The Mozart Forgeries: A Caper Novel for the Serious Mozart Aficionado.(Book Review)

The Mozart Forgeries: A Caper Novel for the Serious Mozart Aficionado. By Daniel N. Leeson. New York, Lincoln, Shanghai: iUniverse, Inc., 2004 (address: 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100, Lincoln, NE 68512). [x, 321 p. ISBN 0-595-31676-X (pbk., $19.95); 0-595-66366-4 (cloth).]

Much as Eduard Morike's Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag delighted the Romantic sensibilities in 1856, so this tale will appeal to the analytic sensibilities of today. Its diabolic story is of two characters known only as Librarian and Forger. But it is also an introduction to many other things of bibliographical interest: the technology of watermark analysis, quill pens, and ink chemistry; the history of pawn shops and the later years of the clarinetist Anton Stadler; and the rationales and practices of today's rare-book auction world and major music research institutions. It does all this with a gusto that academic seminars often find awkward to handle.

Like all good mystery personalities, these are somewhat plausible. Forger has manual skills and smarts (including jazz improvisation), but he needs direction. This is provided by Librarian, a rare-book specialist at Lincoln Center (skillfully drawn, however, so as not to be easily associated with any person I know of who works there). His setting within the bureaucracy of the New York Public Library may have been oppressive, but this is hardly sufficient reason for Librarian to mastermind what he did. (After all, the most infamous recent book scoundrels have worked not out of the New Jersey suburbs, but in Salt Lake City, Austin, Texas, and Ottumwa, Iowa.) Their turpitude lies very deep, and our few hints at explanations--even the lust for money--always leave one asking for more.

There are a few awkward moments in this story: any good forger should have caught the grammatical blunder eight lines up on p. 17. The concert in Washington around p. 106 would have taken place in the Coolidge Auditorium, the manuscript would have been on view in the Whittall Pavilion. Few forensics experts would have faulted things like this, however, and the latter does bring to my own memories of the time Frank Campbell and I stumbled across, in an arrearage file, one of the several Mozart forgeries of "Professor" Tobia Nicotra. His forgeries, as described by Wolfgang ...