Harp Column Blogs: Samuel MilliganArchive

When I was very young, I thought that since music is so beautiful, everyone involved with it would be beautiful, at least to some degree.  I knew, of course, that humans are human after all, and that I would find all sorts of personalities, but certainly no truly hateful person would become a musician.  Astonishingly enough, I managed to maintain this simple-minded attitude all the way through high school.

My first year of college corrected all that.  I encountered a teacher who was the very epitome of a mean-spirited martinet.  Moreover, he had a low opinion of any boy who would play the harp, let alone one who was perverted enough to love opera.

So it was made clear to me that a good musician can be prejudiced and cruel.  But I still believed that truly unethical conduct would be beneath anyone who really loved music.

Wrong again.  Over the years I have been disabused of my Pollyanna thinking so many times that I cannot remember when it first happened.  But certain specific instances that concerned the harp readily come to mind.

Stealing Hotel Towels

During my years as a harp technician, I occasionally encountered attempts to bilk an insurance company to get free harp repairs.

"The harp got overheated which made the neck twist" went one such pitiful claim in spite of the fact that the harp was a good sixty years old and that the neck was original.  The investigator for the insurance company figured she was trying to pull one off, and was not really surprised when I assured him that indeed that was so. 

This incident was further annowing since paying fraudulent claims will make the premiums higher for the rest of us, but the attitude seems to be that it's permissible to steal from a large company.  Not so.  Theft is theft, whether it's a repair job or a hotel towel.

On another occasion, the harpist had a bogus bill, supposedly from Lyon & Healy, for several thousand dollars for a rebuilding job.  She had submitted it to the IRS claiming it as a professional expense and therefore deductible.  The tax people got a bit suspicious because it was obvious that the Lyon & Healy letterhead on the bill had been a photocopied scissors-and-paste job, and a clumsy one at that.  I verified their judgement, pointing out as well that the prices listed for the various services were considerably more than they should have been. 

The IRS checked with Lyon & Healy and discovered that the bill was indeed a forgery.

Bring Up a Child in the Way That He Should Go

I recall some years ago being approached by a very shy little girl who was learning the harp using one of my books, and wanted me to autograph her copy.  Imagine my surprise on seeing that the whole book was a photocopy, even including the covers.  I concealed my feelings and signed it for her, adding some encouraging words about her harp studies.  I said nothing about the photocopying.  But I had plenty to say to her teacher the next time I had the opportunity.

Photocopying copyrighted material is theft.  Any published work is issued in good faith by the publisher who has to make a fair profit in order to stay in business.  Also, the composer is due royalty payments for the work he has done, and to illegally copy that work is to cheat him out of his just earnings.  For a teacher to encourage illegal photocopying sends a clear message to the student that it's OK to steal.  And the student may figure, logically enough, that if stealing is acceptable, then perhaps lying is as well, and so on.

The Schartz-Metterklume Method*

Many years ago another harp teacher approached one of my students with an offer to teach him the "correct way" to play the harp, since, according to her lights, my teaching was clearly deficient.  Being a gentleman, he got rid of her as politely as possible.  But he was totally repulsed by the incident.  "Do you suppose," he asked, "that she thought I was stupid enough not to see what she was up to?"

There are ethical ways of acquiring students.  Taking an ad in one of the harp magazines or in your local newspaper is totally acceptable.  On the other hand, for me to write to a harp student recommending that he or she come to Brooklyn to study with me, or worse yet, for me to suggest that same thing in a blog or in the forum section of this website would be an egregious violation of ethics.  It also suggest that I have no better way of attracting students.

The best way for a teacher to advertise is to consistently turn out good students.  It is the best of the better mouse traps.  If I am a good teacher, believe me, the word will get around.  There is no need for me to look foolish by self aggrandizement, or worse yet. try to lure a student away from another teacher. 

Confucius pointed out over two thousand years ago that if you act ethically, you will not lack for followers.  If you act unethically, you may get by for a while, but in time you will be found out, and consequently lose not only your following, but your reputation as well.

Brooklyn, NY, August 22, 2006

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*If you don't know the Schartz-Metterklume Method, by all means do yourself a great favor and read the Saki short story of the same name.  No need for a trip to the library--just Google in the title and author.