Beethoven's skull: dark, strange, and fascinating tales from the world of classical music and beyond

Introduction. The grim and the unusual in the history of Western music Part I: The strange lives, stranger deaths, an odd fates of composers. Ancient Greece and Rome : Terpander ; Lamprus of Erythrae ; Harmonides ; Nero, Emperor of Rome ; St. Cecilia ; Boethius The middle ages : Deor ; Adémar de Chabannes ; Taillefer ; William IX ; Peter Abelard ; Marcabru ; Bertran de Born ; Richard I ; The Monk of Montaudon ; Folquet de Marselha ; Châtelain de Coucy ; Guilhem de la Tor ; Goliards ; Jehan de l'Escurel ; Grimace The Renaissance : Antoine Busnois ; Gilles Joye ; Henry VIII, King of England ; David Rizzio (or David Riccio) ; Thomas Morley ; John Bull ; Carlo Gesualdo ; Tobias Hume ; Thomas Weelkes ; Alfonso Fontanelli ; Orlando Gibbons The Baroque era : Giulio Caccini ; William Lawes ; Alessandro Poglietti ; Jean-Baptiste Lully ; Alessandro Stradella ; John Abell ; Marin Marais ; Henry Purcell ; Antonio Vivaldi ; Benedetto Marcello and Rosanna Scalfi Marcello ; Francesco Maria Veracini ; Giuseppe Tartini ; Jean-Marie Leclair ; John Taylor ; Louis-Gabriel Guillemain The Classical era : Frantisek Kotzwara ; Franz Joseph Haydn ; Johann Anton Fils ; Johann Schobert ; Josef Mysliveček ; Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz ; John Stafford Smith ; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ; Antonio Salieri ; Jakub Jan Ryba ; Ludwig van Beethoven The Romantic era : The syphilis scourge ; Niccolò Paganini ; Carl Maria von Weber ; Hector Berlioz ; Frédéric Chopin ; Franz Liszt ; Charles-Valentin Alkan ; Anton Bruckner ; Camille Saint-Saëns ; Modest Mussorgsky ; Karel Komzák II ; Ernest Chausson ; Giacomo Puccini ; Gustav Mahler ; Claude Debussy ; Enrique Granados ; Alexander Scriabin The modern era : Composers in World War I ; Richard Strauss ; Erik Satie ; Louis Vierne ; Arnold Schoenberg ; Percy Grainger ; Anton Webern ; Alban Berg ; Wallingford Riegger ; Sergei Prokofiev ; Peter Warlock Sins and omissions

Part II: A dark and weird musical miscellany. Odd musical origins : Biological origins: singing fish ; Biological origins: cavemen choirs ; Mythic origins: the Egyptian music goddess with a violent past ; Mythic origins: the god who made a lyre from a turtle

Magic in music : The myths of Orpheus ; A boil on your nose : the power of the Celtic bards ; Fairy music and its dangers ; Bacchanalian rites in ancient Greece ; Music and magic in the chilly north ; Composers and magic

Plague and penitence : the rather awful fourteenth century : The flagellants and their gruesome spectacles ; Kyries : lovely music for awful occasions ; The fawn-colored beast : anti-establishment satire ; The fumeurs : avant-garde artists or medieval stoners?

Blood and guts : The malevolent Pied Piper of Hamelin ; The historical Dracula ; Joan the Mad and singers for her husband's corpse ; La Marseillaise and the French Revolution ; Blood-letting and a haircut

The dead speak : They just decomposed ; Schumann's violin concerto, brought back from the dead ; Haunted concert halls and opera houses : where the dead keep giving encores ; Music from beyond

Nursery rhymes : the good, the bad, and the downright awful : Three blind mice ; Mary, Mary, quite contrary ; Jack and Jill ; London Bridge is falling down ; Ring around the rosy ; Georgie Porgie ; Sing a song of sixpence

Musical curses, bad luck, and superstitions : The curse of "Gloomy Sunday" ; Tchaikovsky's cursed symphony? ; The Babe's piano ; The 27 club ; Superstitions about the ninth symphony ; The yellow clarinet ; Unlucky Friday, or at least a noisy one ; Morning singing brings tears ; Circus and superstitions ; Sexist superstition at the first American musical ; Schoenberg and the number thirteen ; Speaking of superstitious composers

Some final musical oddities : The mystery of the world's greatest violins ; The ringtone heard round the world ; Composers who hated their own works ; Mozart's skull ; Beethoven's skull

Last words.