KEEPING AMERICA SAFE FROM VIOLISTS

posted by James Reel

    I keep forgetting to post this, even after having gotten permission from the author, Neil Hughes, a music librarian at the University of Georgia. The inspiration was the announcement in late March that England's Halle orchestra canceled its American tour when the cost of obtaining visas for their players and staff became prohibitively expensive, now that various arms of our government are doing everything they can to keep potential terrorists from entering the country. For the literal-minded among you, I should point out that this is humor:

    I can't believe this...you would actually allow, for example, a foreign viola section into our country without thoroughly vetting them first? Wake up, people! These radicals are known for such heinous acts as tuning to A415Hz while the rest of the orchestra tunes to A440, without posting warnings outside the hall and in the program notes. This can cause North American hearing aids to explode. (The bloody tactic is described in a recently-released CIA document entitled Weapons of Musical Destruction: The Limey Sleeper Cell Situation.)  Individuals from these cells have also been known to play Harold in Italy, and to laugh at their victims while so doing. The larger organizations of which they are a part have also been caught, red-handed, playing concerts comprising nothing but the music of Vaughan Williams (who, suspiciously enough, pronounces his first name as "Rafe," which sounds kinda Arabic to me). "My GOD, not another modal folksong quotation!" one of their recent hostages was heard to cry, just before he hurled himself from the parquet.
    Is this the kind of America you want to see? I say, charge 'em double for those visas, throw up fabricated obstacles at every step of their way, and make 'em stand in line in the back alleys of London until Manchester freezes over. We need to keep our concert halls safe from this sort of insidious blight.