Opus Clavicembalisticum difficulty

[ahinton]

It's possible to attend a recital of all Rach concerti in a row. I did, and to my surprise, it felt more like listening to a concerto of 4 movements than 4 concerti.

I wouldn't recommend it. I did, however, once attand a performance of all ten numbered Scriabin sonatas in chronological order and that certainly had the effect of giving the work a second meaning in a kind of "works within a work" sense.

Sorabji is Indian. Indians are used to listening to that sort of length in their own classical music.

Sorabji was only part Indian, never lived in India and his "Indian" heritage was in any case originally Persian, his father being a Parsi. Whilst observations along the lines that you mention have indeed been made over the years, I think that it's probably too easy to overstate and misrepresent the notion of the Orintal and the Occidental merging in Sorabji's music; it is a factor, without doubt but he was not, for example, trained in Indian classical music.

Best,

Alistair

[lostinidlewonder]

It was and is true, which is why I responded as I did; if you choose to believe otherwise, that is your prerogative alone.

Though this assumes you know everyones prerogative which is quite doubtful.

I did not seek to "make" it look like anything of the kind - or indeed anything other than what it was; should you choose to try to read more into it, whatever that may be, that is, once again, up to you alone.

"Yawn" response is rather amusing and highlights an emotional response by you, it is not reading "more into it" it is just reading for its face value.

Fair comment, although it is far from rare in Sorabji yet there are very few instances of it in other composers' solo keyboard works.

Illogical statement we are talking about the landscape of music as a whole and measuring rarity not focusing on a single composer and speculating.

Again, I did not and do not "compare" per se; however, the performance stamina issue is obviously pertinent in works such as those of Sorabji that have been mentioned in ways that do not apply to individual performers in a Wagner opera. "Contrast", perhaps, but not "compare".

Err you did compare as soon as you mentioned the works in the same discussion. Compare vs contrast, it is the same deal. I find it very odd that you have to highlight some kind of difference between the two, just being argumentative by the looks of it.

You have already stated that and, to a point, I can accept it although, as I mentioned, it is very rare in other composers' solo keyboard works but relatively common in Sorabji's.

But this is a totally different perspective to what we were discussing, if you want to merely focus on one single composer and speculate about statistics that is not the same as looking at the whole landscape of composers out there. You mentioned a "unique" attribute to Sorabji's works though I fail to see any possiblity of uniqueness especially if you are not comparing him with other composers.

I did not realise that you had performed Sorabji's works. I am pleased to hear it now and look forward very much to hearing you do so. As a matter of interest, which ones are in your repertoire?

I have performed them for myself and private listeners who are interested in his work, I am yet to find a situation where a public performance would be viable material for the average paying audience member. I treat Sorabjis work more like a less organised and more dense Bach/Godowsky type composition and is a good reading work out especially when one becomes too arrogant with their reading capabilities.

Nonsense. The issues for a performer of one of these works are quite different to those for listeners to them. Listeners do not require the immense physical energy that the performers do.

The reason why considering the challenges of performance was brought up initially in our discussion was that the performer must consider the difficulty of the performance not only for themselves as they present the concert but also the difficulty of understanding/appreciating the performance itself experienced by the audience. Both are just as important as the other. If for instance I were to do a concert for a lot of young people and go ahead and play some serious abstract piano work as if I were performing for an audience of music academics, I am ignoring the challenges that I heap up on my audience shoulders and thus the concert will not do as well.

Mentioning that the issues are "related" is not a fence sitting comment

It certainly seems so when one considers that initially you said it was a "rather different issue".

; no one is sitting on a fence here and there is in any case no such fence on which to sit.

Yet I have identified how it can be seen in this manner so there indeed a fence on which to sit on when one compares "related" to "rather different issue".

The only related elements are the length of time that listeners and performers each have to sit still and concentrate on the music, but that's about as far as it goes.

This to me seems like a very simplistic model that does not take into account other factors such as the many factors of preparation of the concert and management of the audience by the perfomer during the event.

Another factor that will not affect, still less involve, the audience is the hundreds of hours that the keyboard soloist will have needed in order to prepare his/her performance.

I don't see at all how the audience is separated from this. A performer considers their audience all the time when they are preparing works, they are imagining what their presentation will look like to their audience and they envisage performing for their audience while building their program. If this is all done without the audience kept in perspective then often you find programs can tend towards quite self absorbed type affairs on the performers behalf. All successful performers have that triangle of performance constantly on their minds and strive to nurture all three when preparing concerts: the Composer, the Performer and the Audience. An audience member will be affected based on the performers careful consideration of them.

Well, perhaps concert traditions and practice in US are indeed different to those in UK these days; if so, you have no business to question my "concerting industry experience" other, perhaps, than in US.

Though being Australian I would more resonate with how things work in the UK. It is a shame if your experience is that the UK still has performers who do not interact with their audience with a talk, that old fashioned approach to concerts has been dying out here in Australia for decades already and at the majority of piano solo organised by people outside of the universities you will have a good talk from their performer.

The only issue with having such a pre-performance talk in such circumstances is that this makes the overall event that much longer again which, given the lengths of some of those pieces, could be something of an issue.

Though instead you should consider that it sets up the energy of the audience to focus on things they might not have been aware of and thus help them experience something special.

Organ Symphony No. 2 plays for between 8½ and 9 hours but its world première took well in excess of 10 hours because intervals were taken between each of its three movements.

A ridicuous amount of time to think an average audience members could put up with the music for that long and still maintain focus to the end. It is a tragic waste of time in many cases, for instance imagine that at the 3rd hour and 45th minute there was a tricky passage which took him 2 hours to master and only lasts 10 seconds but so many audience members have tuned out being blasted with all sorts of acrobatics already that they neglect to hear anything special.

I did not and do not suggest any such thing. What I did state was that it is hardly the prime motivation for playing any repertoire, be it Chopin or Sorabji.... if it's unclear to you why the performers have expended so much effort of such pieces for disproportionately small financial reward, you'll have to ask the performers - of whom I thought you said that you were one yourself!

This is bewildering to me that a professional performer would not worry about the money they would be paid for performances. It is a very important issue if this is how you make your living! When I was performing full time I was making great money and I would not have done it if there was no money to be made from it! Repeating concerts makes the time invested in building up the program itself pay itself off. I guess there are musiicans who are not also business men/women and thus enjoy suffering for their art without financial reward, so long the music is honored! It seems an unnecessary burden. So too is preparing a program that is many hours long only for it to be performed once in my lifetime or even two three times, such a poor investment of time vs cash.

The implicit assumption here is that plenty of music could benefit from - or at the very least not be disadvantaged by - such reductions (mainly textural) albeit that Bach's would be considerably harder to treat in such a way than some other composers'; if that is not arrogance, it certainly suggests at the very least that people like you who are prepared to spend time in doing that kind of thing have questionable regard for the composers whose works they so treat.

Are you crazy, if someone is learning a work that they could not play because the score is simply too difficult but they are so passionate to learn the piece that they cant bear not learning the piece, to preserve the sound notes can be left out and the individual who benefits from that can experience playing the music with more freedom. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this and I can't imagine any composer would feel offended especially if their work is being appreciated and transformed to also fit in the hands of those who otherwise would not be able to play their works.

How, for example, might you go about paring down one of Sorabji's fugues, where the number of voices is what it is?

There are many ways though it would not be efficient to discuss it in this format nor a good use of time for what it really is worth.

Practical historical experience does not bear this out...

Live instrumental concert attendence is shrinking that seems to be quite a historical experience to observe. What an average audience member might find "boring" is encouraged by lengthy works being added to a program. First time concert goers who are subjected to lengthy works might certainly be put off attending another concert so it really plays an important factor in nurturing the future.

and I was not in any case, suggesting that pieces that play for many hours should - or are expected to - be played without breaks.

Though some of the works have a lot to play though before a break can actually be put in and by then many times past the 20 minute mark has already occured thus many audience members lost.

"Your average audience member" is in any case more likely not to want to attend such performances in the first place rather than attending but not staying the course - but then not all audiences are "average"!

Yeah the sales of such concerts are very difficult and often don't make much money.

OK, so if not 20 minutes, what instead would you seek to advocate as a maximum acceptable duration? Holding the audience's attention over any timespan is in any case at least in part about how effectively the performer manages to do this and to what extent the music itself is capable of holding such attention.

Of course one can extend or enhance this focus though visual effect on stage eg: lighting effects changes depending on the mood of the music, there also could be projected images or information that change over time with the music, projection of the hands at the piano or even notes as they are played or a score which is synchronised to the playing. Technology can help a great deal these days to aid performances, people too stuck in tradition and unwilling to grow can behave how they want but those who want to take on the technologies these days and how it can improve their show will propser. Operas having subtitles displayed for the audience for example is a great use of technology and assists a with maintaining the attention of the audiences who otherwise would have no idea what was being said.

Again, I did not suggest that no one else would experience the same or something similar; I stated that I would not necessarily expect that as a matter of course, not least because no two pairs of ears will respond identically to any musical performance.

Though saying one experiences 4+ hours as 1+ hour this is an unusual way to measure something and really doesn't tell us much in a rational manner, it may indeed heighten someones expectations when observing the same performance in the future only to be let down because they experienced no time dilation. 

The mistake that you make here is to assume that most audience members will react similarly to either the one or the other;

Though your logic here is mistaken if it thinks that I need to assume what most audience members will do for my statement to make logical sense. I said an opera will have more chance is maintaing attention than a soloist, there are just so many other factors to look out for in an opera than there is with a soloist, this statement does not rely on assuming how audience members will react it relies on the logic that given more content to absorb there will be more energy to maintain focus than given less content to absorb.

yes, of course there is much more visually in an operatic performance than there is in a performance by just one keyboard player but, as I stated, the purpose of all of it is not to distract from the music and so there is a lot more on which to concentrate.

Distract from the music is an irrational idea from you. Just because there are more things to see in an opera that does not distract from the music at all and in fact enhances it. Maybe you should do some reading on the research of distraction and its benefit to concentration. You will find that many results indicate that focused-distraction and concentration led to fewer intrusions of target thoughts than suppression, and concentration in turn resulted in fewer target intrusions than focused-distraction during the initial period. Watching a soloist you will have more tendency to have to supress irrelvant distracting thoughts to maintain concentration where with operas you will have focused distraction on the stage itself and all the performers which will in the end aid in your overall concentration.

See above - but what might you suppose Wagner would have thought about this particular notion of the visual elements as a possible (and even implicity welcome) distraction from his music? - or does that not matter to you?

You are the one arguing that operas have a tendency to distract audience members from the music itself, this is a deranged type of observation because an opera relies on its visual direction also, it is part of what the peformance is! Costumes and such work together to appreciate the music. So your idea of "distraction" here taking away from the music is rather irrational.

I have no such problems and, as already stated, this factor seems not to have pertained on the occasions when such works have been performed; the risk of which you write is therefore largely one of your own invention.

This is a rather arrogant tone from you, "largely one of your own invention" is rather skeptical persective of my professional experience with average audience attention spans. If you believe that performing a single work that goes for over 1 hour without a break as a soloist will not be in danger of losing audience focus then you have one more screw loose than I though.

Yes, occasionally there have been issues for a handful of audience members dependent upon public transport following late conclusions of such performances, but that's about it.

This has little relevance to what I was discussing.

There have not exactly been a lot of generations that have come after mine!

It doesn't take many to lose touch.

I imagine that, in Haydn's last years, no one would have anticipated that a composer would write a symphony a century or so later that plays for around an hour and a half without intervals between any of its four movements, yet who complains about Mahler's Sixth Symphony today? A few performances in Beethoven's time included several works which came to a total duration far greater than what is expected of a "conventional" length orchestral programme today, just as Anton Rubinstein put on programmes far longer than what is expected of a piano recital today, but did anyone complain in either case or refuse to attend?

But you are talking about a world back then which was very different to what it is today. One need to consider why attending "classical" concerts is diminishing in todays world and expectig audiences to deal with very long works in concerts really is not going to pave the mainstream way of the future.

Why should they even wish or be concerned to do so?

They don' thave to wish or be concerned, the fact remains they will remain fairly unknown if thats the path they want to take.

after all, what, today, when there are literally hundreds of thousands of composers active, IS "mainstream" attention in any case? Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and others are obviously "mainstream" and their legacies continue to last from generation to generation, but did anyone complain about the 50 or so minute duration of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony or Hammerklavier Sonata in terms of the difficulty of maintaining concentration on what they convey?

Mainstream can easily be noted by the amount of attention particular works are getting and with the internet these days there are many sources you can go measure this. 50 minutes duration is nothing compared to a work that goes for hours on end. Watching an orchrstra for 50 minutes generally is easier than listening to a soloist given any average concert goers experience. This is because of the different amount of observations and experiences that can be made and holds logically true.

[ahinton]

Though this assumes you know everyones prerogative which is quite doubtful.

No; I referred solely to yours.

"Yawn" response is rather amusing and highlights an emotional response by you, it is not reading "more into it" it is just reading for its face value.

In your opinion in both cases but not so in the latter one.

Illogical statement we are talking about the landscape of music as a whole and measuring rarity not focusing on a single composer and speculating.
Err you did compare as soon as you mentioned the works in the same discussion. Compare vs contrast, it is the same deal. I find it very odd that you have to highlight some kind of difference between the two, just being argumentative by the looks of it.
But this is a totally different perspective to what we were discussing, if you want to merely focus on one single composer and speculate about statistics that is not the same as looking at the whole landscape of composers out there. You mentioned a "unique" attribute to Sorabji's works though I fail to see any possiblity of uniqueness especially if you are not comparing him with other composers.

In your opinion.

I have performed them for myself and private listeners who are interested in his work, I am yet to find a situation where a public performance would be viable material for the average paying audience member. I treat Sorabjis work more like a less organised and more dense Bach/Godowsky type composition and is a good reading work out especially when one becomes too arrogant with their reading capabilities.

OK; well, if you do get to find and take advantage of publilc performance opportunities, please let us know; we always seek to record details of public performances of Sorabji's music and add them to the website at www.sorabji-archive.co.uk .

The reason why considering the challenges of performance was brought up initially in our discussion was that the performer must consider the difficulty of the performance not only for themselves as they present the concert but also the difficulty of understanding/appreciating the performance itself experienced by the audience. Both are just as important as the other. If for instance I were to do a concert for a lot of young people and go ahead and play some serious abstract piano work as if I were performing for an audience of music academics, I am ignoring the challenges that I heap up on my audience shoulders and thus the concert will not do as well.
It certainly seems so when one considers that initially you said it was a "rather different issue".

But it IS a different issue, for the reasons that I have already given; the difficulties - whatever they might be - that face a single performer are for him/her alone, but an audience consists of as many different people as it does on any particular occasion and each will inevitably respond differently both to the work and to its performance.

Yet I have identified how it can be seen in this manner so there indeed a fence on which to sit on when one compares "related" to "rather different issue".
This to me seems like a very simplistic model that does not take into account other factors such as the many factors of preparation of the concert and management of the audience by the perfomer during the event.

These are all interesting factors, of course but I had taken the OP to be opening a discussion of the difficulties for the performer alone and responded accordingly.

I don't see at all how the audience is separated from this. A performer considers their audience all the time when they are preparing works, they are imagining what their presentation will look like to their audience and they envisage performing for their audience while building their program. If this is all done without the audience kept in perspective then often you find programs can tend towards quite self absorbed type affairs on the performers behalf. All successful performers have that triangle of performance constantly on their minds and strive to nurture all three when preparing concerts: the Composer, the Performer and the Audience. An audience member will be affected based on the performers careful consideration of them.

That's all very well but, just as a composer cannot write a work "for an audience" (i.e. a specific one), a performer cannot play one "for" one in the sense that neither can have advance knowledge of who will attend or how they might respond.

Though being Australian I would more resonate with how things work in the UK. It is a shame if your experience is that the UK still has performers who do not interact with their audience with a talk, that old fashioned approach to concerts has been dying out here in Australia for decades already and at the majority of piano solo organised by people outside of the universities you will have a good talk from their performer.
Though instead you should consider that it sets up the energy of the audience to focus on things they might not have been aware of and thus help them experience something special.

As I stated, I have no problem in principle with this kind of thing even though I encounter it very rarely; it is a fact, however, that a talk before, say, OC will make the entire event even longer than it would otherwise be - an hour, in the case of the instance that I mentioned - half an hour for the talk itself and half an hour for the audience to have a breather between it and the performance. I also participated in a discussion forum about Sorabji and his work in a concert at NYC's Merkin Hall at the end of 1998, although this took place after the performance.

A ridicuous amount of time to think an average audience members could put up with the music for that long and still maintain focus to the end. It is a tragic waste of time in many cases, for instance imagine that at the 3rd hour and 45th minute there was a tricky passage which took him 2 hours to master and only lasts 10 seconds but so many audience members have tuned out being blasted with all sorts of acrobatics already that they neglect to hear anything special.

But here you are merely putting forward speculation that appears to be based upon your own personal expectations; might some audience members respond similarly for similar reasons around three quarters of the way through a Ferneyhough quartet even though only around a quarter of an hour would by then have elapsed?

This is bewildering to me that a professional performer would not worry about the money they would be paid for performances. It is a very important issue if this is how you make your living! When I was performing full time I was making great money and I would not have done it if there was no money to be made from it! Repeating concerts makes the time invested in building up the program itself pay itself off. I guess there are musiicans who are not also business men/women and thus enjoy suffering for their art without financial reward, so long the music is honored! It seems an unnecessary burden. So too is preparing a program that is many hours long only for it to be performed once in my lifetime or even two three times, such a poor investment of time vs cash.
Are you crazy, if someone is learning a work that they could not play because the score is simply too difficult but they are so passionate to learn the piece that they cant bear not learning the piece, to preserve the sound notes can be left out and the individual who benefits from that can experience playing the music with more freedom. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this and I can't imagine any composer would feel offended especially if their work is being appreciated and transformed to also fit in the hands of those who otherwise would not be able to play their works.

Again, I did not suggest that performers are unconcerned about their incomes - far from it, indeed - but it remains up to them how they run their musical lives and it is clear that most of them do not select the repertoire that they will present based solely on financial expectations.

There are many ways though it would not be efficient to discuss it in this format nor a good use of time for what it really is worth.

Ah, I thought as much!

Live instrumental concert attendence is shrinking that seems to be quite a historical experience to observe. What an average audience member might find "boring" is encouraged by lengthy works being added to a program. First time concert goers who are subjected to lengthy works might certainly be put off attending another concert so it really plays an important factor in nurturing the future.

But, yet again, no two audience members, experienced or otherwise, are alike in their expectations or responses, so generalising like this is at best less than enlightening; moreover, an audience member might be put off by all manner of things in a piece besides how long he/she has to sit still and listen to it.

Though some of the works have a lot to play though before a break can actually be put in and by then many times past the 20 minute mark has already occured thus many audience members lost.

20 minutes again! I have not in any case experienced audience members being "lost" on such occasions.

Yeah the sales of such concerts are very difficult and often don't make much money.

The sales of many concerts result in financial loss and so have to be subsidised; try, for example, booking London's Wigmore Hall without external financial assistance for a very popular programme and selling all 550 or so seats and still ending up losing money...

Of course one can extend or enhance this focus though visual effect on stage eg: lighting effects changes depending on the mood of the music, there also could be projected images or information that change over time with the music, projection of the hands at the piano or even notes as they are played or a score which is synchronised to the playing. Technology can help a great deal these days to aid performances, people too stuck in tradition and unwilling to grow can behave how they want but those who want to take on the technologies these days and how it can improve their show will propser. Operas having subtitles displayed for the audience for example is a great use of technology and assists a with maintaining the attention of the audiences who otherwise would have no idea what was being said.

The kind of things that you mention often occur in organ performances where a large screen shows the organist and what he/she is doing.

Though saying one experiences 4+ hours as 1+ hour this is an unusual way to measure something and really doesn't tell us much in a rational manner, it may indeed heighten someones expectations when observing the same performance in the future only to be let down because they experienced no time dilation.

So people should not give expression to their own experiences whether or not anyone else might share them, then - unless they happen to concur with your own thoughts on a particular issue?

Though your logic here is mistaken if it thinks that I need to assume what most audience members will do for my statement to make logical sense. I said an opera will have more chance is maintaing attention than a soloist, there are just so many other factors to look out for in an opera than there is with a soloist, this statement does not rely on assuming how audience members will react it relies on the logic that given more content to absorb there will be more energy to maintain focus than given less content to absorb.

That's as maybe but, once again, one cannot generalise, for doing so could be taken to imply a presumption that most if not all audience members will have the same or similar expectations and respond in the same or similar ways.

Distract from the music is an irrational idea from you. Just because there are more things to see in an opera that does not distract from the music at all and in fact enhances it. Maybe you should do some reading on the research of distraction and its benefit to concentration. You will find that many results indicate that focused-distraction and concentration led to fewer intrusions of target thoughts than suppression, and concentration in turn resulted in fewer target intrusions than focused-distraction during the initial period. Watching a soloist you will have more tendency to have to supress irrelvant distracting thoughts to maintain concentration where with operas you will have focused distraction on the stage itself and all the performers which will in the end aid in your overall concentration.

That's all very well (and I will select my own reading material, thank you) but, yet again, no two listeners will have the same expectations or responses.

You are the one arguing that operas have a tendency to distract audience members from the music itself, this is a deranged type of observation because an opera relies on its visual direction also, it is part of what the peformance is! Costumes and such work together to appreciate the music. So your idea of "distraction" here taking away from the music is rather irrational.

Not at all! It was you who raised this issue. Other visual factors might have the ability to provide such concentrative "distractions" but I do not suggest that this factor detracts - still less is intended to detract - from the music.

This is a rather arrogant tone from you, "largely one of your own invention" is rather skeptical persective of my professional experience with average audience attention spans. If you believe that performing a single work that goes for over 1 hour without a break as a soloist will not be in danger of losing audience focus then you have one more screw loose than I though.

Dull performances can risk inducing such an effect even when they're far shorter that this! It is up to the composer AND the performer/s to try to hold the attention of as many audience members as possible.

This has little relevance to what I was discussing.

It does so to the extent that there might on occasion be audience members who leave before the end of a performance solely in order to be able to get home in places where such transport is not available 24/7.

It doesn't take many to lose touch.

That's no doubt true but it is a problem that affects - nay, afflicts - the entire world of "classical music"; even Mozart and Beethoven are minority interests, for all their "household name" status.

But you are talking about a world back then which was very different to what it is today. One need to consider why attending "classical" concerts is diminishing in todays world and expectig audiences to deal with very long works in concerts really is not going to pave the mainstream way of the future.

There is a multitude of reasons why this is happening; the performance of long works is hardly a significant factor therein, otherwise people would stay away in their droves from performances of Mahler's and Bruckner's largest symphonies, or from Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie or any number of other popular large-scale works.

They don' thave to wish or be concerned, the fact remains they will remain fairly unknown if thats the path they want to take.

That doesn't follow. You might as well say the same for performers who specialise in challenging contemporary music as you do for those who sometimes play long works. Kevin Bowyer, however, plays the complete organ works of Bach, Vierne, Widor and Messiaen as well as a good deal of Reger and other "standard" organ repertoire besides the works that were mentioned previously; likewise, Jonathan Powell and others who perform Sorabji also play a wide variety of other repertoire.

Mainstream can easily be noted by the amount of attention particular works are getting and with the internet these days there are many sources you can go measure this. 50 minutes duration is nothing compared to a work that goes for hours on end. Watching an orchrstra for 50 minutes generally is easier than listening to a soloist given any average concert goers experience. This is because of the different amount of observations and experiences that can be made and holds logically true.

If every composer and/or performer's principal goal was to enter some kind of "mainstream", even assuming that one exists and is cast in stone, it would be a dull musical life! The very tem "mainstream" has in any case pretty much outlived any usefulness that it might once have had in a world where so vast a variety of musics are so readily available.

Best,

Alistair

[thalbergmad]

Sorabji threads nearly always end up being even longer and more boring than the music.

Thal

[ahinton]

Sorabji threads nearly always end up being even longer and more boring than the music.

To you perhaps, in either or both cases, but you do not have to read such threads or listen to such music; no one is forcing you to do either.

Best,

Alistair

[georgey]

Sorry to stir up this thread again.  Here are just my thoughts as I type:

Just a couple items in the Madge recording notes that caught my eye:

1) In a letter from Sorabji to N. Slommsky dated 3/23/1933, Sorabji says “My Opus clavicembalisticum has been described as the greatest most important work for piano since the Art of Fugue, the Forty-Eight, or the Diabelli Variations, as indeed it is.”  -  I understand this is out of context, and so I would need to see this in context to be surer of what I suspect may be his beliefs.  Also, was this just a one time opinion that he later corrected? 

2) Madge describes his meetings with Sorabji.  Madge says: “He disliked having to explain his points, you either understood it, or – basta!”  Again, I understand this is out of context, and so I would need to see this in context to be surer of what I suspect may be his beliefs. 

I also am now familiar on a first listening basis with a work that is said to be the main catalyst for OC – Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica.  Busoni takes Bach’s unfinished triple (or perhaps quadruple) fugue (and maybe a couple more fugues from a.o.f. I hear) in Bach's Art of Fugue and adds his own stamp to it.  Busoni’s work lasts about 30 minutes. I enjoyed hearing this work for the first time just now.

I completed my first listening of OC.  I will spend more time to get in at least 4 more listens. I enjoyed my first listening. 

[ahinton]

1) In a letter from Sorabji to N. Slommsky dated 3/23/1933, Sorabji says “My Opus clavicembalisticum has been described as the greatest most important work for piano since the Art of Fugue, the Forty-Eight, or the Diabelli Variations, as indeed it is.”  -  I understand this is out of context, and so I would need to see this in context to be surer of what I suspect may be his beliefs.  Also, was this just a one time opinion that he later corrected?

Slonimsky, actually. The first part of this is correct and Sorabji's apparent endorsement of it was clearly a tongue-in-cheek remark!

2) Madge describes his meetings with Sorabji.  Madge says: “He disliked having to explain his points, you either understood it, or – basta!”  Again, I understand this is out of context, and so I would need to see this in context to be surer of what I suspect may be his beliefs.

He spoke rapidly but clearly and what he said might be arguable but never unclear; I know this from many meetings with him.

I also am now familiar on a first listening basis with a work that is said to be the main catalyst for OC – Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica.  Busoni takes Bach’s unfinished triple (or perhaps quadruple) fugue (and maybe a couple more fugues from a.o.f. I hear) in Bach's Art of Fugue and adds his own stamp to it.  Busoni’s work lasts about 30 minutes. I enjoyed hearing this work for the first time just now.

I completed my first listening of OC.  I will spend more time to get in at least 4 more listens. I enjoyed my first listening.

That's great! Yes, the Busoni work was undoubtedly a model for OC, each punctuated by fugues and the chorale-like strain on page 2 of the opening Introito is quite close in contour to one in the Busoni. Sorabji revered Busoni - and Bach.

Good luck with your listening experience!

Best,

Alistair

[bmn3]

Popularly known as the hardest piece for piano ever written, what is harder between:

1. OC and all 32 Beethoven Sonatas?

2. OC and all 4 Rach concerti?

3. OC and all 12 Transcendental etudes by Liszt?

4. OC and all Chopin etudes?

I am wondering because while OC is most certainly a great deal harder than practically everything in the standard repertoire on a piece-by-piece basis, a lot of well-reputed pianists have the habit of recording "complete X sonatas/etudes/nocturnes by composer X" and these are of course very long as well.

So I am wondering if mastering the "complete works of composer X" would be just as difficult as taking on this gargantuan solo piano work, then it should be possible for a competent concert pianist to take it on!

What are your thoughts? 

I bet Opus archimagicum makes those pieces listed above look like a piece of cake. Haven't tried playing the piece, but by just reading the score, it looks like a nightmare.

[bmn3]

I have the Madge recording and it is excellent.

Eww.

[gep]

[Quote from: klavieronin on June 26, 2019, 01:15:35 AM]

    I have the Madge recording and it is excellent.

Eww.

I have both Madge recordings, and neither is "eww" to me. That said, Ogdon's is, to me, musically very much superior to Madge's (and am very grateful to Madge for playing OC, for the Dutch '2nd première' pretty much stands at the head of all later interest in Sorabji's music), though it has some problems too. I think the ideal performer to date of OC is Jonathan Powell, whose recording of the piece (and I hope he will record it sometime!) should be spectacular. I have heard bits of live recordings of him playing OC, and they are stupendous; based on his recently released recording of Sequentia Cyclica, he could deliver the recording of OC.

all best,
gep

[cuberdrift]

I bet Opus archimagicum makes those pieces listed above look like a piece of cake. Haven't tried playing the piece, but by just reading the score, it looks like a nightmare.

If length and breadth is what makes a fine artist...then look no further.

Pianist sets world record with 27-hour concert

I've read a bunch of articles on a certain Sandy Strickland who reportedly played for 194 hours in one marathon, collapsing unconscious after. I would love to know if any of you can affirm the validity of the story?

Syncopating Sandy the Non-Stop Piano Player

Here's video proof of Satie's "Vexations" played for 24 hours, allegedly the "longest non-stop piano video ever recorded":

Finally, if we are interested in difficulty for difficulty's sake...I'm sure some are aware that randomly banging on the piano keys and then having a midi transcription of it would render it impossible to play a second time? I mean, imagine if this performance was transcribed, I wonder who would be able to play it.