# Beethoven a fraud?



## Curiosity (Jul 10, 2011)

Yes, according to Rob Newman. 

http://musicalrevisionism.info/

Were they ALL a part of the conspiracy? Even noble B?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Curiosity said:


> Yes, according to Rob Newman.
> 
> http://musicalrevisionism.info/
> 
> Were they ALL a part of the conspiracy? Even noble B?


This guy tried to get people on this forum to believe this stuff way back in 2007 or so.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Where's that 'rolls eyes' emotion?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

violadude said:


> This guy tried to get people on this forum to believe this stuff way back in 2007 or so.


I've read several of his papers and seen a video of his. Did he actually become a member and post messages on TC?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> I've read several of his papers and seen a video of his. Did he actually become a member and post messages on TC?


Well I wasn't around back then but I've gone back and read what I believe were some posts by him (or someone advocating his work). Someone who has been here from the beginning or near the beginning can tell you for sure.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

kv466 said:


> Where's that 'rolls eyes' emotion?


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Conspiracies seem less about encouraging people to seek the truth, and more about feeling enlightened and forcing your own idea of how the world works on others so you can control them.

I do think it's a healthy habit to question these deified concepts of "great men"/"geniuses" though, in less retarded ways.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

violadude said:


> Well I wasn't around back then but I've gone back and read what I believe were some posts by him (or someone advocating his work). Someone who has been here from the beginning or near the beginning can tell you for sure.


Yep, I remember him being around. If I remember right, him and Stlukesguild had it out with each other pretty good.


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## graaf (Dec 12, 2009)

Curiosity said:


> Yes, according to Rob Newman.
> 
> http://musicalrevisionism.info/
> 
> Were they ALL a part of the conspiracy? Even noble B?


I just checked the site and didn't see much about LvB, except for mere mentioning. Anyone saw anything concrete about LvB? Anyone even bothered to see anything at all?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

As soon as I saw the name Newman, I did not bother anymore.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

regressivetransphobe said:


> ...I do think it's a healthy habit to question these deified concepts of "great men"/"geniuses" though, in less retarded ways.


Yes, the role of a scholar is not only to give us facts, but to make solid conclusions based on them, & also give some opinions. As long as these opinions are well-founded to some degree, I have no problem with that, but once people go out on a limb too much & start giving the reader "conspiracy theory" I just turn right off, my eyes start glazing over, etc.



Art Rock said:


> As soon as I saw the name Newman, I did not bother anymore.


Same here, Newman's name is now synonymous with dodgy, dubious, outright bad scholarship (if you can even call it scholarship, it's more like unfounded opinion or pure bull**** to put it more crudely)...


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

1. Here they are in start date order.

http://www.talkclassical.com/865-controversy-over-true-musical.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/980-two-operas-falsely-attributed.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1275-mozart-how-many-works.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1326-why-mozart.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1621-did-mozart-really-master.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1675-mozart-mythology.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1688-splitted.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1722-best-work-i-ever.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1725-maria-theresia-von-paradis.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1787-mozart-healer.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/1784-mozarts-reputation-reality.html

2. These threads, which as far as I know were the total of his attempts here, are mostly about Mozart and Haydn, with only an occasional hint in the direction of Beethoven. He had a very long run on T-C before being banned.

3. The longest-running thread was the first one, alleging that little-known Italian composer Andrea Luchesi was the real composer behind several of Mozart's most famous works.

4. There was a spoof thread aimed at ridiculing these opinions, arguing that Luchesi was a drunken, wife-beating scoundrel and that the real genius behind everything written in the late 18th C was a chap called Bert Uri Moxart, known as "Moxy".

http://www.talkclassical.com/1697-controversy-over-true-musical.html

5.  Prior to coming to T-C, he had been active on several previous forums but was eventually banned. After T-C, he moved to various other forums, where he met the same fate. All along, he kept promising a book setting out his views.

6. A feature of Newman's style was that he would sometimes work with accomplices who would spoon-feed him with suitable questions.

7. He would often switch to less controversial topics, in order to try to gain acceptance among other members. In some cases he succeeded. His musical knowledge generally (aside from "controversy" issues) was very good, far better than most.

8. He was seldom rude and knew how to work around moderators, which is how he lasted so long in many places. He had an incredible ability at stirring up debate, and then lying low, creating mayhem in the process.

9. After being banned, he sometimes came back under a different name, one of favourite characters being "colleengail".

10. To get a quick overall view of the situation THIS  thread, from a so-called "truth-seeker" board, should suffice to give an introduction to his antics in various places.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks member *Artemis* for posting those old threads initiated by Mr Newman, I'll have a more detailed look at them when I get the chance. Just had a brief look at the first one, and by jolly, this guy was more long-winded than yours truly :lol: . Now that in itself has to be some form of achievement, regardless of the man's spurious scholarship!!!...


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

Sid James said:


> Thanks member *Artemis* for posting those old threads initiated by Mr Newman, I'll have a more detailed look at them when I get the chance. Just had a brief look at the first one, and by jolly, this guy was more long-winded than yours truly :lol: . Now that in itself has to be some form of achievement, regardless of the man's spurious scholarship!!!...


Do have a look at the very last link posted in my para No 10. It should help explain the background a bit further regards the history of Newman's activity on various boards. A very funny aspect was the questioning of his exact musical credentials.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Yes, I had a brief look at what you just suggested. The problem is that he's proseletysing, as if what he says is like a religion. You're either a believer or you're not. It has more to do with faith than evidence, which is fine in matters or religion or spirituality, etc., but in terms of musicology, that simply doesn't work. I mean I could argue that Beethoven walked on water, but would anyone believe me? Is this well founded? Nope, even if I'm a PHD in music or whatever, that would simply not wash. It's not commonsense. This is how I think about these things, & about scholarship in general. It has to have some form of consensus.

In contrast, another scholar who's kind of gone out on a limb like this is Dr Martin Jarvis, referring to his conclusion that it is likely that Anna Magdalena Bach, second wife of J.S. Bach, composed the six solo cello suites traditionally attributed to him. I attended a public lecture by Dr Jarvis last year & he presented evidence in a scholarly and scientific way. At least Jarvis has done this, and at least a number of prominent scholars in the field agree with him, or at least partially agree with him. In contrast, Newman seems to have convinced nobody of his hyphothesis, or at least not any significant people in the areas of musicology or scholarship...


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

Sid James said:


> Yes, I had a brief look at what you just suggested. The problem is that he's proseletysing, as if what he says is like a religion. You're either a believer or you're not. It has more to do with faith than evidence, which is fine in matters or religion or spirituality, etc., but in terms of musicology, that simply doesn't work....


He has an unshakeable belief in what he proclaims about the alleged fraud of Mozart and Haydn. No amount of counter-argument will persuade him he is wrong. If the going gets tough on any one avenue, he will switch to another.

A sure sign of things getting very tough for him is when he resorts to getting his interlocutors to try to justify their faith in the status quo. This often happened and was one of most annoying features of discourse with him. It is often difficult for a typical lay person to respond in detail to his specific questions, since what does a typical punter on places like this really know about all the historical musicological research about Mozart, Haydn, et al?

After being banned from all the big classical music forums, he switched to other venues like literature forums. He appeared as a guest on some Swedish radio programme, where he ran rings around some very gullible interviewer.

In short he needs to be treated with a very long barge pole. Have a look at the way he dodged and weaved every question put to him in some of those threads highlighted earlier.

The place where he probably suffered the biggest bruising was over at GMG, but perhaps his biggest disappointment was when he got booted out of CMM after a long-running debate about the authenticity of Mozart's_ Le Nozze_.

You are correct that hardly anyone believes his silly stories, but there have been the occasional people who have appeared to have done so. Just glance through some of the threads I quoted earlier.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Artemis said:


> Have a look at the way he dodged and weaved every question put to him in some of those threads highlighted earlier.
> 
> The place where he probably suffered the biggest bruising was over at GMG, but perhaps his biggest disappointment was when he got booted out of CMM after a long-running debate about the authenticity of Mozart's_ Le Nozze_.


He sounds like a cheap coward to me. The type of man who would hide behind his wife when caught out, like bin Laden did.


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## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> He sounds like a cheap coward to me. The type of man who would hide behind his wife when caught out, like bin Laden did.


I'm not sure about that.

In terms of having "guts" to stand up to criticism from others he was very resilient, and few things seemed to phase him.

It wasn't just his views about Mozart et al that distinguished him. He held conspiracy views in various other areas, completely separate from music. He used to believe that the original Moon landings were faked, and I think he had peculiar views about 9/11, being some kind of CIA plot and all.

Regards Beethoven, I haven't read his latest thoughts but he used to argue that Beethoven wasn't an outright fraud like Mozart and Haydn, rather that some works are wrongly ascribed to Beethoven due to some kind of error.

In the case of Mozart and Haydn, he genuinely believes that these two composers were a couple of useless bums, who had virtually no composing skills whatsover. It wasn't simply that they could compose but didn't bother. I think he might accept that Mozart could play the piano quite well but that's about all he would concede. The rest of it was all, according to RN, the product of the "Mozart industry" making it all up.

No matter what arguments were put to him, he would counter-argue. One of his points was that Mozart received no proper training in music, so how come he was that good? He was completely unimpressed by accounts of Leopold's teaching of the young Mozart (thus explaining why Mozart never attended any kind of music academy) on the basis that Leopold himself was, according to RN, equally useless as a teacher and musician and was no more than a third rate fiddle player in some third rate orchestra.

As for Haydn, he used to argue that Haydn never composed anything in his life apart from fraudulent stories about his trips, e.g. to London, when the real purpose was to pick up en route the latest bunch of symphonies, etc, written by a small bunch of back-room composers, and he would come back to Vienna or wherever and pass them off as his on work.

It was all very comical material.


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