Limelight notes the passing (into what we don’t know) of Threatening Music Notation, the long-running Twitter/X handle devoted to posting examples of the most absurdly difficult and humorous flights of compositional fancy.

“I will no longer be posting on this account,” wrote TMN’s still anonymous founder. “This is because Elon Musk has made this site unpleasant to use and because I do not want to be associated with his product. Thank you all for years of community, laughs, music, and learning.”

Building up a dedicated community around its posts (350,000 followers), TMN posted images of scores featuring, for example, physically impossible guitar fingerings, a piano work (Penis Dimension, by Frank Zappa) demanding the player turn around, sit on the piano keys (“both buttocks”) and then sit back down without losing the tempo, and a “really gay harp solo”.

Followers regularly submitted works for consideration, debate and commiseration.

TMN’s decision to quit the X platform is one of many announced in recent weeks, including actors Jamie Lee Curtis and Mark Hamill, author Stephen King, director Guillermo de Toro and singer Barbra Streisand.

TMN has made no announcement of a shift to another platform.

Vale.