What is this Opus Clavicembalisticum?

[Daniel_piano]

I'm not saying it's not difficoult but there are other pieces with same technical difficoulty but with need more mastery of a musicality
I think that so far the only real thing that scare about this piece is the fact that it's four hours long
But if it was ten minutes long then it wouldn't have been considered more difficolout than other pieces and more people would have (maybe) tried to play it

1. Written on 3 staves

Like many other super-hard fugues for organ

2. 4 hours long

yes, that's the most hard aspect of it imo

3. Insane technical difficulties

yes but nothing that you don't find on other pieces especially in the neorelism era

4. Huge jumping chords
5. Complex fugues, in which the subject must be brought out

Okay, but it's not peculiarity of this piece

6. Figuring out ways to make this piece sound like it's not just noise

It's not so certain that this may be possible at all
Our ear is anatomically designed to perceive certain intervals and successions of intervals as "music" especially when these intervals gravitate according to the natural series of overtones, on the other hand it is also designed to perceive certain succession of intervals without following the overtones rules (like serialism music) as so dissonant to be noise
This is a very important function that made us human evolve
In fact we can perceive certain frequencies as noise and see the difference between music and noise (tension and rest) because we need noise as an allarm for when our live could be in danger
Storm, fires, screams, roars they are all noises that tell us we're in danger and we need to perceice them as unpleasant to be ready to run away or fight
Music is perceived as "music" because it bases itself on the natural overtones, meaning those that the ears that hear easily
What the ear can hear easily is always perceived as melodic because it activated certain neurohormones production, on the other hands all the other series of less audible overtones will result in a unplesant sensation for our ears and different neuhormones will be secreted, these neurohormones are receptive in those area of the brain where there's a fear, mania, panic, danger intuition sensation
Have you evern wondered why the "any minor tonality" is more sad than "a mojor tonality"
Until 30 years ago it was believed (read for example Boulez unscientific writing) that it was because of cultural conditioning and that other populations with different tonality mode would perceive the minor as happy and the major as sad
Not only it has been discovered that the overtones of the harmonic series are present in every ethnical music system despite the tonality being different (but it is still tonality all over the world) but it has been discovered that every population from China to Africa perceive the minor tonality as SAD
The point is that the third in the minor tonality is substituted by a less audible overtone, this result in the ear having more work to do wo recognize the sound in its context, if complete dissonance and serialism causes the ear to perceive it as noise because of the nature of the unaudible overtones and their connection with noise and danger alarm and major tone soothe the ear because composed of a series of more audible overtones, the minor scale is a balance between noise and major tonality, you have the characteristic of the major tonality plus a transfiguration toward the noise that alert us of some danger
The result is the sense of panic resulting from noise and dissonance lighted by the most audible overtone of the major tonality and lighted panic = sadness
Most avant-garde music is perceived as "noise" because it is "noise" according to the anatomy of the ear and you can't defy this natural law
Had we perceived music and noise as the same or same musical we would have been extincted a lot of centuries ago as perceiving a danger through noise was one of the most important features we had to evolve and avoid extinction
Now this music is so much "noise in itself" without any conditioning, that infants from different countries of the world who never listened to any kinds of music (so they were not conditioned by western music) were happy and have a normal encephalogram when listening to tonal music and started crying, feeling sick, being nervous and had a abnormal ancephalogram when listening to atonal music
They were just perceiving a danger when listening to that music because that's what their ear is designed to and they couldn't certain consider that music as their ear was telling them that it was an noise a noise to say that there was a danger and it was not cultural conditioned but completely natural and instinctive

Now, what anymeone didn't say about Sorabji is that he suffered from mani depressive disorder
Part of this was due to his frustration in composing what he didn't really wanted to compose
Sorabji was more interested in Rachmaninov works and conception of music, he wanted a major use of dissonance in a tonal context
It was a friend of him explaining that no one would have taken him seriously is he didn't write in the School of Vienna style
It was the problem for many composer, beauty and tonality was considered useless and of no value and they were ridiculed and their works where not performed if they didn't write aleatory, serial of atonal
A lot of 1920 to 1960 composers will admit later that they composed atonal works but in secret keep composing tonal music and that what they wanted to be perfomed of them
Sorabji was not found of concerto halls an didn't want his music to be performed in theaters, this because of his contempt toward modernism eliticism
few critics has even guessed that Opus Clavicembalisticum was a joke or a protest of Sorabji toward the eliticism of modernism
According to them it was an opposite move compared to minimalism but generated with the same causes
Modernism and avant-garde wanted their music to sound serious and hard because they had to express the contemp for the war and the life disorder of man
Yet more and more dishonest composers trying to gain fame by just spitting random notes on a score started composing more and more ridicolously long and nonsense pieces
Reich reaction was to make music short an repetitive, Sorabji decided to make the longest piece ever; both were reaction against eliticism nonsense
Now, this is like Tchaikovsky suicide there a lot of different studious and critics saying different things and always denying the truth of the others, so we'll never know what it the truth but ihmo is a credible ipothesis since many composers they were already tired of Bern nonsenses (children will sing atonal and serial tunes in the street in the 1970... yeah right)

and I think that learning to play it correctly is much more difficult than sitting down and banging on random notes, don't you?

The point is that when you have melodic sounds is far difficolout to have a balance of sounds, a musicality, a perfection of touch
When you have total dissonant collection of chords and intervals the ear can't barely  hear the difference between a wrong note and a right one, between good tone and wrong tone, between musicality or lack of it, between playing with passion or playing mechanically
It's how our ear works and there's nothing we can do
Now, if we were insects that would be different, we wouldn't perceive the difference between sounds and noise, but that's would have been not of a good thing in case of earthquake

Stravinsky already realized it 100 years ago when he said that this music system (pentatonality, bytonality, atonality,) would have attracted a lot of dishonest composers just in search of a quick way to gain fame between the accedemic eliticists, because he realized that it was far more difficoult to compose a piece according to harmonic series rules instead of using dissonance as the basis, something that the ear can't perceive in its whole, in it's part but just a big noisy unit
Now, Stravisnky did knew what he was talking about

Daniel

[xvimbi]

Go to www.opusclavicembalisticum.blogspot.com. This is a blog that I made that has some of the OC on it.

Note: Beginning starts at bottom of page.

- Ludwig Van Rachabji

Thanks for those snippets. I have no idea, though, how this will sound when played "correctly". I know that Sorabji did not want to have the OC performed (perhaps he was anticipating all the heated debates...), but do you know if Sorabji himself ever played it, and if so, was he satisfied?

Can you judge if it is indeed humanly possible to play this "correctly", i.e. by someone who has ten fingers and two feet only? I think it might not be possible, but only someone who can imagine the sound correctly would be able to tell. If it can't be played, does it have any merit? If it can, what is it's merit?

Daniel_piano is discussing some of these questions in his post, and as far as I can see, he equtes the OC as a reactionary work to protest against the establishment. So, the question remains, what are it's merits?

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

-

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

-

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

Jonathan Powell says:

I must stress that I would advise no-one to judge the merits (whatever they may be ...) of the piece on the strength of the two available recordings, simply because they are both hugely inaccurate. I strove to learn all the notes, and in my humble opinion, the piece doesn't sound random and ridiculous (which it does on those recordings) when played pretty accurately and with decent phrasing, pedalling, sense of proportion etc

[Op. 1 No. 2]

I'm not saying it's not difficoult but there are other pieces with same technical difficoulty but with need more mastery of a musicality
I think that so far the only real thing that scare about this piece is the fact that it's four hours long
But if it was ten minutes long then it wouldn't have been considered more difficolout than other pieces and more people would have (maybe) tried to play it

Well, ofcourse. But I think it's wrong to state it like that. It's like saying "If Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto was 2 minutes long, it'd be a lot easier." The piece is that long, so there's really no "if's", if you ask me.

1. Written on 3 staves

Like many other super-hard fugues for organ

And 4 staves at least one-fourth of the time. Plus, using your feet is prohibited.

2. 4 hours long

yes, that's the most hard aspect of it imo

Yep.

3. Insane technical difficulties

yes but nothing that you don't find on other pieces especially in the neorelism era

Yes, but these technical difficulties aren't less hard than those, and have to be used for hours.

4. Huge jumping chords
5. Complex fugues, in which the subject must be brought out

Okay, but it's not peculiarity of this piece

Well, they're quite huge and have to be made quite fast. And the fugues are harder to play than (perhaps almost, I don't know all fugues) any, since they're very pianist-unfriendly and have quite a lot of voices.

6. Figuring out ways to make this piece sound like it's not just noise

It's not so certain that this may be possible at all
Our ear is anatomically designed to perceive certain intervals and successions of intervals as "music" especially when these intervals gravitate according to the natural series of overtones, on the other hand it is also designed to perceive certain succession of intervals without following the overtones rules (like serialism music) as so dissonant to be noise
This is a very important function that made us human evolve
In fact we can perceive certain frequencies as noise and see the difference between music and noise (tension and rest) because we need noise as an allarm for when our live could be in danger
Storm, fires, screams, roars they are all noises that tell us we're in danger and we need to perceice them as unpleasant to be ready to run away or fight
Music is perceived as "music" because it bases itself on the natural overtones, meaning those that the ears that hear easily
What the ear can hear easily is always perceived as melodic because it activated certain neurohormones production, on the other hands all the other series of less audible overtones will result in a unplesant sensation for our ears and different neuhormones will be secreted, these neurohormones are receptive in those area of the brain where there's a fear, mania, panic, danger intuition sensation
Have you evern wondered why the "any minor tonality" is more sad than "a mojor tonality"
Until 30 years ago it was believed (read for example Boulez unscientific writing) that it was because of cultural conditioning and that other populations with different tonality mode would perceive the minor as happy and the major as sad
Not only it has been discovered that the overtones of the harmonic series are present in every ethnical music system despite the tonality being different (but it is still tonality all over the world) but it has been discovered that every population from China to Africa perceive the minor tonality as SAD
The point is that the third in the minor tonality is substituted by a less audible overtone, this result in the ear having more work to do wo recognize the sound in its context, if complete dissonance and serialism causes the ear to perceive it as noise because of the nature of the unaudible overtones and their connection with noise and danger alarm and major tone soothe the ear because composed of a series of more audible overtones, the minor scale is a balance between noise and major tonality, you have the characteristic of the major tonality plus a transfiguration toward the noise that alert us of some danger
The result is the sense of panic resulting from noise and dissonance lighted by the most audible overtone of the major tonality and lighted panic = sadness
Most avant-garde music is perceived as "noise" because it is "noise" according to the anatomy of the ear and you can't defy this natural law
Had we perceived music and noise as the same or same musical we would have been extincted a lot of centuries ago as perceiving a danger through noise was one of the most important features we had to evolve and avoid extinction
Now this music is so much "noise in itself" without any conditioning, that infants from different countries of the world who never listened to any kinds of music (so they were not conditioned by western music) were happy and have a normal encephalogram when listening to tonal music and started crying, feeling sick, being nervous and had a abnormal ancephalogram when listening to atonal music
They were just perceiving a danger when listening to that music because that's what their ear is designed to and they couldn't certain consider that music as their ear was telling them that it was an noise a noise to say that there was a danger and it was not cultural conditioned but completely natural and instinctive

Well, I think the dissonance and atonality is something you have to get used to. In medieval times, certain intervals and harmonic structures that are very common and normal now, would've quite probably had the same impact on them as it had on those children. I know I am used to it, and I can listen to it as any other music, and I enjoy Sorabji, as music. To me it's definately not noise. And I think it's nonsense to compare atonal music to noises that tell us something's dangerous, like the rumbling of a vulcano. I mean, I can tell the difference between Sorabji and that quite well, and I'd still run from a vulcano. Not from Sorabji or other atonal music. And I believe this could be the same with everyone if they got used to listening to it. You might not think it's worth it, but, whatever that means to you, trust me, it really is worth it.

Now, what anymeone didn't say about Sorabji is that he suffered from mani depressive disorder
Part of this was due to his frustration in composing what he didn't really wanted to compose
Sorabji was more interested in Rachmaninov works and conception of music, he wanted a major use of dissonance in a tonal context
It was a friend of him explaining that no one would have taken him seriously is he didn't write in the School of Vienna style
It was the problem for many composer, beauty and tonality was considered useless and of no value and they were ridiculed and their works where not performed if they didn't write aleatory, serial of atonal
A lot of 1920 to 1960 composers will admit later that they composed atonal works but in secret keep composing tonal music and that what they wanted to be perfomed of them
Sorabji was not found of concerto halls an didn't want his music to be performed in theaters, this because of his contempt toward modernism eliticism
few critics has even guessed that Opus Clavicembalisticum was a joke or a protest of Sorabji toward the eliticism of modernism
According to them it was an opposite move compared to minimalism but generated with the same causes
Modernism and avant-garde wanted their music to sound serious and hard because they had to express the contemp for the war and the life disorder of man
Yet more and more dishonest composers trying to gain fame by just spitting random notes on a score started composing more and more ridicolously long and nonsense pieces
Reich reaction was to make music short an repetitive, Sorabji decided to make the longest piece ever; both were reaction against eliticism nonsense
Now, this is like Tchaikovsky suicide there a lot of different studious and critics saying different things and always denying the truth of the others, so we'll never know what it the truth but ihmo is a credible ipothesis since many composers they were already tired of Bern nonsenses (children will sing atonal and serial tunes in the street in the 1970... yeah right)

Well, Sorabji might not have acheived what he wanted, but I definately think his music has helped making the balance between tonality and atonality better. A balance which isn't quite there yet, but, I believe, will be there. And all of Sorabji's works are in the same style as the Opus Clavicembalisticum, so I doubt it was him joking around all his life. I think he was just trying to fill the gap between tonality and atonality, and he got closer and closer, but didn't make it every time, so he got pissed off and told no one to preform his works because he hated them. Wouldn't you feel like that, after spending your entire life trying to achieve something? So I agree Sorabji didn't enjoy the music he wrote. But Rachmaninov felt the same, he even said he failed as a composer. Does that mean Rachmaninov's music is bad? No. It's great. Does the fact that Sorabji didn't enjoy his work make it bad? Definately not.

And by the way, I'm having Sorabji themes stuck in my head quite often, and thus I do whistle them (if that counts as singing).

and I think that learning to play it correctly is much more difficult than sitting down and banging on random notes, don't you?

The point is that when you have melodic sounds is far difficolout to have a balance of sounds, a musicality, a perfection of touch
When you have total dissonant collection of chords and intervals the ear can't barely  hear the difference between a wrong note and a right one, between good tone and wrong tone, between musicality or lack of it, between playing with passion or playing mechanically
It's how our ear works and there's nothing we can do
Now, if we were insects that would be different, we wouldn't perceive the difference between sounds and noise, but that's would have been not of a good thing in case of earthquake

Well, the untrained ear couldn't hear it, but could definately feel it, if you know what I mean. I mean, I definately think listening to music isn't just hearing. What you feel is at least just as important. And as I said, I still know the difference between atonal music and a sound of danger.

Stravinsky already realized it 100 years ago when he said that this music system (pentatonality, bytonality, atonality,) would have attracted a lot of dishonest composers just in search of a quick way to gain fame between the accedemic eliticists, because he realized that it was far more difficoult to compose a piece according to harmonic series rules instead of using dissonance as the basis, something that the ear can't perceive in its whole, in it's part but just a big noisy unit
Now, Stravisnky did knew what he was talking about

Daniel

I don't agree with Stravinsky on that then. Bitonality, for example, can be found in Debussy. A lot of people enjoy Debussy's music, it's very accessible most of the time, and writing music like that isn't less difficult than writing music that's 100% tonal, like Mozart for example. And again, the ear needs some experience to hear atonal music as... not a "big noisy unit". And I suggest you use the word atonal instead of dissonant next time. There's a big difference, and in atonal music, there theoretically is no dissonance.

[Daniel_piano]

Well, I think the dissonance and atonality is something you have to get used to. In medieval times, certain intervals and harmonic structures that are very common and normal now, would've quite probably had the same impact on them as it had on those children. I know I am used to it, and I can listen to it as any other music, and I enjoy Sorabji, as music. To me it's definately not noise.

it's not that simple
"you just have to get used to it" or "it's just a cultural conditioning" are the excuses that avant-garde composers have been using to presumptuosly justify why their works was liked by so few people
The truth is that cultural conditioning has nothing to do with it, it's a matter of ear anatomy something that we can't change just with lame excuses

And I think it's nonsense to compare atonal music to noises that tell us something's dangerous, like the rumbling of a vulcano. I mean, I can tell the difference between Sorabji and that quite well, and I'd still run from a vulcano.

It's not nonsense, it's the anatomy of the ear and physic of the sound
It has been showed that among trained listeners only 1% can really stand avant-garde compositions and amongst teachers and accademic teachers the amount is just 3%
We shouldn't care much for the reason why a 1% can stand it, but the reaosn why 99% can't
The reason is simply anatomical and acoustical and has been explained thoroughly in a lot of acoustical science books
Our ear perceive avant-garde composition as noise
Now, even noise can be quite interesting, in fact there's music made with cooking tools noise (pans, plates, glasses, bottles, knives and so on=
The excuse that people don't like avant-garde composition because they're used to easy listening music or because they are to used to tonality doesn't hold water as avant-garde is not appreciated even among music hystorians, composers, orchestra directors, teachers and a lot of other people who never listen to pop and know Stravinsky and Bartok pieces at memory

Not from Sorabji or other atonal music. And I believe this could be the same with everyone if they got used to listening to it. You might not think it's worth it, but, whatever that means to you, trust me, it really is worth it.

No, its not the same with everyone
People who can eventually ear something different than noise from avant-garde pieces are just using their mind to apply tonality characteristics to the atonal composition
Yes, that's what happen
Your ear perceives it as "noise" as acoustically and anatomically espected, but your brain eventually hold on a series and keep repeating it in the uncounscious until the lack of tonal gravity is substituted by a fake perception of tonality
Not everyone can do that
In fact, only 1% of the classical musical listener are able to deceive the ear in such a way using their mind subconsciously

Well, Sorabji might not have acheived what he wanted, but I definately think his music has helped making the balance between tonality and atonality better. A balance which isn't quite there yet, but, I believe, will be there.

The only balance between tonality and atonality is atonality used as tension and tonality as rest, a piece with only tension (like any avant-garde work, can break your nerves apart and nothing more)
Anywa I don't think no one will be there
Avant-garde composition is pretty dead
There are very few composers composing today
Those still attached to avant-garde era are using electronic instrument and very few acoustical instrument all the other are moving toward a neo-romanticism (both in music and painting) and are either in direction of pure tonality or impressionism and minimalism
So, there will be no a balance in the future just a completely opposite direction in musical style, hopefully more in social context compared to the eliticism of avant-garde that no one cared for a part from accademists

And all of Sorabji's works are in the same style as the Opus Clavicembalisticum, so I doubt it was him joking around all his life.

There hundreds of composers who joke around all their life
Now that avant-garde fascism is dead a lot of serial, atonal and avant-garde composers have admitted that they wrote that stuff because no one would have taken them seriously otherwise but they did write tonal music secretely and that's what they wanted to do (or at least they wanted to do that too but they were not permitted/allowed to)
Anywa, the reactionary aspect against elicitism of OC is not the aleatory style per se but the lenght
Just like minimalism was a reaction against avant-garde eliticism it has been    suggested by music studious that even OC could a be a reactionary work

I think he was just trying to fill the gap between tonality and atonality, and he got closer and closer,

There was not much of a gap
Modernism started as a reactionary movement against was in Europe
It was not a musical evolution, it was a rational and uneven break with what there were before
In fact, while all the music in the world is still in social context, avant-garde music simply has no social context, it is shut in ivory towar where only the elite can go
Almost every music theorist of today agree that avant-garde music is simply out of context and therefore socially meaningless, something that never happed from medieval chants to gregorian chorals
What really happened is that the new regime of modernism has the power and it was "either or" so there were no alternative for hundreds of composers that didn't want to compose according to the modernism style, if they did something different they were ridiculed and not performed
This lasts until 1975 circa
Very few sensfull and vital music can be written in such fascistic and limiting situation and again, now that avant-garde regime is over lot of accademy composers and teachers agree with this point of view and admit that they have always had doubts but they feared to be esiliated from the musical world in the protested
 

But Rachmaninov felt the same, he even said he failed as a composer. Does that mean Rachmaninov's music is bad? No. It's great. Does the fact that Sorabji didn't enjoy his work make it bad? Definately not.

Rachmaninov didn't like his own music because he was compelled (because of the modernism fascism and regime) to write in a style he didn't want to
His Piano Concertos are kind of near to what he wanted to really composer but couldn't, much of the rest is not
Anyway, there's no objective bad or good
Bad or good is just subjective
We can only judge a style according to what we know from past styles and past music and our knowledge on musicology, acoustic and physic

And by the way, I'm having Sorabji themes stuck in my head quite often, and thus I do whistle them (if that counts as singing).



The point is that when you have melodic sounds is far difficolout to have a balance of sounds, a musicality, a perfection of touch
When you have total dissonant collection of chords and intervals the ear can't barely  hear the difference between a wrong note and a right one, between good tone and wrong tone, between musicality or lack of it, between playing with passion or playing mechanically
It's how our ear works and there's nothing we can do
Now, if we were insects that would be different, we wouldn't perceive the difference between sounds and noise, but that's would have been not of a good thing in case of earthquake

Well, the untrained ear couldn't hear it, but could definately feel it,

It's still the old excuses used by avant-garde composers, an excuses that no believe anymore, neither acoustic scientists nor contemporary composers
Untrained ear mean absolutely nothing
Avant-garde music is perceived in the same reluctant way in evey part of the world and there are clear anatomical and acoustical reasons for that
In fact only 1% of trained ears can stand avant-garde compositions
It's biological fact
Every musical system of the world in based on harmonic overtones series
There's nothing like atonality in nature or in the ethnic music and in fact it can't be perceived musically by our ear, only by our brain that create a fake tonality to bear the lack of tonal center
The fact alone that you say that whistle atonal pieces show how this is true
You can sing them (perceiving a sense of direction) only because your brain is apply tonal characteristic to the sounds you heard, 99% of the people can't do that even if their ear trained or even if they have been studied 30 years getting 20 diplomas in composition, harmony, violin, organ and piano
Avant-garde composers aknowledge themselves that they were trying to do phylosophy with music, but they as good in their phylosophycal thinking as much as they were bad in their music creating

if you know what I mean. I mean, I definately think listening to music isn't just hearing. What you feel is at least just as important. And as I said, I still know the difference between atonal music and a sound of danger.

it doesn't mind what you think you think
Your brain doesn't know the difference, that's he way he fake subconsciously by adding already establish tonal characteristic to the piece you're hearing
There's not much difference between chords following an atonal series and the noise of siren or alarm, I mean acoustically and anatomically
Your brain doesn't know the difference, you think he does

I don't agree with Stravinsky on that then. Bitonality, for example, can be found in Debussy. A lot of people enjoy Debussy's music, it's very accessible most of the time, and writing music like that isn't less difficult than writing music that's 100% tonal, like Mozart for example. And again, the ear needs some experience to hear atonal music as... not a "big noisy unit".

Experience does nothing
You can't deceive the anatomy of 10000 years with just 100 years of listening
In fact avant-garde compositions are still unappreciated by majority of trained professionals
I know people who because of their work (orchestra directors, music theorists, teachers) had to listen avant-garde atonal works for years and years analizing them and explaining them to their students
They still can't stand them, they still don't feel the musicaly of them like the 99% of the people of this world including those having a musical system based on the penthatonic scale

And I suggest you use the word atonal instead of dissonant next time. There's a big difference, and in atonal music, there theoretically is no dissonance.

Atonal music is acoustically only dissonance
This is simply a ratio of vibrations perceived by the ear, nothing tou can fool with excuses about training the hear, educating people (even those already educated?) or that kind of justifications

[bravuraoctaves]

Scientific research has found that in humans,  sense of harmony is more nature than nurture.  In animals,  however,  they have  absolutely no sense of harmony.

[Op. 1 No. 2]

it's not that simple
"you just have to get used to it" or "it's just a cultural conditioning" are the excuses that avant-garde composers have been using to presumptuosly justify why their works was liked by so few people
The truth is that cultural conditioning has nothing to do with it, it's a matter of ear anatomy something that we can't change just with lame excuses

It definately has to do with how your brain sorts out things, so "getting used to it". Ofcourse it isn't that simple, but it's a lot more understandable to put it that way. The more I listen to that music, the more I enjoy it.

It's not nonsense, it's the anatomy of the ear and physic of the sound
It has been showed that among trained listeners only 1% can really stand avant-garde compositions and amongst teachers and accademic teachers the amount is just 3%
We shouldn't care much for the reason why a 1% can stand it, but the reaosn why 99% can't
The reason is simply anatomical and acoustical and has been explained thoroughly in a lot of acoustical science books
Our ear perceive avant-garde composition as noise
Now, even noise can be quite interesting, in fact there's music made with cooking tools noise (pans, plates, glasses, bottles, knives and so on=
The excuse that people don't like avant-garde composition because they're used to easy listening music or because they are to used to tonality doesn't hold water as avant-garde is not appreciated even among music hystorians, composers, orchestra directors, teachers and a lot of other people who never listen to pop and know Stravinsky and Bartok pieces at memory

It doubt it has to do with the atonomy of ears, but more with what's transported to the brain and how that handles it. And a reason lot's of composers, teachers, orchestra directors, etc, don't enjoy atonal music is also because they don't take time to listen to it often, and they haven't really given it a chance. And by the way, noise is a very subjective thing. I mean, lots of people like techno music, while I think it's noise. In my highschool class, 20 people liked techno, 1 liked metal, and I was the only one that enjoyed classical, and atonal music. Because most people liked techno music, does that make me a flaw of nature? Because I like atonal music, does that make me some 1% that's some special thing? I doubt it. I think lots of people don't even give atonal music a chance. You can say what you want, but at a first listen you can never hear the true beauty of a piece, especially if it's new to you, or complex, or even worse, both. But the problem is that most people would reject atonal music after the first minute and never pick it up again.

No, its not the same with everyone
People who can eventually ear something different than noise from avant-garde pieces are just using their mind to apply tonality characteristics to the atonal composition
Yes, that's what happen
Your ear perceives it as "noise" as acoustically and anatomically espected, but your brain eventually hold on a series and keep repeating it in the uncounscious until the lack of tonal gravity is substituted by a fake perception of tonality
Not everyone can do that
In fact, only 1% of the classical musical listener are able to deceive the ear in such a way using their mind subconsciously

Well, ofcourse, I agree. After listening to the music more and more, you start hearing the connections and parts and you can sort them out. Some people do this faster than others, but I think everyone could, if they tried long enough. It's just that most people, even trained musicians, don't take that time.

The only balance between tonality and atonality is atonality used as tension and tonality as rest, a piece with only tension (like any avant-garde work, can break your nerves apart and nothing more)
Anywa I don't think no one will be there
Avant-garde composition is pretty dead
There are very few composers composing today
Those still attached to avant-garde era are using electronic instrument and very few acoustical instrument all the other are moving toward a neo-romanticism (both in music and painting) and are either in direction of pure tonality or impressionism and minimalism
So, there will be no a balance in the future just a completely opposite direction in musical style, hopefully more in social context compared to the eliticism of avant-garde that no one cared for a part from accademists

There are atonal pieces that are actually quite relaxing. Anyway, you don't know if there will be a balance, you can't predict what will happen. I will definately try to make music that mixes all musical developments of the past two centuries, or even more. May God help me.

Anyway, maybe you've heard it, but listen to Leo Ornstein's 8th piano sonata, written in 1990. I think this piece has a great balance between atonality and tonality.

There hundreds of composers who joke around all their life
Now that avant-garde fascism is dead a lot of serial, atonal and avant-garde composers have admitted that they wrote that stuff because no one would have taken them seriously otherwise but they did write tonal music secretely and that's what they wanted to do (or at least they wanted to do that too but they were not permitted/allowed to)
Anywa, the reactionary aspect against elicitism of OC is not the aleatory style per se but the lenght
Just like minimalism was a reaction against avant-garde eliticism it has been    suggested by music studious that even OC could a be a reactionary work

Sorabji has written several works of the same length and even longer. I doubt someone locking himself up in his house to compose all the time would have been writing "jokes" all the time. I think he was a very serious musician, but a very self-critical one even more.

There was not much of a gap
Modernism started as a reactionary movement against was in Europe
It was not a musical evolution, it was a rational and uneven break with what there were before
In fact, while all the music in the world is still in social context, avant-garde music simply has no social context, it is shut in ivory towar where only the elite can go
Almost every music theorist of today agree that avant-garde music is simply out of context and therefore socially meaningless, something that never happed from medieval chants to gregorian chorals
What really happened is that the new regime of modernism has the power and it was "either or" so there were no alternative for hundreds of composers that didn't want to compose according to the modernism style, if they did something different they were ridiculed and not performed
This lasts until 1975 circa
Very few sensfull and vital music can be written in such fascistic and limiting situation and again, now that avant-garde regime is over lot of accademy composers and teachers agree with this point of view and admit that they have always had doubts but they feared to be esiliated from the musical world in the protested

I don't think it was an evolution, but it was definately a revolution, that I think is supposed to melt with what there was before some time soon. And I don't think you should compare this to what happened in Medieval time. I mean, every development goes a lot faster now, and there's a lot more people now with different views. I don't think it's an "ivory tower where only the elite can go". I think it's somewhere everyone could go, but no one takes the time for to go, so they call the ones that do take that time "elite", because they don't understand why they'd take the time to listen to that music.... Which ofcourse they would understand if they took that time theirselves.
 

Rachmaninov didn't like his own music because he was compelled (because of the modernism fascism and regime) to write in a style he didn't want to
His Piano Concertos are kind of near to what he wanted to really composer but couldn't, much of the rest is not
Anyway, there's no objective bad or good
Bad or good is just subjective
We can only judge a style according to what we know from past styles and past music and our knowledge on musicology, acoustic and physic

Well, Sorabji didn't like his music because he couldn't quite achieve what was on his mind, and it's the same with Rachmaninov, so it's quite right to compare the two on that aspect. I know good and bad is subjective. But both composer thought they were bad composers. It seemed like you were saying Sorabji was a bad composer because he thought he was himself, and I was saying this isn't the case. It's alright you don't like Sorabji, but to hate it and label it noise is completely wrong.

It's still the old excuses used by avant-garde composers, an excuses that no believe anymore, neither acoustic scientists nor contemporary composers
Untrained ear mean absolutely nothing
Avant-garde music is perceived in the same reluctant way in evey part of the world and there are clear anatomical and acoustical reasons for that
In fact only 1% of trained ears can stand avant-garde compositions
It's biological fact
Every musical system of the world in based on harmonic overtones series
There's nothing like atonality in nature or in the ethnic music and in fact it can't be perceived musically by our ear, only by our brain that create a fake tonality to bear the lack of tonal center
The fact alone that you say that whistle atonal pieces show how this is true
You can sing them (perceiving a sense of direction) only because your brain is apply tonal characteristic to the sounds you heard, 99% of the people can't do that even if their ear trained or even if they have been studied 30 years getting 20 diplomas in composition, harmony, violin, organ and piano
Avant-garde composers aknowledge themselves that they were trying to do phylosophy with music, but they as good in their phylosophycal thinking as much as they were bad in their music creating

With "untrained ear" I meant, not enough listening to Sorabji to discover what his music really is about, but I've told that already somewhere above in this post. And no atonality in nature? There is no tonality in nature. Have you ever heard the wind blowing christmas carols or heard water flowing that sounded like Mozart?
And as I said, lots of musicians don't even give avant-garde composers a chance.
And bad in music creating? That, sir, is 100% subjective. And I doubt you've heard enough yourself to say that in such a convinced manner.

it doesn't mind what you think you think
Your brain doesn't know the difference, that's he way he fake subconsciously by adding already establish tonal characteristic to the piece you're hearing
There's not much difference between chords following an atonal series and the noise of siren or alarm, I mean acoustically and anatomically
Your brain doesn't know the difference, you think he does

There's also something like pitch and tembre, and common sense. A horn of a car, or a siren sounds a lot different than atonal chords. Ofcourse my mind knows the difference. And my brain knows it doesn't have to go on red alert with atonic music, and it does know when a siren goes off. The problem with science is that it sees a human being as something that does everything instinctively. I don't think a human being has an instinct that controls it, but it controls itself (unlike with animals). And I know that my brain knows the difference  between an atonal chord passage and a siren or whatever. I mean, come on.  :\

Experience does nothing
You can't deceive the anatomy of 10000 years with just 100 years of listening
In fact avant-garde compositions are still unappreciated by majority of trained professionals
I know people who because of their work (orchestra directors, music theorists, teachers) had to listen avant-garde atonal works for years and years analizing them and explaining them to their students
They still can't stand them, they still don't feel the musicaly of them like the 99% of the people of this world including those having a musical system based on the penthatonic scale

Experience and being open for new things does everything. A lot of people who listen to that for their work don't like it often just to be part of some group, so they can talk along with them, etc. Lots of people in music are afraid to have an opinion other than most, at least around those others. And, pentatonic music doesn't have to do with atonal music. I don't get the connection? Chinese music, for example, is perfectly tonal.

Atonal music is acoustically only dissonance
This is simply a ratio of vibrations perceived by the ear, nothing tou can fool with excuses about training the hear, educating people (even those already educated?) or that kind of justifications

I mean, according to the theory of atonal music it's not dissonant, because the music isn't based on tonality. Ofcourse if you look at it in a tonal way, it's dissonant. Not if you look at it as it is. But that doesn't matter.
And it has nothing to do with how your ear vibrates, it has to do with how your brain handles these vibrations.

[alextryan]

Wow y'all have a lot to say bout this. 

The link is broken to the recording.  Anyone got it, willing to put it up for ftp/download?

[DarkWind]

I haven't read all of it, but Daniel_piano, you act as if all avant-garde was nothing but just noise making. Ever hear of George Crumb? Google up "Makrokosmos" on a Google Image Search and try to play one of those pieces, the scores are insane. Same thing would go for pieces like his Star Child, which take up 4 conductors and a giant orchestra. Yet, the piece is beautiful and mysterious. It uses very different notation.

[Spatula]

HOLY MOO!

EASTER!

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

I went to Sheet Music Plus to look for the music to that. And under it, it said "Customers who bought this also bought......." 4'33 by John Cage.

Hmm........

[Spatula]

Weird minds think alike

[DarkWind]

I just acquired the recordings, and I must say, they are quite good. Very mystical, with some screaming in it.

[xvimbi]

If you are suprised by how he arranges his music, you haven't seen nuttin'. There is a lot of weird composers out there...

The most difficult aspect about some of Crumb's music is to find the right sized chains in the local hardware store   

[Brian Healey]

I went to Sheet Music Plus to look for the music to that. And under it, it said "Customers who bought this also bought......." 4'33 by John Cage.

If anyone actually bought "sheet music" for 4'33'', then please slap yourself repeatedly in the face immediately.

It's kinda funny, really. I've seen the "score" for 4'33'' before, and it's actually a three-part piece. The score is just a single page that says something like

PART ONE:
tacet

PART TWO:
tacet

PART THREE:
tacet

and that's it. I'm not kidding. The scary part is that it had to be copyrighted in order to be published. That means that anytime you hear silence in a piece of music, it's technically copyright infringement. Although I think Cage's lawyers would have a tough time enforcing that one.

[Daniel_piano]

Dear Forum
        In answer to the argument "you can train your ear
to atonality, because tonality is just cultural conditioning,"
there is scientific evidence that the world wide scales of
the diatonic (major & minor) as well as the pentatonic and
jazz scales, have natural foundations in acoustics, and that
musical scales and systems are NOT just "culturally conditioned.
        A simple, and short, explanation can be found at this
URL written by Bob Fink, a musicologist:
    https://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/atonal.htm
        Another news clip is here, about consonance and
dissonance:
    https://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/babies.htm
        Please read both of these and let me know what you
think, or if you think that there are errors of fact and
science at those URLs, please tell me what they are?
--Best wishes

[Brian Healey]

I took an atonal sight-singing class at Berklee, and believe me that'll change your mind. I though it would be impossible, but it just comes down to training your ear to hear specific intervals, just like you do when you learn to sight-sing tonal music. It's really no different, except to us cats in the Western musical hemisphere tonal music comes more naturally because our music is based on tonality.

[Daniel_piano]

I took an atonal sight-singing class at Berklee, and believe me that'll change your mind. I though it would be impossible, but it just comes down to training your ear to hear specific intervals, just like you do when you learn to sight-sing tonal music. It's really no different, except to us cats in the Western musical hemisphere tonal music comes more naturally because our music is based on tonality.

The point is that any music is based on tonality to an extent
Now, there's not a single music system in the world that is based on atonality
Even the Arabian system, the penthatonic scale and the African musical system are all based on the natural harmonic series
A famous musicologist that studies all ethnic music of the word said that there's not a single music system in the world where there's not the fifth and seventh in the scale
They're universal so there's really few differences about our equal temperamente and other musical system if you compare them to pure atonality
What I wanted to make clear (especially from an ethnical, scientific, anatomical and acoustical point of view) is that we dont' appreciate tonality because of "cultural conditioning" but because of specific and scientific reasons that make tonality more natural and pleasant to our ear despite any cultural conditioning
And this is true in any part of the world

Daniel

[Brian Healey]

Well, I see what you're saying, and you have a point.  Certain Eastern musical systems might be micro-tonal, but still based on their own version of tonality. Conditioning does play a role, though, because to Western ears, micro-tonal musical systems sound "weird", even though they are logical in their own way.  My point is that, in a way, atonality sounds "weird" for the same reason. Atonal music is usually extremely logical, almost ridiculously so. Whereas in tonal music, your ear orients itself by the music's relationship to the tonal center, in atonal music every note is an entity on its own, and the ear cannot orient itself because there is no place the ear can call home. You can however, train your ears to percieve a note's relationship to the notes around it in atonal music, and in that way, the absence of tonality almost becomes tonal. It's almost like when you stay awake so long that you stop being tired (not sure if that's a good analogy).

Who is that famous musicologist you spoke of? I don't claim to know everything about the music of the world, but I know that many musical systems, Javanese music in particular, are based on pentatonic scales that don't contain sevenths. It's also a pretty broad generalization to say every musical system contains a fifth when every musical system has a different idea of what a fifth is. A fifth that we would play on a piano is different than a fifth played by an Indian violinist, and both of those would be different than a fifth played by a Javanese gamelan musican. And what did he have to say about African musical systems that don't even contain scales and are based solely on percussion? There's no fifths or sevenths there.

[Daniel_piano]

Sorry I don't remember the musicologist name, have to look for hin my documents

The point about telling that every musical system of the world is based more or less on tonality is to show how tonality is indeed natural and how it was derived from natural and acoustic
That's is: every musical system is based on the natural sequecence of overtones
Better yet, every musical system is based on those overtones that we can hear more clearly, showing how the effect music has on us is not something perceived in the brain but perceived in the ear
No musical system in the world completely ignore the natural sequence of overtones like atonality
----------------
Whenever a single note, like "Middle C," is played, we actually hear several  notes at once, called "overtones."  They're very faint, and even though we think we're hearing a single note C, we still hear its overtones: The overtones are a mixture of different weaker tones telling us, for ex., we're hearing a "C" by a trumpet instead of a piano or a voice -- but sounding like the same "single" note of middle C.
    The higher the overtones are, the less loud they are. The human ear can only hear the first few overtones of any note played. Except for a tuning fork, all  musical notes made by voices or instruments will produce their own overtones.
    The meaning of these scientific facts , as initially outlined in my books on the origin of music, appear to be this:
    The basic musical scale & its tonality (meaning a scale form in which there are strong and weak notes, rather than all notes seeming to be equally important) probably arose in the most ancient times like this:
     
    We hear the octave as the loudest overtone of any note, such as middle C. Next loudest [& different] note would be a tone matching what is the fifth note of a scale, namely the "fifth." In the scale of C, this would be G.
    The note that produces middle C as its audible overtone would match the 4th scale note, F.
    This creates what is now called the tonic (or its octave), the fifth, and the fourth, steps (or "intervals") in the scale when they are played out loud as separate notes. These three intervals come from the most noticeable of the overtones.
    The tonic, fourth and fifth are found in the music and scales of all cultures in all periods of human music making.
    When each of the intervals is sounded as separate notes, they, in turn, have their own overtones. The loudest of ALL these will clue in the rest of the notes found in the most widely known scales in the world and in history.
    This also explains how there are strong & weak notes in the scale, why there are only 2 halftones in the scale, why notes historically entered the scale when they did...and much more.
    Here's how:
    If you write out the overtones of these three intervals and string out the three most audible (different) overtones of each, within the span of an octave, you can get the major scale ( I've left out the repeated octave overtones and inaudible overtones as redundant):
    TONIC C:    Overtones: C, G, E, (& Bb, then inaudible)
    FIFTH G:     Overtones: G, D, B, (and F)
    FOURTH F: Overtones: F, C, A, (and Eb)
    Major scale:    C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C
    If you substitute the three weakest ones (the 3rd, 6th and 7th notes of the scale) with another three notes (which includes the even weaker next overtones), and which are flatter, you get the minor scale. (The 6th note above is strongest of the three because it forms no halftones with adjacent notes in the major scale):
    Minor scale:    C, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb, C
    Now, if you leave these two -- the 3rd and 7th notes -- out altogether, you get what's called the "Chinese scale" -- or the piano's "black notes" pentatonic 5-note scale -- found also in Africa, old Scottish and Irish folk music, and elsewhere:
    Pentatonic scale:   C, D,    F, G, A,    C
    Because those two overtones are very weak, they were the last to come into the scale, and how to tune them was a matter of historic uncertainty -- and many people tuned them somewhere between minor and major (in the ‘cracks' on the piano), producing what are known as "blue" or "neutral" notes.
    The process of adding halftones into the pentatonic scale took place in China, in Scottish music, elsewhere, and even the names given to these notes in different cultures are similar: "passing," "becoming," "leading" notes.
------------------

I still no wonder that atonality (when hard core, Berg is another story) is not liked and perceived as disturbing by majority of the people in all the world
Only 1,2% of all the classical listeners listen to avant-garde compositions
Atonality is eschewed by animals and infants and and people from China, Peru, Africa, New Zeland and other places in the world perceive western atonality as unpleasant as majority of western people
Among peoples whose ears can't stand atonal compositions are teachers, composers, musicologists, music hystorians, orchestral conductor
We're not talking here about people who listen to Britney Spears, we're talking about people that has more diplomas and Ph.D. in music than anyone in this forum
If it were cultural conditioning we would have beed passed though it after more than 100 years especially on the music experts category
But it didn't work this way, there must be a more objective reason why atonality is so unplesant and unmusical to many (including a lot of music experts) and in fact there's a acoustical and anatomical reason.... something that can't be overlooked

Mind you, I'm not saying that those who enjoy atonal and avant-garde composition should not listen to them or feel like they're weirf
But this new studies and researches on the biological naturality of tonality are the answers to the atonal-propaganda nonsense that wanted us to believe that tonality is just "cultural conditioned" and that it was originated "by pure chance"

It's just that I want to defend all those people that have been saying after years of listening to it that they can't find musicality in atonality and have always been answered by the atonal-regime that they were stupid and social conditioned
Well, these people should take their revenge in the name of science and acoustic science
"Listen to it, you'll get used to it" just proved to be wrong
You can't defeat acustic laws and our anatomy and people all over the world have been waiting for more than 100 years to get "used" to this music and yet even people composing it or analysing it never get used to it
People is tired of avant-garde junk and nothing else out there
Not to say that avant-garde composers should stop composing, but there's shouldn't be a regime anymore like in the last 50 years and everyone should compose the music they prefer (be it tonal, impressionistic, neo-romatic or whatever) without being ridiculed and not taken seriously; and this is what have been happening in the last 50 years and the power of avant-garde regime and its attempo to destroy anything else was the reason why we never heard new tonal music anymore, not because people didn't want to hear it or because no one wanted to compose it but because accademical power threated people who dare to do that by ridiculing them or never perform their pieces
Today even accademic establishment is rebelling against the avant-garde/atonal regime and more and more famous atonal composers are confessing their willing to compose tonal music and how they were never permitted to so

So, if the fact that we're in the 21century, that avant-garde and modernism era is dead (both in music, poetry, sculpture and painting), that over 6000 composers are sending their tonal compositions to new tonal music contests out there, that composers and teachers are admitting for their time how dealing with atonal compositions was never a choice of yours or one that they liked, the fact that in more 100 years laymen and experts alike never get used to this musical system... if all of this wasn't enough for the avant-garde-regime vicitims to take their revenge, now even acoustic and science defend their point of view explaining why atonal is unique as a musical system completely against any natural acoustic law and how tonality was indeed founded in nature and anatomy and how it was not originated by chance by specific nature fenomena observation


Daniel
 

[Brian Healey]

First of all, atonality might be considered avant-garde, but one does not mean the other. You seemed to use the two as interchangeable terms. Music can be avant-garde without being atonal. Secondly, you make a lot of presumptions and generalizations that you can't even begin to back up.

Atonality does not ignore the natural sequence of overtones. It's based on the same musical system that Beethoven used. Atonality is simply a method of musical organization.

And if you want to talk about overtones, our Western musical system does not follow those principles exactly either. A fifth on a piano is not a true natural fifth. In fact, if you play a C on the piano, the F#/Gb is actually closer to the natural fifth than the G. George Russell talks about that in his book "The Lydian Concept."

[Daniel_piano]

       
        No one is arguing that conditioning doesn't exist.
People who like atonal music definitely like it. They're not
lying. But why there are so many fewer of them in any society
(compared to lovers of tonal popular music and tonal classical
music), is because it takes so much more time to adapt to
listening to dissonance and atonality.
        This was proven in the "Babies" experiment, because
the babies had little or no "pre-conditioning" to tonal
music. Yet they still disliked atonal music, and were drawn
to the tonal or consonant sounds.
        Re-read that short URL:
 
        https://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/babies.htm

        The professor there is quoted saying that it is harder
work to adapt to atonality. And it is. Like learning to like
Bleu cheese, compared to liking sugar or candy (which are almost
universally enjoyed immediately).
        If ALL the senses -- taste, touch, smell and sight --
have stimuli or limits that can be, on one side, *naturally*
pleasant, and on the other side naturally painful or unpleasant,
then why would our sense of hearing be any different?

        Singing atonal intervals [strung outside of any
tonal scale] is perhaps easier than adapting to atonal music
as a listener, because (I assume) you are dealing with just
intervals, not the full combinations of rhythm, multiple
chords, and melodic strings.

        While it's easier to adapt to tonal melody, nevertheless,
conditioning *still* is partly required to appreciate tonal
harmonic music, because harmony is more complex than single
"A Capella"  tonal melodies, and is innately more dissonant than
single tones (such as in a singing solo voice).
        That's because the overtones we hear from any single
tone are all consonant, but when, for example, we make a
simple major chord, the overtones of each note in that
"consonant" chord are *not* all consonant with each other.
Some of these audible overtones cause complex ratios between
their frequencies, which are proven to be acoustically
"noisier" than simple ratios (consonances).
        Thus a simple major chord has *both* consonance and
some dissonance in it, whereas a single tone has *only*
acoustically-defined consonance.
        The reason why humans ever came to tolerate harmony
at all is because harmonies can reveal the *relationships that
exist between notes* in a tonal melody. The overtones linking
the notes of a melody are very faint. But harmonies can
strengthen these links. (Or weaken them, depending which
harmonies you use). Musicians first learning harmony were
willing to put up with minor amounts of dissonance in order
to better enjoy the tonal aspects within a melody.
        To hear a short MIDI example of this, click on:

        https://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/melody.htm

        That URL plays an *atonal* melody, and then, plays
the same melody *made tonal* by adding certain harmonies that
will bring out the inner-relationships between the notes of
the atonal melody.
   See also this very short URL:
   https://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/drone.htm

      ======== N O N - W E S T E R N    M U S I C =========

        I am also told that some students (perhaps not neces-
sarily yourself) argue that 'many people (especially young
music students) believe that in Asia or Africa or South
America they can't appreciate our music and that their music
is actually atonal.' But that isn't quite true.
        Just in case you've heard that, here is a letter
I received some years ago from Andrew Tracey, head of the
International Library of African Music, a leading source
of knowledge about African music:

        "...Very little evidence from Africa is adduced,
but what it could add would be support for the existence of
diatonic type of scales in certain regions, of scales clearly
based on the harmonic series [overtones] in others, and of
equal-spaced scales in yet others.
        "As regards the number of notes in the octave,
according to Hugh Tracey's measurements of numerous
instruments during his 40 years of research in central,
eastern and southern Africa, approx 40% of Africans use
pentatonic scales, 40% heptatonic, and the remainder either
hexa- or tetratonic scales. A look through the catalogue of
our Sound of Africa series of recordings, 210 records recorded
by Hugh Tracey, would give you a good deal of evidence of
actual African tunings, recorded in Hz." -- Andrew Tracey

        As regards "style" (Calypso, African or Indian ragas
and dances, etc, compared to Beethoven or the Beatles) some
music *styles* will require time and conditioning to be under-
stood, but the basic tonal scales *already were existing* and
were used tonally. They were discovered thousands of years
earlier. See these URLs [about the oldest known song and about
the "Neanderthal flute"] for clear proof:

        https://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/evidence.htm
        https://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/fl-compl.htm

More about this matter can be found at this URL:
 
        https://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/natbasis.htm
and scroll down to the short chapter called: "An Evolutionary
Process in Progress."

Atonality does not ignore the natural sequence of overtones.

   No system can ignore the overtone series unless its
music is played on tuning forks, which have no overtones.

It's based on the same musical system that Beethoven used.

   Can you be precise? What system did Beethoven use
according to you? 
   According to me, Beethoven used the "tonal system,"
which of course, by definition, the "a-tonal" system clearly
doe NOT use. Also, there is more than one "atonal" system
claimed nowadays. Which one are you referring to?

Atonality is simply a method of musical organization.

   What is the point of that statement? It's rather vague.
After all, every piece of music uses a "method of musical
organization." What is that method, specifically?

 

And if you want to talk about overtones, our Western musical
system does not follow those principles exactly either.
 A fifth on a piano is not a true natural fifth.

        Temperament is a specific system that actually *confirms*
a cultural adherence to a naturally-tuned or justly-tuned diatonic
system.
   Its stated purpose for being invented was in order
to make a fixed key instrument that *could* make the scale or
"keys" in which music was written, be as *true* to a naturally
tuned key as possible, and still be physically playable or
feasible on a single instrument.
   The first pianos and harpsichords were justly tuned,
but presented problems that eventually only temperament could
solve, such as only certain keys sounding natural, and the other
keys sounding grossly out of tune.
   Since it is impossible to attain the goal of all keys
on a piano being pitched to a natural acoustic tuning, they are
tempered (altered slightly from acoustic pitch) -- a compromise
-- to make any key chosen sound as much in natural tune as
possible.
   Most of us accept the "unnatural" mistuning as an accept-
able compromise. But people with perfect pitch do not, usually.
   Also, singers often hate the piano as an accompaniment, and
many, if not most, *ignore* the tempered sound, and will sing the
natural intervals despite the piano's tuning. This mismatch between
vocalists and tempered or fixed-note instruments is common, even
in other cultures, past and present. There is evidence for this
in many musicologist writings -- available on request.
    Violinists as well often ignore tempered intervals, and
harpists, trombonists, and etc.
   Temperament is not explained as an exception to "just tuning"
due to some "desire" NOT to have natural keys and not to have acous-
tically just music or intervals. The real purpose for temperament
is as outlined above.
   So why pretend that there is some other "non-tonal" reason
for using temperament?
 

In fact, if you play a C on the piano, the F#/Gb is actually closer to
the natural fifth than the (end of sentence missing?)
G. George Russell talks about that in his book "The Lydian Concept."

   In order to demonstrate that properly, you'd need to
provide the ratios of F#/Gb on the piano to C, as well as the
tempered ratio between the C and the G on the piano. Then one
can see, from the ratios, if that is true. Can you provide those
ratios? That would make your claim -- if it's true, but the
point, even if true, seems to be missing in what you write.

   Best Wishes
- Bob Fink

I'll post later a list of all the writers and musicologists who have found out and showed that the 4th and 5th are universal and found in their scale order in every musical system of any culture

[Brian Healey]

Can you be precise? What system did Beethoven use
according to you?
   According to me, Beethoven used the "tonal system,"
which of course, by definition, the "a-tonal" system clearly
doe NOT use. Also, there is more than one "atonal" system
claimed nowadays. Which one are you referring to?

Perhaps tuning system would have been more accurate, but I consider a musical system to be the way wavelengths are divided to create notes. For instance, there are many notes in the Indian musical system that simply do not exist in ours. Ours is a twelve-tone system because we divide an octave into 12 slices, and Indian music uses something like a 7-tone division. Atonal music doesn't use different notes. Any atonal music written for Western instruments uses the same musical system because they use the same 12-tone division of the octave. A middle C played in a Beethoven sonata is the same middle C heard in a Schoenberg piano piece. Tonal vs. atonal is a different matter.

What is the point of that statement? It's rather vague.
After all, every piece of music uses a "method of musical
organization." What is that method, specifically?

I don't think it could be a more simple statement, actually. As I said before, both tonal and atonal Western music is based on the same 12-tone system. What differentiates a tonal piece from an atonal piece is how the music is organized. The notes of a tonal piece are organized in such a way that the music is drawn toward a  tonal center. As you say, the construction of tonal music has a scientific basis. I'm not arguing with that, but the fact remains that it's still an organizational method. There are, in fact, numerous methods used to create tonal music, evidenced by the fact that a piece by Debussy uses different principles than a piece by Bach, but they are both tonal. In atonal music, the notes are organized so that a tonal center is avoided. As with with tonal music, there are many methods used to achieve atonality, the most well-known of which is the tone-row system.

In order to demonstrate that properly, you'd need to
provide the ratios of F#/Gb on the piano to C, as well as the
tempered ratio between the C and the G on the piano. Then one
can see, from the ratios, if that is true. Can you provide those
ratios? That would make your claim -- if it's true, but the
point, even if true, seems to be missing in what you write.

Honestly, I don't know all the ratios and stuff, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhat common knowledge. See, in previous tuning systems, not all keys were equal. The farther you got from the key of C, the more the intervals were out of whack. Then equal temperament came along, and sacrifices had to made so that all keys were equal. In a short answer, that's why a fifth today is not a true fifth.

[Brian Healey]

Just found this website on tuning systems.
https://cnx.rice.edu/content/m11639/latest/
This has all the ratios if you're interested, but it explains the tuning systems in words pretty well. Here are a couple quotes:

The problem with just intonation is that it matters which steps of the scale are major whole tones and which are minor whole tones, so an instrument tuned exactly to play with just intonation in the key of C major will have to retune to play in C sharp major or D major. For instruments, like voices, that can tune quickly, that is not a problem, but it is unworkable for piano and other slow-to-tune instruments.

Before equal temperament, "just intonation" was a commonly used tuning system that worked on correct ratios, but only in one key. You'd have to re-tune to play in another key. That's what I meant by all keys not being equal. It also mentions the "mean tone system", which was also a commonly used system based on thirds, at the expense of the fifth.

In equal temperament, only octaves are pure.

That's basically it right there. In order to equalize the keys, everything except the octave had to be adjusted.

Actually, it seems like well temperament is the way to go. The keys aren't exactly equal, but more of the natural ratios are retained. It's a shame that didn't catch on.

[bernhard]

 I have never seen the sheet music to Satie's Vexations (which lasts 24 hours) but I imagine it can't be too technically difficult, or else it would be unplayable.

- Ludwig Van Rachabji

Satie’s vexations is very easy (without the repeats). You can see the original manuscript  here (it becomes far more legible after you print it):

https://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/vexmanus.html

And you can read some interesting comments about it here:

https://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/article3.html


Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Ludwig Van Rachabji]

Satie’s vexations is very easy (without the repeats). You can see the original manuscript  here (it becomes far more legible after you print it):

https://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/vexmanus.html

And you can read some interesting comments about it here:

https://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/article3.html


Best wishes,
Bernhard.

How can that be performed? Can the audience survive it?

[bernhard]

Vexations has been performed quite a lot of times actually (usually by a bunch of different pianists).

Have a look here for some impressions:


https://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/10/satie_vexations_1.html

https://www.lichtensteiger.de/furniture_music.html
(John Cage’s instructions to performers)

https://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/26/1090693895347.html?from=storyrhs&oneclick=true

https://www.users.waitrose.com/~chobbs/Bryars.html
(an excellent article with a much clearer score)

If you google “Satie Vexations” you will get 4,800 replies. (Reading through them will be a bit like playing the darn thing)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[JimDunlop]

I'm sure it HAS been performed enough times... But this comment from the above-listed website made me chuckle.

The first Australian performance, organised by David Ahern, took place in Watters Gallery, Darlinghurst, Sydney, on 21-2 February 1970. The performance lasted 22 hours; the pianist was Peter Evans, who attempted the performance solo. After 16 hours, having reached repetition 595, he stopped abruptly, and left the room. He wrote: "I would not play the piece again. I felt each repetition slowly wearing my mind away. I had to stop. ...People who play it do so at their own great peril." Apparently his mind became full of "evil thoughts, [and] animals and "things" started peering out of the score at him."

[Brian Healey]

People who play it do so at their own great peril." Apparently his mind became full of "evil thoughts, [and] animals and "things" started peering out of the score at him."

Holy crap! That's awesome!

I don't get it though. It says the performance lasted 22 hours, then says that he stopped after 16 hours.

[luda888]

I NEED IT!!!

[DarkWind]

Actually, there is a debate about whether or not Satie wanted it to be repeated 600 or so times. On the manuscript, it does not say "Repeat 600+ times." What it says is, "To play this piece in repetition for 600+ times would require a great amount of preparation beforehand." I'm not quoting exactly, its something like this. But the truth is, he didn't actually want it to be played 600+ times, he just suggested it.

[Brian Healey]

Actually, there is a debate about whether or not Satie wanted it to be repeated 600 or so times. On the manuscript, it does not say "Repeat 600+ times." What it says is, "To play this piece in repetition for 600+ times would require a great amount of preparation beforehand." I'm not quoting exactly, its something like this. But the truth is, he didn't actually want it to be played 600+ times, he just suggested it.

Leave it to piano nerds with way too much time on their hands to actually try and do it!  Doesn't seem to be much point in it to me, although the hallucination thing described by Peter Evans sounds pretty cool.

[jpowell]

For anyone still interested in this subject, I can add that my next performance of Opus clavicembalisticum will take place on March 12, in the Opera House, Helsinki, Finland as part of the Musica Nova festival there. For information about my recent and forthcoming Sorabji releases, please visit altarusrecords.com
The next CD is the 1933 Fantasia ispanica, a 65-minute, 5 movement work somewhat in the tradition of Goyescas and Iberia.
Best wishes
Jonathan Powell

[Brian Healey]

Mr. Powell,
If you happen to read this, I'm curious as to what sort of preparation you go through in order to perform a piece of this magnitude. Over the course of about four and a half hours, I'm sure you are quite taxed both mentally and especially physically. I'm thinking in terms of both long-term preparation and short-term (like say, the week of or the day of the concert). I would appreciate your insight.

[presto agitato]

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

Amazing Post. I 100% agree with you. The most difficult pieces in piano literature dont belong to the XX century.

I donwloaded the piece, and yeah its very difficult but sounds horrible.

With the Sibelius software i could write the most difficult piano piece ever composed, but if the piece doesnt sound good what for?

[Brian Healey]

I donwloaded the piece, and yeah its very difficult but sounds horrible.
With the Sibelius software i could write the most difficult piano piece ever composed, but if the piece doesnt sound good what for?

Eye (or ear) of the beholder, I guess. I find the OC to be very emotionally charged. I mean, I do agree with you that trying to write an impossibly difficult piece is stupid, but I don't think that was the case with Sorabji.

[bernhard]

For anyone still interested in this subject, I can add that my next performance of Opus clavicembalisticum will take place on March 12, in the Opera House, Helsinki, Finland as part of the Musica Nova festival there. For information about my recent and forthcoming Sorabji releases, please visit altarusrecords.com
The next CD is the 1933 Fantasia ispanica, a 65-minute, 5 movement work somewhat in the tradition of Goyescas and Iberia.
Best wishes
Jonathan Powell

Mr. Powell,
If you happen to read this, I'm curious as to what sort of preparation you go through in order to perform a piece of this magnitude. Over the course of about four and a half hours, I'm sure you are quite taxed both mentally and especially physically. I'm thinking in terms of both long-term preparation and short-term (like say, the week of or the day of the concert). I would appreciate your insight.

I second Brian. This would be most interesting.

Also I would be most interested in your thoughts on what attracted you to this piece, and what are your thoughts on its merits (you seem to be the only person in this thread who could actually speak with any degree of authority about it).

Best wishes for your forthcoming recital,
Bernhard.

[jpowell]

About preparation of OC
I learnt the piece for my first performance of it over a period of about five months, although I composed and performed other concerts during this period as well. The piece, as some of you may know, is in 12 movements, so I learnt them in groups of three or four. There are four fugues, so I learnt one of those at a time, two variation groups, some cadenza passages, a chorale prelude, moto perpetuo movements, so there was enough variety to keep  me going over that period.

I studied the technical and musical aspects of the piece simultaneously: so aspects of phrasing would be addressed by appropiate fingering, tone production etc -- just as one would study any other piece.

The aspect of stamina did not -- and continues to not -- worry me, since if one is practising for eight hours a day prior to performance, then playing for just four on the day of the concert does actually come as something of a relief. I 'tested' myself by learning, during the previous year (2002), Sorabji's 2 and a quarter hour 4th Sonata (1929); since this proved to produce no extreme fatigue, I thought it would probably safe to move on to OC.

About the merits of the work
OC is a very tightly organised piece of music, based loosely on the form of Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica. All the themes employed are interrelated, and are treated in wide variety of forms. Although some of the very long movements -- such as the Fuga tertia -- are less scintillating on a moment-to-moment basis than the explosive Fantasia and Cadenza I, even the longer movements, when played suitably, do possess a sense of inner momentum and coherence that is characteristic of Sorabji's most succesful work. Like or hate it, Sorabji's style -- in terms of harmony, melody and texture -- is particularly difficult to mistake for anyone else's, and the strength of his individuality is surely a merit in itself. I have also been impressed by the emotional breadth of the work in the pianistic sense: Sorabji seems equally at home producing a passage of pianissimo crotchets, as he is creating one of fulminating virtuosity: both extremes are able to find their place within the broader expressive gamut of the work with surprising validity.

Of course, there are some aspects of Sorabji's writing that are not entirely to my taste, but then I suppose there are very few composers indeed all of whose works I could claim to admire absolutely. What I do find admirable in a broader sense about Sorabji is his understanding of the sonorities of the piano, treating it in turns as a vast resounding chamber, or quasi organo in chorale-prelude passage, or in filigree fireworks that can -- when rendered sympathetically -- leave the hair on the back of one's neck stand on end. Lastly, for the moment, I would add that the sincerity of Sorabji's aesthetical stance impresses me: he had no need to write any of his mature works -- he never pursued a 'career' as a composer -- so he wrote as he did simply because it seemed to him the natural thing to do, and when one learns of his own tastes -- in music, literature, decorative arts etc -- the naturalness of his own writing will actually become far more evident than they otherwise might from a cursory glance.

By the way, none of the people whom I know who knew Sorabji have ever mentioned any mental illness (even though they do speak of him quite candidly). The extract from the Sonata of 1917 that appears on the website is of Sorabji's first ever piano composition: it is an immature work and not really indicative of his style.

Best wishes
Jonathan

[jazzyprof]

Mr. Powell, thank you very much for the wonderful insight you've given us into this work and what it takes to appreciate it and to play it.  A performance question:  In live performance do you play it straight through or is there an intermission?

[jpowell]

I have one interval after the second part, about 2 and a bit hours in. The third part, heard after the interval, lasts a couple more hours.
In further answer to questions of preparation: as the performance approaches, I do run-throughs of the pars prima, pars altera, pars tertia to get into the spirit of playing for a longer time. Before that, I usually just deal with single movements, or just a few lines at a time. On the day, I just begin each movement when I'm warming up at the concert hall, and perhaps in the morning play some of the harder fast bits very quietly and slowly. So nothing out of the ordinary!

[xvimbi]

Thanks for your insights on the OC. If you read the posts in this thread, you will have realized that I brought up a statistical argument about the OC: based on it's rare performance, I used the phrase "the OC is musically fairly meaningless". After some back-and-forth, I now think a better phrase would have been "The OC is of less importance relative to other pieces" (whatever that means).

What do you think are the reasons that the OC is rarely performed and why it does not enjoy a brighter spot in the repertoire? Why is it that not more outstanding pianists play it? Why do you play it?

Is it too tedious for a piansist to learn it? Is it too tedious for an audience to listen to it? Is it too difficult to recognize its merits?

The same questions can be asked about thousands of pieces, so they are very general. I'd be interested to hear your take on it. Thanks so much in advance.

[Op. 1 No. 2]

Mr. Powell, if I may ask you this, is there any chance you'll preform Opus Clavicembalisticum in the Netherlands some time?

[Brian Healey]

Thank you very much for your comments, Mr. Powell. I think the OC and Sorabji in general are somewhat misunderstood, but I think we all have a greater understanding now thanks to the insight of someone who has been immersed in Sorabji's works, the OC in particular.

In response to xvimbi's post, I think the OC is perhaps the opposite of tedious. Tedious means simple and boring, whereas the OC is very dense and exciting (in my opinion). If anything, it's too complicated for a general audience to listen to and enjoy it. I think it takes an active listener to recognize the merits of a work like the OC, not the kind of passive listener that doesn't like to think about the music. Of course, anybody going to a recital of the OC probably knows what they're getting into. I think perhaps its length alone turns many people off, both performers and audience, but that's only speculation on my part. I'm sure Mr. Powell can offer a more first-person perspective.

[bernhard]

I have one interval after the second part, about 2 and a bit hours in. The third part, heard after the interval, lasts a couple more hours.
In further answer to questions of preparation: as the performance approaches, I do run-throughs of the pars prima, pars altera, pars tertia to get into the spirit of playing for a longer time. Before that, I usually just deal with single movements, or just a few lines at a time. On the day, I just begin each movement when I'm warming up at the concert hall, and perhaps in the morning play some of the harder fast bits very quietly and slowly. So nothing out of the ordinary!

Thank you indeed, for a most informative and enjoyable post.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[ryguillian]

In Sorabji's words (speaking of Op. Clav.) "The closing 4 pages are as cataclysmic and catastrophic as anything I've ever done -- the harmony bites like nitric acid the counterpoint grinds like the mills of God. . . ."

[Daevren]

Yes, its true. Atonality is not a natural system. Tonal music is much closer to nature and the laws of physics.

That doesn't mean tonality is better than atonality. Tonality can get boring if you don't challenge or weaken it.

Actually, triadic tonal music can get very harsh while atonal music can sound smooth or balanced. Really, atonal music sometimes sounds like music where holes are filled. Like you subcounsiously know which notes or coulors are needed to balance things out.

Of course it will make no sense to the average listener. They will not understand. Just like I will not understand chinese the first time I hear it. But there is structure in there. It may not be the most natural way to structure music. But from the mathematical point of view, maybe atonal organisation is better. You use all twelve notes while in tonal you use sets of seven.

And don't give me the elitist/ivory tower brabbling. I know almost nothing about atonal music. I have the books lying around here but I was too lazy to read them.

Also, non-musicians can like atonal music, people that hear atonal music for the first time can like atonal music. Atonal music not creating a response by babies? What does that mean? Shakepeare(or any writer) will also not create much of a reaction. So I guess all literature is as avant-garde and useless as all the atonal elitist crap?

Its a fact, listening to music with lots of harmonic coulor can sound music more natural than tonal stuff from the times of Mozart.

I don't get the non-western music argument. Atonality is an advanced harmonic concept. Other cultures have music based mainly on harmony and rhythm. Their usage of tones we don't use or the western ear hears as atonal are just embellishments to make the music more melodicly interesting. Ooh, also something western people can't stand or understand because of cultural subjectivity.

[Pianostudy]

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

Here's a recording. WARNING: LONG download!  

The Opus Clavicembalisticum is considered to be the most difficult piece ever written in the history of the world. It makes everything else look like Fur Elise. Sorabji was quite an interesting character. Try doing some research, because you will enjoy reading about him.

Here is a measure from his sonata. Typical Sorabji:






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

It does not sound like crap. It is atonal, but actually, I find it interesting. It takes a while to get used to. Remember, Sorabji did actually have mental illness. However, if you have 6 hours to spare (2 hours to download, 4 hours to listen) try listening to Sorabji.

If you wish to get the sheetmusic, go to pianofiles.com and send one of the people there an email asking for it. Be willing to trade something of yours though, because they might not trade it to you otherwise. That's how I got the score, and I love it!

Hope I helped,

Ludwig Van Rachabji

I'm interested in listening to this piece, but the download has since been removed from the server.  Does anyone have an alternative location to download this piece from?  Thanks.

[Op. 1 No. 2]

It's available on eMule.