Beethoven’s Skull

“If you think classical music is boring and stuffy, [Beethoven’s Skull] will make you change your tune” (USA Today).
 
This unusual history of Western classical music focuses on strange happenings and shocking tabloid-style stories of revenge, murder, curious accidents, and strange fates, proving that pop stars don’t have a monopoly on wild behavior. Highlights include tales of:
 

• A cursed song that kills those who hear it
• A composer who lovingly cradles the head of Beethoven’s corpse when his remains are exhumed half a century after his death
• A fifteenth-century German poet who sings of the real-life Dracula
• A dream of the devil that inspires a virtuoso violin piece

 
Unlike many music books that begin their histories with the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, Beethoven’s Skull looks back to the world of ancient Greece and Rome, progressing through the Middle Ages and all the way into modern times. It also looks at myths and legends, superstitions, and musical mysteries, detailing the ways that musicians and their peers have been rather horrible to one another over the centuries.
 
“[A] rollicking, if grisly, stroll through the history of music . . . Impeccably researched . . . Sure to keep readers engrossed.” —Library Journal