Earlier this spring, Jennifer Shen, a forensic scientist with the San Diego County Medical Examiner, received an odd request in her e-mail inbox: A local music group was looking for help with a project.

It didn’t involve reconstructing a crime scene spatter by bloody spatter and analyzing traces of evidence — the daily grind for this chemist. This assignment was more highbrow, but no less noir:

Orchestra Nova, which renders classical music with unconventional pep, needed an expert to speak at the season finale, “CSI: Beethoven – Inside Ludwig’s Head.” The program features the Leonore Overture, the Fidelio Overture and Symphony No. 4, and a conversation about musical forensics. The performances take place Friday, Saturday and Monday at venues across the county.

Shen, a natural teacher who gives public lectures about her field, loves Beethoven, so she agreed to participate. Her mother “snorted and rolled her eyes. She thought it was an odd combination,” Shen recalled recently.

She wondered what she was getting herself into. Then she started looking into research about how the maestro died. And that’s when her obsession started.

Alongside Orchestra Nova’s conductor Jung-Ho Pak, Shen will invite audiences to contemplate two enduring mysteries: What killed Beethoven? And what drove him to create some of the most moving music of all time?

Beethoven died in agony on a stormy day in 1827. Thanks to a lock of his hair and skull fragments that have survived, scientists in this century have performed tests that bring them closer to determining a cause of death.

Read the full story at San Diego Union Tribune