The Madman’s Orchestra: The Greatest Oddities from the History of Music

With this quirky and informative account, screenwriter Brooke-Hitching (The Most Interesting Book in the World) veers off the beaten path to explore the strangest corners of music history. He covers some of the world’s most bizarre instruments, including the largest: the Great Stalacpipe Organ, which comprises a series of caves whose stalactites can be struck by mallets to produce different notes; and the pyrophone, a 19th-century “internal combustion organ” that used blasts of flame in glass tubes to make sounds. The weird concerts described—many of which still take place—include the Ice Musical Festival Norway, where visitors from around the world watch musicians play ice harps, fiddles, and drums, and performances by the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, whose members create impromptu instruments from raw vegetables and later blend them into a soup for the audience. Elsewhere, Brooke-Hitchings unearths such historical oddities as 15th-century French composer Baude Cordier’s sheet music, which twisted lines of notes to match “the theme of the composition,” and hoaxes like a series of Haydn sonatas “rediscovered” in the 1990s. Enriched by a colorful array of reproduced sheet music, photos, and illustrations, and spanning continents and centuries, this is a witty, fun, and often jaw-dropping tour of the many outlandish ways humans have made music. (Apr.)