Special Guest Blogger: Carl Rosenbaum

I was an employee of the Noble Austrian Esterházy family and through my marriage to a famous Opera Singer, Therese Gassmann, we were celebrities in Viennese circles and it was through them that i became good friends with composer Joseph Haydn.
When my good friend died after a long illness, I was appalled by the meager farewell given to my musical hero but as Vienna under siege by Napoleon at the time, the genius drew few of the honors that might have been accorded him under better circumstances, as many would-be mourners were otherwise engaged in not dying themselves.
I had a far better idea and for that i needed Haydn’s head. In the late 19th Century a relatively new science known as phrenology had gained widespread credibility as a means of understanding the human mind through examination of the skull. It was believed that the various shapes and contours of the cranium indicated specific human characteristics.
My intention was to map musical brilliance using the head of the man who possessed it in such abundance and four days after the burial i slipped the cemetery warden a few notes and he delivered the head to me in my carriage.
Unfortunately it was the height of summer and the smell of the putrefying head made me sick but the next step was to remove the skin from the head and i handed over the head to a scientist friend who stripped away the muscle and ligature that obscured the all-revealing skull and popped ou the brain and tossed it into the hospital furnace.
Meanwhile, i was delighted to see that a far grander memorial service had been arranged for Haydn although while the composer was being more appropriately celebrated, his head was soaking in lime-water at a nearby hospital
The corrosive bath did wonders on the skull, transforming it to a gleaming white and ready to be set in the display case I had so lovingly constructed for it. And there it remained for over a decade in a handsome custom-made black wooden box, with a symbolic golden lyre at the top, glass windows and a white cushion until it was decided that Haydn deserved an even more dignified burial site and that’s when it was discovered something was amiss.
Upon exhumation of the grave they found only a wig left where the head should have been and an investigation by the police traced it back to me so i gave them  a substitute skull. They weren’t fooled that time but I successfully foisted a second fake on them which they placed in the grave above the severed neck, while hiding the real skull in my wife’s bed as she pretended to be ill.
The skull remained with me for the rest of my life so i don't know if the composer’s head was never reunited with the rest of him.