Sticker Shock

The news came over the weekend that yet another Stradivarius violin was sold at auction for over a million dollars. In this case, it was the so-called "Penny" Strad (named for the first woman to play in London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) which went for $1.2m at Christie's auction house in New York. Barbara Penny died last year, and her heirs decided to sell the instrument, which is, of course, their absolute right.

These sales always provoke a sort of admiring gasp in the arts press, as if to say, "Look how valuable these fine old Italian instruments have become! They must truly be great works of art!" To which a musician would reply: Yeah, art, that's great, but who bought it, please? Because I'd be willing to put down a month's salary on the bet that it wasn't anyone who plans to play it. (The buyer has asked to remain anonymous, which is allowed under auction house rules, just so long as the check clears.)

There's a reason that Strads, and Guarneris, and Guadagninis and other select Old World instruments made a few hundred years ago are so highly valued, and it's this: they're rare, they sound (arguably, it must be said) better than modern instruments, and no one alive knows how to make any more of them. They will, by definition, be expensive, and I don't know any musician who would argue with any of that.

But how expensive should they be? Market forces are all well and good, but the presumption of a market-based model would be that prices for the best violins, violas, cellos, and basses would rise to the highest possible level at which they would still be affordable to the wealthiest or most resourceful professional musicians who want them. And this is exactly the problem with the current market for old string instruments, which has been exploding out of all proportion to reality for the past couple of decades. They aren't affordable to any musicians anymore (okay, fine, Josh Bell and Itzhak Perlman could still afford one, but they've each already got at least one,) because the market has been overwhelmed by collectors, many of whom are acquiring the instruments to display them as art objects, or simply as an investment.

This drives musicians absolutely crazy. Purely as a matter of practicality, a string instrument that sits unplayed for years or decades will inevitably lose much of its quality of sound, meaning that one of the great instruments ever made is effectively destroyed because some wealthy collector thinks it makes a nice conversation piece. At the very least, a Strad in a glass case is a Strad that is not being played anywhere in the world. It's an indefensible waste of a precious resource, and yet there seems to be no stopping it.

There are, of course, silver linings. Many owners of high-end instruments are philanthropically minded, and they "lend" their acquisitions for years at a time to promising young musicians (usually violin soloists) who are just starting out, can't afford a great fiddle yet, but need one to take the next step in the ultra-competitive field they've chosen. Some buyers wind up selling a whole collection of valuable instruments at a discount to their favorite orchestra. (The Minnesota Orchestra's bass section plays on just such a collection, and the New Jersey Symphony famously bought, and then resold, a huge collection from a well-known East Coast financier who was promptly arrested for tax fraud.)

Furthermore, I've talked to a number of string players in the last few years who think the absurd escalation of prices on old Italian instruments is a blessing in disguise, that it forces us to abandon any hope of acquiring one and focus instead on the multitude of talented luthiers producing high-end instruments right here, right now. They may have a point.

But it still bugs me that a tool that I have to have to do my job can be made absolutely unavailable to me under any circumstances, because someone with too much spare cash thinks it might bring an 8-12% annual return while squirreled away in his safe.