Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Today on ER! Live from Leipzig!
This is a hoot, and not inappropriate for Halloween, it having tangentially to do with death.
What follows is an excerpt from my Oct. 17 post (minus gratuitous mention of boo-boos). Below that is a comment left on that post yesterday by the director of a museum in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany.
... then, to the famed Prairie Lights bookstore (in Iowa City, Iowa), where I overheard this interesting story:
A man behind a counter on the phone was telling a friend, incredulously, how in a new-book catalog he had read of this book about the demise of the funerary violin in post-Reformation Europe.
Turns out that the man, himself, is something of a violin afficionado and musicologist, and he had never heard of such. He said he thinks, "This is bullshit." So he makes some calls and, lo and behold, he gets quoted in the New York Times, then in The Guardian, and then the story goes on National Public Radio, and isn't it all just a hoot, but his discovery of an apparent hoax hasn't made him rich yet.
Took just a little Googling to find the story in The Guardian. The man I overheard apparently was Paul Ingram, quoted as the "bookseller in Iowa" in the story. Wow. Talk about ticklin' my erudite side.
Here's the book in question (literally in question): Rohan Kriwaczek, An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violins (New York: Overlook, 2006) -- apparently more "incomplete" than the author intended.
Ms. Vogt's comment:
Jim Harris at Prairie Lights Books recently sent me an advance copy of AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF THE ART OF FUNERARY VIOLIN and I must take issue with his colleague Paul Ingram’s assessment that the book is a hoax. My belief is that the Rohan Kriwaczek hoax is itself a hoax.
Let me explain. I am the director of MuseumZeitraim Leipzig and a former curator at The Wassmann Foundation, Washington, D.C. Research and scholarship at both institutions confirms that the Leipzig composer Hugo Wassmann, brother of the renowned artist Johann Dieter Wassmann, was an active member of the Lutheran wing of Leipzig’s Guild of Funerary Violinists in the 1890s. Hugo’s ultimate falling out with the Guild came in 1901 over his efforts to introduce the saxophone to funerary rights, a practice that would eventually take hold in the city of New Orleans with great success, although not among Lutherans. Hugo was a former captain in the Prussian army and regularly composed military marches inclusive of the saxophone.
Here in Leipzig, the funerary violin has a long and crucial history, most often associated with Heironymous Gratchenfleiss. Gratchenfleiss’s extensive archives were in the care of
Musikinstrumenten-Museum der Universität Leipzig, part of the Grassi Museum, but lost forever when the complex was gutted by fire in an Allied bombing raid on 3 December 1943.
The un-sourced (and poorly translated) letter Kriwaczek quotes referencing Gratchenfleiss, dated 14 September 1787 (pp 62-63), which he simply describes as “by an unknown man named Fredrik,” is in fact by the pen of Fredrik Wassmann, grandfather of Johann and Hugo, describing the funeral of their great-grandfather, a funeral Gratchenfleiss performed. An original copy of the letter is in the archives of The Wassmann Foundation. The liberties Kriwaczek takes with his facts would appear to be part of a larger narrative strategy to make it appear he has created a hoax, when he hasn’t. What a dull book it would have been otherwise.
Intriguing.
Tschüss,
Sophie Vogt
Director
MuseumZeitraum Leipzig
# posted by Sophie Vogt : 2:29 AM
Small world, etc., etc.!
--ER
P.S. Happy Halloween, y'all. My Choctaw language class meets tonight right when the little ghouls and goblins will be out, so I'll have to miss it this year. :-(
What follows is an excerpt from my Oct. 17 post (minus gratuitous mention of boo-boos). Below that is a comment left on that post yesterday by the director of a museum in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany.
... then, to the famed Prairie Lights bookstore (in Iowa City, Iowa), where I overheard this interesting story:
A man behind a counter on the phone was telling a friend, incredulously, how in a new-book catalog he had read of this book about the demise of the funerary violin in post-Reformation Europe.
Turns out that the man, himself, is something of a violin afficionado and musicologist, and he had never heard of such. He said he thinks, "This is bullshit." So he makes some calls and, lo and behold, he gets quoted in the New York Times, then in The Guardian, and then the story goes on National Public Radio, and isn't it all just a hoot, but his discovery of an apparent hoax hasn't made him rich yet.
Took just a little Googling to find the story in The Guardian. The man I overheard apparently was Paul Ingram, quoted as the "bookseller in Iowa" in the story. Wow. Talk about ticklin' my erudite side.
Here's the book in question (literally in question): Rohan Kriwaczek, An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violins (New York: Overlook, 2006) -- apparently more "incomplete" than the author intended.
Ms. Vogt's comment:
Jim Harris at Prairie Lights Books recently sent me an advance copy of AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF THE ART OF FUNERARY VIOLIN and I must take issue with his colleague Paul Ingram’s assessment that the book is a hoax. My belief is that the Rohan Kriwaczek hoax is itself a hoax.
Let me explain. I am the director of MuseumZeitraim Leipzig and a former curator at The Wassmann Foundation, Washington, D.C. Research and scholarship at both institutions confirms that the Leipzig composer Hugo Wassmann, brother of the renowned artist Johann Dieter Wassmann, was an active member of the Lutheran wing of Leipzig’s Guild of Funerary Violinists in the 1890s. Hugo’s ultimate falling out with the Guild came in 1901 over his efforts to introduce the saxophone to funerary rights, a practice that would eventually take hold in the city of New Orleans with great success, although not among Lutherans. Hugo was a former captain in the Prussian army and regularly composed military marches inclusive of the saxophone.
Here in Leipzig, the funerary violin has a long and crucial history, most often associated with Heironymous Gratchenfleiss. Gratchenfleiss’s extensive archives were in the care of
Musikinstrumenten-Museum der Universität Leipzig, part of the Grassi Museum, but lost forever when the complex was gutted by fire in an Allied bombing raid on 3 December 1943.
The un-sourced (and poorly translated) letter Kriwaczek quotes referencing Gratchenfleiss, dated 14 September 1787 (pp 62-63), which he simply describes as “by an unknown man named Fredrik,” is in fact by the pen of Fredrik Wassmann, grandfather of Johann and Hugo, describing the funeral of their great-grandfather, a funeral Gratchenfleiss performed. An original copy of the letter is in the archives of The Wassmann Foundation. The liberties Kriwaczek takes with his facts would appear to be part of a larger narrative strategy to make it appear he has created a hoax, when he hasn’t. What a dull book it would have been otherwise.
Intriguing.
Tschüss,
Sophie Vogt
Director
MuseumZeitraum Leipzig
# posted by Sophie Vogt : 2:29 AM
Small world, etc., etc.!
--ER
P.S. Happy Halloween, y'all. My Choctaw language class meets tonight right when the little ghouls and goblins will be out, so I'll have to miss it this year. :-(
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It did occur to me that her comment might've been a hoax about a hoax about a hoax. But how fun!
And hey, I think she's kinda hot. ;-) It all started with the green belly dancer on that old Star Trek ...
And hey, I think she's kinda hot. ;-) It all started with the green belly dancer on that old Star Trek ...
Just finished watching Orson Welles' "F For Fake", perhaps the greatest partially fake documentary about an at least somewhat faked biography of a guy who faked art masterpieces.
Seen it?
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Seen it?
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