Last September, the venerable London publisher Duckworth published The Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin by Rohan Kriwaczek. The book contains a fascinating account of how a new type of music emerged during the Reformation, which sought to recognise the deceased and the mourners’ sense of grief. A Guild of Funerary Violinists was established in 1580 and received a royal warrant from Elizabeth I (Kriwaczek himself is its latest president). The music thrived under the auspices of the guild, with members duelling at funerals to wring the most tears from mourners.

Mr Kriwaczek writes: “By 1833 the Cult of Funerary Violin had reached its zenith and Pope Gregory XVI, through the efforts of Cardinal Pacca, took action with a fanatical zeal unseen since the Albigensian crusade. This included the wholesale destruction of the Funerary Violin tradition, which stretched back over 300 years, and the subsequent removal of any references to it.

“Historic records, books and sheet music were all seized; paintings were burnt, retouched or cropped to remove the offending images; instruments with the traditional death’s head scroll were either ‘restored’ or destroyed; the performers were forced into monastic orders, and in time the entire notion of a Funerary Violinist was forgotten.

“It is doubtful whether such repression could have taken place or such results been achieved without the support and co-operation of government officials throughout Europe, but so little evidence remains that it is impossible to say (it is thought that the libraries of the Vatican may hold such seized documents, and maybe one day they will come to light). What little we do know has been painstakingly pieced together from a handful of fragments and unsubstantiated and often unspoken rumours.”

On 13 October, Mr Kriwaczek, a 38-year-old father of two living in Brighton, admitted he had made up the whole thing. He became interested in funeral music after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in the mid-1990s with a Masters degree in composition. Rejecting the avant-garde music that he was taught there, he felt a closer relationship with the audience when playing at funerals. “But of course nobody would book me because no one considered having a violinist at a funeral,” said Mr Kriwaczek, who busks to supplement his income as a music teacher. “So I thought, let’s make this part of funeral culture and create a musical genre. I founded the Guild of Funerary Violinists and then I thought if you had a guild it had to have a history.”

He carefully researched the political, religious and social background, and made use of manuscripts bought on eBay, photographs from antique shops, names from the graves in his favourite cemetery and a number of forged documents. He wrote music scores to demonstrate how the Funerary Violin developed, crediting many of them to the fictional composer Hieronymous Gratenfleiss. He gave the guild a motto: Nullus Funus Sine Fidula (No Funeral Without A Fiddle).

Researching and writing the book took 18 months before he began to print individual copies from his home computer. “I didn’t intend for many people to read it and I certainly didn’t intend for it to be published,” he said. “I gave one copy to a parent on the school run and she passed it to her husband who worked in publishing. He liked it and said he would take it to the Frankfurt Book Fair.”

At the 2005 fair, it was shown to Peter Mayer, the owner of Duckworth in London and the New York publisher Overlook. Mr Mayer decided at once on publication, paying the author £1,000. Questions about the book’s authenticity weren’t raised until last autumn, when it was spotted in Overlook’s winter catalogue by Paul Ingram, a buyer from a bookstore in Iowa City. Ingram talked to violin specialists and his doubts deepened. This led to a front page story in the New York Times on 4 October, suggesting it might be a hoax, leaving Duckworth to reflect on perhaps the most embarrassing episode in its 108-year history.

Still, the publicity led to the 224-page book (£14.99, print run of 1,500) topping the Amazon website for “movers and shakers” and it leapt from number 500,000 to 73 in the bestsellers’ chart. Duckworth is now planning a reprint. Overlook will publish the US edition in January. Peter Mayer explained: “Questions of whether it was fiction or non-fiction never really occurred to me, because it was a ‘thing’ and not everything in life is categorisable… I have never read anything quite like it. It is absolutely brilliant.”