When Mozart passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days
later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard a
strange noise coming from the area where Mozart was buried. Terrified,
the drunk ran and got a priest to come and listen to it. The priest
bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music
coming from the grave.
Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate. When the
magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment,
and said, "Ah, yes, that's Mozart's Ninth Symphony, being played
backwards."
He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and
it's backwards, too. Most puzzling." So the magistrate kept listening.
"There's the Seventh...the Sixth...the Fifth..." Suddenly, the
realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up
and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow
citizens, there's nothing to worry about.
"It's just Mozart decomposing."
George Anthiel composed film scores, but earlier in his life he had been an avant garde composer. In 1924 his "Ballet mecanique" was performed at Carnegie Hall. The work was scored for a fire siren, automobile horns, and an airplane propeller. After only a few minutes of this racket, an aging gentleman in the orchestra seats tied his handkerchief to his cane and began waving a white flag.
