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TINY VIOLIN

Japan's Beethoven: I'm a Fraud

Didn't write his music, can probably hear.

Imagine if Milli Vanilli had been classical musicians. One of Japan's most popular musical figures admitted Thursday that someone else secretly wrote his most famous compositions, and he probably faked a hearing disability. Mamoru Samuragochi has been called Japan's Beethoven and was exposed as a fraud by his ghostwriter on Wednesday. “He told me that if I didn’t write songs for him, he’d commit suicide,” Takashi Niigaki said yesterday. The timing couldn't be worse: a Japanese Olympic figure skater was planning to use a Samuragochi song in Sochi.

Read it at New York Times

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