Tristan Foison 3: the Desenclos incident
The "Desenclos incident" happened on 18 May 2001 in Washington, D.C. A local choir, the Capitole Hill Chorale, performed the Requiem Mass by Tristan Foison. Sadly the Requiem Mass was not originally composed by Tristan Foison, but by Alfred Desenclos. The circumstances of this discovery and the aftermath are extraordinary and written down in several newspaper articles and online blogs therefore I will not repeat them here in detail.
What I find most hilarious is the fact how the score of the Requiem Mass by Tristan Foison looks like. When you look closely on the first page of the score you will notice two interesting facts:
- Why are the fonts of the title on one hand and the instruments and lyrics on the other hand so strikingly different?
- Why is there a plate number at the bottom pointing to the French publishing house Durand & Fils?
Today the answer to these two questions is very easy, but there was a chance to be dubious back in 2001. The title in this casual handwriting font and on the other hand the strict typewritten font - that looks wrong. And a check at the publishing house Durand for the plate number 14000 would have led to the Messe de Requiem by Alfred Desenclos. Here the original first page:
Tristan just cut off the top of the title page and added his own name and title. It is obvious that he did not take pains with this procedure, leaving the plate number at the bottom and not even trying to use a similar font for the header. Tristan Foison used this technique several times, therefore I call it the "Foison technique".
