Shocking Music

"There is darkness in every personality," says the author of the book Christopher Lawrence, and great composers and musicians are no exception. The history of classical music and the lives of famous musicians are rife with murders, infidelities, bigamy, fraud, wealth, poverty, gluttony, nervous breakdowns, strange behavior, and terrible, terrible toilet humor (Mozart was the main exponent of the latter). Is classical music pleasant? It only seems that way to you. Shocking Music documents the entire underbelly of great composers, revealing their most intimate secrets. The book consists of stories, each corresponding to a particular musical fainting: love, lust, excess and obsession, triumph and joy. Among the heroic musicians of "Shocking Music" are Mozart, Wagner, Berlioz, Puccini, Granger, and others.