Hans Franke (1882-1971)

[Alan Howe]

I assume everyone knows that this website is still in existence: https://hans-franke.de/

[terry martyn]

Yes.

And his wikipedia entry has all references to plagiarisms deleted

[terry martyn]

References to deletions (Wikipedia) and retentions ( the Franke website) have led me back to the destruction of the manuscript for the Fifth.

I thought that Signum was fairly well-advanced in the preparation for the CD containing this work. The internet circa 2006-2008 was no longer in its infancy. Are we expected to believe that no-one involved in that CD's preparation failed to copy the manuscript?

[eschiss1]

I have mentioned things on the -discussion- page of the Wikipedia-de page (and added a hopefully not inappropriate comment just now) but someone needs to do an overhaul, with sources (by Wikipedia-de standards of citation, not Wikipedia-en, and I don't know what the former are), of their Hans Franke page itself, yes...

[Ilja]

References to deletions (Wikipedia) and retentions ( the Franke wrbsite) have led me back to the destruction of the manuscript for the Fifth.

I thought that Signum was fairly well-advanced in the preparation for the CD containing this work. The internet circa 2006-2008 was no longer in its infancy. Are we expected to believe that no-one involved in that CD's preparation failed to copy the manuscript?

I don't think that is such a stretch. From what I gathered it was the principal violinist of the orchestra who identified the movement as being Rheinberger's overture (which he'd played as a member of the Brandenburg State Orchestra of Frankfurt, who had recorded that work with Nikolaus Athinäos) during the preparation of the recording. Franke's other symphonies consist of a full score plus a full set of parts; it would be worthwhile to see whether the parts might have survived this episode, but the Dresden archive certainly does not contain them, so I'm not optimistic.

By the way, I don't see what photo-copying has to do with the state of the internet.

[terry martyn]

My reference to the state of the internet at the time that this CD was being prepared was to underline the quantum leap in exchange of information that it has brought to the world.

Maybe someone at (or formerly at) Signum has the missing evidence.

[Ilja]

By the way, Felix Lambsdorff has been so kind to create an overview on Google Sheets that shows the current state of Franke identifications. You can find it here. Of course, we're grateful for further identifications of suggestions of possible sources.

[Ilja]

My reference to the state of the internet at the time that this CD was being prepared was to underline the quantum leap in exchange of information that it has brought to the world.
Maybe someone at (or formerly at) Signum has the missing evidence.

It was out of its infancy but still very restricted in what it offered comparative to today. Wikipedia had just gotten off the ground, IMSLP had only just been founded in 2006, and streaming services mostly didn't exist yet. Moreover, library catalogues were not nearly as integrated as they are today, and initiatives such as the online register of Leipzig Conservatory students (which allowed us to eliminate Franke as a student at Leipzig) didn't exist yet either.

And even if the resources were available, access to them and even the state of general internet literacy was a different matter. I'm willing to give the parties involved in that recording the benefit of the doubt, and from the discussions I had it sounds as though everyone was genuinely bewildered. What happened consequently is, perhaps, a different matter.

To avoid misunderstanding: Signum produced the CD with Franke chamber music [Not the Rheinberger overture, as I wrote earlier]. I know nothing about a possible connection to the cancelled Franke recording. But even if they were, my guess would be that, like in the case of the Rheinberger CD, they mainly took care of sound engineering, production and distribution/marketing. Musical matters would have been handled by the orchestra, Golo Berg and possibly the Franke Foundation.

[eschiss1]

Edition49 no longer offers rent-material for the 5th symphony, whatever Worldcat may claim, (though they do offer about a dozen items of his), so it's hard to tell whether the items they did offer were copies of the ms parts, or typesets, or what...

[eschiss1]

Re library catalogues: true, though Worldcat didn't come about all at once either (I remember RLIN very well! )

[Ilja]

Yes.

And his wikipedia entry has all references to plagiarisms deleted

They were never entered; I added a small summary about the case to the English Wikipedia entry about Kauffmann; the last meaningful addition to Franke's German wikipedia entry (there is no English one) was made in 2020, well before the case blew up.

But it's perhaps a good reminder that adding a relevant text wouldn't hurt; at this moment this forum is (to my knowledge) the only place where this fraud has been documented and discussed. The current entry is more or less a copy from the Schaller catalogue, so that would mean almost an entire re-write since we now know much of his supposed biography is bogus. Perhaps a better way would be to create a new English wiki entry?

[eschiss1]

The most that was added to the German Wikipedia entry was some comments to the talk/comment section, by me, and those are still there.

[terry martyn]

Eric had asked for permission to amend the wikipedia.de entry ,much earlier in the thread.  But,you are right,Ilya. I was thinking of the Kauffmann article in wikipedia.en. Apologies for the confusion.

But it has underlined the fact that Franke still  has most of the field to himself when it comes to bibliographical matters and that cannot be allowed to continue.  In scouring the internet, I did come across a thread on Reddit,but I think it was placed there by Alan. There is no comment,critical or otherwise,that I have yet been able to find on Amazon,which lists the CD of his "Sixth" as unavailable. I have not checked on  twitter/x,or other social media outlets.

Ilya,you were correct about the 1990's recording of the Taming of the Shrew Overture by Signum. It's still available from discogs.

And,to avoid further confusion about the destroyed manuscript ,Mark mentioned the "Fourth" as relating to the selfsame Rheinberger overture,in post 271 above,but he meant to type the "Fifth".

[Ilja]

Never mind, Terry, it's so easy to get confused in this story; I have trouble keeping track of things myself as well.

[terry martyn]

Bom Cabedal has (12th March) uploaded the Franke "Sixth" on to his YouTube Channel, and shifted the two middle movements back to their original positions. He publicises the symphony as that of Kauffmann,dating from 1886,and fully acknowledges the plagiarism of Franke.