And I mean I listened to the full piece, played by Ogden.
What about it's musical value. Did he just put down all the notes at random? because of it's lenght I couldn't imagine Sorabij really wrote it considering every note.
The work is based on many themes, it is far from random. The very beginning movement introduces four of the main themes. The first, is at the very beginning. The single notes descending into a very low D# minor chord. This is the 'motto' as Sorabji calls it and it is the most important theme throughout the composition. It returns in many places throughout the work. As the work progresses, more and more themes are introduced while the previous ones still recur. In a way, the OC is both strict and free at the same time. It mostly built from themes such as fugue subjects. Sorabji uses these themes to 'build' his vertical structures in his music, sometimes piling themes on top of other themes. The final movement of OC, the Coda-stretta, for example, is completely built on themes from the entire work, in counterpoint, leaving very little room for anything else. At the same time, the themes that recur do so very freely, the fugue subjects are an example. The entries of a subject in one of the fugues will have the same general outline, but in many cases, some of the intervals or rhythms will be slighty different. I wouldn't think, considering the scale of the piece, that Sorabji could have considered every note as you say, but he was probably more interested in the overall effect than the tiny details.
Second, I was suprised at the level of tonality. It sounded only a little more atonal that Scriabin. I am not sure, but that would make it not truely atonal. Most chords where constant chords on their own. I didn't study the score and harmonies but I wouldn't be suprised if it does have hierarchy.
Yes. Unfortunately, because of Mr. Madge, many believe the OC is full of huge dissonant clusters, which rarely relent for the duration of the work.
The third thing that was immediate was that the composer wasn't trying to write the hardest piece ever. This was very obvious. He was exploring pianistic textures. Getting different sounds. The piece contains fast passages, slow ones, pp, ff. It has many parts that are 'very easy' to play, relatively speaking. I could cut out parts and post it on this forum and no one will ever know that it's from the opus clavicembalisticum. I bet some of the Sorabji haters might say they like it.
Absolutely. The reason Sorabji wrote difficult music was so that people who wanted to learn it would have to be completely serious about doing so, but Sorabji really only writes difficult when he needs to be difficult. You can't acheive the same effect as simple music in complex music any more than you can acheive the same effects as highly complex music in simplicity. I think when Sorabji's intentions call for a certain degree of difficulty, whether it be extremely easy to play, or monstrously difficult, he just writes it. Quite a few of the Passacaglia variations are very easy to play.
The music is stacked in such a way that it is impossible to get perspective. The piece isn't noise. But don't get me wrong, the music by itself isn't particulary great or rewarding. The fact that most people can't enjoy this music is not because the notes are random. It's just that the music is overloading the listener. If he would have tried to write the noisiest and/or hardest piece ever it would have sounded way different.
I think OC is easier to take than some other Sorabji. It's divided into twelve movements, which means it isn't as concentrated as the fourth sonata for example, which although at half the length has only three movements. I find Sorabji is hard to take in bigger chunks, like the sonata, the first movement of which is basically formless and lasts for 47 minutes.
After four hours I started to get a real sense of the size of this piece. When someone tells you or you read somewhere that the piece is four to five hours depending on the recording then that is just a number. But when you hear it...
True, when I started to listen to the sonata (I still haven't got through the first movement undistracted
) I thought, okay I'm going to listen to a movement that's 45 minutes long. It doesn't seem nearly as long as it actually is.
Most people may not like opus clavicembalisticum but Sorabji's skill is undeniable. It may be noise, but this is surely noise of sublime artistic level. Any claim that it would be very easy to write a piece like opus clavicembalisticum: please try and realise what an achivement it actually was.
It is indeed in no way easy to write something like Sorabji's music. I've tried it many times and failed, ending up not knowing what the hell I had written actually sounded like. Sorabji was a genius.
But after 4 hours and 46 minutes, I was still puzzled. Why did he write it? And since OC wasn't an expeption; why did he write those other huge pieces, some even longer? It seems the guy was dead-serious. If he tried to write a piece of 15-25 minutes he would have written way better music.
Much of his music is of 15-25 minutes. The Sonata no. 1,
"Le Jardin Parfume", and
"Quaere reliqua hujus materiae inter secretiora" all fall into this time-length.
are their midi's of these pieces? and who really cares about the length. I know of people who love opera so much that they play piano reductions to operas. Mozart wrote operas that were around four hours. length doesn't matter, it is the quality and the feelings given from the experience.
I don't believe there are any online midi files of Sorabji's music, but a midi performance can offer only the right notes, which is one of the most fundamental aspects of pianism. We really
should not have to resort to midi to hear his work.
As JCarey already explained that currently the only way to hear it is to buy it, I would like to add that if anyone is going to purchase a recording, whatever you do, DO NOT buy Geoffrey Douglas Madge's recording. There are many places in the four hours, where he plays random notes based on
how the music looks, and there are parts where he is completely improvising. I'm sure many people have been repelled from Opus Clavicembalisticum by this disgusting travesty of a recording. Anyone who wishes to hear the piece can either buy John Ogdon's recording, which is substantially more accurate yet extending the length of the piece by almost an hour to acheive this, or wait for Mr. Powell to make his recording of the work, and judging by his other recordings of Sorabji, it should be worth waiting for.
Topic: I listened to Opus Clavicembalisticum