Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon

Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon

Reece, Frederick

Hardcover

Music CompositionGeneral MusicMusic Reference

ISBN10: 0197618308
ISBN13: 9780197618301
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Apr 1 2025
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.13
Height: 0.95 Width: 6.58 Depth: 9.45
Language: English
We all know about art forgeries, but why write fake classical music? In Forgery in Musical Composition, Frederick Reece investigates the methods and motives of mysterious musicians who sign famous historical names like Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert to their own original works. Analyzing a series of genuinely fake sonatas, concertos, and symphonies in detail, Reece's study exposes the shadowy roles that forgeries have played in shaping perceptions of authenticity, creativity, and the self within classical music culture from the 1790s to the 1990s.

Holding a magnifying glass to a wide array of phony works, Forgery in Musical Composition explains how skillful fakers have succeeded in the past while also proposing active steps that scholars and musicians can take to better identify deceptive compositions in the future. Pursuing his topic from case to case, Reece observes that fake historical masterpieces have often seduced listeners not simply by imitating old works, but rather by mirroring modern cultural beliefs about innovation, identity, and meaning in music. Here forged compositions have important truths to tell us about knowing and valuing works of art precisely because they are not what they appear.

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