned what it's like to be without all that pre-validation.