A closer look
Nokia's legendary default ringtone, which dominated the soundscape of the early 2000s and haunted theaters and restaurants globally, is actually a tiny snippet of a classical guitar piece composed by Francisco Tárrega in 1902. A brilliant nineteenth-century Spanish composer wrote a beautiful, sweeping waltz, completely unaware that a century later it would be compressed into a screeching monophonic electronic beep triggering millennial anxiety. For a brief period in history, this fragmented classical composition was arguably the most frequently played piece of music on the entire planet, purely because people were too lazy to change their default phone settings. It is tragic to realize that your ultimate artistic legacy could be the abrasive soundtrack of someone getting dumped via a text message
