When it comes to satanic rituals, the British have a lot to learn from the Dutch and their neighbours.
The best – or rather the worst – we can do is get some S&M babes before a mob of drug-addled retards, turn the amplifiers up full whack and let’em rock to pro-Palestinian, anti-royalist shrieks half-muffled by incoherent electronic cacophony.
Music in any aural sense of the word doesn’t come into it – it’s strictly a visual spectacle staged as a pagan rite. I wrote about the Glastonbury festival the other day, and I really have nothing much to add to it.
But the Dutch, Belgians and Germans do, and what they add is a new concept hitherto unexplored by our progressive modernity. They show how to combine satanic rituals with music, and I do mean real music: classical, acoustic and performed by properly trained musicians.
As I write, I’m looking at a brochure advertising a unique concert to take place on 28 July in Amsterdam. Called Klassiek Fetish, it’ll feature performers and audiences clad in the kind of gear… well, I’d better let the brochure speak for itself:
“Amsterdam will be filled with high notes during the launch of its first classical music event for the Fetish & LHBTIQ+ community in the capital following the example of Fetish concerts in the cities of Berlin and Antwerp.
“Celebrate beauty, freedom and wonder while enjoying classical masterpieces performed by amazing musicians.
“Dress to impress: Leather-Rubber-Uniform-Superhero-Gala-Sportswear-Drag.”
Lest you may think this is just a gimmick, a regular concert with some kinky kit thrown in to spice up the proceedings, the brochure emphasises the transcendent aspect of the experience:
“Classic 4 Fetish is not just a concert, but a celebration of individuality and artistic expression. It is an opportunity to show yourself as you are, in a setting that is both respectful and inspiring. Put on your best fetish gear and be enchanted by the beautiful sounds and visual beauty. Let yourself be carried away by the timeless melodies and enjoy the beauty of classical music in an environment where freedom and expression are central. Buy your tickets now and experience a day full of musical splendor and visual magic in the enchanting surroundings of the heart of Amsterdam.
“The programme offers a breathtaking selection of music pieces by Tchaikovsky, Bosmans and Fauré, among others, supplemented with many other surprises.” I shudder to think what these might be. Public flagellation? Human sacrifice?
This is worse, much worse than Glastonbury – in the same sense in which a heresy is a greater threat to a religion than that posed by atheism. A fortress may be able to withstand a battering ram, but it will succumb to the vandals inside its walls.
Christianity and music, its closest approximation in the lay world, can best resist perverse vulgarisation by putting up a wall around themselves and letting the outside world get on with its vulgarity. Both Christianity and music may venture on outside forays to convert the heathen, but they must not on pain of death open their doors to unconverted barbarians.
Churches commit this mistake by downplaying the mysteries of their creed and seeking sleazy popularity, the kind provided by raves and services accompanied by pop excretions. Musicians – or, to be more exact, concert organisers – do the same thing by mixing serious music with trashy muzak best suited to shops, lifts and restaurants. (BBC Proms are a good example of this stratagem.)
Yet both religion and music can succeed only on their own terms – or not at all. When they sell their soul for the mess of popularity, they betray their mission and ultimately become irrelevant.
However, what’s going on in Antwerp, Berlin and Amsterdam is even more sinister than all that. It’s an extension of a continuous effort to sexualise real music, thereby lowering it to the sewer of pop. In this case, the sexualisation is of a perverse kind, but that’s merely a development of a long-standing tendency.
Several generations of people have been raised on the crudely erotic content of pop music, conveyed both through the lyrics and, more typically, rhythm. So trained, people seek the same thrills in real music written to appeal to the higher faculties of man rather than to his lower regions.
Much of Wagner’s oeuvre is overtly sensual (one of my many problems with it), but his operas are too long for pop junkies to get their jollies. They want their fix short and sweet, which explains why Ravel’s Bolero is the most popular classical piece among young people.
Its monotonous coital rhythm produces a most enjoyable response that has little to do with its understated musical content. (Ravel himself once said that there was no music in his Bolero.)
All this was hilariously illustrated in the 1979 film 10, where the Bo Derek character always puts on Bolero before making love (she uses a more direct term). And in 1984, the British figure skaters Torvill and Dean won the Olympics with their elegant copulation on ice performed to the unremitting beat of Bolero.
But at least Torvill and Dean did their bit in elegant clothes, and Bo Derek in no clothes at all. They didn’t take that quasi-classical piece into the ‘Leather-Rubber-Uniform-Superhero-Gala-Sportswear-Drag’ territory.
We’ve had to wait 40 years after the British Olympic triumph for this musical development, but, as Galileo and Newton discovered, falling objects accelerate. The same is true of modern life: processes that used to take centuries or decades to develop, these days take years or months.
That’s why I can confidently predict that things will quickly sink even deeper than the bottom-feeding Klassiek Fetish. I’m not sure, alas, that my imagination is vivid enough to imagine what those lower depths could look like.
It’s possible, for example, that the fetish gear that so far is optional will in due course become compulsory at all classical concerts. Or that the audience will be given Ecstasy and fentonil rather than glasses of bubbly at the interval. Or that we’ll be regaled with a performance of, say, St Matthew Passion by nude singers.
The possibilities are endless, and I’ll leave you to explore them on your own. Let’s just say that Klassiek Fetish shows a promising way forward.
P.S. If you wish to attend Klassiek Fetish, I’ll be happy to provide booking information.
“Klassiek Fetish shows a promising way forward.” More likely a “damning way downward.”
I would happily accompany you to this event, Alex, but I see the performance is at 12 noon. A bit early in the day for that sort of thing!
Yes, that would be a real matinée from hell.