"A number of years ago I was working at a radio station in New York which is
now defunct called WRVR and I was assigned the job of cataloguing the record
collection, and they played mostly classical music. They had a jazz section,
but it was mostly classical music. I found myself in the basement in a room
full of records and I was supposed to type out a card for each of the
records. And I thought, well, I'll just use this opportunity to teach myself
musical history. So I began at the beginning of what they had which was a
couple of shelves of Gregorian chants. And so for two weeks I saturated
myself in that music, from nine o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock at
night, whenever I went home, listening to nothing but those tonalities.

"And then for some reason I had to go up to the control booth to ask Gordon,
the engineer, a question, so I ran up the stairs and opened the door to this
cacophony of sounds. And I had for a moment exactly what I imagine the people
at The Rite of Spring experienced, which was kind of a cognitive dissonance.
What is this? Why is this radio station playing this kind of musical
nonsense? I literally clapped my hands to my ears and said, 'Gordon, what is
this music?' And he casually leaned over and picked up the album, and it was
Bach's St Matthew Passion."

    - Walter Murch, on that silly avant-garde noise JS Bach produced
      http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/making-radiolab/3014382