On the subject of what Ian Pace says about Sorabji, I have to agree with what he is saying, TO THE DEGREE that often the density and lack of obvious structural direction sometimes obscures the "mysticism" of his music, but I also think that Pace is either looking for the wrong thing in Sorabji, or simply has made up his mind to despise his music. I do wonder what his thoughts are on some of his earlier works such as Quasi-Habanera and Sonata No. 1 that I believe would better fit what Ian is apparently not finding in the works of Sorabji he cites.
I wasn't going to get into this but feel that I don't really have a whole lot of option now but to make at least some remarks on this matter.
Frankly, having read Ian Pace's posts about and around Sorabji as well as some private messages from him on the same subject, the suggestions that you make above - both that he is "looking for the wrong thing in Sorabji's music" and that he has "simply made up his mind to despise" it - are just about right. I can tell you that the contempt that he has expressed for Sorabji's work extends pretty well right across its range, with almost no exceptions. If you have read much of Pace on Sorabji, you will have encountered a wholly disproportionate amount of material that is about politics, gender studies, sexuality and the like that comes across (not only to me, by any means) as just so much rabid posturing and I and many others simply cannot figure out what he's talking about in terms of how it supposedly relates to Sorabji's compositional motivations or indeed the music that resulted from them; the music is apparently replete with, for example, "extreme right-wing", anti-feminine and "emotionless" characteristics; well, no two pairs of ears are the same as any other two, that's for sure, but quite how he concludes any such thing about any music at all, let alone Sorabji's, is quite beyond me.
Randomly, a verbal spar between Ian Pace and Alistair Hinton would possibly be the single most ingenious CG ever put upon a piano forum
I'll ignore the use of that largely meaningless term "randomly" but caution you not to hold your breath. Ian Pace undoubtedly has a very considerable intellect and writes from time to time most intelligently and engagingly about a number of matters; his recent contributions about the music of Chopin and Brahms are among examples of this. Clearly, however, he and I disagree diametrically about Sorabji. The principal difference that strikes me about his stances on Chopin / Brahms and Sorabji is that what he writes on the former is well-researched, well-considered, though-provoking and, above all, comprehensible, whereas his tirades on the latter come across as much more simply conceived, intentionally offensive rantings that inevitably tell us less than nothing about Sorabji and more than some of us might want to read about Ian Pace.
There are also times when it seems to me that Ian Pace's frequent recourse to the wide range of literary sources with which he is familiar somehow call to mind Alexander Pope's couplet
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.
Now I am not for a moment suggesting that Ian Pace is ignorant - very far from it, in fact; what does strike me, however, is that there are times when his voracious reading appetite spills over into personal posturings that might arguably be seen to illustrate the kind of person of whom Sorabji wrote in his first letter to me, i.e. an intellectual whose sheer intellectuality risks revealing someone educated above his intelligence. When Ian Pace writes as he does about Sorabji, dragging politics, gender and other issues into what passes for his arguments, he lets himself down rather badly, I fear and, in so doing, passes himself off as such a person, at least for the duration of his rant at any given moment. I should add, for the sake of due balance, that Ian Pace's remarks about these matters in relation to music are at least consistent rather than earmarked specially for reference to Sorabji, even if they do have a habit of going off the rails. He and I have engaged in dialogue about such things outside the realms of Sorabji and his music, although on such occasions he has sometimes tended to try to bring Sorabji back into the arena of that more general discussion; he and I have agreed to disagree on such things and I do know for a fact that others have done likewise.
I would far rather read what Ian Pace might have to say about the thread topic here, to which return is surely well overdue!
Best,
Alistair
Topic: Chopin's Scherzo no. 3