For Good Friday we are about to sing Crux fidelis by the person I shall call – following the convention used for Classical authors – Pseudo-King John IV of Portugal. This work obviously fooled the musical world for a while, but its suspicious lack of provenance and anachronistic features (see John Rutter’s edition) point to a 19th-century composer who never got any credit for it.
I’ve recently been considering another work that seems to be at least partly fake. The Erleigh Cantors have occasionally performed a Magnificat in faux-bordon ‘from Robert Fayrfax’ setting on the First Tone’ (which is otherwise unknown), paired with a Nunc ‘by an unknown Edwardine composer from a Chapel Royal Choir Book of 1547’. They were published as Novello’s Parish Choir Book series no. 1062. The editor, Royle Shore, has added a couple of bars of solo descant to the Gloria of each canticle.
I consulted an expert on the revival of Tudor music, and it seems most likely that the Magnificat has some basis somewhere in Fayrfax, such as a few bars extracted from another composition and repeated to make the composed part of the setting. Royle Shore was a solicitor and not a very expert editor, but he wanted to get Church of England parish choirs singing Tudor repertoire.
They’re pleasant enough canticles, though I have never come across any other choir performing them or seen them in a Cathedral choir library. I have to say that I still have my doubts about that Nunc, and suspect Royle Shore of having slipped in one of his own compositions.
As to the ethics of forging a musical composition, the more marginal to musical history the composition would be if genuine, the less it matters. King John IV is famous as a king rather than as a composer, so while his name lends royal glamour to the composition, Crux fidelis is not being attached to an established body of work. Tweaking Fayrfax rather drastically (if that’s what’s been done) is a rather different matter and I wish Royle Shore had been more open about exactly what he did.
I doubt though that Royle Shore made much money from his fake Fayrfax and possibly forged Nunc; and Pseudo-King John (if such a person existed) insinuated their composition into an anthology, so little extra profit there either. Just the satisfaction that their compositions were in print, and perhaps a little glow of smugness at having fooled the musical public. When all’s said and done, Crux Fidelis has survived in the repertory because people enjoy performing and listening to it.