The history of classical music is rife with fraudsters and tricksters. Inevitably, when the value and acclaim of a piece can easily be bolstered by association with a name that everyone recognizes, you will get stories of dusty attics and mysterious antiques dealers leading to the discovery of something new and “important” in the musical world. Today at The Classical Station, we’re looking through some examples of exactly that phenomenon, diving into the history of classical music to find some of the craftiest and most ingenious frauds ever perpetrated on the music-going public and seeing how good you, our listeners, would’ve been at spotting the forgeries.

1. The Curious Case of Fritz Kreisler

A world-famous violinist in his own right, Fritz Kreisler toured the world drawing crowds with his virtuosity and unique style. In addition to his skill as a performer, Kreisler showed a unique facility for uncovering old manuscripts. Over the course of his travels around the world, he uncovered lost pieces by Gaetano Pugnani, Giuseppe Tartini, and Antonio Vivaldi, among many others. The musical world greeted these discoveries with enthusiasm, glad to hear new pieces by such deeply respected names, much more so when they were played by one with the skill and feeling of Kreisler.

You will, of course, have anticipated the punchline. Kreisler never, in his entire career, discovered a lost manuscript and had been composing all the pieces he “discovered” himself. According to contemporary reporting, no force was necessary to compel this admission; quite the contrary, Kreisler freely admitted the deceit and, when questioned as to his motive, simply pointed out that the critical world had accepted them as authentic and that “…the name changes, the value remains.”

As a test of your ear, and Kreisler’s mastery, we present two pieces below: one by Vivaldi and one by Kreisler “in the style of Vivaldi.” Could you have spotted the different provenance?

2. Leopoldo Fanciolini’s Workshop of Horrors

Forgeries in the musical world extend beyond misattribution of pieces. If a fraudster really wanted to make money during the classical and romantic periods, a path often lay in selling forged or modified reproductions of rare musical instruments. This was exactly Leopoldo Fanciolini‘s insight, and he made such a business of this practice that, according to modern historians, he did immeasurable harm to the work of identifying the lineage of classical instruments. Leopoldo had two chief cons: the first lay in taking instruments and affixing additional elements to them to increase their rarity, e.g., adding an additional keyboard (or “manual”) to a harpsichord. The second was in adding inscriptions or aesthetic elements to cheap instruments to pass them off as having rarified origins.

He was horrifyingly successful in both these ventures and today whole museum exhibits are dedicated to the oddities that his workshop produced to pawn off on hobbyists and collectors.

Leopoldo’s financial success should not suggest that he was a mastermind per se, as he often created instruments that were so obviously wrong that any musician would identify them as forgeries, e.g., keyboards with groups of three sharps rather than the alternating two and three. His advantage lay in his skill at choosing his buyers, often foregoing lucrative collectors if he knew them to be well-informed. In fact, Leopoldo’s eventual discovery and conviction came from just such a run-in with an informed buyer. Leopoldo had sold instruments in bulk to a Count Passerini, who eventually attempted to sell one of the more egregious forgeries on to an exacting and intelligent German collector by the name of Wilhelm Heyer. When Heyer discovered the forgery, he informed Passerini, who, in turn, took Leopoldo to court and exposed his deceit to the broader collecting world.

3. Mykola Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky

The Soviet Union, among its many faults, was deeply insecure concerning its youth and lack of ideological history. This insecurity was evinced by a rabid hunger for and appreciation of any authors, composers, or performers who could be historically tied to the Russian Empire—a kind of nationalist fervor to ground the fledgling USSR in a creative lineage. This resulted in many non-ethnic-Russian composers being passed over for their Russian counterparts. It was in reaction to this tendency that Mikhail Goldstein perpetrated the following hoax: Goldstein wrote a symphony, Symphony No. 21, and attributed it to a Mykola Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky. After hiding the work in the archives of the Odessa Conservatory, Goldstein then pretended to “discover” it. Symphony No. 21 and its fictitious author made a splash in Soviet musical circles where they were held up as proof of Russian compositional excellence extending back into the 1700s.

Once the piece entered wider circulation and had been performed by several prominent Soviet symphonies, Goldstein confessed his authorship, attempting thereby to prove that all ethnicities (Goldstein was Jewish) were capable of producing “great Russian music.” The authorities were furious at being made to look foolish, and Goldstein was made a pariah in Soviet musical society, leading to his emigration to Germany some years later.

Interestingly, long after the hoax had been discovered, Ukrainian conservatories continued to teach Symphony No. 21 and Mykola Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky, deciding that Goldstein’s claims of authorship were at best uncertain. Some, enamored of the myth of Symphony No. 21, even went so far as to say that the symphony was written by neither Ovsianiko nor Goldstein but by a third, as yet unknown, Russian composer.

 

When trying to define the “greatness” of any art, one is ultimately forced to that most reliable of metrics: durability. That classical works have survived for many hundreds of years is, fundamentally, a testament to their quality. Unfortunately, that means that to be a fan of great classical music is to spend one’s time in the deep past where provenance is always uncertain. There will always be those willing to abuse that uncertainty in the name of fame, profit, or simple mischievousness. We hope you’ve enjoyed our roundup of a few of the great musical hoaxers that have been perpetrated on us, the listening public, and hope they inspire you to look into the history of some of the pieces you love best. You may be surprised by what you find.

-Matthew Young

 

Many of the composers referenced above, including Antonio Vivaldi, Gaetano Pugnani, and Mikhail Goldstein, are featured this winter on TheClassicalStation.org. Please take a look at our Winter 2024-25 Highlights to see when to tune in, or request a piece directly via one of our Request Programs!