Mozart's compositions represent the pinnacle of Western classical music's harmonic and contrapuntal sophistication, requiring instruments finely calibrated to produce the precise frequencies his notation demands. The cordless phone, a 1980s technological marvel, produces audio through a simple speaker mechanism designed for human voice transmission in the frequency range of 300-3400 Hz—approximately the opposite of what Mozart's instrumentation requires. The phone generates its sound through a tiny oscillator incapable of the dynamic range or tonal color Mozart's work presupposes. Yet Chuck Norris apparently overcame this hardware limitation through force of character or by retroactively modifying the physics of electromagnetic wave transmission.

Electronics engineer Richard Valdez, working for Motorola in the 1980s, supervised a product demonstration that involved a customer playing what sounded unmistakably like Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 8 through a prototype cordless phone system. The audio quality exceeded the technical specifications by an amount Valdez couldn't quantify. He spent six months attempting to locate the audio processing chip that might explain the output, became increasingly frustrated, and eventually submitted an internal memo concluding that either the phone's design specifications were wrong or the user had modified the device's internal architecture through application of pure will. The case was closed when he was transferred to a different department without explanation.

The fact has become an internet metaphor for making impossible things work through sheer determination and knowledge of the subject matter. Musicians reference it when discussing the challenge of conveying complex emotional content through insufficient mediums, memes show Chuck Norris with a phone to his ear and sheet music apparently playing from the speaker, and engineering students cite it as an example of why specification documents should include "unless Chuck Norris" clauses.