Sorabji

[thierry13]

I've found out that many pianists had recorded sorabji pieces, including is sonata, and his opus clavicembalisticum. These pianists are:Michael Habermann,Geoffrey Douglas Madge,Kevin Bowyer(organ),John Ogdon,Marc-André Hamelin,Ronald Stevenson,Yonty Solomon,Donna Amato,Carlo Grante and charles hopkins. I would like to see scores (only samples) of his sonata and his opus clavicembalisticum. Just to see the amazing difficulty that's out there. And if anybody had recordings(same samples) of those, i would appreciate:). Of course, i don't want to try those pieces, just be amazed by their great difficulty  

[in_love_with_liszt]

I never did get the point of Sorabji's music....

[liszmaninopin]

I could email you some Sorabji pdf's.

However, I couldn't get you the whole pieces, as many of the files are too big for me to send out of my email box.

[thierry13]

I never did get the point of Sorabji's music....

There is probably no, but to make it so hard, that only the finest pianists could play it ! I never heard it, so i don't know if those gigantic pieces sound good, but i just want to see how d**n hard they are!!

[allchopin]

I don't want to disappoint you but I've heard the third mvmt. of the opus and it's pure garbage.  I deleted it it was so bad (maybe I shift deleted it..)

[in_love_with_liszt]

That's exactly what I'm talking about-if your only goal when you're writing music is to make it as hard as possible then it's just going to turn out a soup of notes, which is exactly what it sounds like. Music is much more tasteful when the difficulty comes from trying to produce beautiful sounds eg. is Chopin and different voices, something that Liszt and Rach also messed with alot. Sorry I guess this post wasn't really meant for people to post their own opinions about the music, but all I'm saying is don't get caught up in worrying about difficult music, because difficulty is highly objective, and mainly obsessive difficulty doesn't make a three course meal, it makes a bland note soup.

[Antnee]

Yeah, I'd say alkan has probably composed the most difficult music that still has taste and Beauty. I've never heard sorabji but I have seen some scores somwhere before and they didn't look pretty. I'm guessing I wouldn't care much for his music, but I'm not certain until I hear a performance.

[Motrax]

I have a smaller piece by him (only 200 measures and 8 minutes or so) on Sibelius, which has a relatively good playback feature. Though the piece itself doesn't have any music in it in the usual sense (as far as I can tell at this point), it has this odd hypnotic sort of appeal which makes you keep listening to it even though it sounds nasty.

Though I'd imagine a computer plays the piece much more hypnotically than a pianist - part of the appeal is that every torrent of notes is crisp and perfect, creating a dizzying sort of effect.

Though with all things considered, I'd call it lousy.  

[DarkWind]

https://www.darkwinddesign.com/OpusClav.pdf


Fear it.


I actually kinda like his music. It's very insane and crazy, his rythms are very unique and unusual.

[Spatula]

It looks like he took a brush of black paint and whipped onto the canvas music board.  

A one, a two, a one-two-three-four...

[pies]

­

[liszmaninopin]

Sorabji's music is very unique.  I, personally, don't really like the Opus Clavicembalisticum.  However, I do like his Gulistan, his Fantaisie Espagnole, and some of his etudes.  Those, IMO, are really good music.

I disagree that Alkan has composed the most difficult music of taste and beauty.  There are many twentieth century works that are both beautiful (to me) and far more difficult than any Alkan.

I guess, after DarkWind posting the OC, I really don't need to send you a Sorabji score to see what it looks like.  The Sonata looks like more of the same kind of stuff.

[allchopin]

https://www.darkwinddesign.com/OpusClav.pdf


Fear it.


I actually kinda like his music. It's very insane and crazy, his rythms are very unique and unusual.

Damn, hats off to Dark Wind for getting this behemoth score up on the net!  All 254 pages.

[Saturn]

Why are there down-bow markings (like the kind you'd see in violin sheet music) in the score?

[rph108]

How long would you guess someone like Hamelin would have to work on that piece?

[thierry13]

At least 1 month, IMO, seeing the size and extreme difficulty of this piece. He only played his sonata, i think.