I suppose that there's no chance of this "discussion" returning to the subject of Carter's Piano Sonata, is there?
No, I thought not.
Ah, well...
Rather than hog this thread for the time being, may I respectfully invite pies to cite the source of the Sorabji quote that he made earlier, for the satisfaction of soliloquy? In the meantime, I offer a related quote from him (Sorabji, that is - not soliloquy), as follows:
"It is high time to declare roundly that all that pseudo-anatomical nonsense of the text-books and the analytical programme is so much pernicious and noxious rubbish, confusing the issues and darkening counsel. It distracts attention from what matters - the music - to subordinate and subsidiary matters that, in the totality of the music, are as germane thereto as a man's skeleton to the whole of him".
OK - so what's the source of this one? Well, I will tell you that is the second of Sorabji's two books of collected essays, entitled Mi Contra Fa: The Immoralisings of a Machiavellian Musician (Porcupine Press, London, 1947) and it appears on page 15 in chapter 1 - Introito. I can confirm that this passage is not motivated by any intent to defend or to vilify a work of his own or of anyone else, nor "because some critic made some comment about Gulistan" (which would have been difficult, since that piece had not been performed at the time of the book's publication), nor because anyone had claimed "that some fugue he wrote wasn't really a fugue", nor in the spirit of "trashing some french spectral piece" (especially given that the book was published well before such a movement arose).
I offer this merely as an example. Over to you, pies. In the meantime, one thing I will confirm is that neither of these Sorabji quotations was motivated by a desire to undermine a piece that was brand new at the time the aforementioned book was published - that's to say Carter's Piano Sonata (just thought I'd mention that en passant - this thread was once about that piece, after all - or so I understood...)
Best,
Alistair