# How easy would it be for a scholar to forge music?



## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

OK, so I know the topic is a bit outlandish and it's begging to be made into a punchline on the "Ideas for Stupid Threads" thread, but here goes:

How easy would it for a scholar or musicologist who is intimately familiar with a composer's work to contrive a convincing imitation of that composer's work, knowing all his/her stylistic tendencies, harmonic language, inflections, etc? For example, if a musicologist has studied Villa-Lobos his whole life and devoted his whole career into studying his music, it's more than plausible they would be able to pull this off.

Now to be clear, what I *don't* mean is literally forging a manuscript and trying to dupe historical archives and academic institutions into actually believing this is a real work of that composer, because that idea is absurd given the vast amounts of academic scrutiny, peer-review, and painstaking vetting process to verify its authenticity. The very idea is ridiculous.

What I _*do*_ mean is the actual composition of the piece itself and how believable and passable it would sound if you played it for somebody. For example, it's a fact that countless composition students can and have composed anachronistic pieces as a part of their studies that would sound just like anything else out of the Baroque or Classical period. I mean, that's the whole reason it's the tendency of contemporary composers to avoid writing pieces that don't reinvent the wheel because they're thinking of their careers and want to make a name for themselves, and nobody achieves that by "rehashing" styles that have already been done before (there's a lot of neo-classical/baroque/romantic I've heard I honestly love, I wish more composers harkened back to it, but I do understand why they don't)

If you take that a step further, I could easily imagine a musicologist being able to recreate a pastiche, albeit a very convincing one - something that sounds exactly like Villa-Lobos or Saint-Saens or Vivaldi, and even if everybody knew this hypothetical piece was indeed fake, and the forger wasn't even trying to pretend that it isn't, it would still sound a heck of a lot like it and may as well be.


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

It has been done! The famous "Albinoni" Adagio in G minor is completely (or at least mostly) by his biographer. It's definitely not my area so I'm not sure on the details, but I think other musicologists have been back and forth over whether it's based on a genuine fragment for a while now.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

MrMeatScience said:


> It has been done! The famous "Albinoni" Adagio in G minor is completely (or at least mostly) by his biographer. It's definitely not my area so I'm not sure on the details, but I think other musicologists have been back and forth over whether it's based on a genuine fragment for a while now.


It was definitely easier to get away with back then, that's for sure! I heard about some virtuoso violinist from the 19th century forging a lot of Paganini and duping audiences into thinking it too since I would just have to assume it was a bunch of virtuosic "shredding" and showboating with some Paganini-like melodies.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I think that if someone is talented enough, and works at it hard enough, they can probably compose in the style of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Villa-Lobos, etc. Just as a talented and dedicated enough artist can paint like Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, Seurat, Frida Kahlo, Grandma Moses, or Norman Rockwell. 


They can do it, and probably have done it, but it won't be anything original.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Czerny has moments where he does sound like real Beethoven and could fool someone. Rimsky and Glazunov completed music by other Russian composers and I don't know if anyone can reliably tell where the contribution of one ends and of another begins.

There were plenty of Wagnerians whose works contain moments that at one point or another would pass for real Wagner. In fact, that was the idea 

Then there are some contemporary composers / scholars who have managed to emulate the music of Williams for a moment or two. Unless it is "action music" though, it becomes clear very quickly that it's not him.

Mind you there is a huge gap between creating a believable companion to Wellington's Victory and a believable companion to Eroica.


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## gregorx (Jan 25, 2020)

Coach G said:


> I think that if someone is talented enough, and works at it hard enough, they can probably compose in the style of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Villa-Lobos, etc. Just as a talented and dedicated enough artist can paint like Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, Seurat, Frida Kahlo, Grandma Moses, or Norman Rockwell.
> 
> They can do it, and probably have done it, but it won't be anything original.


Yes, and why would someone with talent want to waste it emulating music from the past? It does nothing to advance music, nobody wants to hear it; not even those who listen only to music from the Baroque/Classical/Romantic Periods. They already have what they want. Nobody is going to be a more better Beethoven.

I think I've seen other threads with similar sentiments to this one - why don't composers today write in the old style. There is a natural fascination with the past, but I would think that, in this case, it is satisfied by the shear volume of recorded works from the last 400 years. I can't imagine why a composer working today would want to rehash the old stuff.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

The real question is why would they do it since there isn't a lot of money to be made as with art forgeries?

The a recording of the real stuff only sells a few thousand copies.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> The real question is why would they do it since there isn't a lot of money to be made as with art forgeries?
> 
> The a recording of the real stuff only sells a few thousand copies.


Per the 3rd paragraph of the OP, that wasn't really the question I had in mind, more the actual compositional process and result of the imitiation.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> Per the 3rd paragraph of the OP, that wasn't really the question I had in mind, more the actual compositional process and result of the imitiation.


I am sure it can be done, but don't see _why_ it would be done. Composers with the skill and training spend their time on their own work and I don't see them wasting time on this kind of pointless exercise since, as I said, there's little money to be made, and much to be lost in prestige.

Someone posted about a computer program which essentially does this. All of the music by a composer is input into the computer and some kind of AI software was written to extract from that data bank and create "new" works by Bach or Beethoven, etc. Probably a good exercise for developing AI but as music, it is irrelevant.

The only reason we are interested in any "great" music is because of the _original human achievement_ it represents. If one of those elements is missing, e.g. not done by humans or not original, then there's not much of an achievement.

Of course that hasn't stopped Alma Deutscher.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I saw in a George Lucas interview how Lucas used "tempt tracks" when he worked with John Williams on the soundtrack to _Star Wars_: "I want the music for scene to sound like Wagner's _Miestersinger Overture_, and this one to sound like Debussy's _Afternoon of a Faun_, and this one to sound like that really savage moment from Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_, etc.

So it's been argued at length whether or not John Williams is a great composer, as opposed to a great composer for _film_, or any kind of composer at all. In this regard, I've heard some of the straight classical works of John Williams, the works for cello and orchestra that he composed for Yo-Yo Ma; and if these works are representative of Williams' "serious" or "classical" compositions then I would say that these works are pleasant, competent, but not particularly outstanding or memorable. But when Williams tries to builds upon what _others_ have done it becomes "classic" as with the main theme from _Star Wars_, _Darth Vader's March_, _Jaws_, _Jurassic Park_, _The Cowboys_, etc. It all, somehow, comes out sounding like John Williams; and lots of composers are great at building upon what others have done.

In this regard, there is Maurice Ravel with _Tambeau de Couperin_, _La Valse_ (Homage to Johann Strauss), and _Pictures at an Exhibition_ (after Mussorgsky); not to mention the debt that Ravel's music pays to Debussy in the first place. But Ravel wouldn't be great unless he had his own creative powers, a strong personality of his own, that make what he did exceptional even when standing on the shoulders of someone else.

It's like when composers such as Rueveltes or Poulenc emulated Stravinsky. Probably many others, everyone and his brother, were out trying to compose like Stravinsky after _Rite of Spring_ caught the world by storm, but only the ones who had that little something extra became noteworthy. So when Stravinsky himself went to the other side and jumped on Arnold Schoenberg's atonal bandwagon, he didn't sound like Schoenberg as much as he still sounded like Stravinsky, just because his sense of originality was so powerful.

It's OK to be a copycat as long as you're an _original_ copycat! If that makes any sense.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I think it would be nearly impossible. Every great, and even the not-so-great, composers had their own musical thumbprint, their own unique sound, that no one can imitate perfectly. Take the completion of the Mahler 10th - despite the best and grueling work of many others who are very intimate with Mahler's style not one of them has created a version that really sounds like Mahler. There are many works like this; Puccini's Turandot, Tchaikovsky's 7th, Elgar's 3rd...no matter how inspired the editor, the real sound world of the composer always eludes them. Violinist Fritz Kreisler tried to pass off a bunch of works as recently discovered lost masterworks by others; but knowing critical ears spotted the lie instantly.

It is possible with simpler, earlier music to do this I suppose. The Mozart Requiem as completed by Sussmayer for example. Only real experts would know where Mozart leaves off and Sussmayer begins. Mahler's own reworking of Weber's Die Drei Pintos is a marvel of orchestration, he so cleverly and completely mimicked Weber's style.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Someone posted about a computer program which essentially does this. All of the music by a composer is input into the computer and some kind of AI software was written to extract from that data bank and create "new" works by Bach or Beethoven, etc. Probably a good exercise for developing AI but as music, it is irrelevant.


To be fair, I shouldn't be surprised considering how far AI has come but that's still absolutely wild to me. The compositional process is so involved and nuanced as well as creative one would think that was one of the few things only humans can still do. Say what you want about Bach being the overused cliche of the "sewing machine" (I'm guilty of saying that about Mozart), but that was still a human mind applying genuine creativity and meticulous thought to every piece. The idea that an AI can just randomly generate pieces like that in a cold and calculated way is kind of depressing. I would actually want to listen to these to hear how they sound or if there's just some "it", some human factor that's still missing.

I do agree with your sentiment though. Anyone can be a copycat and sometimes borrowing ideas works well if you put your own spin on it ("great artists steal" like the classic Stravinsky quote, and there's nothing impressive about imitation. Anyone can copy Beethoven, but only Beethoven can really be Beethoven. However, I think it's an interesting discussion that touches on the nature of art and music and the creative process.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> I think it would be nearly impossible. Every great, and even the not-so-great, composers had their own musical thumbprint, their own unique sound, that no one can imitate perfectly. Take the completion of the Mahler 10th - despite the best and grueling work of many others who are very intimate with Mahler's style not one of them has created a version that really sounds like Mahler. There are many works like this; Puccini's Turandot, Tchaikovsky's 7th, Elgar's 3rd...no matter how inspired the editor, the real sound world of the composer always eludes them. Violinist Fritz Kreisler tried to pass off a bunch of works as recently discovered lost masterworks by others; but knowing critical ears spotted the lie instantly.
> 
> It is possible with simpler, earlier music to do this I suppose. The Mozart Requiem as completed by Sussmayer for example. Only real experts would know where Mozart leaves off and Sussmayer begins. Mahler's own reworking of Weber's Die Drei Pintos is a marvel of orchestration, he so cleverly and completely mimicked Weber's style.


I wonder to what extent the emotional investment and laws of perception impact how we receive the music. I remember that back in the 1980s when everyone was mourning the untimely and senseless murder of John Lennon, that there was a wave of "Beatlemania" and it seemed like every boy (including my younger brother) who was interested in rock-n-roll went through a "Beatles" phase that lasted for about a year or two. Around the same time, I remember seeing commercials on TV for the rock band, _Beatlemania_ with people going to these concerts saying "They look like the Beatles, and sound like the Beatles, it's a real Beatles experience!"

And this wasn't supposed to be one of those cheesy casino or cruise ship entertainment impersonation acts like the one my wife and I saw at a a local casino where the Michael Jackson, Christina Aguilara, Aretha Franklin, and Justin Timberlake impersonators come out at the end of the show with all the showgirls and such; Beatlemania was, I guess, and if I can remember the gist of the TV commercials accurately, for people who wanted to pay money to experience the _real_ Beatles live in concert!

The only problem is that "real Beatles" were terrible in concert, or at least that's what a friend told me who saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium and he said that all you could hear was teenage girls screaming in your ears.

Shortly after, the Beatles, like Glenn Gould, turned their back on live performance and took to the recording studio as their portal to the rest of the world.

But I guess if you want it to the Beatles live in concert, you can make it so, at least in your own mind.

Conversely when we see a CD and it says MAHLER: SYMPHONY #10 and then the fine print says "as conceived by Derrick Cooke"; we might say, "can't be any good."

As an aside, I always thought it would be great, or at least interesting, if Shostakovich took a shot at finishing up _Mahler 10_. Mahler, was, after all, a Mahler fan, and he composed his own brand of monster symphonies full of Mahler's long ramblings and anguish. If Shostakovich could go through all the trouble of touching up Mussorgsky's _Khavanstchina_ and also attempt to do Rimsky-Korsakov one better and take another stab at giving Mussorgsky's _Boris Godunov_ a make-over; then why not Mahler?

In that Shostakovich champion and thoroughly Russian, Rudolf Barshai, has made his own rendition of the "complete" _Mahler 10_, I guess it's the closet thing we have to a _Mahler 10, as conceived by Shostakovich_.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Fabulin said:


> ...
> Mind you there is a huge gap between creating a believable companion to Wellington's Victory and a believable companion to Eroica.


Sure, competent composers (and composition students) can imitate styles of various past composers (and there is a recent thread on this very topic somewhere on this site), but the essence of genius, that ineffable "thing" that makes for true greatness, cannot be duplicated.

Sure, many out there can write "the Beethoven Tenth Symphony", and perhaps fool a lot of us with it, but unless it strikes that "something new" chord, which Beethoven was famous for, it could never be completely convincing. Note Beethoven's works. They show a progression of growth in style. The composer doesn't rewrite his First Symphony over and over. Each new one forges new ground. This is the thing that cannot be duplicated; it's found in the very mind of the composer, not in his/her compositional technique.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

SONNET CLV said:


> Sure, many out there can write "the Beethoven Tenth Symphony", and perhaps fool a lot of us with it, but unless it strikes that "something new" chord, which Beethoven was famous for, it could never be completely convincing.


Many classical commentators both during and after Brahms' lifetime claimed that his 1st symphony was essentially Beethoven's 10th. What say you?


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Many classical commentators both during and after Brahms' lifetime claimed that his 1st symphony was essentially Beethoven's 10th. What say you?


I think that Beethoven and Brahms are so far apart stylistically that the title was more in the "spirit" of following after Beethoven. That here was So in the 1940s you had Frank Sinatra, and in the 1950s you had Elvis Presley, and in the 1960s you had the Beatles, and in the 1980s we had Michael Jackson. We group them together not so much because their music followed along in a stylistic progression (although the Beatles were _somewhat_ influenced by Elvis), but more-so for the iconic status. So I guess with Brahms' _Symphony #1_ it was as if the world had found another grand, powerful, German symphony; one that was worthy to be called Beethoven's successor. The final movement of Brahms _Symphony #1_ hints to the choral finale of Beethoven's _Symphony #9 "Choral"_, so I don't know if that was Brahms paying homage to the master from Bonn, or just something everyone was eager to read into it.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Coach G said:


> I think that Beethoven and Brahms are so far apart stylistically that the title was more in the "spirit" of following after Beethoven. That here was So in the 1940s you had Frank Sinatra, and in the 1950s you had Elvis Presley, and in the 1960s you had the Beatles, and in the 1980s we had Michael Jackson. We group them together not so much because their music followed along in a stylistic progression (although the Beatles were _somewhat_ influenced by Elvis), but more-so for the iconic status. So I guess with Brahms' _Symphony #1_ it was as if the world had found another grand, powerful, German symphony; one that was worthy to be called Beethoven's successor. The final movement of Brahms _Symphony #1_ hints to the choral finale of Beethoven's _Symphony #9 "Choral"_, so I don't know if that was Brahms paying homage to the master from Bonn, or just something everyone was eager to read into it.


Here's some context from the article from Wikipedia:

"It is often remarked that there is a strong resemblance between the main theme of the finale of Brahms's First Symphony and the main theme of the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Also, Brahms uses the rhythm of the "fate" motto from the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. This rather annoyed Brahms; he felt that this amounted to accusations of plagiarism, whereas he saw his use of Beethoven's idiom in this symphony as an act of conscious homage. Brahms himself said, when comment was made on the similarity with Beethoven, "any *** can see that". Nevertheless, this work is still sometimes (though rarely) referred to as "Beethoven's Tenth"."

"Brahms began composing a D minor symphony in 1854, but this work underwent radical change before much of it was finally recast as his first Piano Concerto, also in D minor. The long gestation of the C minor Symphony which would eventually be his first, may be attributed to two factors. First, Brahms's self-critical fastidiousness led him to destroy many of his early works. Second, there was an expectation from Brahms's friends and the public that he would continue "Beethoven's inheritance" and produce a symphony of commensurate dignity and intellectual scope - an expectation that Brahms felt he could not fulfill easily in view of the monumental reputation of Beethoven."

Now an argument could be made that had Beethoven lived long enough to write a 10th symphony, itmight have included aspects similar to the Brahms work.

But that's not my point. I was being a little facetious when I made that post about someone faking Beethoven's 10th symphony.


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## mparta (Sep 29, 2020)

The essential text on this:

Pierre Menard, Jorge Luis Borges. Says it all.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

Depends on which composer.

I could forge Czerny.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Rosemary Isabel Brown (27 July 1916 - 16 November 2001)[1] was an English composer, pianist and spirit medium who claimed that dead composers dictated new musical works to her. She created a small media sensation in the 1970s by presenting works purportedly dictated to her by Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist)


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## mparta (Sep 29, 2020)

Vasks said:


> Rosemary Isabel Brown (27 July 1916 - 16 November 2001)[1] was an English composer, pianist and spirit medium who claimed that dead composers dictated new musical works to her. She created a small media sensation in the 1970s by presenting works purportedly dictated to her by Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist)


You seem to think that her claims are untrue!

I'm sure you can find someone here to argue that with youut:


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Someone posted about a computer program which essentially does this. All of the music by a composer is input into the computer and some kind of AI software was written to extract from that data bank and create "new" works by Bach or Beethoven, etc. Probably a good exercise for developing AI but as music, it is irrelevant.


The "Emmy" music-- which includes "'Beethoven' Symphony no. 10" and "'Vivaldi' Zodiac" is of very poor quality.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

This pleasant little work was thought to have been composed by Haydn but was actually composed by Hoffstetter, a contemporary:


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Vasks said:


> Rosemary Isabel Brown (27 July 1916 - 16 November 2001)[1] was an English composer, pianist and spirit medium who claimed that dead composers dictated new musical works to her. She created a small media sensation in the 1970s by presenting works purportedly dictated to her by Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist)


After her she attained some notoriety, she had dinner with Leonard Bernstein and his wife. She brought some of her piano music (pieces "dictated" to her by Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, Beethoven and Rachmaninov) some of which Bernstein sightread. According to her he "liked very much the 'Fantaisie-Impromptu' in three movements which I had received from Chopin; in fact he liked a great many of the pieces, Liszt's, Schubert's, Beethoven's and the Rachmaninov…" (A piece Rachmaninov earlier that day had insisted that she finish as he "knew" she would seeing Bernstein later that night.)


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Well , let's convince a collector by first inducing some private and passionate hysteria that an apparently historical hand-written score is genuine .


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Yes, it can be easy to mimic. However the key is it would be impossible for the copier to sustain quality repeatedly over and over with many compositions because the copier is not talented.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Vasks said:


> Rosemary Isabel Brown (27 July 1916 - 16 November 2001)[1] was an English composer, pianist and spirit medium who claimed that dead composers dictated new musical works to her. She created a small media sensation in the 1970s by presenting works purportedly dictated to her by Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist)


At the risk of seeming really old, I remember her quite well and have her book Unfinished Symphonies. I don't have any of the records anymore. I thought she was a fraud back in the '60s and then came to a more gentle feeling: she was deeply, profoundly mentally ill. Nothing she "wrote" sounds authentic.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I think that the difficulty of the forgery would depend on the composer and on the scholar's familiarity with his/her style(s). This youtube video came to mind while reading this topic:






Some imitations in this, such as those of Bach, Chopin and Satie, are so well done that I think that they could pass as authentic, at least to my ears. Others, such as the Beethoven's, don't sound convincing IMO.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

SanAntone said:


> The only reason we are interested in any "great" music is because of the _original human achievement_ it represents. If one of those elements is missing, e.g. not done by humans or not original, then there's not much of an achievement.


I would disagree. But then again, I'm not sure what you mean by "great", and I'm not sure it's something I really care about.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Then there was Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms' g-minor piano quartet. At times he entered Brahms' sound world really well, but being Schoenberg he was incapable of not putting his own spin on it in places.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

MarkW said:


> Then there was Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms' g-minor piano quartet. At times he entered Brahms' sound world really well, but being Schoenberg he was incapable of not putting his own spin on it in places.


Schoenberg was a really good at orchestration or re-orchestration, at enlarging chamber works for orchestra and reducing orchestral works for a chamber ensemble. I have a Schoenberg's reduction of Mahler's _Das Lied von der Erde_ for soloists and chamber ensemble by some outfit called the Orchestra of the Swan with a conductor and soloists who I've never heard of anywhere else; and it doesn't seem to lose any of it's impact.


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## EnescuCvartet (Dec 16, 2016)

Remember Bruce Haynes' Brandenburg Concertos #7-12? In that instance, however, I don't think he actually composed any new material, he just reorganized some Bach cantatas, if I'm not mistaken. #7 gets fairly regular air play on my local classical station, usually accompanied with an audible smirk and snicker by the DJ.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

SanAntone said:


> Many classical commentators both during and after Brahms' lifetime claimed that his 1st symphony was essentially Beethoven's 10th. What say you?


I believe I've commented on this notion previously on this Forum. I've always enjoyed the proposition that Brahms's First is Beethoven's Tenth. I believe Brahms was haunted by the spirit of the symphonist Beethoven, which led to the long delay of his introduction of a first symphony. And when it comes along it is in the key of C minor, three flats. Interestingly enough, the sketches for Beethoven's 10th present a work in three flats, E-flat, the same key as the great _Eroica_. I suspect Beethoven had something grand in mind for that 10th. Too, I don't believe Brahms was aware of the symphony sketches or the supposed key, but he seems so tuned in to Beethoven's art that he chose the three-flats key for his own opening symphony.

Still, Brahms's First is the first symphony by Brahms, and not Beethoven's Tenth. One thing Brahms shares with Beethoven is that the character of each symphony is unique. Unlike other major symphonists whose symphonies are sometimes hard to tell apart since they share a similar sound texture, form, and orchestration, etc. ... the four symphonies of Brahms are each unique -- its own symphonic world, complete, just as are the nine by Beethoven.

The great final movement theme of the Brahms First has often been compared to the great theme of Beethoven's Ninth, and there is a resemblance which I'm sure did not escape Brahms. I suspect that theme could have been a homage to the previous giant who hovered over Brahms -- a homage of love, certainly. There is no vocal chorale in the Brahms, but the closing movement does give us an orchestral chorale. The symphony is a fine one from the first rumbling chords, which seem to be trying to break through into a new space, up to the end, which seems to have found the universe where Beethoven once dwelled. I don't think Brahms has any need to feel a second fiddle to Beethoven. He, too, is a master, and he plays side by side with Beethoven -- not a "second fiddle", but rather a partner, as the second violin in a string quartet.

I'm glad we have the nine symphonies of Beethoven. I wish there would have been a Tenth. And I'm glad to know the four symphonies of Brahms. I wish we had had more from him. But those four are great ones, true giants among symphonies. I'm sure Beethoven would have approved.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Coach G said:


> Schoenberg was a really good at orchestration or re-orchestration, at enlarging chamber works for orchestra and reducing orchestral works for a chamber ensemble. I have a Schoenberg's reduction of Mahler's _Das Lied von der Erde_ for soloists and chamber ensemble by some outfit called the Orchestra of the Swan with a conductor and soloists who I've never heard of anywhere else; and it doesn't seem to lose any of it's impact.
> 
> View attachment 152182


Speaking of Schoenberg, he freely composed a work based on Handel's Concerto Grosso Op 6 no. 7. He wasn't trying to create a mere pastiche, but a better version of the work:


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Surely a forgery of an apparently original hand-notated manuscript of historically unknown music by a famous composer could be conceived and sold to a collector .


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I think it was Ripley's Believe it or Not, where I read something about Rosemary Brown. Listening to the Liszt and Debussy here, they don't sound that convincing to me, especially the Debussy. They sound like forgeries.

[video]https://www.wqxr.org/story/weird-classical-rosemary-browns-music-beyond-grave/[/video]


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## Caryatid (Mar 28, 2020)

I'm surprised to see so many people in this thread freely concede that such imitations could be done if only contemporary musicians could be bothered. I think you give musicology too much credit. If it is so easy, where are the good examples of it? I've come across cases where the vague _ambience _of a certain composer is imitated, but I'm not aware of any occasion when somebody has produced music that could easily be passed off as a new major work by a great composer. And even when the ambience is imitated, it often turns out that the supposedly new work is a tissue of short extracts from existing music. On the whole even the greatest composers have had trouble imitating their predecessors. Mozart and Brahms each tried to write baroque dances for keyboard, with somewhat inauthentic results (see K.399).

I have listened to AI music from more than one source and so far I haven't found it convincing in the least.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

The versions played today of Bruch's Concerto for Two Pianos, Rachmaninoff's First Symphony, and Prokofiev's 4th Piano Concerto (for the left hand) were all composed by my Great Grandpa. The "original" pieces (manuscripts) were all lost for a while, and my skillful forger ancestor created new ones out of whole cloth. Prokofiev had forgotten just what the 4th PC sounded like, and was content with what he was told was his own work.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Surely a forgery of an apparently original hand-notated manuscript of historically unknown music by a famous composer could be conceived and sold to a collector .


No doubt. There's a sucker born every ten seconds. Good luck getting it by a modern musicologist though. One would need period paper with the right watermarks, period ink, skill at mirroring the composer's hand, theoretical and stylistic knowledge, and plausible provenance. Musicologists outed Charles Ive's attempts to put an early date on later music by comparing his early and later handwriting characteristics. Numerous Josquin forgeries have been outed through stylistic and manuscript analysis.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> No doubt. There's a sucker born every ten seconds. Good luck getting it by a modern musicologist though. One would need period paper with the right watermarks, period ink, skill at mirroring the composer's hand, theoretical and stylistic knowledge, and plausible provenance. Musicologists outed Charles Ive's attempts to put an early date on later music by comparing his early and later handwriting characteristics. Numerous Josquin forgeries have been outed through stylistic and manuscript analysis.


It seems more difficult to forge a composer's music manuscript than a painter's canvas . What of the collector''s market for manuscripts ?


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

Tikoo Tuba said:


> It seems more difficult to forge a composer's music manuscript than a painter's canvas . What of the collector''s market for manuscripts ?


There definitely is one, although I think it's relatively small. Most of the manuscripts of composers "of note" are by now in museums, archives, universities, etc. A while ago (5 years?) the manuscript of Mahler 2 was auctioned at Sotheby's, and went for a bit north of 4.5 million. I think the winner was anonymous.


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## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

MrMeatScience said:


> I think the winner was anonymous.


Ah , a Nonny Mouse !


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> I believe I've commented on this notion previously on this Forum. I've always enjoyed the proposition that Brahms's First is Beethoven's Tenth. I believe Brahms was haunted by the spirit of the symphonist Beethoven, which led to the long delay of his introduction of a first symphony. And when it comes along it is in the key of C minor, three flats. Interestingly enough, the sketches for Beethoven's 10th present a work in three flats, E-flat, the same key as the great _Eroica_. I suspect Beethoven had something grand in mind for that 10th. Too, I don't believe Brahms was aware of the symphony sketches or the supposed key, but he seems so tuned in to Beethoven's art that he chose the three-flats key for his own opening symphony.


E flat / C minor are also known as the "masonic keys", btw


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