Hans Franke (1882-1971)

[terry martyn]

That must be the third CD the Franke Foundation refers to on its "Funding" Page.  I wonder who composed that String Quartet?

[Ilja]

I tend to agree with Alan that the destruction of Dresden probably enabled Franke to pose as a composer of Czerny-like proportions.

I am beginning to think that this is really important work we are doing here, in attempting to expose a plagiarist and in rehabilitating the reputation of a composer (Kauffmann) who is well above the middle rank,if this symphony is anything to go by. Do we need, or could we in the future need, journalistic or other media help?

In fact, I was contemplating writing something myself. However, since I'm also in the death throes of my book on Berlin railway stations (out in the Fall) and while milking this for every bit of procrastination I can get out of it (as you might have noticed) the timing is not perfect. However, I have some contacts in German newspapers that could be useful, should the need arise.

[John Boyer]

I tend to agree with Alan that the destruction of Dresden probably enabled Franke to pose as a composer of Czerny-like proportions.

Alan and Terry are, of course, quite right. To hand-copy the better part of 1000 compositions would be a monumental undertaking in itself, never mind actually composing them.  To even make the claim that one has almost matched Czerny in productivity is to invite scrutiny and skepticism. Why would anyone hoping to perpetrate a fraud make a claim so patently absurd?

To plagiarize the works that have been identified so far indicates dishonesty, but to claim to have done it 800 more times suggests a truly unbalanced mind.

[Alan Howe]

Returning to the issue of whether we should have been more wary, not to say downright suspicious of Franke's claims in the first place, we certainly wouldn't have known where to start looking with regard to the true provenance of the Symphony. It wasn't until Martin posted his work on Kauffmann's Symphony that we realised there was in fact an issue involving plagiarism on Franke's part. Looking back, we might well have had more luck uncovering the truth about the Piano Trio in D and the Piano Concerto - but, frankly, the reality was that they just weren't interesting enough to pique anyone's interest. Having listened to it, I had simply dismissed the PC as being of no consequence (although that should have been a red flag, as Ilja has pointed out).

So: it was the quality of Kauffmann's Symphony wot did it!! And Martin's superlative work in producing such a good computer realisation that we recognised it straight away!

[Alan Howe]

If Franke plagiarised later composers such as Boehe, we would dealing with a composer whose stylistic development ranged from proto-romantic to post-Wagnerian. We did in fact have a brief flurry of interest in the claims of another composer who, it turned out, was a complete fiction. Does anyone remember the case of one Gottfried Eschenbach (1842-1920)?>>
https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php?topic=5176.0
http://eschenbach.awardspace.biz/index.html

[eschiss1]

Well, the piano concerto, being by Wölfl- a composer of interest to only a few of us here, and not a superb one (though one capable of originality- I rather enjoy his sonata for cello, piano and percussion, written long before Bartók) - was unlikely to ring bells especially given that relatively few of us had access to the CD.

[Alan Howe]

A (terrible) thought: is it possible that either Raff's 3rd Symphony (in F, im Walde) or 5th Symphony (in E, Lenore) was plagiarised by Franke? Would they have been too well known for Franke to have considered choosing them?

I don't know whether Mark T. can give us an idea of whether these two symphonies were still being performed in, say, Germany or Austria between 1900 and 1940? Or had they gone completely out of fashion by the beginning of the 20th century? Eric has already supplied with some information in the thread on early 20th century Raff performances:
https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,9310.0.html

[Ilja]

Yes, you can easily imagine how Lenore could double as a "Forest" symphony, but I still think that Raff might've been a tad too risky to plagiarize - even if circumspection doesn't appear to have been Franke's most prominent trait.

[Alan Howe]

The most well-known movement by Raff would probably have been the March from Lenore; why not simply leave it out?

[Alan Howe]

I'm not the greatest sight-reader in the world so I could be wrong (and am en route now so can't check), but at first glance it looks like a bit from the opening to Ernst Boehe's Odysseus Heimkehr, the final movement of his massive poem/symphony/thing Aus Odysseus' Fahrten, Op. 6 from 1903.

Well, here's the Boehe, for comparison purposes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqLMqfDufq4

[Mark Thomas]

I don't know whether Mark T. can give us an idea of whether these two symphonies were still being performed in, say, Germany or Austria between 1900 and 1940? Or had they gone completely out of fashion by the beginning of the 20th century?

I can't immediately give chapter and verse on performances in Germany then, but both works were certainly still performed with reasonable frequency up to WWI so Franke, who was in his 30s by then, would have been familiar with them, probably enough so to see the dangers of claimimg either as his own work when there were plenty of other, more obscure, forest/woods-themed symphonies penned in the romantic era, so strong did the subject feature in German culture.

[eschiss1]

Performances of Raff between 1900 and 1922 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig included the one of his 3rd symphony I mentioned at the top of this thread (Lohse, 1922 January 12), also his 2nd violin concerto in 1916, and La fée d'amour on March 8 1900 (the latter two conducted by Nikisch). I don't know about Magdeburg, where Franke resided, but I can have a look at contemporary issues of NZM for a bit and see if anything's mentioned.

[Mark Thomas]

The D minor Trio may be more difficult to trace. The tempo indication "Andante elegioso" is not one I can find anywhere else and it would stand out as somewhat doubtful Italian to my knowledge ("Andante elegiaco" would be correct).

It might be a typo for Andante religioso of course, which is quite a common designation. That said, despite a naggingly familiar start to the first movement, I can't identify it even after listening to the opening bars of every piano trio recording I have, whether in D minor or not, A search of D minor trios at IMSLP has also drawn a blank.

[eschiss1]

RISM  has a sometimes useful search feature too, with a keyboard- type in the first few notes, specify the conjectured instrumentation using their code, and see if there are any matches in their database...

[Ilja]

Performances of Raff between 1900 and 1922 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig included the one of his 3rd symphony I mentioned at the top of this thread (Lohse, 1922 January 12), also his 2nd violin concerto in 1916, and La fée d'amour on March 8 1900 (the latter two conducted by Nikisch). I don't know about Magdeburg, where Franke resided, but I can have a look at contemporary issues of NZM for a bit and see if anything's mentioned.

I think it was Kauffmann who lived in Magdeburg; Franke was mainly active in Saxony and just across the Bohemian border, in Teplitz (today Teplice). Interestingly, the Franke Stiftung biography (FWIW) claims he studied conducting with Nikisch, so it's likely he was at least familiar with Raff.