Last year, temperatures ran high about Gustavo Dudamel and El Sistema being used as the friendly face of Hugo Chavez's Venezuelan government (briefly, On the Overgrown Path, anti-Chavez; Matthew Guerrieri, wait just a minute and think this through), but I think we can all agree that the insufferable fictional violinist and conductor Sir Roy Vandervane went too far in his opposition of Greece's government in the early 1970s:
'Telling a shag why I won't do Harold in Italy for him,' [said Vandervane.]
'I suppose the viola part would be rather on the-'
'No, no, this would have been waving the stick. Because of Byron.'
'What's he got to do with it?'
'Duggers, the music by Hector Berlioz, [from or around] 1869* as we both have cause to know, is based on a-'
'God. I'm with you. God.'
'Sorry, but these days you do rather seem to need to have stuff spelt out.'
'What's Byron got to do with it?'
'Christ, he's a Greek national hero. They're always going on about him.'
'So we refuse to perform a piece of music by a Frenchman inspired by a poem by an Englishman [ed.: about a visit to Italy!] who died a hundred and fifty years ago in case it might get blokes to turn soft on the present government in Greece. I see.'
'You can't let it slip, you know. Got too keep after them.'---from Girl, 20, by Kingsley Amis, 1971.
*Close: 1834.