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The Mozart Forgeries
"Mozart's music, forged manuscripts, and a murder! Could any music aficionado who enjoys a unique, fascinating, and well-told tale ask for more?" - Conductor George Cleve, Music Director, San Francisco's Midsummer Mozart Music Festival. The idea of creating a counterfeit of a genuine Mozart manuscript is outrageous, but to attempt the forging of "two" such compositions for the purpose of a technical/musical swindle is an order of magnitude more aggressive. Yet that is exactly what Forger, a counterfeiting genius, and Librarian, an eighteenth century document specialist, decide to do, their motivation being a $20,000,000 price tag. They are faced with incredible impediments not the least of which is the authentication of both documents by some of the world's leading Mozart scholars. From any perspective, the effort appears preposterous.
Their choice of compositions are the lost manuscripts of Mozart's clarinet concerto and his quintet for clarinet and strings. Each stage of the effort is, by itself, an awesome undertaking, what with handwriting, paper, ink, watermarks, pens, and a great deal of imprecise history surrounding both works-- the originals of which disappeared around 1800. Together, they combine to create a task so technically difficult that the probability of success is only slightly less than winning the Irish sweepstakes without buying a ticket.
Their choice of compositions are the lost manuscripts of Mozart's clarinet concerto and his quintet for clarinet and strings. Each stage of the effort is, by itself, an awesome undertaking, what with handwriting, paper, ink, watermarks, pens, and a great deal of imprecise history surrounding both works-- the originals of which disappeared around 1800. Together, they combine to create a task so technically difficult that the probability of success is only slightly less than winning the Irish sweepstakes without buying a ticket.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 21, 2009
subtitle of The Mozart Forgeries is A Caper Novel for the Serious Mozart Aficionado, and that is an accurate description, though the book is a good deal more than that. For instance while I consider myself a music aficionado, I am not a fan of Mozart, but that didn't affect my enjoyment of this book. I am also interested in books and paper and how they are made, and I am an amateur calligrapher--all have relevance to The Mozart Forgeries. But what matters most is that I also love a good read, and this book measures up on all counts.
There are two main characters, never named (I will come back to that ): Librarian and Forger. Friends since childhood, they grow up with, or acquire, a variety of special skills and abilities: a photographic memory for texts, the ability to play piano, a career dealing with rare manuscripts, and not least among others, a willingness to break laws in order to make money. Both are exceedingly cunning, and Librarian, the leader, in particular has enough caution and planning skills to make a top-drawer secret agent. In a nutshell, the basic premise is this: several popular works of Mozart (known to anyone who loves classical music, even me), are known to exist only from copies of missing originals. Librarian and Forger decide to forge them and to auction them off for millions of dollars. The novel is a detailed account of how they do this, and I do mean detailed--the process takes up the majority of the pages. The plot twists and suspense come towards the end, but they do come. The story is meticulously plot-driven rather than character driven: the reader will learn an astonishing amount about music, how paper and ink are made, the process of music composition, and most informative to me, the business of forgery. If the skills involved were not so specialized, the text could almost be used as a how-to guide for enriching oneself with a quill pen.
The volume is handsome and the story is splendidly written. You will not find a more cleanly edited book anywhere. For my money, though, the style was a tad cool. For example, I see no reason why the two protagonists couldn't have been called Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. In an aside early on the author explains that since the characters desire anonymity he will call them only Forger and Librarian. Whatever that added to the flavor of the story created awkwardness through the first two thirds of the book, for me at least. (I finally did get used to it.) Furthermore, though the two men do have vestigial personalities, they tend to speak as if they are university lecturers, in polished, complex sentences. Ultimately, however, their personalities are not the point. The caper is the story. In a way, it's the opposite of all those "Oceans" movies, where the caper was almost irrelevant and the characters and their interactions and in-jokes were what mattered. This is a decidedly scholarly caper story.
If you are the type of reader who enjoys florid, breathless, gauzily plotted crisis-a-minute action stories like The Da Vinci Code, The Mozart Forgeries is not for you. If you enjoy a tightly plotted, rigorously detailed, and even informative, caper story, I don't know how you could do better.
There are two main characters, never named (I will come back to that ): Librarian and Forger. Friends since childhood, they grow up with, or acquire, a variety of special skills and abilities: a photographic memory for texts, the ability to play piano, a career dealing with rare manuscripts, and not least among others, a willingness to break laws in order to make money. Both are exceedingly cunning, and Librarian, the leader, in particular has enough caution and planning skills to make a top-drawer secret agent. In a nutshell, the basic premise is this: several popular works of Mozart (known to anyone who loves classical music, even me), are known to exist only from copies of missing originals. Librarian and Forger decide to forge them and to auction them off for millions of dollars. The novel is a detailed account of how they do this, and I do mean detailed--the process takes up the majority of the pages. The plot twists and suspense come towards the end, but they do come. The story is meticulously plot-driven rather than character driven: the reader will learn an astonishing amount about music, how paper and ink are made, the process of music composition, and most informative to me, the business of forgery. If the skills involved were not so specialized, the text could almost be used as a how-to guide for enriching oneself with a quill pen.
The volume is handsome and the story is splendidly written. You will not find a more cleanly edited book anywhere. For my money, though, the style was a tad cool. For example, I see no reason why the two protagonists couldn't have been called Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. In an aside early on the author explains that since the characters desire anonymity he will call them only Forger and Librarian. Whatever that added to the flavor of the story created awkwardness through the first two thirds of the book, for me at least. (I finally did get used to it.) Furthermore, though the two men do have vestigial personalities, they tend to speak as if they are university lecturers, in polished, complex sentences. Ultimately, however, their personalities are not the point. The caper is the story. In a way, it's the opposite of all those "Oceans" movies, where the caper was almost irrelevant and the characters and their interactions and in-jokes were what mattered. This is a decidedly scholarly caper story.
If you are the type of reader who enjoys florid, breathless, gauzily plotted crisis-a-minute action stories like The Da Vinci Code, The Mozart Forgeries is not for you. If you enjoy a tightly plotted, rigorously detailed, and even informative, caper story, I don't know how you could do better.
February 5, 2009
A very interesting plot idea, full of all kinds of supporting information. As a textbook, it reads quite well. As a novel...well, the book is turgid and pedantic in style, with no character development (the main characters don't even have names...!) and no style. I wish Leeson had hired a real writer to bring this idea to life. It could have been a really good book.
February 27, 2015
What a fun diversion for any music lover. Very technical information about paper and ink and the writing of music paired with an interesting story of creating forged masterpieces. Very entertaining read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews