> According to British cultural critic Norman Lebrecht, a violinist in 1960 could expect to pay about $1,600 for “a fine 19th-century instrument,” or roughly double his annual salary.
Emphasis mine.
That seems unlikely to me, $800 over the course of a year?
It's not unrealistic --- keep in mind that the collective earnings of an orchestra are not large to begin with. There are great operational expenses, and once those have been taken care of, the remaining money is divided among the members of the orchestra. Keep in mind that playing in an orchestra is not a full-time job, adjust for inflation, and then an annual salary of $800 may even seem generous...
Manual workers were paid ~£14 a week which is £700 a year. Clerical workers in the governments employ get just shy of £800 a year.
Your musician is earning approximately a third of your manual labourer.
Let's put that into modern day money, where £25K is the rate for a person that shuffles paper across a desk for some government. Would some musician really be earning all of ~£8.5K a year for their role in an orchestra?
I think it's a misquotation. The linked article says
> Around 1960, a London ensemble player earning £1,000 a year could expect to pay twice that sum for a fine 19th-century instrument.
which fits well with what others have commented were typical salaries back then.
I am however surprised by the other commenters saying that playing in an orchestra is not a full time job. Perhaps it is different in the US, but in Sweden any symphony orchestra worth naming is comprised of full-time musicians.
I don't think the author of this piece fully understands the criminal mindset.
Clearly a lot of criminals are retarded idiots, however, there are some that are extremely well read and educated. For reasons of their crime, e.g. if drugs related but without them having ever used violence against others, some 'criminal masterminds' have an outsider view to society, a rejection of capitalism and a dislike of government institutions. Yet at the same time, they might prize certain objects. From having done time they might also have the obsessional way of thinking that goes with spending ten years working out how to steal something that, for reasons of their own, they particularly want.
Plenty of people like to have things that are unobtainable by normal means - 'trophies' that you have to either pay a lot of money for or steal. Things that have to be stolen have a cachet to them that merely very expensive things do not have. Not so recently, in the UK, there was a 'football casual' hooligan scene where the clothes that went with it had to be stolen, buying them, even if the money was available was just not the way to do it if you were to be 'part of the gang'.
My point being that people steal these valuable artworks to sell them simply does not apply in a lot of cases. It might have been in this one particular tale, however, it is to underestimate the tastes and education of 'the criminal' to assume that outrageously valuable things are sold down the pawn shop for a couple of quid.
