Choral Music

"I think I hear some choral music. One hears almost no music from these backyards. Knowing absolutely nothing about music, I conclude, in a scholarly way, that it must be Puccini because of the ascending and melodramatic scale of flats. Then I hear some dissonance and decide that it must be Berg or Schonberg. The soprano then hits a very high note and sustains it for an impossible length of time, and I realize that what I've been hearing is the clash of traffic and a police siren amplified by a light rain."

--from The Journals of John Cheever