Scoreload

American composer and pianist renowned for creating outrageously complex and intentionally absurd musical scores. John Stump gained cult fame primarily through his composition "Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz", a piece deliberately overloaded with nonsensical performance instructions, impossible technical demands, and bizarre notations, satirizing the extremes of avant-garde and overly complex contemporary music.

• Stump's "Faerie's Aire and Death Waltz" became an internet sensation decades after its creation, baffling and amusing musicians worldwide with instructions like "release the penguins", "like a pitchfork dragging a concrete pipe", and demands for 15 players on one piano.
• His works were largely unpublished during his lifetime and circulated privately among musicians. The wider dissemination of "Faerie's Aire" occurred posthumously via online forums and sheet music sharing sites, turning it into a viral phenomenon.
• Stump died of complications from diabetes and heart disease on Christmas Day, 2006, at the age of 62. The viral fame of his work surged primarily after his death.