Apparently, "Loving Miss Hatto" will be the title of the film.
The Daily Mail: The piano genius who never was: As a documentary on the 'greatest music fraud ever' is released, Joyce Hatto's husband reveals why he fooled the world with fake recordings
The Guardian: BBC to screen Joyce Hatto biopic penned by Victoria Wood
The Cross-Eyed Pianist: The great classical music swindle
My posts on the Joyce Hatto scam:
- The Joyce Hatto hoax?
- How iTune/Gracenote identify your CD?
- Christopher Howell reveals Joyce Hatto correspondences
- Having read David Hurwitz's
- Hatto husband's about-face
- Hatto saga drawing to a close
附錄:須文蔚 靈光的式微與再現：冷眼評Joyce Hatto唱片剽竊事件
2012-04-03
2007-03-03
Hatto saga drawing to a close
It looks likely that following her husband's admission of guilt, the Joyce Hatto saga will soon draw to a close.
1. While enthusiasts may continue to identify the origin(s) of various Joyce Hatto recordings, it is safe to assume that very few, if any, of her CDs released over the past two decades or so are actually hers.
2. The affected labels are unlikely to bring William Barrington-Coupe to court given that any monetary compensation they may get will be dwarfed by the legal costs. The same reasoning applies to the other group of victims - the deceived consumers.
3. With the admission of guilt, Barrington-Coupe will almost certainly discontinue selling Joyce Hatto CDs.
4. Whatever her actual role in this saga, Joyce Hatto will in future be remembered not as a pianist, but as the central figure in the so-called "Hatto Hoax".
5. There will be eggs on certain critics' face for their part in cultivating a cult
of personality - Joyce Hatto as "the greatest British pianist that no one has heard of".
Should we believe that Barrington-Coupe did it for the love of his wife? Well, it probably was one of the reasons why he did it in the beginning, when he needed to "doctor" shortcomings of Joyce Hatto's studio recordings. But like gambling and drug, once you start, there can be no stop. And the stake usually gets higher and higher. In the case of Barrington-Coupe, he probably soon realised that taking large sections of other pianists' recordings was the most convenient way, and that there was no reason why he couldn't continue to release "Joyce Hatto" CDs even after her death.
1. While enthusiasts may continue to identify the origin(s) of various Joyce Hatto recordings, it is safe to assume that very few, if any, of her CDs released over the past two decades or so are actually hers.
2. The affected labels are unlikely to bring William Barrington-Coupe to court given that any monetary compensation they may get will be dwarfed by the legal costs. The same reasoning applies to the other group of victims - the deceived consumers.
3. With the admission of guilt, Barrington-Coupe will almost certainly discontinue selling Joyce Hatto CDs.
4. Whatever her actual role in this saga, Joyce Hatto will in future be remembered not as a pianist, but as the central figure in the so-called "Hatto Hoax".
5. There will be eggs on certain critics' face for their part in cultivating a cult
of personality - Joyce Hatto as "the greatest British pianist that no one has heard of".
Should we believe that Barrington-Coupe did it for the love of his wife? Well, it probably was one of the reasons why he did it in the beginning, when he needed to "doctor" shortcomings of Joyce Hatto's studio recordings. But like gambling and drug, once you start, there can be no stop. And the stake usually gets higher and higher. In the case of Barrington-Coupe, he probably soon realised that taking large sections of other pianists' recordings was the most convenient way, and that there was no reason why he couldn't continue to release "Joyce Hatto" CDs even after her death.
2007-02-28
Hatto husband's about-face
Having insisted that his wife's virtuoso recordings are genuine just one week ago, William Barrington-Coupe now admits that he did pass off piano CDs as wife's work (Telegraph, 27/2/07):
But William Barrington-Coupe insisted that he only did so to give Joyce Hatto hope as she was dying, and maintains that she knew nothing of the deception.
He said she had made recordings, but they were marred by grunts of pain as her ovarian cancer worsened and he began to insert excerpts of other recordings to hide the noises.
"In some cases it was only a matter of bars, but her playing in places just became a template. It was very complicated and difficult to do, but I just allowed myself to take longer passages than initially because it was easier to fit them in."
More details, as Gramophone reveals William Barrington-Coupe's confessional letter to BIS:
As he grew more adept at the practice, he began to take longer sections to ease the editing process, and discovered, he says, by accident how to digitally stretch the time of the source recordings to disguise the sound. He would, he says, use Hatto’s performances as a blueprint and source recordings which were along the same lines.
But William Barrington-Coupe insisted that he only did so to give Joyce Hatto hope as she was dying, and maintains that she knew nothing of the deception.
He said she had made recordings, but they were marred by grunts of pain as her ovarian cancer worsened and he began to insert excerpts of other recordings to hide the noises.
"In some cases it was only a matter of bars, but her playing in places just became a template. It was very complicated and difficult to do, but I just allowed myself to take longer passages than initially because it was easier to fit them in."
More details, as Gramophone reveals William Barrington-Coupe's confessional letter to BIS:
As he grew more adept at the practice, he began to take longer sections to ease the editing process, and discovered, he says, by accident how to digitally stretch the time of the source recordings to disguise the sound. He would, he says, use Hatto’s performances as a blueprint and source recordings which were along the same lines.
2007-02-27
Having read David Hurwitz's
latest cynical editorial on the Hatto saga - The Hatto Affair: A Victimless Crime? - I shall never visit Classics Today.com again.
Where's the moral principle?
Where's the moral principle?
2007-02-22
Christopher Howell reveals Joyce Hatto correspondences
Christopher Howell, the critic at MusicWeb whio previously penned glowing reviews of Joyce Hatto's CDs, decided to reveal his extensive correspondences with Hatto and Barrington-Coupea.
For more on this safa, check out the rec.music.classical.recordings discussion group, or new additions to the ongoing series Joyce Hatto - The Ultimate Recording Hoax by Andrew Rose of Pristine Classical.
For more on this safa, check out the rec.music.classical.recordings discussion group, or new additions to the ongoing series Joyce Hatto - The Ultimate Recording Hoax by Andrew Rose of Pristine Classical.
How iTune/Gracenote identify your CD?
In my previous post - The Joyce Hatto hoax? - I mentioned that iTune helped identify a Joyce Hatto CD as a potential fake.
Actually, before this incident, I never thought about how iTune "identify" music. I somehow just assumed that there must be a certain piece of information embedded in a CD (a unique code, e.g.) which would be transmitted to the Gracenote database, which iTune uses, for matching purpose. The matching, I supposed, was done through information submitted by record companies.
That is, it seemed to me that a Joyce Hatto CD of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes would carry a code (say 1a2b). Concert Artist, the label which released that CD, would submit album and track information to the Gracenote database to match that unique code.
If this is indeed how it works, then a Joyce Hatto CD will always be identified as just that, and there is no way to expose this potential fraud.
In fact, from Gracenote's web site, these days music identification is done in a much complex and sophisticated way:
Audio Waveform Recognition Technology: Using audio waveform fingerprint technology, MusicID can identify individual songs or albums in a user's collection regardless of source, format or tag information.
In simple terms, A may disguise himself as B and in posession of B's identification documents, but he still has the fingerprints of A and therefore can be exposed when being checked.
I learned something new today.
----------
To learn even more, including the controversy surrounding CDDB/Gracenote, read Wikipedia's entry on Gracenote.
OK, so there is no unique code embedded in a CD and that CD information was submitted by volunteers/users as well (at least in the early years). But that's not the point here. The point I want to make in this post is, should music recognition was done along this vein, there is no way to identify a recording as fake. There must be some form of fingerprint/DNA inherent in the music itself for this to happen.
● Song Recognition Software Uncovers Fraudulent Recordings (Wired Blogs, 21/2/07)
● Gracenote Defends Its Evolution (Wired News, 13/11/06)
Actually, before this incident, I never thought about how iTune "identify" music. I somehow just assumed that there must be a certain piece of information embedded in a CD (a unique code, e.g.) which would be transmitted to the Gracenote database, which iTune uses, for matching purpose. The matching, I supposed, was done through information submitted by record companies.
That is, it seemed to me that a Joyce Hatto CD of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes would carry a code (say 1a2b). Concert Artist, the label which released that CD, would submit album and track information to the Gracenote database to match that unique code.
If this is indeed how it works, then a Joyce Hatto CD will always be identified as just that, and there is no way to expose this potential fraud.
In fact, from Gracenote's web site, these days music identification is done in a much complex and sophisticated way:
Audio Waveform Recognition Technology: Using audio waveform fingerprint technology, MusicID can identify individual songs or albums in a user's collection regardless of source, format or tag information.
In simple terms, A may disguise himself as B and in posession of B's identification documents, but he still has the fingerprints of A and therefore can be exposed when being checked.
I learned something new today.
----------
To learn even more, including the controversy surrounding CDDB/Gracenote, read Wikipedia's entry on Gracenote.
OK, so there is no unique code embedded in a CD and that CD information was submitted by volunteers/users as well (at least in the early years). But that's not the point here. The point I want to make in this post is, should music recognition was done along this vein, there is no way to identify a recording as fake. There must be some form of fingerprint/DNA inherent in the music itself for this to happen.
● Song Recognition Software Uncovers Fraudulent Recordings (Wired Blogs, 21/2/07)
● Gracenote Defends Its Evolution (Wired News, 13/11/06)
2007-02-20
The Joyce Hatto hoax?
Gramophone describes the scandulous discovery as:
It was already one of the strangest stories the classical music world had witnessed. But the discovery of the late English pianist Joyce Hatto as the greatest instrumentalist almost nobody had heard of, appears to have taken a bizarre, even potentially sinister turn.
So who was Joyce Hatto? And what is this bizarre and potentially sinister story?
Joyce Hatto, a little-known pianist who stopped performing as a concert pianist in 1976, struggled with cancer, continued to record - prolifically - for a small label Concert Artist Recordings run by her husband, began to achieve cult status among some classical music critics shortly before her death in July 2006. She was hailed as "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of" and “one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced.”
Yes, there had been rumours that her prolific output - well over 100 CDs - covering a wide repertoire seemed suspect, but no one had been able to substantiate the doubts. Until now.
When you put a CD in your computer and run iTune, it would usually recognise it and come up with the correct album and track information for your cataloging purpose (actually it is done by Gracenote in the background). What if you put in a Bob Dylan CD and iTune comes up with Britney Spear information? Normally you would just curse iTune for being bloody useless.
But when someone put in a Joyce Hatto CD of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes and got instead information on the same work by a different pianist on a different label, he felt puzzled and informed a critic who reviewed for Gramophone and Classic Today.com, who concluded he smelled something fishy. Later, scientific analysis of soundwaves seemed to suggest the two were indeed identical. Soon, other cases of supposedly "plagiarism" were found.
To cut a long story short, it is now suggested that a number of Joyce Hatto CDs "were in fact copied from recordings of the same music by other pianists."
So it seems that while most of us have never (heard of or) listened to any CD by Joyce Hatto, those who have may have listened to great piano performances by someone else.
Suppose this is indeed a hoax. The not-yet-answered question is why? For money, or something else?
● Gramophone: Masterpieces Or Fakes? The Joyce Hatto Scandal
● The New York Times: A Pianist’s Recordings Draw Praise, but Were They All Hers?
● Stereophile: Was Joyce Hatto the Greatest Pianist Almost Nobody Ever Heard Of?
● MusicWeb: Hatto - the greatest pianist(s) that now everyone has heard of!
● Hiperhip: A Strange Story
● Wikipedia: Joyce Hatto
● Pristine Classical: Joyce Hatto - The Ultimate Recording Hoax
● AHRC Research: Purely coincidental? Joyce Hatto and Chopin's Mazurkas
● Concert Artist Recordings: Featured Artist: Joyce Hatto
● Boston Globe: After recording 119 CDs, a hidden jewel comes to light - Fans and critics have long overlooked pianist Joyce Hatto
● The Guardian: Obituary - Joyce Hatto
----------
From Classics Today.com:
● Will The Real Joyce Hatto Please Stand Up
As I told him [Mr. Barrington-Coupea, Hatto's husband] a few days ago, either he hired an orchestra, engineers, a recording space, a conductor, and paid them all, or he did not. Even Ms. Hatto’s solo recordings were not made just by her husband alone. In short, many others were involved, and they are even credited on the booklet jackets. Let some of these parties come forward and acknowledge their participation. Let Mr. Barrington-Coupe produce receipts, schedules, or whatever documentation is in his possession.
At the heart of this whole controversy, the real question isn’t so much what Hatto and her husband may have done. It is “Why?” As I’ve already pointed out, it’s not difficult in today’s digital marketplace to engineer a fake, but there’s so little money in doing so that one can only wonder why anyone would want to bother. What on earth is the point in taking famous recordings by major artists and issuing them on a vanity label (with no international distribution) as the work of a virtually unknown recluse? The sheer level of chutzpah involved in lifting entire concerto recordings wholesale from major labels ... is either breathtaking, or simply insane.
William Barrington-Coupe did come forth and talked to the Telegraph, insisting that "my wife's virtuoso recordings are genuine", although he offered nothing whatsoever to support his point, in the face of strong evidence to the contrary.
It was already one of the strangest stories the classical music world had witnessed. But the discovery of the late English pianist Joyce Hatto as the greatest instrumentalist almost nobody had heard of, appears to have taken a bizarre, even potentially sinister turn.
So who was Joyce Hatto? And what is this bizarre and potentially sinister story?
Joyce Hatto, a little-known pianist who stopped performing as a concert pianist in 1976, struggled with cancer, continued to record - prolifically - for a small label Concert Artist Recordings run by her husband, began to achieve cult status among some classical music critics shortly before her death in July 2006. She was hailed as "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of" and “one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced.”
Yes, there had been rumours that her prolific output - well over 100 CDs - covering a wide repertoire seemed suspect, but no one had been able to substantiate the doubts. Until now.
When you put a CD in your computer and run iTune, it would usually recognise it and come up with the correct album and track information for your cataloging purpose (actually it is done by Gracenote in the background). What if you put in a Bob Dylan CD and iTune comes up with Britney Spear information? Normally you would just curse iTune for being bloody useless.
But when someone put in a Joyce Hatto CD of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes and got instead information on the same work by a different pianist on a different label, he felt puzzled and informed a critic who reviewed for Gramophone and Classic Today.com, who concluded he smelled something fishy. Later, scientific analysis of soundwaves seemed to suggest the two were indeed identical. Soon, other cases of supposedly "plagiarism" were found.
To cut a long story short, it is now suggested that a number of Joyce Hatto CDs "were in fact copied from recordings of the same music by other pianists."
So it seems that while most of us have never (heard of or) listened to any CD by Joyce Hatto, those who have may have listened to great piano performances by someone else.
Suppose this is indeed a hoax. The not-yet-answered question is why? For money, or something else?
● Gramophone: Masterpieces Or Fakes? The Joyce Hatto Scandal
● The New York Times: A Pianist’s Recordings Draw Praise, but Were They All Hers?
● Stereophile: Was Joyce Hatto the Greatest Pianist Almost Nobody Ever Heard Of?
● MusicWeb: Hatto - the greatest pianist(s) that now everyone has heard of!
● Hiperhip: A Strange Story
● Wikipedia: Joyce Hatto
● Pristine Classical: Joyce Hatto - The Ultimate Recording Hoax
● AHRC Research: Purely coincidental? Joyce Hatto and Chopin's Mazurkas
● Concert Artist Recordings: Featured Artist: Joyce Hatto
● Boston Globe: After recording 119 CDs, a hidden jewel comes to light - Fans and critics have long overlooked pianist Joyce Hatto
● The Guardian: Obituary - Joyce Hatto
----------
From Classics Today.com:
● Will The Real Joyce Hatto Please Stand Up
As I told him [Mr. Barrington-Coupea, Hatto's husband] a few days ago, either he hired an orchestra, engineers, a recording space, a conductor, and paid them all, or he did not. Even Ms. Hatto’s solo recordings were not made just by her husband alone. In short, many others were involved, and they are even credited on the booklet jackets. Let some of these parties come forward and acknowledge their participation. Let Mr. Barrington-Coupe produce receipts, schedules, or whatever documentation is in his possession.
At the heart of this whole controversy, the real question isn’t so much what Hatto and her husband may have done. It is “Why?” As I’ve already pointed out, it’s not difficult in today’s digital marketplace to engineer a fake, but there’s so little money in doing so that one can only wonder why anyone would want to bother. What on earth is the point in taking famous recordings by major artists and issuing them on a vanity label (with no international distribution) as the work of a virtually unknown recluse? The sheer level of chutzpah involved in lifting entire concerto recordings wholesale from major labels ... is either breathtaking, or simply insane.
William Barrington-Coupe did come forth and talked to the Telegraph, insisting that "my wife's virtuoso recordings are genuine", although he offered nothing whatsoever to support his point, in the face of strong evidence to the contrary.
訂閱：
文章 (Atom)