Looks an interesting composer. He wrote nine symphonies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Eschenbach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Eschenbach)
http://eschenbach.awardspace.biz/index.html (http://eschenbach.awardspace.biz/index.html)
Does anyone know anything about him?
Here's the biography at the Eschenbach Society website:
Gottfried Eschenbach was born in 1842 to a middle-class family in Schleswig-Holstein, the son of Karl Eschenbach, an orchestral violist, and Margareta Eschenbach (neé Schröder). Although his father taught him to play the viola at an early age, he originally wanted Gottfried to become a lawyer. However, it soon became apparent that the boy was highly musically gifted, and Eschenbach's father eventually agreed to send him to Leipzig, where he studied composition, harmony, viola and conducting under Niels Gade and others. In 1863, he finished his studies, and his graduation piece and op. 1, a Symphony in C major, was played at a conservatory concert.
Eschenbach devoted the years after his graduation to his talents as a violist, touring Europe several times with Hungarian pianist Zoltán Kovács. However, he experienced an epiphany after hearing the Leipzig premiere of Brahms' German Requiem in 1869, and decided shortly thereafter to devote himself entirely to musical composition. For the rest of his life, he rarely held public recitals and restricted his talents as a conductor largely to his own works.
Eschenbach married soprano Katrine Jünger (1849-1919) in 1873. Together, they had three children. He died in 1920.
Although well-known for his slow and meticulous craftsmanship, Eschenbach lived long enough to amass nearly 200 opus numbers. His output is often divided into three periods. The first period, sometimes called the Romantic period, is usually said to begin with the publication of Eschenbach's first extant works in the early 1860s. While heavily influenced by the works of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, the first-period works foreshadow many of the hallmarks of the composer's mature style, especially in the area of rhythm (the finale of Eschenbach's First Symphony is one of the first pieces in the canon of Western concert music largely in 5/4 time). The most notable compositions from this period are the Symphony in C major, Eschenbach's opus 1, the first two string quartets and several smaller works for the viola premiered in recital by the composer.
Although the beginning of the second period can be traced to Eschenbach's visit to Bayreuth in 1872, its style only became apparent with the 1875 publication of the song cycle An Der Frühling. The cycle shows the clear influence of the neo-German school of Liszt and Wagner in its heavily chromatic harmony and use of leitmotifs. Most of Eschenbach's large-scale works, including six of his nine symphonies, were composed during the second period. Although harmonically adventurous, the second-period works are formally Classical, rarely breaking completely with the conventions of sonata form.
Unlike many other German composers of the older generation, the aging Eschenbach was intrigued by the innovations of composers such as Schoenberg, Debussy and Stravinsky. This becomes apparent in the works of the third period. Usually said to start around 1900, the third period synthesizes and improves on Eschenbach's earlier innovation while also introducing several new features inspired by the inventions of Germany's expressionists and France's impressionists, including complex non-functional harmonies (the Debussy-inspired Préludes), synthetic scale formations (the last two symphonies and the orchestral Symphonic Fantasy) and polytonality (the Concert Study for the Left Hand, his last major work, written for Paul Wittgenstein).
I read something like this - polytonality ca.1920? (... and when did Wittgenstein start commissioning? but then, I see that Josef Labor's 1919 trio and 1920 fantasy were dedicated to him, so... hrm... maybe, maybe... - that's not out of the question datewise. ) - and yet something in me wants to think (so to speak) "April 1 was 4 months ago", especially after that injoke with Rufinatscha's 3rd a few years ago...
It's no joke - at least not from me, Eric. I trust the whole thing's not a wind-up...
Intriguing, but the proof of the pudding is in the hearing. Which we aren't likely to do, I suspect. Was he published at all? There is nothing at IMSLP, and Worldcat returns a big fat zero. Eric?
I've sent the Society an email.
I'm getting an increasingly bad feeling about this. Every reference to Eschenbach leads precisely nowhere - including the stated publisher of The Music of Gottfried Eschenbach mentioned in the Wikipedia article: J. Derbyshire & Sons Ltd.
According to another small book, there does seem to have been a violist with this name:
http://www.bookrenter.com/german-violists-german-classical-violists-paul-hindemith-gottfried-eschenbach-tabea-zimmermann-sophia-reuter-julia-rebekka-adler-llc-1157842321-9781157842323 (http://www.bookrenter.com/german-violists-german-classical-violists-paul-hindemith-gottfried-eschenbach-tabea-zimmermann-sophia-reuter-julia-rebekka-adler-llc-1157842321-9781157842323)
However, as the publishers - Books LLC - appear to produce collections of Wikipedia articles, we're effectively going round in circles...
Interesting to note a couple things:
The person who created the article ONLY edited that and nothing else:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/GeorgLudvig
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/GeorgLudvig)
There's almost nothing of substance added since the article was created over four and a half years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gottfried_Eschenbach&diff=587973102&oldid=337034612 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gottfried_Eschenbach&diff=587973102&oldid=337034612)
And the society page doesn't actually contain anything but that small bio...
Not to mention, the society page's earliest entry in the Internet Archive is shortly after the Wikipedia page's creation:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100215000000*/http://www.eschenbach.cz.cc/
(https://web.archive.org/web/20100215000000*/http://www.eschenbach.cz.cc/)
Everything is pointing toward a hoax. Now WHY someone would create a hoax for a late romantic composer who seemed to have an average (though prolific) career. Perhaps the biggest kicker is the mention of having written something for Paul Wittgenstein. Considering HIS commissions and works written for him are pretty well known (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_associated_with_Paul_Wittgenstein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_associated_with_Paul_Wittgenstein)), one would think there would be some mention of this composer's work for him beyond a single Wikipedia page.
Have added my concern (that this is simply another Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup, in its way) to the talk page of the Wikipedia article.
Some more things to raise suspicion:
- a Google search for the name of the president of this society results in just four hits, three of them from the society's own site and one from a search engine that aparently just crawls the net. Margreta Eschenbach has just one hit, that of the society...
- why would a society devoted to a German composer not be available in that language as well as English (or Norwegian since it claims to be based in Norway)?
It's all very fishy. Was the Wikipedia entry first created on April 1st? Just to be flippant, my favourite spoof composer (apart from PDQ Bach, of course) was one of those created by contributors to the New Grove in 1980: Lasagne Verdi, known as 'Il Bolognese' (1813-1867). :D
These are precisely the concerns that I had yesterday. I smell a very large rat. Still, we'll see what the Society says - if they say anything at all, that is.
It looks like a hoax...
But why didn't its author modify Paul Wittgenstein's page accordingly!
Now why? A private joke maybe... Or more seriously, a way to experiment with how information spreads over the web see, for example the citation in http://mindering.blogspot.fr/2011/12/commissioning-sympony-in-c.html (http://mindering.blogspot.fr/2011/12/commissioning-sympony-in-c.html).
Which reminds that wikipedia information is not 100% reliable!
This reminds me of the practice of cartographers who used to add imaginary islands in the middle of remote oceans, outside the main routes, just to check if anyone actually illegally copied their work. I've heard that online dictionaries still contain invented entries, for the same purpose...
No news yet from the 'Society'. Rat getting bigger - and smellier...
So it seems. But why? What on earth is the point?
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.
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?
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.
'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.
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... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky)...
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?...
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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia/Upper_Peninsula_War) has a much more wide audience for it...
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
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...
Still no reply to my email to the Society. Rat growing to monstrous proportions and smell now overpowering.
Shouldn't the Wikipedia page be taken down, or at least have a prominent warning posted on it?
I have just added four prominent hoax warnings to the Wikipedia page. Let's see whether these elict any response...
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...
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.
Thank you very much indeed for your help and expertise, Eric. Much appreciated.
Thank you.
I am now informed that the page is now listed @ Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (deletion discussion page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Gottfried_Eschenbach)); 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).
Thanks to everyone involved in exposing this pointless piece of misinformation. Good to know that Wikipedia has the potential to act so quickly and responsibly.
http://www.comicvine.com/gottfried-von-eschenbach/4005-63853/ (http://www.comicvine.com/gottfried-von-eschenbach/4005-63853/)
Any relation?!
Thanks for the update, Eric.
... by way of Adrian Leverkühn, perhaps. Fiction + fiction = hoax-y alleged fact. Hrrrmmmmmmm.
Thank you!
The Wikipedia page has now been deleted. Discussion here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Gottfried_Eschenbach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Gottfried_Eschenbach)