Imagine the 1812 Overture Scored for Sousaphone and Accordion...

...and then try to imagine something worse. If you can conjure up a piece of music that horrible, it might well sound like the Peace and Friendship Symphony, as played by the Tehran Symphony Orchestra.

Late last month — around the time the Iranian government executed two more political prisoners, charging nine others with waging war against God, a capital offense — the Tehran Symphony Orchestra was sent on a government-sponsored tour across Europe, which just ended this week.

It played the so-called Peace and Friendship Symphony, by Majid Entezami, a four-movement jeremiad of martial bombast and almost unfathomable incompetence and silliness, originally performed, according to Tehran Times, last February in Iran to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the revolution.