Shortly after the death of a well-known composer, someone, unaware of the news, asked W. S. Gilbert what the man was doing. "He is doing nothing," Gilbert replied.

"Surely he is composing?" the man persisted. "On the contrary," Gilbert quipped. "He is decomposing!"

["A composer," Frank Zappa once declared, "is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistence of unsuspecting musicians."]