Creative Fraud

[jakev2.0]

In light of the recent Hattogate scandal, I was wondering if there are any circumstances under which fraud can actually be perceived as creative or clever. An example which springs to mind is [if i remember correctly] Fritz Kreisler's "discovery" of compositions by Baroque composers that he had actually written himself.  He had convinced people that they were originals, which many believed - a testament to his own creative ingenuity.

If an accomplished pianist, as a joke on critics or as an attention stunt, recorded some Chopin a la Josef Hofmann and post-production engineered background noise in an attempt to pass it off as Hofmann's KNOWING it would be revealed as fake...would this be as dishonest as the Hatto issue? I don't think so.

[ahinton]

In light of the recent Hattogate scandal, I was wondering if there are any circumstances under which fraud can actually be perceived as creative or clever. An example which springs to mind is [if I remember correctly] Fritz Kreisler's "discovery" of compositions by Baroque composers that he had actually written himself.  He had convinced people that they were originals, which many believed - a testament to his own creative ingenuity.

If an accomplished pianist, as a joke on critics or as an attention stunt, recorded some Chopin à la Josef Hofmann and post-production engineered background noise in an attempt to pass it off as Hofmann's KNOWING it would be revealed as fake...would this be as dishonest as the Hatto issue? I don't think so.

One could go farther here and suggest that all of us composers are in some sense "fraudulent" in that we use the same sounds as everyone else has ever done but happen to stick them in a different order, textural and formal context, etc. The art of the creative transcriber has a lot to say here; let's face it - whose music ends up as being "original"? Between the long-standing traditions of transcriptive and paraphrastic work, variation construction, allusive and quotative writing and the rest and more, who is to say whose music is whose, whose performance/s are whose and whose recordings of whose performances of whose transcriptions of someone's arrangements of someone else's paraphrase/s on someone else's something or other is or are whose? Never mind the Hatto saga so far (except to the extent that one could - and someone soon will - add this into the frame if only to contribute yet more fuel to an already over-stoked fire) - just get a sufficiently large number of international intellectual property rights lawyers in on the act and our potential worries about fuel and water shortage, global warming and the rest will disappear into the ether to be replaced by their ever more expensive arguments which will absolutely never end as long as there remains someone somewhere to continue to finance their exposition, development, recapitulation and then round we all go again forever...

Go figure - and go get some money together (for you'll likely need it, whoever you are)...

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

we use the same sounds as everyone else has ever done but happen to stick them in a different order

That reminds me of the Eric Morcombe-Andre Previn Sketch.

Thal

[ahinton]

That reminds me of the Eric Morcombe-Andre Previn Sketch.

Thal

"Morecambe" and "Prévin", actually - but to whatever extent it may remind you of that (and I can remember it too), it is the stuff of which Busoni ruminated many years before this - and, let's face it, it is a fact and it is, perhaps, behind the reason why Elliott Carter, in an interview not so very long ago, bemoaned the lack of individuality - not, mark you, "originality" - in so many present-day composers.

Someone - a fellow composer, as it happens - just pointed out to me the similarity between the opening theme of my Concerto for 22 instruments and that of the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony; this had never occurred to me, despite the fact that the symphony concerned had burned itself into my psyche a while before I began to plan this work years ago. Does it matter? No, not really. Would anyone notice? Well, the composer concerned was the first to do so, so maybe the risk is low. Does any of the piece actually sound remotely like Tchaikovsky? No! "Same notes"? - well, not quite - and the context is very dissimilar - but the apparent likeness of phrase shape is momentarily there...

Best,

Alistair

[danny elfboy]

One could go farther here and suggest that all of us composers are in some sense "fraudulent" in that we use the same sounds as everyone else has ever done but happen to stick them in a different order, textural and formal context, etc. The art of the creative transcriber has a lot to say here; lt's face it -whose music ends up as being "original"?

That's the point and why I've claimed that the modernism (as an artistic movement influecing music, acting, sculpture, paiting, poetry, architecture and cuisine) has the most naive and banal view on what originality is all about.

We all "absorb" the same musical information in our life, more or less
But we all "process" those absorbed information in unique ways which describe our unique sensitivity, mindset, thoughts ad way of dreaming and conveying emotions
We're all already unique and original because that the human condition. Each human being is irrepeatable like his/her fingerprints. And our artistic fingerprint is the unique and automatically original processing of common and universal artistic information
The mean has little importance. Art is not about the means but about the ends/goals
Means are nothing but neutral tools. Between the mean and the goal there's a long unique and original processing work
I'm amazed how original even 3 years old can be in the way they create music
You ask them to play something either instinctively or that they have invented
Then you ask them to play another inventions of theirs.
And you can listen in the second the "fingeprint" of the first one, their unique mark
That's what I find very beautiful
"originality" has nothing to do with not being derivative (impossible) breaking with the past (a sort of individual amnesia) or looking for new musical devices, languages and means
Originality is not in the language or the mean originality is in the content ... no matter the language it is. Human can't help but being original (as long as they're honest)
Too bad many people can't see this

[Mozartian]

Another good example is "Albinoni's" Adagio:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomaso_Albinoni