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

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Skyhorse Publishing, [2016]Copyright date: ©2016Description: xvi, 271 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 1510712712
  • 9781510712713
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
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.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 780.922 R265 Available 33111008522167
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Beethoven's Skull is an unusual and often humorous survey of the many strange happenings in the history of Western classical music. Proving that good music and shocking tabloid-style stories make excellent bedfellows, it presents tales of revenge, murder, curious accidents, and strange fates that span more than two thousand years. Highlights include:

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 takes the reader back to the world of ancient Greece and Rome, progressing through the Middle Ages and all the way into the twentieth century. 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.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-268).

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.

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