Jocelyn Wang quotes:

>This snippet was forwarded to me.  I couldn't locate the entire article
>(Onion doesn't archive everything), but it gave me a good laugh.
>
>This brief article is from The Onion, March 20, 2002:
>
>Atonal Composers Gather For Atony Awards
>
>HOLLYWOOD, CA- The recording industry's top atonal composers gathered
>in Los Angeles Monday for the gala seventh annual Atony Awards.
>"Tonight is hostile music's biggest night," said Krzysztof Penderecki,
>nominee in the Most Dissonant Piece category.  "I can't tell you what
>a thrill it is to be here, surrounded by so many legends of arrhythmic
>cacophony." The highlight of the evening is expected to be the awarding
>of the Olivier Messiaen Lifetime Achievement Award to Karlheinz
>Stockhausen for "more than five decades of aggressively impenetrable
>anti-music."

There was an old naif sketch by Benny Hill, in which a gallery of villains
meets for the gala of "Gangster of the Year".  I suppose that this is from
1975 or abouts, but the joke was already old by those times (it has been
applied to almost every imaginable trade, sect or "inner circle" by almost
every imaginable humorist in the past).

I have a problem:  I can't understand where lies the funny of putting
Messiaen, Stockhausen and Penderecki together in the same meeting under
the general label of "legends of arrhythmic cacophony".  Perhaps may
someone help me with this?

>[I believe this is the entire article.  The Onion ("America's Finest
>News Source") is at www.theonion.com  -Dave]

I couldn't find it there.

Pablo Massa
[log in to unmask]

 [Perhaps all will be explained by visiting The Oniom music archive at:

   http://www.theonion.com/archive/archive_music.html

 There's a commplete musicological analysis of the major works of all
 composers mentioned in the article, as well as detailed definitions of
 each of the terms used.  The joke gets really funny once it has been
 explained in excrutiating specificity.  -Dave]