Alumnus Frederick Reece publishes first book

Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon, by Dr Frederick Reece (Jesus College, 2008), has been published by Oxford University Press this month. Dr Reece is now Assistant Professor in Music History at the University of Washington.

The book explores the topic of compositional forgery in depth, shedding new light on musical conceptions of authenticity, creativity, and the self. It identifies key patterns of deception which explain how forgeries have manipulated listeners in the past and how musicians can better spot fakes in the future, and illustrates important historical cases of compositional forgery using a wide variety of documents and scores.