RIN:29 Address to a Closed Society: An Open Letter

Fall, 1987
Mr. J. Kimball Harriman
Executive Director
American String Teachers Association
University of Georgia Station
Box 2066
Athens, Georgia 30612

Dear Mr. Harriman:

1. The following "open letter" is addressed to the membership of your renowned organization. It was not written in haste but, rather, was drafted only after much soul searching. It is based on my professional experience with string teachers -- professional experience which now totals more than 40 years as a violin maker, dealer, and restorer.

2. In fact, my letter is an outgrowth of many no-holds-barred discussions, both with members of your profession and with numerous colleagues of my own. Nevertheless, the issues touched upon are sensitive indeed. The content of my analysis is not likely to be endorsed publicly by any other violinmaker-dealer or organization.

3. Because I know the violin business inside out, I hope my words may lance the festering boil which has long corrupted the relations between professional teachers, on the one hand, and violinmaker-dealers, on the other. Those in both groups claim to be professionals. And the detoxification of relations should, ultimately, benefit those whom music teachers and instrument makers seek to serve: students and consumers. But lancing a boil is not pleasant, and the important issues -- musical and ethical -- are inevitably painful. Without open discussion of these same issues, however, things can only get worse. The one chance for an improved prognosis lies in addressing the problems honestly -- even bluntly:

To the Amoral Majority of the American String Teachers Association (ASTA):
An Open Letter

4. I first learned of Allan Bloom's best seller, The Closing of the American Mind, through a review in Insight magazine (May 11,1987). Professor Bloom's diagnosis of the crisis in U.S. education seemed, and still seems, profound. I was struck by the reviewer's synopsis of Bloom's argument, the thesis that:

People in the United States have lost their capacity
-to tell good from evil
-to reason
-to think independently.

5. I then bought the book and read it, in its entirety. Because it is argued in detail, Bloom's thesis became all the more convincing -- and frightening. I am compelled to agree with Professor Bloom's indictment of the relativism which percolates through the educational systems of this nation and, too, of the nations of Western Europe. As a noted University of Chicago scholar and teacher, Bloom makes his chronicle of the United States' educational institutions and teaching profession into a weighty account of sordid deals and deeds.

6. This is the broad picture. It is an interesting coincidence that the three main points in Bloom's thesis are precisely the issues which past issues of Reuter's FOCUS REPORT have treated in detail. Granted, our scope has been somewhat narrower -- since we have been moved by the question: has the violin business become a criminal racket and a snare? But the issues themselves -- loss of capacity to discriminate good from evil, to reason, to think independently -- these are parallel. In consequence, it is remarkably easy to transpose Professor Bloom's insights from the larger educational scene to a less inclusive world of teaching and learning: that covered by American String Teacher magazine (ASTA's official journal). The world which now concerns us is, as we have said, smaller than the greater cosmos of universities and colleges. Still, it is large enough -- sufficiently roomy to be a significant part of the tenured pastures in which the Education Racket (music education included) continues to flourish.

7. We are living at a time when various professions, once viewed by the public as sacrosanct, are washing a portion of their dirty linen in public. Lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and stockbrokers are among those no longer hiding some of their ethical shortcomings. In many different fields, we find opposing groups. Often, the opponents share common symbols and, to the casual observer, seem deceptively similar. But closer inspection gives us a different picture. One side is cunningly seeking to exploit the gullibility of the ignorant through mythology, while the other side is faithfully serving those moved by reason and intellectual integrity. Thus we have the obvious chasm separating

scientologists from scientist
astrologers from astronomers
faith healers from medical doctors
snake oil salesmen from pharmacists
musician-dealers from violinmaker-dealers.

8. The time may be ripe, therefore, for a closer look at musical professions and professionals. Today may be the day, so to speak, to uncover the relationships and practices -- too often incestuous and perverse -- which contrast the two types of businesses through which violins are sold. I am, in other words, pointing up the differences between two radically distinct kinds of dealers;

1 MUSICIAN-DEALERS, who operate with the covert assistance of a majority of string teachers -- these teachers actually serving as fleecing Matchmakers.

2 VIOLINMAKER-DEALERS, who maintain honorable and ethical relationships with the minority of string teachers who are not participants in the usual fleecing procedures.

9. The differences I mention are not new and were not, as common idiom has it, invented yesterday. The need to explore them publicly has, however, become acute -- especially since the recent election of a Los Angeles Violinmaker-Dealer, Mr. Hans Weisshaar, to the presidency of the Entente Internationale (the International Society of Violin and Bow Makers). Both in this country and abroad, many artists and teachers and violinmaker colleagues lauded and enthusiastically welcomed his election. Yet others, primarily musician-dealers, responded otherwise. To paraphrase their words, they characterized his elevation by talking in terms of an international body embracing a California male prostitute to teach them to turn tricks, Chicago style. Still, all this is perplexing. Could one, after all, think of a more honorable and ethically unblemished violinmaker and dealer than Hans Weisshaar? For that matter, what of Jacques Francais of New York -- the man whose penchant for writing up certificates for instruments and bows (seeming musical foundlings devoid of noble origin) has earned him notoriety as Jacques the Baptizer?!

10. Most issues of the FOCUS REPORT have addressed one controlling question: Has the violin business become a criminal racket and a snare? For this reason, I have made an extensive effort to expose what has fittingly come to be known as the Chicago violin MAFFIA (also referred to, from time to time, as the Great Fiddle Scam). To continue the quest initiated by previous FOCUS REPORTS, allow me now to give special emphasis to an even larger professional issue which seems to be of enormous concern to persons of honor and integrity. I speak of the wide-ranging corruption -- fraud, deception, bribery, extortion, accelerating dissolution of ethical principles, and the like -- which involves musician-dealers, yes, but also an ever-increasing number of string teachers. Such crooked actions and schemes by musician-dealers and teachers most especially injure the innocent and honest violnmaker-dealers. For musician-dealers, fraud is a way of life. So it is the genuine violin-maker/dealers -- those for whom ethical conduct and normal business conduct are synonymous -- who suffer the deepest wounds. For the wider public tends to be confused. It tends to view most sellers of violins as being "the same," to lump them all together -- while making a special exception for the dealer that the teacher has recommended! The unsuspecting student and the public, as well, are tricked into thinking that almost all violin sellers are shysters. Since so many sellers are in fact quacks -- the only exception again being, from the student's perspective, the particular seller to whom the teacher-matchmaker has steered him -- both students and other potential buyers are deprived of the benefits of genuine expert advice, the counsel which violinmaker-dealers alone can provide.

11. This presents an infuriating yet puzzling picture. One wonders. Did the majority of string teachers never possess the capacity to tell good from evil? Or did they lose that capacity over a period of time, through gradual acclimation to an apparently attractive but essentially debased set of arrangements? Either way, the result is the same -- leading to a further question. Has the dedication of string teachers shifted away from teaching and serving the trust and general educational interests of their students -- shifted toward exercising and fulfilling these same teachers' greed? If the latter is the case, then we are left with an uncomfortable conclusion. It would seem to be string teachers themselves who have reduced the teaching of string instrument playing to something that is, apparently, just another racket.

12. Speaking with many of my peers -- individuals trained in the ancient arts of instrument making and restoration and, also, pledged to observance of a rigorous ethical code -- I hear tales of enormous frustration. Where do these feelings come from? Time after time, members of my profession feel themselves degraded by the conduct of your profession's amoral majority. For it has become an accepted "truth" -- a generally-honored rule of conduct rather than an exception -- that string instruments can not be sold unless string teachers act as matchmakers. This would suggest, in other word, that significant numbers of ASTA members expect payment from dealers to whom they refer students. Such ASTA members are, one almost inevitably concludes, accustomed to extorting kickbacks for each and every fleecing victim whom they supply to high powered musician-dealers. It is, of course, well known that arbitrarily set retail sales prices on instruments have risen dramatically over the past ten years. But this is not simply due to inflation, nor is it merely an issue of increased demand. We have very good reasons for suspecting that it is also -- indeed, is primarily -- a consequence of the imperatives embodied in teachers' increasingly greedy demands.

13. Teachers as teachers are either masters or master coaches of the performer's art. By the same token, as teachers they are not properly venerated as appraisers of the monetary or investment values of stringed instruments and bows. Too frequently, though, they are established as expert estimators of the ability of a student -- or a student's family -- to fork over outrageous prices to dealers. Such teachers are experts in one component of the fleecing operation. They thereby play a major role in distorting the market prices of both fine antique instruments and, also, modern-made violins, etc. (For fuller development and analysis of this point, see Reuter's FOCUS REPORT for Spring, 1987, "THE CHICAGO SHORT CUT: Creative Merchandising of Sound Through Bribery."

14. Those who base their reasoned ethical principles on moral standards have often -- albeit metaphorically -- equated bribery with sexual prostitution. Allow me to expand the moral-ethical issue by turning to a noted legal scholar. In his highly acclaimed treatise, Bribes, Federal Judge John T. Noonan, Jr., comments as follows. "To pay a bribe (as a violin dealer, contractor, etc.] is to play the part of a professional seducer. Secrecy and deceit are the common badges of the bribe and must be practiced by the parties to it. To accept a bribe is to take on the necessity of lying. Human beings do not engage in such acts without affecting their characters, their view of themselves, their integrity." These are observations which reclaim the ancient linkage between law and morality, and, as such, are especially forceful. What is more, in the same book, the honorable judge further amplifies his point. "Historically, the tie between the ethics of bribery and sexual ethics are close . . . They have shared the same language. 'Corruption' is a state of civic graft or sexual depravity. Bribed judges [and teachers] are 'whores,' who have 'prostituted' their office." As the author concludes in his very next paragraph, "at the core of each ethic are two moral concepts -- fidelity and gratuitousness."

15. Judge Noonan's observations have been validated in many ways. So, when violinmaker-dealers get together, their conversation very often includes sex-for-sale diction. Those who pay or take bribes are bluntly spoken of as "whores" and "prostitutes." And the consensus is that many String Departments and Faculties of Music Schools -- many housed within this nations most prominent universities -- are to all appearances not just "dens of robbers" but, to top it off, "houses of ill repute." Again and again, I have listened to the wails of many of my colleagues -- colleagues who have been entrapped by string teachers who have, in effect, subjected them to extortion. I know the indignation and anger of my colleagues, the depth of their outrage. Without any difficulty, I can imagine their days beginning with "pious" chants -- swelling incantations of ASTA (the acronym of your organization). But my colleagues' chants spring, as I have said, from outrage rather than adoration or respect. Their customers may have been "had," but so (they believe) have they. As we listen, the repetitions of ASTA undergo variations much like changes in form familiar to students mastering patterns of declination in a foreign language. ASTA, bASTA, bASTArds... over and over again. But let us ask, what is the legitimacy of ASTA's heritage? And why is it so easy to imagine honorable colleagues slipping into a kind of Freudian verbalization of their hostility? They are professionals, in the fullest sense of the term. They are accustomed to civil and civilized standards. Yet they are dumfounded when they encounter the actual make up of your organization, and the conduct and orientation of the majority of its members. Who, my colleagues seem to be asking, are the members of ASTA? Are they fish or fowl, friends or foes, teachers or ambiguously-qualified musician-dealers' hired matchmakers? Are they honorable professionals, somehow misunderstood, or are they in actuality what they at least appear to be: pimps and prostitutes? (If the reality is, in fact, radically at odds with the appearance, then there is much which needs to be clarified... and this letter may be considered a first step in the quest for clarification and rectification, an opening to more harmonious professional relations.)

16. A recent study compiled for the National Center for Education Information provides important information. It describes in detail the public image of most educators. The general perception is far from positive. From all the evidence, it seems that the loss of dignity and respect for educators traces to an overt greediness which parents believe they see in teachers. Certainly, such greed has been more than notable in the majority of string teachers. So many, after all, covertly operate as matchmakers -- teachers who turn a profit by acting as objective counselors to their students while, at the same time, functioning as agents of musician-dealers. (See accounts of the Chicago Violin MAFFIA, published in prior issues of the FOCUS REPORT.) One does not have to think that teachers are adequately paid in order to understand that pay alone is not the issue. In the words of Emily Feistritzer, the former teacher who directed the National Center study: "What teaching may lack, far more than adequate pay, is the dignity it once had and deserves to have again. Teaching is a noble occupation, and the people drawn to it are attracted for noble reasons that have little or nothing to do with monetary gain."

17. What, I must ask, has happened to the noble aspirations that most string teachers must have had at the start of their careers? One would expect these teachers to be passing on to their students the craft, artistry, and scholarship of former generations -- indeed, to be enlarging this heritage. Instead, however, many seem to be succumbing to a strangely powerful ethical void: the mire which surrounds those who worship at the altar of relativism. String teachers should, I think you will agree, be viewed as members of one of the most noble professions - rather than as practitioners of what is often called the oldest profession. The scene is disheartening. Much of it was set forth in the last two issues of the FOCUS REPORT. There, we were compelled to tell our readers that growing numbers of string teachers are prostituting themselves by acting as matchmakers and by extorting bribes from musician-dealers and others! The teacher (i.e., matchmaker) and musician-dealer "work together," guided by the proverbial "honor among thieves." Through their symbiotic relationship, they rip off ignorant and innocent students -- and this kind of conduct, sad to say, appears as the modern zenith of professional accomplishment and stature to which many in your profession now aspire. The accomplishment is complete, the circle closed. Now, the fleecing of students has an organized and institutionalized form -- an institutionalized form well hidden from view by the deceptive trappings of culture, cultivation, and education. I grant that string teachers often behave like other so-called educators, that they sometimes pompously claim to be sculptors of the future, of a better progeny, etc., etc. But it is too easy to find a different reality. It is too easy to encounter string teachers whose actions are like a testimonial to greed, whose conduct gives every evidence of being dominated by love of money. In such a "professional" context, it is understandable that the end is nearly always thought to justify the means.

18. ASTA's excellent scholarly magazine has but one prominent flaw -- and that flaw is related to all the matters we have been discussing. American String Teacher lists recipients and winners of awards conferred by your organization. These individuals enjoy public reputations of professional competence and esteem -- and, certainly, on the public side I would not question their achievements. On the supposedly private side of things, the whole area of professional ethics, the picture is less clear and less flattering. In truth, many of the names cited in the Spring, 1987, issue would -- if pulled together into a single list -- read like a Who's Who In America's Violin MAFFIA.

19. I know that I am speaking of widely celebrated musicians. Yet this, I fear, is precisely the point. Too many of these individuals have achieved a kind of notoriety which parallels the fame of numerous bed-hopping celebrities in the show-biz/entertainment world. Music goes Hollywood! Large diamonds worn on-stage are not infrequently the payoff for these individuals' high-carat performance off-stage. So it is with stage performers and movie actors... or at least this is what we may say, condescendingly, to ourselves. But surely it is otherwise with string teachers?! Almost all of us in the musical world must wish this were true. What are we to do with the evidence, however? We attend concerts. We see teacher-performers on the stage, flaunting the trophies won through their agility as matchmakers and prostitutes. Publicly, without shame, they stroke these sounding repositories of their illicit activities.

20. Auctioning off their matchmaking services to the highest bidder, many ASTA members enjoy apparent success in extorting monies or goods as their "entitlement," i.e., as their cut of the action. It is as though there were only one question, and one form of competition, still alive in the violin business: Which dealer can be intimidated into giving the biggest kickback or payoff? Nevertheless, whatever name we use, the practice we're describing is still bribery!

21. For a flagrantly excessive number of teachers, the primary goal seems to be bilking their students. What else can one conclude from the fact that these "educators" have sent and/or send their students to musician-dealers such as the former Lyon & Healy, the former Wm. Lewis & Son, XXXXX, Kenneth Warren, Kagan & Gaines -- to these and other musician dealers who have to engage in bribery on a grand scale simply in order to dispose of instruments which have been E.N.D. processed in their shops? (E.N.D. has been discussed at length in previous issues of the FOCUS REPORT.) These instruments, purposely devalued, lack most of the artistic and investment value which could still make them of interest to connoisseurs. They are of even less interest as working instruments, for very little is left upon which one might perform! Even so, thanks to the eager connivance of matchmaking teachers, unsuspecting students actually lay out good money for these relics, ruins, and bogus trophies.

22. From the perspective of any violinmaker-dealer -- a professional who is at once a maker, restorer, and conservator -- these activities are not solely deceptive. They are also unethical. What else should one think when he sees a student buying an instrument whose price may include a 50% kickback to the approving teacher? What is one supposed to conclude when teachers send their students to purchase high priced instruments from musician-dealers -- and do so with the full knowledge that these instruments have been purposely maimed in order to make them temporarily sound resonant and healthy? Even though they are, to mention a fact of which the purchaser is kept ignorant, near death?

23. In ethical terms, the practices of bribe paying musician-dealers form a sharp contrast to the honorable conduct of violinmaker-dealers. True violinmaker-dealers are governed by the Code of Ethics of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers, Inc. Members of the Federation are reminded by the Code that "true ethical responsibility requires an absolute commitment to honorable behavior and practices, even at sacrifice to personal advantage."

24. We at Fritz Reuter and Sons adhere strictly to this injunction. We view ourselves as bound by it.

25. Later on in the Code of Ethics, in the section on "Responsibilities of Members to Clients and the Public," the entire matter of honorable behavior and practices is amplified at considerable length. Its meaning is not ambiguous:

II.a. A member of the Federation should serve his clients with professional concern for their best interest consistent with his obligation to the public at large.

II.c. A member of the Federation should be frank and straightforward with clients. A client should never be in doubt about the professional opinion or stature advised by a member.

II.d. Members of the Federation should be constantly alert to guard the public against fraud or unethical conduct of any kind and to report such suspicions.... .

26. In a way, of course, the Federation's code is not unusual. Most professional organizations, as I am sure you are aware, have ethical codes as part of their laws and by-laws. Such codes regulate the profession's transactions with the public. Out of curiosity, I therefore made inquiry among members of your organization, ASTA. The results were negative. I telephoned several executive members of the American String Teachers Association, but I totally failed to uncover -- or even elicit a reference to -- any ASTA code of ethics, ethical conduct, professional morality, or the like. Doctors have codes of ethics -- as do lawyers, undertakers, stockbrokers, and other professionals. In fact, other than ASTA, I found only one "professional" organization without such a code. I speak of COYOTE: Cast Off Your Old Tired Ethics. I assume it is obvious that the members of COYOTE are, not unlike those who make up ASTA's amoral majority, practitioners of relativism.

27. I suppose this should outrage most onlookers, but not really shock them. They have seen enough! Of course I am not claiming that an ethical code would automatically make virgins out of prostitutes. But, for ASTA members and those aspiring to the profession which ASTA represents, explicit standards would be available as a measure of professional conduct and ethical behavior.

28. When I was a student, I often wondered -- during the classes in music history -- why musicians invited to play for nobility had, over the recorded centuries, usually been required to enter by way of the side door. They did not come in through the front entrance. I wondered why the same musicians had to eat their meals in the kitchen, having only the social status of "Gesinde" or "Gesindel." Today, reflecting upon the manners and morals of ASTA members, I have come to understand this low status for the first time.

29. I admit, indeed proclaim, that there are some things which performing musicians can do -- and do do -- with superlative skill. But who would think of consulting a driving instructor about the purchase of an automobile, either new or used? Wouldn't one, if in doubt, consult an auto mechanic or engineer instead? Wouldn't one want the guidance of relevant expertise -- for example, the assistance of a stamp collector (rather than a postal clerk) in starting a collection of one's own stamps, the knowledge of a coin collector (rather than a bank teller) regarding coin collecting, and so on? Granted, both coin collectors and bank tellers handle money -- but for very different purposes, and on the basis of very different kinds of expert knowledge. Your profession, the profession for which ASTA speaks, is marked by expertise in the playing and teaching of string instruments. It does not follow that purchasers of violins need to consult their teacher about decisions to buy an instrument or bow. Indeed, the teacher may simply be the wrong person to consult -- not because the teacher lacks knowledge, but because the teacher lacks the right kind of knowledge. Educators who teach students to play string instruments lack, in other words, the special and specialized qualifications for assessing the authenticity., physical condition, and monetary value of instruments and bows.

30. Is it really so difficult to understand that violin makers who are dealers are the ones who should properly advise prospective buyers? They do not claim to be violin teachers or performers. As makers, however, they do claim -- for good reason -- to have the expertise buyers deserve to have on their side when considering a purchase. They can provide genuine expert opinion. Frequently, I would add, they have an additional reason for objectivity in their assessments. As with our own firm, Fritz Reuter and Sons, they "lay on the line" a reputation established over several generations. Of necessity, quick profit simply can not enter into their judgments.

31. Granted, within the context of this letter I have had time to deal with no more than one of the main points raised by bringing the thesis of Bloom's Closing of the American Mind to bear upon an important aspect of the musical world. Of necessity, I have limited myself to loss of the ability to distinguish good from evil. I can assure you, however, that I will turn to the other two points in due time.

32. Meanwhile, in closing, I want to express special thanks to the many honest and honorable members of ASTA who assure me that they have profited from previous issues of Reuter's FOCUS REPORT -- and who have, indeed, educated me in turn. They have provided me with fascinating if chilling information and, in the process, with continuous encouragement in my determination "to guard the public against fraud or unethical conduct of any kind" (Code of Ethics, II.d.).

Sincerely,
Fritz Reuter, Jr.

FRITZ REUTER & SONS, INC.

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