Gottfried Eschenbach (1842-1920)

[Alan Howe]

I suppose it's the perverse satisfaction derived from successfully deceiving people. It may also be to do with finding out the extent of misinformation that can be spread via the 'net.

[Mark Thomas]

Well, if it's the latter then it wasn't very successful, was it? It took four years for anyone here to notice it, and surely we'd been prime hoax targets?

[cypressdome]

Nothing in Riemann's Musiklexikon or any of the other standard late 19th and early 20th century biographical sources on musicians and yet the Wikipedia article claims he had enough standing/reputation to conduct his own works in concert.  Nothing in Pazdírek's Universal-Handbuch.  Nothing in the various Hofmeister publications despite the Wikipedia article's claim of the publication of a a song cycle entitled An Der Frühling in 1875.  Too bad the Eschenbach Society didn't mock up some CD covers like I recall seeing on the April Fool's Day Musicweb reviews.

[Alan Howe]

'An Der Frühling' may be another pointer to a hoax: it's wrong grammatically. The definite article should be in the accusative (not nominative) case and shouldn't begin with a capital letter, so the title of the song cycle should read: "An den Frühling". It's actually a bit of a howler. I suppose a non-German might easily make this kind of error, but anyone familiar with the song-cycle involved surely wouldn't get it this wrong. It smacks of someone making up a suitable fictitious title (it means: "To Spring"), but not being sufficiently competent in German to get it right.

[eschiss1]

Hrm. Well, the beginning of an article by Hugh Wood ("Frank Bridge and the Land without Music", Tempo Magazine, 1977, 120, pp.7-11) contains a statement to the effect that in the author's opinion (with which this writer will have to agree as it seems fairly obvious - more or less) most neglected and unsung composers are that way for a (good) reason. (He specifically exempts e.g. Foulds - specifically his cello sonata - and in the body of the article (the best of) Bridge's music, then not yet much rediscovered, from this blanket judgment; I'd exempt more though obviously not -much- more, or else I wouldn't be a member of groups like this. I might even exempt Hugh Wood's music, though so far I've only heard one string quartet and his piano concerto- but (what I know of) his music is waaaaay outside the remit of this forum.) Anyhow, I take such parodies to be, sometimes, sideswipes at overenthusiastic rediscovery attempts. 

Or they might, equally or moreso or always, just be entirely pointless.

Well, no. Not always pointless.

Remember another and even more interesting forgery than any so far mentioned in this thread I think btw- see here......

That one may have been anything but pointless during Stalinist anti-Semitism, when the fake composer was Jewish and Ukrainian, and created in part, possibly, to prove a point?...

[TerraEpon]

My first thoery was perhaps it was some class assignment to create an encyclopedia-like article and someone decided to load it onto Wikipedia.....or perhaps even to create a new Wikipedia article and someone had a laugh by making it all up.

But that wouldn't explain the existence of the society page -- which has moved URLs once.

I agree with the boggling over using this subject. Certainly something like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia/Upper_Peninsula_War has a much more wide audience for it...

[thalbergmad]

I guess you have to have a strange sense of humour to do something like that, but I too have invented a composer in the past. His name was Alexander Plinkovsky and I posted some midi's on another site and some idiots fell for it.

Thal

[jdperdrix]

Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky's symphony was reissued on a Melodyia CD, under E. Mravinsky. Is is still available? Anyway, it can be downloaded... (I just did...)
Famous hoaxes by the Casadesus brothers, one of them being entered in Köchel's catalogue. And also Winfried Michel, who wrote and published 18th century sonatas and concertos as a ficticious Giovanni Paolo Simonetti (not really intended as a hoax). The same Winfried Michel apparently fooled none other than H. C. Robbins Landon as well as Paul and Eva Badura-Skoda with six alledgedly rediscovered piano sonatas by Haydn...
A musical hoax can be fully achieved only by a talented composer. Maybe none of Gottfried Eschenbach's creators were talented enough to continue this hoax...

[Alan Howe]

Still no reply to my email to the Society. Rat growing to monstrous proportions and smell now overpowering.

[Mark Thomas]

Shouldn't the Wikipedia page be taken down, or at least have a prominent warning posted on it?

[Alan Howe]

I have just added four prominent hoax warnings to the Wikipedia page. Let's see whether these elict any response...

[eschiss1]

Alan- such warnings gather more attention if done with a template. I replaced it (well, the top one) so - "{{hoax|date=August 2014}}". Makes it a suspected hoax, entered into the category for investigation (by people on Wikipedia who make it their business to do such things- every template creates a category, which in turn attracts a group of such people hopefully with some expertise meaning to apply rules and deplete the category (properly, not arbitrarily), etc. etc.) as of August 2014.  There's too much on Wikipedia to get admins/others' notice in any other way, really...

[eschiss1]

Hrm. By the way of a by the by the way, apparently not only nothing in Worldcat, but not in KVK or the Musiksammlung-Katalog of the ÖNB, either.  Just checking to see if I missed anything (published or in libraries.) There are a few possibilities- e.g.: all in manuscript (or lost in the wars) and the one reference is cited with misspellings that makes it useless to us as a source, &c &c - others - but ... erm... doesn't look good, agreed.

[Alan Howe]

Thank you very much indeed for your help and expertise, Eric. Much appreciated.

[eschiss1]

Thank you.
I am now informed that the page is now listed @ Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (deletion discussion page); I see that there is  already a link from there to our discussion here in support of the case for deletion ("Addition: Have you seen this?" from the one commenting vote so far, a delete.) The fellow who listed it sends thanks your way (to your Wikipedia nickname, not your personal name).