writing about music is hard, and if the writing is about compositional techniques and their analysis, then the difficulties are insurmountable for all but a few. Want proof? From the pen of an eminence (whom I spare from identifying in this space):
The fifth horn part of [composer's] heckelphone concerto contains in m. 456 a subtle transformation of the viola line from m. 123. Specifically, the seventh thirty-second note in m. 123 is taken up five octaves, subject to the CSET(X,Y)-transform, and then hurled downward into the third line of the divisi string basses, where, after being inverted into the fourth piccolo, it is reharmonized by an augmented-sixth chord in G-sharp major, subjected to rhythmic diminution, and held by a fermata (example 789).
I trust that you figured out—by the final, parenthesized punch line, at least—that it's a parody, written originally to show a bunch of callow graduate students how...
