For Those in the Mood, Some Music

September 18, 2012, 12:09 pm

By ZACHARY WOOLFE

The first officially licensed product for sale in the marketing blitz for “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the publishing phenomenon that brought sadomasochism into the pop-culture mainstream, is not a toy whip or handcuff or even a T-shirt. It's Bach.

“Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album” had its rollout on Monday evening at the Soho House before guests each fitted with a single handcuff. It is a compilation of 15 musical works mentioned in the kinky, neo-Gothic trilogy of “Fifty Shades” novels, whose protagonist, Christian Grey, is an amateur pianist and Thomas Tallis aficionado with distinctive sexual tastes.

The event featured an interview with, and rare public appearance by, E. L. James, the British former television executive whose “Fifty Shades” books, originally self-published on the Internet, have sold millions of copies and spawned the genre described as “Mommy porn.”

“It's nice that people who don't normally listen to classical music are listening to classical music,” she told a crush of journalists, wearing a snug black-and-white minidress and a black lace shrug. “And that people who normally don't read are reading.”

The liner notes promise to expose a “dark side to Classical music,” but the works are, on the whole, harmless: favorites like the Flower Duet from Delibes's “Lakmé,” Pachebel's Canon, a piano arrangement of Bach's “Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring” and the Aria from his “Goldberg Variations.” The recordings, drawn from the EMI Records back catalog, have that storied label's imprimatur and feature renowned artists like Riccardo Muti, Arleen Auger and Les Violons du Roy.

On the album the pieces seem innocuous enough but in the books they sometimes accompany intense sex scenes. “Spem in Alium,” Tallis's great motet for 40 voices, is the soundtrack for a late sequence set in Christian Grey's dungeon, the Red Room of Pain. (Sales of the Tallis Scholars' recording of the motet had spiked even before the album's release on Sept. 11; the album has now climbed to No. 11 on the iTunes bestseller list.)

Ms. James said she included much of the music because it was what she played when she needed to drown out the noise made by her two sons as she wrote in her living room in West London.

As the books gained popularity, fans turned to the frequent mentions of music. (In addition to the classical selections, the books reference pop songs ranging from “Sexy” by the Black Eyed Peas to Bruce Springsteen's “I'm on Fire.”)

“Everyone was asking, ‘When can I get the album, when can I get the album, when can I get the album?'” Ms. James said. â €œAnd EMI stepped up to the plate.”

The story is slightly more complicated. In July EMI had put out “Fifty Shades of Classical Music,” a compilation of 50 tracks that was intended to be the flagship of “The Greatest Classical Music Ever,” a new series of downloads. The playlist's robust sales caught the attention of Ms. James and her team, which was wary of efforts to co-opt the “Fifty Shades” brand without permission.

“She was like, ‘Um, what are you doing?'” Wendy Ong, the vice president of classics at EMI, said with a laugh in an interview on the Soho House roof deck. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I'm so glad you called.' And then we started talking and I said, ‘Let's make an official album because I think your fans want an actual compilation and they want it stamped with your approval.' And she loved the idea.”

Ms. James's agent, Valerie Hoskins, listed some upcoming licensed products, including hosiery, T-shirts, jewelry and a line of clothing from Van Heusen, including a version of the necktie that is a key detail in the book.

“Christian is about taste and Christian is about class,” she said, referring to the character in the books. “So the licenses have been very carefully developed.”

Andrew Ousley, a publicist for EMI, gave a sense of the scale that he is hoping for.

“This will be the biggest disc for us since the Three Tenors,” he predicted.