Mozart a fraud?

[robnewman]

Reading through these posts has been educational.  The funny thing is that if there were really some great conspiracy and the true authorship of Mozart's music was being suppressed, then such shenanigans as are being played out in this thread would be the result.  If what Newman claims is actually true, then he would be up against a almost insurmountable force to strike down his thesis and Newman can claim that any of his dissenters are a part of this great conspiracy.

And yet, why is Mr. Newman wasting his time of music forums?  Isn't there a great conspiracy to uncover?  Just supposing that all of this is true, what does it matter if such-and-such a forum agrees with you?  In the grand scheme of music history, has anything ever been established on the internet?  Are you here to settle this great mystery?

And what is this?  You are supposed to have a book done by the end of the summer, and you don't have a chapter or section or paragraph on the Clarinet Concerto?  You have to go away and write an article?  Lets hope this is a minor gap in your book, because if it isn't, then good luck.

Let me also suggest you take the comments on this thread seriously, because it is just the internet, it is no doubt a foreshadowing of the ridicule you will receive for anyone professionally associated with the historical Mozart.  If you can't answer the questions here, then I hate to see what questions are going to be thrown at you once your book unleashed to the world.  

I must give you credit for your post, much of which makes perfect sense. But you might like to take on board some information which you seem to have forgotten. The misattribution to Mozart is not imaginary but a plain fact of Mozart studies, and has been for almost 200 years. Secondly, the making of composers with iconic status is sure to result in the suppression and obsuring of other talented composers, as we see over and over again in cases such as Vanhal, Myslivececk, Luchesi, Cartellieri and literally dozens of others. And, instead of saying that members here are part of a conspiracy I actually think the opposite. A conspiracy is carried out secretly and not in public, and we all here are wanting to throw light on these issues, not hide them. Thirdly, I'm not 'wasting time' on this or any other forum. I'm acting responsibly, conscientiously, in sharing my findings with those of others. And have been for years. At some expense, I might add. None of which brings me profit and much of which consists of saying things which, amazingly, are unknown though they are basic and verifiable facts that anyone can find in a music dictionary. The industry surrounding Mozart is so huge, so alluring, that we really are discussing an industry. One which tends to make us ignorantly accept things we would never accept by any fair standard of criticism.

As regards not having to hand an article on the Clarinet Quintet and also the Clarinet Concerto, you can see for yourself that these were NOT chosen by me, but were selected by a poster to the forum, right here, less than 3 hours ago. Can't do better than that, can I ?

As far as ridicule is concerned, I've done my homework. So let's see whose attitude is ridiculous and whose is not. But thanks for reminding us that any deviation from the Mozart industry is sure to be ridiculed. It's a fact I'm reminded of all the time.

Best wishes

RN

[robnewman]

Regards Haydn, yes I know I've heard it all before.  

Regards Cartellieri, you certainly pull out of the bag of the long-since forgotten some weird and wonderful characters.  I must admit that I thought you were going to come up with Carl Stamitz who apparently misplaced a few of his clarinet works.  I assume he lost these works somewhere, right?  Tut tut, these silly people should take better car of their property, shouldn't they? If not, and the works were kindly produced to order for Mozart, presumably you will provide a motive and proof of purchase and all that?  Yes, of course you will.  

Anyway I hope we get the full story from you  in one instalment tomorrow, and not spread out over 3 like the last time you attempted such a story.

Yes, and let's hope you can finally answer us about early 'Mozart' in one request too ! Not spread out and obscured in this mammoth post. But believe me I won't hold my breath !

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Just listened and I agree it is very good.  But then again so is Mozart...

Listened to it, too - perfectly agreeable music (and by a very young composer at that). But do you have the opening movement? There ought to be more meat there...

[robnewman]

Just listened and I agree it is very good.  But then again so is Mozart...

Yes indeed !

[robnewman]

Listened to it, too - perfectly agreeable music (and by a very young composer at that). But do you have the opening movement? There ought to be more meat there...

I will post the Second Movement. The Adagio. This is truly beautiful. Will take a few minutes.

Regards

[Holly]

Yes, and let's hope you can finally answer us about early 'Mozart' in one request too ! Not spread out and obscured in this mammoth post. But believe me I won't hold my breath !

What mammoth post?   I know that your imagination is well-oiled and somewhat out of control at times but no way was my last post a mammoth one.  Have you been drinking again?  I thought you were under orders not to overdo it.   At any rate, you ought to appreciate that, just as you have so generously given up much of  your free time to entertain us, so we're providing you with a free service checking out your various theories before you go public in your forthcoming book.  We wouldn't you to go off half-cock and look stupid, at least I wouldn't.  By the way, is your book going to be confined to Mozart and Haydn, or will it include chapters on your view about the alleged CIA conspiracy behind 9/11, the alleged faked moonwalks back in the 60's, and all that kind of stuff too?

Hasta la vista.  

[robnewman]

I will post the Second Movement. The Adagio. This is truly beautiful. Will take a few minutes.

Regards

No, it can't be done so easily. So I must leave it at that. Sorry. Can't post the Adagio to this concerto. There are various wonderful chamber works by Cartellieri, several concertos, even a great C Minor Symphony, several oratorios, etc. Of the concertos there is one for flute (whose 3rd movement you've heard) and no less than 3 for clarinet, including one for 2 clarinets. With around 10 clarinet quartets and various sextets. The earliest concerto, I believe, is the very piece today attributed to Mozart. So that, in total there seem to have been 4 such concertos. But anyway, I will post on this tomorrrow.

R

[robnewman]

What mammoth post?   I know that your imagination is well-oiled and somewhat out of control at times but no way was my last post a mammoth one.  Have you been drinking again?  I thought you were under orders not to overdo it.   At any rate, you ought to appreciate that, just as you have so generously given up much of  your free time to entertain us, so we're providing you with a free service checking out your various theories before you go public in your forthcoming book.  We wouldn't you to go off half-cock and look stupid, at least I wouldn't.  By the way, is your book going to be confined to Mozart and Haydn, or will it include chapters on your view about the alleged CIA conspiracy behind 9/11, the alleged faked moonwalks back in the 60's, and all that kind of stuff too?

Hasta la vista.  

Sorry to disappoint you but no, my book does not deal with the conspiracy of 9/11 (not even the official one). And no, your post has avoided being mammoth in size. But the thread would be ten times longer if we were relying on finally getting your answer to the question on early Mozart. Don't worry. Par for the course in Hollywood.

Regards

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

No, it can't be done so easily. So I must leave it at that. Sorry. Can't post the Adagio to this concerto.

Pity. It would have put more flesh on Cartellieri.

[snyprrr]

An answer to the JC Bach attr. in the early Mozart p.c. would be nice.

[Catison]

As regards not having to hand an article on the Clarinet Quintet and also the Clarinet Concerto, you can see for yourself that these were NOT chosen by me, but were selected by a poster to the forum, right here, less than 3 hours ago. Can't do better than that, can I ?

I think you've miss my point.  As a researcher who is himself about to be published, I know it is important not only to write in order to put forth an argument, but also to anticipate any counterargument and fill all possible holes one may find, warranted or not.  This is part of being a persuasive author.  However, surely you understand that the great clarinet works, written during Mozart's final years, are an important part of his legacy.  Indeed, I know a few people for whom these works are his legacy.  If you are going to try to discredit Mozart, why do you have such a glaring hole in your book?  Who cares if some of Mozart's early works, even if the majority, are wrongly attributed?  Mozart's legacy, it is true, is certainly tied up in his being a prodigy, but without works like the Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet, he would be a forgotten footnote of a prodigy.  If you are going to strike at the myth of Mozart, shouldn't these works be the primary target?  This is why I am asking, why such a glaring omission?

[karlhenning]

I think it is pointless to really argue with Newman. He is using a typical propagandist technique. Pretend to have an open discussion but in reality ignore all dissenting opinions and keep repeating the same exact points over and over until they become branded into the minds of others. It's the famous "big lie" concept. Essentially, it's like talking to a bot.

Quoted for truth.

[karlhenning]

OK I'm a complete charlatan.

Quoted for truth.

[Brian]

[DavidRoss]

I found a website listing what the author claims are the world's wackiest conspiracy theories:

    * The driver shot JFK. (the late William Cooper)
    * The Beatles were designed and sent to the U.S. by the British Psychological Warfare Division, to undermine the morals of American teenagers. (Lyndon LaRouche)
    * Christ's Crucifixion was staged. (Hugh Schonfield) Christ eloped with Mary Magdalene, and one or both of them fled to France to raise their family. (Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln)
    * Christ and his disciples were a magic-mushroom cult. (Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John Allegro)
    * HIV/AIDS was created in a lab.
    * HIV does not cause AIDS.
    * Man never landed on the moon. It's not even possible. But there is an alien base there. (see Wikipedia; for an artful and very funny parody of how these theories can be patched together from unrelated material, watch the mockumentary Dark Side of the Moon)
    * The Zapruder film is entirely fake, even though it contradicts the findings of the Warren Commission. (Jim Fetzer)
    * Stephen King killed John Lennon. (Steve Lightfoot)
    * WWII was staged. It never really happened. The Illuminati employed elaborate special effects, stage magic, and phony journalism to scare the world into pacifism. (Donald Holmes)
    * Queen Elizabeth I was a man. The real Elizabeth died as a child.
    * George H.W. Bush was really George Scherff Sr., a Nazi sent to destroy America as a teenager and adopted by Prescott Bush (Scherff was also an assistant to Nikola Tesla, and stole all Tesla's inventions after he was murdered by Otto Skorzeny and Reinhard Gehlen). Hitler was still alive in Montana in 1997, and Josef Mengele is keeping himself alive and youthful with a regimen of hormones and cannibalism. Oh, and Curious George was inspired by a young George Scherff Jr.; that's probably why Alan J. Shalleck was murdered by two men he met through a gay sex network one day before the movie premiered. (this information comes from a man named Eric Berman, who claims he heard it straight from his girlfriend's dad, Otto Skorzeny, in Florida during the late '90s. Skorzeny died in Madrid in 1975.)
    * One promoter of the Scherff-Bush story adds that Josef Mengele was the real Zodiac, the Boston Strangler(s), and the anthrax letter mailer. (http://www.thebushconnection.com/)
    * The 1939 War of the Worlds radio broadcoast was a psychological warfare study funded by C.D. Jackson on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, designed to find out how Americans would react to an enemy invasion. Funny... in a trailer for his mockumentary F is for Fake, Orson Welles did say the WoW broadcast had "secret sponsors". (Daniel Hopsicker)
    * A really old one that just won't die: Jews drink the blood and eat the flesh of Gentile children during Passover. Some Catholics still revere the relics of Medieval child saints supposedly slaughtered and devoured by Jews.
    * The doomed Franklin Expedition was sent to the Arctic not only to find the Northwest Passage, but to secretly investigate UFO sightings that had been reported since the 1700s. The men were captured, experimented upon, and eaten by giant aliens. (Jeffrey Blair Latta)
    * Hitler and some associates escaped to the Arctic in a submarine, to live with super-advanced aliens who reside within the hollow earth. (This story originated with Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel The Coming Race, was treated as fact by the pre-Nazi Vril Society, was bolstered by the forged "secret diary" of Admiral Byrd, and was adopted by the likes of Ernst Zundel)
    * Denver International Airport was built expressly to conceal a vast underground complex, headquarters of the New World Order elite. Clues are hidden in the airport's peace-themed mural.
    * Scientology: Billions of years ago the intergalactic overlord Xenu used a film to brainwash our souls ("Thetans") into believing in the world's major religions, which he invented.
    * Gnosticism: The entire material world is an evil trap created by the imposter God of the Bible.
    * Nation of Islam: White people were created in a lab.
    * Jesuits sank the Titanic to kill some of the world's richest, most powerful Jews.
    * The early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never occurred. Everything that supposedly happened during those years was either a misunderstanding, an event from a different era, or an outright lie - Charlemagne, for instance, is a fictional figure. And we are actually living in the 1700s. (Herbert Illig's phantom time hypothesis)
    * Shortly before he left office, Bill Clinton secretly signed into law the National Economic Security and Reformation Act (NESARA). This act would have completely restructured the U.S. government by - among other things - forgiving all personal credit card debt and mortgages, abolishing the IRS, restoring constitutional law, and somehow ensuring world peace - but the Supreme Court placed a gag order on it, and threatened death to any government official who breathed word of its existence. NESARA activists around the world are agitating to get the act announced and instituted.
    * Aspartame, flouride, genetically modified foods, and vaccines are used specifically to keep us sick and open to suggestion, and/or as part of a secret depopulation plan designed by the world's elite.
    * Atlanta child murder theories: Victims were used for CDC research into Interferon; KKK Klansmen posed as cops to wipe out young black men (Dick Gregory); white scientists needed the boys' foreskins to produce a cure for cancer and/or a youth serum. (Dick Gregory again)
    * Jeffrey Dahmer was an actor hired by the Ambrosia Chocolate company to pose as a cannibal killer so no one would object to the factory being torn down and another one built with illegal tax breaks (posted by "manoftruth" on online forums devoted to Rush and Bon Jovi, along with rants on Wicca and Jews; his name might be Mark Zahn, but who knows?).
    * The composer Mozart was a fake, planted by the Paris Masonic Lodge in an effort to undermine confidence in Emperor Joseph II's musical acumen and thus destabilize the regime, making it vulnerable to French conquest; the compositions attributed to him were actually written by several obscure composers who were paid in lethal doses of pure cocaine smuggled in by organ grinders' monkeys.  The plot was masterminded by a defrocked priest who claimed to have written several opera librettos before becoming a grocer in New York.  (Newman!)

[greg]

Hi, Rob Newman.
My name is Greg.
Oh, a popsicle?
No, thank you, I'm not allowed to talk to strangers.
Okay, bye.

[Brian]

Hi, Rob Newman.
My name is Greg.
Oh, a popsicle?
No, thank you, I'm not allowed to talk to strangers.
Okay, bye.

More like:
Hi, Rob Newman.
My name is Greg.
Oh, my popsicle is a hoax?
No, thank you, I'm not allowed to talk to strangers.
Okay, bye.

[71 dB]

The making of composers with iconic status is sure to result in the suppression and obsuring of other talented composers, as we see over and over again in cases such as Vanhal, Myslivececk, Luchesi, Cartellieri and literally dozens of others.

I do agree with this statement myself. I think composers like Vanhal, Dittersdorf and Hofmann weren't that many steps behind Haydn and Mozart in quality. People may say Haydn's music is more inventive than Vanhal's but personally I find Vanhal's symphonies more energetic. Some random composers shoudn't be chosen as the template for good music. There are many ways to achieve greatness.

I'm not familiar with Cartellieri. Thank you for bringing his name up! These forgotten masters deserve to be re-discovered.  

That said, I still believe Haydn and Mozart wrote their own music. You do much better job at promoting obscure composers than discrediting Mozart if I may say so.

[Que]

You do much better job at promoting obscure composers than discrediting Mozart if I may say so.

Ha!! Now there is a valuable suggestion.

Q

[knight66]

Yes, I agree with 71dB there too. There is a saying along the lines of....the best is enemy of the good. I think that may well apply to composers who are certainly worth listening out for, but who have been unfortunately overlooked due to the hegemony of the musical giants.

As well as specific works, perhaps folk could suggest specific CDs we could try.

Mike