#sorabji

[lanativite]

guy who's listened to 1 classical piece: my favorite composer is mozart

guy who's listened to 100 classical pieces: my favorite composer is Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, creator of Opus Clavicembalisticum, who also restricted the performance of his music

guy who's listened to 1000 classical pieces: my favorite composer is mozart

[no-tritones-for-you]

Sorabji: Fantaisie Espagnole, KSS 19 (Long)

[theflamingones]

2 Piano Pieces, KSS 17: No. 2, Toccata · Michael Habermann

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji: Piano Music

“One is often asked what one thinks the “future” of music is going to be in this country. […] Music, the most intimately and intensely personal, the most individual and individualistic of the arts, is not likely to be tolerated — except in the most Marks and Spencered, the most standardized and robotized of forms, after a war, whose real and concealed, as distinct form its loudly propagandized purpose, is the production of the unquestioning Robot in the Universal Servile State of Robots.” ~ Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

“The Decline of Music and Musical Taste in England (With some Reflections upon the future of Music”

[quondam]

I think of the computer as a solo instrument, like a piano, not like a fake orchestra or a virtual studio. Been inspired alot lately by Keith Jarrett and Sorabji - big sprawling masses of sound, lots of rhythmic complexity and interesting sonorities and surface detail but not no much melody or harmonic movement. 

[exchangell]

at a function and hungry as fuck while thinking about kaikhosru shapurji sorabji rn

[automaticfrenchhorn]

Opus Clavicembalisticum, Sorabji, 1929-30

This is a piece everyone needs to experience

This piece was once played so badly that the Sorabji straight up banned anyone from every playing it unless he let them

This is what most of it looks like

Most piano music has two staves. One for each hand. Simple. Sorabji usually writes for three. Sometimes four

SOMETIMES FIVE. THE MADMAN

Some very normal rhythms

Adam Neely, this guy beat you to the 7:11 polyrhythm by nearly 90 years

Also did I mention this piece is over four hours long? Because yeah that's pretty important. It also remains this difficult for the entire time across ~250 pages

This preface, it's a mix of Italian and Latin, with some made up words. "Variationibus" is not how you say "variations" in Latin. Also note the parts; Prima is Latin for first, Tertia is Latin for third. Altera is not latin for second, it means "Alternate". I don't know why Sorabji did this. I genuinely think he just didn't know the Latin word Secundo and went with the next best thing

Typo in the "Interludium Primum", there are XLIX=49 variations, not XLIV=44. Whoopsies

A very normal slur. Good luck playing this legato when your two hands have to play four distinct lines

Making up notation, as one does

I don't even know

[threno-die-blog]

Sorabji: Opus Clavicembalisticum

Sorabji: Opus Clavicembalisticum, an album by Kaikhosru Sorabji on Spotify

My new favorite composer.

[djelgroucho]

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was a British born composer, pianist, and author who wrote some of the longest and most difficult to perform works for the piano...

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2003/sep/12/classicalmusicandopera1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaikhosru_Shapurji_Sorabji

http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk