The Grand Fiddle

Having the wool pulled over one’s eyes is an expression which, taken to its logical conclusion suggests that not only is the vision impaired but that audiologists everywhere receive steady employment removing the fluff from our ears. I would urge governments to initiate such ‘de-wadding’ programmes as a matter of urgency as I fear that a duping of grand proportions has been underway for the last couple of centuries at least in Western society if not the world over.

From the earliest years, man has sought to make music of the most pleasing kind and has largely succeeded in this venture except (and this is where I risk being stoned to death, but would be pleased to be martyred for the cause) with the solo violin. Somehow the world has been lulled senseless by the aptly named ’strains’ of this instrument. Let us consider the evidence:

The whole course of history would have been a lot more bloody than it actually was had David the shepherd boy attempted to soothe King Saul’s mood swings with a violin instead of the gentle harp. He learned the harp whilst out in the fields chucking stones to keep wolves away (perhaps the violin would have been more effective) but anyway, Saul would have had him disposed of and then who would have stood up to Goliath?

It is reputed that satan himself is not only a mean player of the thing but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was the supplier of its name, a corruption of ‘ vile din’ or ‘viol din’ or ‘defiled thing’. Indeed, if it were true that it is an innocent and sweet instrument, why do we insist on calling it a Fiddle? We know very well as we walk into the concert hall (usually dressed in black for the inevitable funeral), that we are about to be subjected to such a hellish experience that we must pull the wool over our ears in order to survive. The unwitting violinist or fiddle agent may strive to bring us a technically brilliant performance and we may go to the bar during the interval and hastily gulp down over-chilled beer to calm the nerves. But we all pretend, rather like the crowd in the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, that we are having a good time. For goodness sake, why? When a knife is scraped across a plate, we don’t all smile and call out for an encore! Can anyone really take their hands from their ears, put them on their heart and say they actually enjoyed a solo violin piece? Yes, they will tell you they were deeply moved but press them on that one next time and they will run out of the building in crisis.

Further evidence is found in the fiddle agent’s inability to cope with the ordeal. Menhuin has to spend hours standing on his head after performing in order to regain his senses and Kennedy, poor chap, made it obvious that he would rather have had a normal life. Vanessa Mae as a young gal, was obviously driven insane by the sound she made and cried for help by asking us to look at her as a woman, a heartfelt plea most men decided to hear. But watch them as they play; all have their eyes screwed tightly shut.

Curiously, the combined sound of this dreadful instrument produces a different and altogether more pleasing effect. This, I suspect is simply a more complex part of the Grand Fiddle (violins=violence?), a matter too profound for the simple human mind to grapple with and a matter in which we ask God to save us. In the meantime, I call upon those still left with any power of mortal reason to rise up in rebellion and dance with joy around communal bonfires made from violins. Return to your pianos, accordions, cellos, clarinets , French horns and Spanish guitars. Awake to the sounds of hissing spruce and crackling varnish and banish from this earth, the evil violin. Consign it to Obliviolin.

Copyright © Midgetgems Comedy 2007