{"id":22161,"date":"2014-02-07T19:32:48","date_gmt":"2014-02-08T00:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=22161"},"modified":"2014-02-08T12:13:13","modified_gmt":"2014-02-08T17:13:13","slug":"the-fragility-of-strads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2014\/02\/the-fragility-of-strads\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fragility of Strads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"266x180xlipinski-strad-300x204_jpg_pagespeed_ic_-vowBH2Csk\"<\/a>Bravo to the Milwaukee Police Department and everybody who\u00a0cooperated to ensure the safe return<\/a> of the Lipinski Stradivarius! What an impressive feat.\u00a0 The recovery of the violin ends several days of anxious speculation about the violin’s fate.\u00a0Was it\u00a0still in Milwaukee, as former FBI officer\u00a0Robert Wittman<\/a> (founder of the FBI’s National Art Crime Team)\u00a0believed? Or in\u00a0a vault of an extremely wealthy and unscrupulous person in a remote country, perhaps side by side with the missing Vermeer painting \u201cThe Concert\u201d<\/a>? Did these robbers know what they were doing or were they a group of blundering amateurs\u2014and which of the two would be more favorable?<\/p>\n

The finest string instruments left to us by the great Italian violinmakers of the 17th and 18th century are among the most splendid of all human creations. They are also quite vulnerable: the\u00a0600 to\u00a0650 Stradivarius instruments\u00a0that still exist\u00a0are\u00a0estimated to represent about\u00a0half<\/a> of Stradivari’s output.\u00a0Two\u00a0Stradivarius violins were destroyed in plane crashes (in these accidents, which happened four years apart from each other, the world also lost\u00a0legendary violinists\u00a0Ginette Neveu<\/a> and Jacques Thibaud<\/a>).\u00a0 Another one did not survive\u00a0an allied air raid<\/a> on Berlin.\u00a0More recently,\u00a0young star violinist David Garrett\u00a0slipped\u00a0after leaving\u00a0the Barbican Concert Hall<\/a>\u00a0and landed with his full weight on the violin case strapped to his back, crushing the Guadagnini violin inside it. Of the violins, violas and cellos from\u00a0the Italian masters\u00a0that are still with\u00a0us, many bear scars\u2014in the form of painstakingly repaired cracks\u2014inflicted by\u00a0more mundane\u00a0accidents and temperature and humidity conditions.<\/p>\n

And then there is, of course, the scenario that was on everybody\u2019s mind after the theft of the Lipinski, even though few would say it out loud. Several\u00a0rare\u00a0instruments (including some<\/a>\u00a0Stradivariuses)\u00a0have been\u00a0intentionally\u00a0destroyed, or\u00a0were stolen and never found. While reading up on\u00a0violin thefts, I came across a news report from 1910<\/a> that is as sad as it is short:<\/p>\n

KANSAS CITY, Aug. 31.\u2014Out in his little cottage, near the suburbs, M. V. Wandell, an aged musician, today mourns the loss of a Stradivarius violin more than he has at any time since it was stolen from him a year ago. Yesterday he located the third and last of the men who stole the instrument, and from the thief’s lips came the same story that his two partners had told\u2014that the violin had been destroyed. So the police have told Wandell there is no hope of ever getting the violin back. The instrument was more than 150 years old. It had been handed down to the musician by his ancestors. He played for a living and to him there was no music so sweet as that which the beloved Stradivarius gave forth. The robbers set upon him one night and tore his violin from his arms. He remembered their faces and located all of them unaided. Two are in prison. The third has confessed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exceptional string\u00a0instruments tend to inspire love and awe as well as some fundamental\u00a0humility in the musicians who play them. All of these traits shone through in\u00a0an\u00a0email\u00a0Frank Almond wrote to the New York Times<\/a>\u00a0while the Lipinski was still missing: \u201cAt this point my best consolation is something I often said in public, and that I now remind myself of every day \u2014 that for many years I have been incredibly fortunate to be passing through its life, not the other way around.\u201d The Lipinski\u2019s anonymous owner expressed similar sentiments in her one public statement<\/a>, in which she said she viewed herself \u201cmore as a guardian of a treasure than an owner, a treasure that needs to be seen and heard.\u201d As Norman Lebrecht put it<\/a>, \u201cFrank\u2019s discretion and the owner\u2019s dignified words unite in dealing with this cultural disaster not as personal tragedy but as an attack on human civilisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the theft of the Lipinski Stradivarius and the attack that accompanied it are a personal tragedy as well. Strads are fragile, but so are humans. It is troubling enough\u00a0that there are people for whom\u00a0a Stradivarius violin\u00a0is nothing more than the money it might fetch in a sale or through payment of ransom. The reality exposed by the Lipinski robbery is\u00a0even more chilling: to some, the musician who plays such an instrument is simply an obstacle.\u00a0Thankfully\u00a0Frank Almond\u00a0has not incurred lasting physical injuries as a result of last week\u2019s armed robbery, but\u00a0I suspect some time will pass before he\u00a0can travel with the Lipinski without feeling like a target. I\u00a0hope he\u00a0recovers completely from this nightmare, and\u00a0that the admirable police work on this case will deter anybody who considers copying this evil crime.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bravo to the Milwaukee Police Department and everybody who\u00a0cooperated to ensure the safe return of the Lipinski Stradivarius! What an impressive feat.\u00a0 The recovery of the violin ends several days of anxious speculation about the violin’s fate.\u00a0Was it\u00a0still in Milwaukee, as former FBI officer\u00a0Robert Wittman (founder of the FBI’s National Art Crime Team)\u00a0believed? Or in\u00a0a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milwaukee","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}