King Crimson
The Night Watch

"The Golden Age"

The wind was changing. Of course, it wouldn't have been easy to sense it by relying solely on the faint murmur of the water as it lazily stretched out on the canal beds, or perhaps just by observing the hypnotic chasing of the massive blades of the windmills, which, with their cyclical motion, cause the picturesque reflectivity of the poetic Dutch skies to ripple. To glimpse the new path traced by the capricious course of human events, it would have been necessary to look South, where, due to the bankruptcy of his Kingdom of Spain, the fanatic grip of Philip II's Catholic orthodoxy was finally losing its maniacal hold on the United Provinces of Northern Europe, thus allowing the Calvinist rebels to chain a series of crucial victories, leading in the early 17th century to the flourishing of the bustling port of Amsterdam and the consolidation, albeit temporary, of the independence of what more or less corresponds to the present-day Netherlands.

Along the unfolding of this bitter conflict, which went down in history as the "Eighty Years' War," lie the numerous adventures of the exuberant painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, who, having witnessed both the Spanish yoke, with its exorbitant taxes and constant heresy condemnations, and the long-awaited freedom characterized by the excesses long held back by the upper layers of the bourgeoisie, experienced in his skin the relentless changes of a country rapidly on the rise and, inevitably, in full identity crisis.

So, it is no wonder that the brilliant artist, once the golden boy of the Dutch scene, highly sought after by the wealthiest families of the time for his incomparable skill in portraiture and, through that success, dedicated to luxury and the most extravagant expenses alongside his beloved Saskia van Uylenburgh, plummeted disastrously, after the tragic death of his wife, afflicted with tuberculosis, as well as three of their four children, into a chasm of bitterness and poverty. This resulted in a progressive and now irreversible rift that developed between his style, increasingly dark, provocative, and incapable of conforming to current trends, and the sophisticated local demands, aristocratically haughty, celebrating the victory over Habsburg hegemony, and attracted to the refinements and canonical beauty of Italian classicism.

The social downfall of the virtuous character and the swift cultural reversals that massively contributed to it, seem to create a bridge across space and time, reaching, over three centuries later, the now desolate environments of the austere court of the Crimson King, where today His Majesty Robert Fripp finds himself involved (since 1992, when the monumental work in four volumes "The Great Deceiver") was published in cataloging and binding numerous historical documents dating back to about four decades ago, at the time of his stern yet enlightened rule of the English Progressive Empire; the eclipse of which the great leader maintains a vivid and unaltered memory: "In the years following 1976, it was impossible even to mention the titles of any of our works, or even to hint at the group's name, without provoking general derision, sometimes even openly hostile, from those who read and were influenced by the English music press."

The analogies with master van Rijn culminated, however, in 1997, when "The Night Watch," a piece inspired by one of the painter's immortal masterpieces, was used to christen the double CD of the concert that King Crimson held in Amsterdam in 1973, which remained officially unreleased, except for the 27 minutes of recording included in the memorable "Starless and Bible Black." This further overlap of the imposing figures of the restless standard-bearer of Dutch art and the absolute sovereign of progressive rock goes far beyond mere homage for its own sake. It reveals itself in the manifestation of excellence achieved by the personality and genius of the human soul, provoking in those who find themselves admiring it a sense of vertigo and reverence entirely similar to what our Rembrandt must have felt depicting a pensive Aristotle, one of the undisputed fathers of thought, in deep contemplation of Homer's face, legendary founder of epic poetry.

It is indeed in purely poetic dimension that the listening of "The Night Watch" projects where it is impossible to encounter a single moment that is not completely permeated with art at its highest expressive levels; almost as if the Crimson were not even engaged in playing their music but painting it on the dynamic canvas of the stage, with John Wetton intent on laying down the thick primer through explosive bass strokes ("Easy Money"), while his voice, hoarse and tormented, struggles ("Lament") in search of that perfect and unrepeatable moment of inspiration, which seems to draw near with the exquisite strokes of Robert's guitar ("Book of Saturday"), to then be fulfilled by the arrival of the violin and its magnificent elegy ("The Night Watch").

Despite the strict complexity of rigorous and almost geometric representations, in their flawless balancing of every infinitesimal detail ("Fracture"), and the penetrating intensity of macabre abstractions ("Starless and Bible Black"), fatally resulting in unfathomable depths of obsessive and prolonged estrangement ("The Fright Watch", "The Talking Drum"), it is in the nostalgic and heartrending echoes of an ancient embrace between mellotron and violin ("Trio") that lies the beating heart overflowing with emotion of a valuable artistic testimony, further enriched by the melancholic and solemn themes imprinted by the bow of David Cross ("Exiles") and sealed by the ineffable skill of Bill Bruford and his sticks, masterfully adept at directing the powerful rides of the other instruments ("Larks' Tongues in Aspic - Part II") as well as ruling their frequently uncontrolled raptures ("21st Century Schizoid Man").

In light of all this, it is truly ironic to think that "The Night Watch" is not even the real name of the colossal painting to which at least part of the work in question is inspired. The truth is that the canvas (which should be called "The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch"), after being vandalistically downsized in 1715 (not before, fortunately, Gerrit Lundens could make an original-size copy of it), remained at the mercy of external agents for so long, darkening exponentially during the process, that it later fueled the false belief that it depicted a night watch when, in fact, it was merely the "group photo" of the Amsterdam civic militia of 1642, those wealthy merchants who played at war in their city's safety while real blood was flowing, and in great quantities, in the far more dangerous border territories.

This further confirmation of how the vanity and childish materialism that have always marked our history are trifles compared to the inestimable value of the experience bequeathed to us by those masters, always consistent with their own thoughts and unwilling to compromise with the prevailing conventions, of whom Robert Fripp is a valid exponent and wise thinker: "I observe the newfound and growing reputation of so-called 'prog rock' with the same wry smile, occasional controversies, and biting comments, the strong and unbiased sense of humor with which I viewed its previous period of infamy and disgrace. This too shall pass. As will what follows it, in turn, pass."