I just heard a funny story about Beethoven and his sixth symphony
("The Pastoral") that reminded me of our VN in regards to artistic
misdirection (under the Soviets we used to call it disinformation, you
may recall).

The first movement of the Pastoral ends with a short passage that
clearly depicts a duet between a cuckoo played by a clarinet and a
warbler of some kind played by the flute. According to Alan Chapman,
the host of a morning program on KUSC (kusc.org/playlist/), when asked
which bird he had in mind when he wrote the flute part, LvB insisted
that he was not referring to birds at all. Anyone with ears would know
he was lying, but according to Mr Chapman, Beethoven had himself
actually marked the passage in the score with the pseudo-English word
"boids."

C Kunin