ENTENTE INTERNATIONALE DES MAITRES LUTHIERS ET ARCHETIERS D’ART
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF VIOLIN AND BOW MAKERS
UNIONE INTERNAZIONALE DEI MAESTRI LIUTAI E ARCHETTAI D'ARTE
INTERNATIONALE VEREINIGNG DER GEIGENBAU-UND BOGENMACHER-MEISTER
General Meeting Minutes
Scottsdale Arizona
May 7, 2009
1. Members who send their regrets that they were not attending this meeting
Robert Ames, Tim Baker, Jacques Bauer, Christian Bayon, Charles Beare,
Michael D. Becker, Ingeborg Behnke, Luiz Bellini, Eric Benning, Francesco
Bissolotti, Martin G. Bouette, Serge Boyer, Wolfgang Bünnagel, Edda Bünnagel,
Fausto Cacciatori, Pascal Camurat, António Capela, Pierre Caradot, Carlo
Chiesa, Roberto Collini, Edith Dittrich, Philippe Dupuy, Johannes Finkel, Andrea
Frandsen, Christopher Germain, Peter Gibson, Fabrice Girardin, Francisco
González, Christoph Götting, Joseph Grubaugh, Klaus Grünke, Gian Carlo
Guicciardi, Pierre Guillaume, David Gusset, Lynn Armour Hannings, Roger
Hargrave, Andrew Hill, Lambert Houniet, Lise Jørgensen, Hieronymus Köstler,
Francis Kuttner, Otmar Lang, Roger Lanne, Nicola Lazzari, Loïc Le Canu, Silvio
Levaggi, Laurent López Morales, François Malo, Lorenzo Marchi, Junji
Matsuoka, Toshyuki Matsushita, Thomas Meuwissen, Peter A. Moes, Wendela T.
Moes, Gio Batta Morassi, Simeone Morassi, René A. Morel, Gerhard Neubauer,
Walter Neubauer, Bernard Neumann, Per Sonny Ovesen, Jean-Jacques Pagès,
Jean-Marc Panhaleux, Philip Perret, Henrike Perret, Jean Petitcolas, Tomás Pilar,
Ramon Pinto, Jordi Pinto, Primo Pistoni, Yury Pochekin, Luca Primon, Guy
Rabut, Jean-François Raffin, Jean-Jacques Rampal, Günther Reuter, Patrick
Robin, Jean-Yves Rouveyre, Karl Roy, Conchobhar Ruiseal, Joachim Schade,
Jean-Frédéric Schmitt, Raymond Schryer, Renato Scrollavezza, Sigrun E.H.
Seifert, Norbert Seifert, Davide Somenzi, Nabuhiro Sonoda, Elisa Scrollavezza,
John W. Stagg, Serge M. Stam, Jan P. Strick, Patrice Taconné, Iwai Takao, André
Theunis, John Carass Topham, Alessandro Tossani, John-Eric Traelnes,
Peter Tunkowitsch, Christian Urbita, Étienne Vatelot, William D. Watson, Ute
Wegerhoff, Amnon Weinstein, Michael Weisshaar, Adam Whone, Derek F.
Wilson
2. Resignations: Rudolf Neudörfer (Germany); Francois Malo(Canada)
3. New Full Member: Wolfgang Schmidt
4. New members introduce themselves
5. Delegates are to notify Treasurer if a member has not paid their dues by deadline
and the Treasurer will contact that member and assess penalties.
6. Scrutiners continue
7. Changes in Delegates:
Hans Benning steps down as American Delegate
Gregg Alf is the new American Delegate
Iwai Takao becomes Japanese delegate
8. Executive Board Continues with exception of the General Secretary who resigned
9. Treasurer’s Report: Jan Ullern: See Attachment
10. Jan Spidlen presents Prague as next EILA Conference site
11. Desire for more gatherings – informal events to gather EILA members. Like
Cremona – if you know of expositions let General Secretary know and we will
notify all the members. No obligation but would be nice to meet as small groups.
12. May want to consider workshops for stress and help with health
13. Stéphane Thomachot & Yung Chin – pernambuco report
14. Thomas Wilder – conservation book. Pre-subscription order
15. Roland Baumgartener Personal thoughts concerning the current EILA situation
Mr. President, Dear Colleagues
The International Society of Violin and Bow Makers has been created with a view
to tightening the bonds of friendship between the makers, adopting all the
measures necessary to safeguard their working conditions, increasing familiarity
with their art, improving the methods of training their pupils and pooling the
whole of their resources and skill in order to restore violin making to its pristine
greatness!
I’m very sure that you will and you should all agree with these words, because it’s
not a personal text by myself, but word for word article no. 2 of the bylaws of our
association which we call EILA today!
With your kind permission I would like to draw your attention for a couple of
minutes to some personal reflections and remarks concerning the current EILA
situation:
I‘m a proud member of the EILA since exactly 30 years now. A part of this time I
served as treasurer, national delegate, member of sub-committees, vice-president
and president. So knowing our association from various points of view, I’m very
sorry to say that it has never been in such a difficult and delicate situation as
today. Here in Scottsdale, only about 1/3 of our members are present, an
absolutely negative record since the EILA was founded in 1950. In the same time
the congress 2009 will apparently be the most expensive ever for the EILA
accounts!
What are the reasons for this? I think there are a number of different ones:
There are of course always members who cannot attend for personal-family,
personal-health or even personal-economic reasons. We really miss these people
today and our thoughts are with them.
I know there is also a significant number of members not participating today
because they don’t consider Scottsdale as an ideal city for a congress or did not
think the congress program interesting and attractive enough to travel to Arizona;
it may also be that it took a very long time - too long - to receive the information
about what was planned for this meeting. I’m not sure if the decision not to
participate for these reasons is a good one, but we definitively also miss these
members today.
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And, last but not least, there are members who applied once to become a member.
After having been accepted, their only interest is to put on the business paper
“member of the EILA”. Personally I don’t miss these people!
Communication from the administration to members, especially from the
executive members of the Committee, such as the President and the General
Secretary, has for nearly one and a half years since the meeting in Strasbourg
been rather bad or nearly non-existent. So even if the administrators were of
course working for the EILA, but not communicating anything, members could
have got the impression they belonged to a non-existent organisation, whilst
paying a not inconsiderable annual fee. Information concerning the Scottsdale
meeting only began to come through very slowly and without much detail, very
late in the year 2008. The internal problems with or between the President and the
General Secretary are not normally meant to be solved by the members. If a
member were appointed General Secretary on the proposal of the President and
felt unable to fulfil his job, not having read or knowing himself the articles and
bylaws, he should not accept the nomination for this function at the very
beginning. Somewhat better then resigning overnight, with absolutely no respect
for the bylaws of the EILA, re: article No. 9 “Resignations”!
This afternoon, there will be a workshop in small groups, guided by our PastPresident Jean-Christophe Graff. He will first give you a summary of the
brainstorming he organized during our last congress in Strasbourg together with
Pascal Camurat. This shows that already two years ago discussions about the
future of the EILA were judged important! But nothing has happened since then.
The problem today will be that 2/3 of our members are not here, even if a
significant number of these absentees would be greatly concerned by this subject.
From my point of view the following questions should be considered and
discussed:

Do we, does our profession still need an association like the EILA?

Is the goal outlined in article No. 2 since 1950 still relevant?
You remember the beginning of my speech: “The International Society of Violin
and Bow Makers has been created with a view to tightening the bonds of
friendship between the makers, adopting all the measures necessary to safeguard
their working conditions, increasing familiarity with their art, improving the
methods of training their pupils and pooling the whole of their resources and skill
in order to restore violin making to its pristine greatness!”
Beside this, various points used to argue the necessity for the existence of the
EILA existence are not working or are no longer absolutely necessary:
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
All matters such as legal questions, VAT and tax questions cannot be
treated by an international organisation, but only by national ones, which I think
every country represented in the EILA has.

Years ago events like working days, conferences and internal exhibitions
were highly important for our professional education. Today such events are
organised and open for a much wider public internationally. Let me mention as
examples the 1987 Strad exhibition in Cremona, the 1998 Guarneri del Gesu
exhibition in New York, the various activities and exhibitions in Cremona every
year during Mondo Musica and the Tourte symposium and exhibition last year in
London. Of course EILA members were involved in all these events, but not just
them…

Contact between colleagues: the world has become very small, travelling
and also modern technical means of communicate have become very easy and less
expensive. At the same time, the violin world in general has become very big. A
very important number of makers, dealers and experts are also active and
successful in our profession without being EILA members.

Our biannual congresses, as here at Scottsdale, are of course still very
important, but not only as social events. But knowing the immense work
undertaken by a few people only, led by the President and investing a lot of time
with such little success and feedback from the members like this year cannot be
the goal for the future.
You are all invited to participate in the afternoon discussions, to put forward your
ideas, proposals, wishes and especially your arguments why we should rescue the
EILA in a common interest, transforming it into a modern, functional
organisation, without ignoring the ideas of our founder members. I’m prepared to
put some practical proposals in this discussion, too.
We have to revise and specify our goals, to review the articles, the functions of
the administration and of the committee and - importantly - their duties. Our
current President will serve for another period of two years. I learned that he will
not be involved in the 2011 congress organisation; this should be a great
opportunity to give him enough time to lead and execute, but importantly, also to
communicate with his Vice-President, General Secretary, General Treasurer,
Committee-Members and with all members to arrange these important points.
Once this is done, it will make it much easier in the future for a member,
nominated for a function, to execute his job perfectly and in a continuous way.
But at least also important: I encourage every member to become a really active
one.
I know that my short statement from today has included some not so nice and
provocative points. It was absolutely not my aim to insult or offend any of our
members, but to demonstrate clearly the strength of my feelings about the very
dangerous situation in which we find ourselves; believe me, the EILA is currently
standing on very thin ice! I know that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
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I would like to take this opportunity to thank our President, my old friend Paul
Schuback, for all the work he did in cooperation with Jeanne and other people for
this event here in Scottsdale, and I hope that the EILA member who will be asked
to write a preface in the year 2025 for the 75 years jubilee of our association could
use the following text:
“Much more than 400 years have passed since the first Amatis and Gasparo da
Salo, and 75 years since the founding of the EILA! Scarcely important
historically, but nonetheless we are celebrating our Jubilee in this year 2025, and
we should perhaps be proud of the way our professional activities and our
international association have developed.”
Additional remark:

I wrote this text for the 50th jubilee publication in the year 2000, I only
changed 50 to 75 and 2000 to 2025!
I asked our President for the opportunity to present these personal reflections
during the General Meeting, so it will be part of the written minutes, which all of
the approximately 180 members will receive and hopefully, thinking positive,
more than one of those 120 not present today will read it, perhaps with the
feeling: “Les absents ont toujours tort!” (The absent are always in the wrong). So
I used at least 5 words in French, the official EILA language.
And as a tribute to our host country and its new President Barack Obama, one
should add: “yes we can!”, not just lean back and think “yes weekend!”
Thank you for your attention!
16. J.C. Graff speaks: EILA is current name – but it is really ENTENTE which
means understanding. Thank you for participation in Strasbourg. Again we will
brainstorm here. People don’t use the website. We have a big variety of interests
Two parts – internal life and external image/activities of EILA
-external possibilities: organize competitions/hiring musicians/EILA guarantees
-internal issues: investing time and money in new techniques, creating a library,
restorer v. new makers discussions
Strengthening EILA identity –
Camurat’s notes: Open or close group? Opening conferences to public? Publicity
may be needed.
Committee members to be involved, they are the heart of the organization.
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17. Acknowledge Carl Becker’s attendance.
18. Charles Rufino is now the General Secretary of EILA
19. Afternoon meeting: divide into groups and discuss
J.C. Graff will present summary of discussion
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