FUNERARY VIOLIN

posted by James Reel

    A most excellent musicological hoax: A fellow named Rohan Kriwaczek has gotten a reputable publisher to issue his Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin. According to a New York Times summary, it’s supposedly “a nonfiction account of a little-known genre of music that was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church and almost wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830’s and 40’s.” Except that there was never any such thing as a funerary violin, and the Church conducted no such Funerary Purges. Too bad the hoax was exposed before publication; it would have been swell to see how many critics and musicologists got snookered, like the publisher. Read about it here.