June 5, 2002

TO THE EDITOR: Elegy for Ethics: Addendum

1. This letter amplifies my earlier response to Susan M Barbierie’s Strings article, "An Elegy for Ethics?" Amplification is urgent because the issues are urgent. David Kerr is an active instruments dealer.

"When Kerr discusses teacher commissions or kickbacks", writes Ms. Barbieri, "he recalls something that the renowned British violin dealer Charles Beare, of J & A Beare, Ltd., said some five years ago at a convention of the Violin Society of America.  He said that American shops in particular need to stop doing this because he just found it reprehensible," Kerr recalls. So here’s the greatest expert in the world saying, "Why are you guys doing this?"

3. When I did business with the esteemed firm, Rembert Wurlitzer of New York (the very firm where Charles Beare gained some of his expertise) the hour’s greatest authority was Dario D’Attili—then in Wurlitzer’s employ. During every on of my visits, D’Attili bemoaned the situation. Teachers, from the faculty of Julliard on down, were always on the phone in search of increased kickbacks. They wanted higher and higher percentages of instruments’ sale price, once they had induced their students to buy from Wurlitzer.

4. But all of the honors don’t go to New York. Chicago’s William Lewis & Son, the firm where I once worked as a restorer, printed the conservatively phrased statement for teachers:

[FOR] PROFESSIONAL [DISTRIBUTION ONLY]
Confidential Discount Information on
Instruments and Bows listed in
William Lewis and Son
Old Collection Catalogue Fall 1953
20% on First $1,000
15% on next $2,500
10% over $3,500

5. This was roughly half a century ago, when a violin by "Joseph Guarnerius filius Andrea of 1710" listed in the 1953 Lewis catalog for $5,000. The teacher’s kickback, discretely represented as a "discount," would have been $725. Nearly 15% of the instrument’s cost would have gone into a pedagogical pocket—as a net profit involving zero expenses. Not even a bad conscience.

6. Almost fifty years later, the percentages are far higher. The culture of greed is thriving. To kickbacks, add the following: fake or altered maker labels, false or misleading certificates, and hidden shop malpractices—notably, degrading instruments’ original architecture through re-graduation. The buyer is being thoroughly fleeced by the string MAFFIA.

7. Let me return to the reason this practice continues. David Kerr, as quoted by Ms. Barbieri, gives an evasive explanation. "A lot of shop owners feel that their hands are tied—they may go out of business because teachers will leave them." Yet the evasion can be understood in a larger context. I begin with the late Hans Weisshaar, a well-know violin maker and dealer. He was primary founder and first President of the American Federation of Violin and Makers, as well as a prominent member and former President of the International Society of Violin and Bow Makers. In a 1984 letter to me, this esteemed professional commented on several questions. Regarding kickbacks, he wrote:

. . . the payment of commissions, finder’s fees or any other remuneration in money or kind, is [a] much easier [issue] to settle. If you are in business and want to sell instruments, you will find it very difficult to be successful without doing it. It has become an established and accustomed practice that has become a necessity for survival for many. And regardless of the protestation of many, this practice will survive and be part of our life, the same as prostitution in all its many forms has been part of our lives since time immemorial. (see letter)

8. Clearly, I judge Weisshaar’s position wrong, and I dislike the easy approval in his linkage of "commissions" and prostitution. But he is right about one thing: the antiquity of both practices. It was 1903 when Hermann August Drögemeyer of Bremen, Germany, published his book, Die Geige (The Violin). On pages 208-209, he observed (I have turned the passage into English) that "there are instrument makers whose existence, for many years, has been base solely on their liberality [in paying kickbacks] to teachers." He then filled out his claim.

The matter becomes even worse when buying stringed instruments (violins, violas, cellos). There, a fixed retail price does not exist, [as we know] because the price can vary by hundreds and thousands of marks [German Gold Marks in 1903]—depending upon an instrument’s physical condition, etc. In such a case, "John Doe" can easily be taken advantage of, not to say, swindled. After the death of a well known instrument maker [and dealer], his estate was in probate. Then it became public knowledge that the maker-dealer [routinely] paid a prominent teacher 40-50% of the price of his students’ purchases!! This is really scandalous, and we doubt that such business practices would survive before a court of law. Yet no one has the courage to be the first [to speak up], to reveal these rotten circumstances!

9. And anyone who looks at the evidence will see that the rotten circumstances have a long if dishonorable history.

10. Allow me to close on a personal note. I am originally from the Netherlands. There, situation ethics are the norm of the day and prostitution is legal. Even there, however, slavery has yet to legitimized. With this in mind, one may be tempted to rank kickback-paying dealers on a very low level, nearly subterranean. For they are both prostitutes and slaves. "My hands are tied," they will say. They look at themselves as having no freedom to practice their profession ethically.

11. In fact, however, they do. A first step toward self-liberation and ethical practice would be the following. Dealers need to stop worshiping, and promoting the worship of Stradivarius as an idol. Stradivarius made new violins. But the conviction that only old instruments allow musicians to play well has had terrible consequences. It promotes the frenzied pursuit of a smaller and smaller number of musical antiques. That, in turn, drives prices into anything-goes stratosphere. And it is this which makes the kickback schemes, at ones, so gross and so attractive.

Sincerely,

Fritz Reuter, Jr.