Gerard Hoffnung was a cartoonist famous for his whimsical drawings of musicians and outlandish musicians. He was also a talented amateur tuba player, a favorite of orchestral musicians in London. In 1956 he organized a parody "Hoffnung Music Festival, " enlisting a stellar assortment of composers and musicians to write and perform. The curtain-raiser was the runaway hit of the program: this parody of a serious concert overture. It has a brazen (in more than one sense of the word) main theme, but a truly pretty and delicate contrasting theme. It has improbable interjections by a row of trumpeters and a rifle platoon, but the funniest touch is a quiet one: Arnold requires a quartet consisting of Hoover vacuum cleaners and a floor polisher, chosen on given notes to make a chord. The overture continues in a by the-book sonata form until it reaches the coda (usually a short concluding section) where it truly runs amok, hitting on every possible clichéd gesture of final cadences, where a full organ, the rifles, and the myriad trumpeters add to the din.

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