What is this Opus Clavicembalisticum?

[Bob]

Is this a real piece?

I saw it posted a few different times in here, and I'm too lazy to read through the 4 page thread, so I'd thought I ask here.

[liszmaninopin]

It's a 4 hour piano piece by Kaikhosru Sorabji.  Legendary for difficulty-some like it, many dislike it.  It's one of Sorabji's longer piano works, very dense and dissonant.

[rachlisztchopin]

I have heard its a piece of crap....I really want to hear this piece of crap. 

[Bob]

Sorabji is a modern composer I'm guessing?  Still alive?

Yeah, even if it's bad, it sounds interesting, just to know about it for amusement at least.  Might be a piece of garbage, but one of those oddities that's good to be aware of.

[xvimbi]

Is this a real piece?

Nobody really knows. The ones who do are insane. Against all warnings from the old and wise, young and aspiring pseudo-virtuosi are irresistibly drawn to this mystical work like Odysseus' men to the singing of the Sirens, only to end up eternally accursed and turned into ghastly animals, never to be heard of again, ever.

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[Bob]

Ah, sounds interesting.  More so now.

I don't mind atonal things or Scriabin or Schoenberg.

[liszmaninopin]

I disagree that the opus clav is the most difficult piece ever written.  Certainly, it is extremely, extremely hard-but later Sorabji like the Fifth Sonata, and the Sequentia Cyclia Super Des Irae, I would consider probably more difficult, at least musically.  Also, some works of Xenakis are at least as hard, and possibly Finnissy's "History in the Photography of Sound."

Strictly speaking, Nancarrow's studies for player piano are possibly the "hardest," as they are physically impossible to play.  However, this discussion becomes kind of pointless, as all the works I mentioned above stretch the bounds of what can be played.

[Bob]

By the way, since he couldn't fit all the notes on 2 staves, he was forced to write his music on 3-7! Insane, insane.... but interesting!

- Ludwig Van Rachabji

Yes, interesting.  When I first saw the clips of the score posted, I thought someone was just joking with Finale, playing lots of glissandoes or posting a very exact computer playing transcription.

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[Bob]

I think this is the fastest I ever seen a post grow (besides a thread like the Fall thread).  6+ posts in about 40 minutes.  That's the power of the internet!  

(shocked and awed at the response)

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[liszmaninopin]

if you all are interested, i would recommend getting a recording of Sorabji's Fantasie Espagnole.  It's an interesting piece.  I also sort of like Djami and Gulistan.

[xvimbi]

Nothing ever written even approaches the difficulty of the Opus Clav. In fact, to play it perfectly would be impossible.

I just wrote a piece within the last two minutes that is much more difficult than the OC.

[liszmaninopin]

Would you care to share it with us?

[xvimbi]

Would you care to share it with us?

The first measure starts with 2Cs, three octaves apart, in the bass, while playing a trill in the treble... requires excellent nose technique...

[chromatickler]

The discussion of 'difficulty' is entirely useless without a precise conception of speed. For example, it's much easier to play the OC in 4 hours than it is to play Chopin's 10/2 in 1 minute.

[Spatula]

https://chezalex.glumol.com/Sorabji.-.Opus.clavicembalisticum.-.Madge.(Chicago.1983.live,.covers).zip  

Here's a recording. WARNING: LONG download!  

DAMNIT! I was at 92% until the connection broke and it timed out.

[xvimbi]

The discussion of 'difficulty' is entirely useless without a precise conception of speed. For example, it's much easier to play the OC in 4 hours than it is to play Chopin's 10/2 in 1 minute.

The discussion of difficulty is useless. Period.

If technical difficulty was the most important measure of pianistic achievement, everybody would play the OC (or at least would be working on it). There are exceedingly few concert pianists who have the OC in their repertoire. Why is that? Because it is musically fairly meaningless. It can't be performed. It is simply not something that would be worth devoting ones time to.

[Sketchee]

By the way, since he couldn't fit all the notes on 2 staves, he was forced to write his music on 3-7! Insane, insane.... but interesting!

- Ludwig Van Rachabji

Not too insane.  Liszt and others have done three or more as well

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[DarkWind]

I think this is the fastest I ever seen a post grow (besides a thread like the Fall thread).  6+ posts in about 40 minutes.  That's the power of the internet!  

(shocked and awed at the response)

In one forum I visit, you could easily have around 50 posts in the first 5 minutes.


Anyways, to call is musically meaningless is pretty much, for lack of a better word, utter bullshit. Honestly, who are you, of all people, to go around calling pieces worthless, when some composer took months toiling at a piano or at a library, somewhere, writing notes, editing, changing, making the whole score work? Well? I don't think you could ever attribute something of that nature to yourself, now would you? You are just like one of those no-good critics that call pieces left and right terrible, badly formed, musically horrid, and give them tips on how the person should have wrote it. If you think you are so good, then why don't you sit down for a few hours each day and come up with a 4 hour long piece, eh? Seriously, xvimbi, you are an incredibly ignorant person. There are actually people who like this kind of music, in case you didn't know. I find Opus Clavicembalisticum a fascinating piece, filled with everything from mystery to pure, ferocious, power. The strength of Sorabji's atonality can be seen in the mysterious ways he can combine chords to give an ethereal quality to his soft parts, and the brash dissonances can make a forte section seem all the more loud. But hey, if you don't like it, too bad, I can see that. But to call it musically meaningless, that truly is a bold statement by someone who has yet to compose 4 hours of music of almost impossible playing, learn and perform it, and have the piece be spoken about by quite a few people throughout the world.

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[xvimbi]

Anyways, to call is musically meaningless is pretty much, for lack of a better word, utter bullshit.

...

Seriously, xvimbi, you are an incredibly ignorant person. There are actually people who like this kind of music, in case you didn't know. I find Opus Clavicembalisticum a fascinating piece, filled with everything from mystery to pure, ferocious, power.

Oh no, you got me wrong. I personally enjoy much of the OC myself. I did not say that I personally find the OC meaningless; I meant that it is meaningless to most people. Perhaps I haven't expressed it that well. I try again: If a piece is important to people and there are a lot of people interested in listening to it (and it is possible to perform it), it becomes meaningful. Whether this is deserved or not is a different issue altogether, but that is besides the point. Conversely, if a piece is deemed musically meaningful by a lot of people, it will be performed. I simply concluded from the fact that the OC is very rarely performed, that it must be musically meaningless, compared to all the other pieces that are performed regularly. It's a purely statistical argument. Britney Spears' music is obviously meaningful and important to a lot of people, whereas the OC is simply not. The only argument that I can see that speaks against my interpretation would be that the OC is indeed be too difficult to perform, which I doubt. I hope that clears it up a bit.

[xvimbi]

I agree. I'm sick of people trashing Sorabji's work.

You guys are cracking me up. Perhaps you need to step back a bit in your overzealousness and actually read what people post.

If you haven't realized this already, then I have to spell it out in simple terms for you: what I am objecting to is the obsessive focus on extremely difficult pieces (Sorabji, Alkan, Godowski, etc.) and the trend to play as fast and flashy as possible. Most can't even play the Moonlight Sonata in a convincing way, yet they attempt to pull off some Alkan and clock how fast they can play a chromatic scale. Young aspiring pianists are too eager to pride themselves with being able to play a single measure of a Sorabji sonata. Indeed, some appear to feel already elated if they can simply post a single measure to the forum and claim "Look, this is the most difficult piece ever written. Aren't you impressed?". What is achieved by doing that?

If I may use the same words, then this is what I call utter bullshit.

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[xvimbi]

Perhaps you should step back a bit in your pretentiousness and read what you post. Or atleast write what you mean to say. Seriously, if you like a piece, why would you call it musically meaningless?

I just tried to explain it, but perhaps it deserves some more attention as it is a fairly general question (which has been discussed on the forum on an off a few times): what gives a piece meaning? By what standards?

Concerning the OC, one can phrase it yet in a different way: the OC does not occupy an important spot in the musical repertoire. If it did, it would be performed more often and serious pianists would devote their time to learning it. They don't, therefore it is not important, therefore it must be fairly meaningless and not worth the trouble (at least to most of them). What other conclusion is there?

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[xvimbi]

Yes, but you are refering to what people think of it in general. I am talking about your original post, where you said it was musically meaningless. That obviously isn't what you meant to say, I guess.

You are right, strictly speaking. The question remains: Is a piece that people are not really interested in not only unimportant, but also musically meaningless? Now, we have to define "musical meaning" after all. I see "musical meaning" in pieces that are able to elicit an emotional response in the listener, that are well-structured and don't contain unnecessary fluff. As such, the OC contains a lot of notes that are most likely not necessary to convey the musical message. It's musical content is diluted and often drowned out by the sheer amount of sound. The same has been said about composers who use gigantic orchestras (e.g. Berlioz and Mahler), and it is certainly true. Although I personally like such bombastic works, because of the sheer amount of sound, I am more impressed on an intellectual level with works that use fewer notes and simple ideas (I'm not talking minimalist music here), i.e. those works have more musical meaning to me.

What do you think makes the OC musically meaningful?

[julie391]

im still waiting for someone to decently record it

i enjoy the score much more than the music

so many different pianistic techniques and figurations, its all pianistic and utterly fascinating to me

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

Yes, but you are refering to what people think of it in general. I am talking about your original post, where you said it was musically meaningless. That obviously isn't what you meant to say, I guess.

You are right, strictly speaking. The question remains: Is a piece that people are not really interested in not only unimportant, but also musically meaningless? Now, we have to define "musical meaning" after all. I see "musical meaning" in pieces that are able to elicit an emotional response in the listener, that are well-structured and don't contain unnecessary fluff. As such, the OC contains a lot of notes that are most likely not necessary to convey the musical message. It's musical content is diluted and often drowned out by the sheer amount of sound. The same has been said about composers who use gigantic orchestras (e.g. Berlioz and Mahler), and it is certainly true. Although I personally like such bombastic works, because of the sheer amount of sound, I am more impressed on an intellectual level with works that use fewer notes and simple ideas (I'm not talking minimalist music here), i.e. those works have more musical meaning to me.

What do you think makes the OC musically meaningful?

So by musical meaning, you mean that you clearly understand what feelings the composer is trying to convey? I am still not quite sure I understand what you mean by "meaningful". I think that Sorabji didn't just pluck notes out of the sky and splash them on the page (you can never be too sure, though). Therefore, his music is meaningful, if I understand your definition correctly. Sure, at times it may not be so..... pleasant. But every note must have meant something to him, or else, he probably wouldn't have written it.

- Ludwig Van Rachabji

[Spatula]

The OC mp3s aren't working for me...help please.

They've unziped to about 4.5 mb for each one..so about 300 MB in total...

HEHEH NEVERMIND! happy as a clam now...

Hey this OC isn't as bad as I thought...not good, but not that bad either.

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[julie391]

any you got to like the crappy madge recording?!?!

[xvimbi]

Haha, trust me, it will take awhile before you actually start thinking it's "good". The first time I heard it, I thought it was trash. Now I like it.

How come that you then react so strongly towards someone who appears to say he doesn't like the OC? Did anybody yell at YOU at first, calling you ignorant and pretentious? Was anybody sick of YOU, because you initially thought the OC was trash? Do you feel enlightened now that you like it? And do you feel you now have the right to yell at others who don't think Sorabji's work is that great? Think about it!

[Spatula]

Haha, trust me, it will take awhile before you actually start thinking it's "good". The first time I heard it, I thought it was trash. Now I like it.

How come that you then react so strongly towards someone who appears to say he doesn't like the OC? Did anybody yell at YOU at first, calling you ignorant and pretentious? Was anybody sick of YOU, because you initially thought the OC was trash? Do you feel enlightened now that you like it? And do you feel you now have the right to yell at others who don't think Sorabji's work is that great? Think about it!

When ever I listen to a piece that's out there, I usually bite my teeth really hard and just keep a straight face no matter how "out there" it sounds.  Of course I can't pull this off every time I but try to give them a chance.  After one listening to the 1st hour, I'm going to have to put this piece in suspended animation for now, but I'll return to it.  Its a growing relationship I think.  It's okay to totally dismiss a piece as sh*t in the first place, but again I think its only fair to give it more than one listen, probably 4 or 5 to then make any final judgements.  I admit I didn't fall in love for Rach 3 at first, I seriously thought I was listening to jazz music, but it grows on you, like how it did with Ludwig Van Rachabji. 
It's pointless to flame him, he's learned and "adopted" the OC in some ways man.  Now if he were to listen to it once and said Sorabji had no talent whatsoever, then just leave it be.

I thought Prokofiev's sonata 6 was bullshit and that was the first piece I've listened from Prokie, but hey now I've got a taste for Prokofie.  And sonata 6 is totally listenable and enjoyable in its own ways.  Dude, just chillax. 

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[xvimbi]

I am not talking about your reply to Spatula, but this one directed at me:

Anyways, to call it musically meaningless is pretty much, for lack of a better word, utter bullshit.

I agree. I'm sick of people trashing Sorabji's work.

- Ludwig Van Rachabji

Can I assume then, that you were sick of yourself, because you initially thought the OC was trash?

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[Spatula]

Sigh, ( I like to sigh, it's my fav expression, but not the most enjoyable ... weird)

But like I said before, if everyone where to perform the 4'33" all together at the exact same time regardless of time zones, then there would be perfect world peace for almost 5 minutes.  Wouldn't that be nice?

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[Spatula]

Especially for people with ADD, like myself 

God, prolly have difficulty with 0'0"

[Daniel_piano]

I don't think Opus Clavicembalisticum is the hardest piece ever?
Or at least, it's major difficulty just lies in its duration but not on the rhythmical, speed, accurary and musicality difficult
In fact I don't believe at all (despite their -often senseless- blackness) that most difficoult piano works belong to the avant-garde and 12-note-row period
In fact it's very easy to chear with these pieces as you don't need such accuracy in musicality, tone or even in hitting the right notes for a simple anatomical reason meaning when our ear can distinguish clear musicality and when it becomes unimportant
Instead of random notes, impossibly wide chords and crazy rhythmic notation (21/16 +  24/16 + 21/8  + 7/2 : 16 for example) what really is difficolout is playing with a perfect tone a musicality especially when the piece is fast and the rhythm is complex
Anyone would be able to create difficoult pieces by making the score full of blackness, even a 3 years old boy would be able to do this with a music notation program and random notes (in fact not only many avant-garde composition where written by writing down what the child of the composer plumped on the keyboard rondamly but also some avant-composer even wrote impossible pieces, and they were proud of it, impossible because they defeated any mathematical rules for measure filling)
I guess that Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Sinding, Clementi, Chopin, Debussy and all the others would have been able to create such complex pieces just by filling the page with complex chords and fast quintuplets, but they didn't do it because it would have been a joke to them to create complexity in such a unelegant manner
I know a composer that showed me that he can create a dissonant, avant-garde super complex piece in just 1 hour using the telephone guide numbers as a hint for his row
But only when he put musicality and avoid strange effects for the sake of it it may requires three months to him to write a good piece but the result is more balanced and not just a show-off of fake complexity
The most difficoult thing in music is create complexity while being simple, that what many composers of the past tried to do with hard work
They knew it would have been easy to just throw in a lot of complex devices into the music but they never tried it because they were proud of themselves only when difficolouty was not self-evident or created with dirty tricks, their pieces had to be complex yet simple to the hear, complex rhythmically and musically yet even in the score
For that reasons (a lot of past avant-garde composers are nowadays for the first time admitting the lack of musical ideas compared to the amount of phylosophycal ideas of modernism and their tricks to try to appear brilliant or intellectual) I don't think real complex pieces are to be searched in this period but on the understimated scores of the impressionism and neorilism period
It's like cheating when cooking
You can create a recipe in few minutes just by mixing in a bowl all the strangest ingredients in the world like quinoa, wild fennel, a condor egg, emu milk, norwegian raspberries, canistel, guarana and it would look like something exotic, innovative and hard to prepare/cook; but it would just be a fake innovation, a fake exocitism and a fake difficoult, it would just be a dishonest mess where for the sake to appear complicated and hard you just mix things randomly without caring for balance, flavours harmony, right cooking time
Or on the other hand you can create an elaborated and complex apple-pie without using the dirty trick of putting a lot of strange ingredients to appear brilliant and serious but with a perfect accuracy in your semplicity, matching the various aromas and flavours, trying to find the right ingredients even if they're few or not exotic
It, despite the first recipe looking more complicated and hard to prapare the second one is more hardest because you can conceal your talent or lack of talent in a lot of different random ingredients, you have few ingredients and you have to mix them perfectly to create something palatable and innovative
It's very easy to appear intellectual, brilliant, serious, profound, complicated and difficoult but everything is just fake obtained through the easy way and that's why composers of the past avoided this path at all cost preferring few ingredients, few special shocking effects but a lot of balance and musicality and nothing where to hide the ignorance or lack of talent in

I know a composer who wrote a good string quartet in 1969 with lot of effort and love and it took him 9 months. The theather didn't accepted it saying it was
too easy and uncomplex so he instead wrote a string quartet just by putting all the strange effects in it randomly, wide chords, rhythm change every two measure, strange dynamics mark like "fluting on the keyboard" "xilophoning on the cello" , put a lot of dissonances in it and wide quinteplets and sixtuplets plus screams from the chorus plus random trills, wide jumps and several climax in the strangest moments
It took 3 days to complete that work
He said to me it meant nothing to him, he didn't put love in it, it didn't put his talent in it it was just a work as the avant-garde theaters wanted it to be
The piece was this time accepted and played by a not-so-happy orchestra
He said to me eventually that the strangest thing is that his first piece who took him 9 months was really rhytmically and musical complex just apparently simple but it was not accepted because condired too easy or not complex, and yet the second work that was easy as a piece of cake to compose just by putting all the tricks used to have the piece look like complex was really nothing complex and nothing hard, no musicality, no rhythm
No, (he conduct orchestra) he considers Beethoven harder than Busoni or Berg and always tells to me that the difficoulty in playing the piano is not playing pieces like a Berlioz Sonata but playing Mozart well
Food for thought...


P.S
If it were shorter, OC wouldn't be harder than many other pieces out there, it's the harderst piece, just the longest

Daniel

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

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[xvimbi]

I could go on for days with that list. Note: I'm not talking about people who don't care what notes they hit, I'm talking about people who sit down and learn it, and play it right. I said in another post that I could pick up the OC and perform it without ever even seeing the music, and hardly anyone would know the difference. But then it would sound like "crap" as everybody seems to call it. However, if it's played right, I doubt it would sound like "crap", and I think that learning to play it correctly is much more difficult than sitting down and banging on random notes, don't you?

If you have never heard it being performed "correctly" yourself, and if you don't have the score (I assume you don't have the score as otherwise, you would have posted a snippet from it), how do you know that it will not sound like "crap", as you say? You don't know, yet you are assuming upfront, without any cogent arguments, that this piece is a worthwhile milestone in music.

The only thing to go by at the moment is what is available to the listener. As Jonathan Powell claims, the two available recordings are not "correct". So then don't react harshly if people call it "crap". In fact, you yourself should call it "crap", or more correctly, one should probably call the performance "crap", but who can tell a bad performance from an incorrect rendition in this case?

Perhaps, you would like to set the rest of the world straight, learn that darn piece and perform it correctly, then we can start to discuss the merits of the OC.

[steinwaymodeld]

In my opinion, I think Sorabji's Prelude and Fugue, Sonata, and some transcription (in the hothouse, chopin waltz, Habaneara) are way better pieces.
I am yet to find any recording of Sorabji's Transcendental Etudes, even though I own the 1-18 Transcdental Etudes by him edited and published by Marc-Andre Hamelin. I am pretty sure Hamelin played them (He is claimed to be playing OC by the age of 16,17. And yet, he think this piece is not worth performning)

Anyway, I listened to OC several times (took me like 2 months), and it has its moments.

But I think the 'density' of the musical quality is so low, for eg.
Liszt sonata express everything, from born to death to hell/heaven in around 22 mins. And Sorabji expressed 'something' which has far less content than Liszt sonata, but it takes 4 hours.

That's the reason I think it's not such a great work, it express a fairly little amount of music in a vast period of time.
Which is completely uneconomical. And it's well known, just because it's 'most difficult' or 'physically impossible', which are not the quality I look for when I want to listen to music.

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

I could go on for days with that list. Note: I'm not talking about people who don't care what notes they hit, I'm talking about people who sit down and learn it, and play it right. I said in another post that I could pick up the OC and perform it without ever even seeing the music, and hardly anyone would know the difference. But then it would sound like "crap" as everybody seems to call it. However, if it's played right, I doubt it would sound like "crap", and I think that learning to play it correctly is much more difficult than sitting down and banging on random notes, don't you?

If you have never heard it being performed "correctly" yourself, and if you don't have the score (I assume you don't have the score as otherwise, you would have posted a snippet from it), how do you know that it will not sound like "crap", as you say? You don't know, yet you are assuming upfront, without any cogent arguments, that this piece is a worthwhile milestone in music.

The only thing to go by at the moment is what is available to the listener. As Jonathan Powell claims, the two available recordings are not "correct". So then don't react harshly if people call it "crap". In fact, you yourself should call it "crap", or more correctly, one should probably call the performance "crap", but who can tell a bad performance from an incorrect rendition in this case?

Perhaps, you would like to set the rest of the world straight, learn that darn piece and perform it correctly, then we can start to discuss the merits of the OC.

I have the score. The reason that I posted the sonata instead is because it was available.

(Look to next post)

-Ludwig Van Rachabji

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

Go to [removed].


- Ludwig Van Rachabji