Brief? - Not on your nelly!

[guest54]

Sensitive youths who do not participate in the wage-slave system may find the following link useful: http://www.demonoid.ph/files/details/2920004/5502752/

It leads to a performance of the Dorset man Sorabji's Symphonia Brevis, his fifth "symphony" for solo piano-forte. Why he gave it the name "brevis" when it is not brief at all is not explained. But the only explanation possible is that the name is an attempt to introduce an element of humour - in that sense rather in the same vein as Schönberg's remark about assuring the future of German music.

Particularly noteworthy here is the fact that this long "symphony without orchestra" - was it perhaps inspired by Schumann's "concerto without orchestra"? - is dedicated to none other than the composer's faithful friend amanuensis and collaborator Mr. Hinton, a popular and valued contributor to this very forum.

The movements are as far as I can make out divided as follows (with timings):

I Movimento libero. Intreccio [35:52]
IIa Adagio [13:05]
IIb Preludio quasi toccata [6:36]
IIc Aria fiorita [11:01]
IId Interludio [5:33]
IIe Notturno [22:41]
IIf Nexus - Quasi fuga - Coda-Epilogo - Punta d’organo [29:38]

But I do not know how accurate this is as I have neither listened to the work nor seen the score.

Its performer is said to be a northern american named "Donna" something, which I always find a most unfortunate appellation, since it means does it not simply "woman" in one of those Latin languages. Were I she I would change it. But she must be no slouch (excuse the americanism) when it comes to tinkling the jolly old ivories. Have there over the years been any Britons ready to tackle it we wonder? Sometimes americans boldly venture in where Britons fear to set foot.

[ahinton]

Sensitive youths who do not participate in the wage-slave system may find the following link useful: http://www.demonoid.ph/files/details/2920004/5502752/

It leads to a performance of the Dorset man Sorabji's Symphonia Brevis, his fifth "symphony" for solo piano-forte.

Why "Dorset man" and on what grounds? HIs father was a Parsi born in Mumbai, his mother was English and was not born in Dorset either; Sorabji resided in Dorset for the final 40-odd years of his life, but how does this make him a "Dorset man"? (and PLEASE do not hyphenate "piano-forte")...

Why he gave it the name "brevis" when it is not brief at all is not explained. But the only explanation possible is that the name is an attempt to introduce an element of humour - in that sense rather in the same vein as Schönberg's remark about assuring the future of German music.

Whilst I am relieved to find at least one person who has taken that famous remark by Schönberg as the joke that he intended by it (which even Ronald Stevenson failed to do when remarking of it, albeit most amusingly, that it was a strange remark for an Austrian Jew to make), the reason that the work is so entitled has nothing whatsoever to do with anyone's humour, it being, quite simply, because it is the shortest of the composer's symphonies for piano solo.

Particularly noteworthy here is the fact that this long "symphony without orchestra" - was it perhaps inspired by Schumann's "concerto without orchestra"? - is dedicated to none other than the composer's faithful friend amanuensis and collaborator Mr. Hinton, a popular and valued contributor to this very forum.

It is very kind of you to say so, but Sorabji's idea of the symphony for solo piano, arising as it did out of the view that the piano is capable of expressing everything worth expressing, far more likely emerged from the precedent of the Symphony for piano solo that constitues one third of Alkan's 12 Studies in minor keys, Op. 39.

The movements are as far as I can make out divided as follows (with timings):

I Movimento libero. Intreccio [35:52]
IIa Adagio [13:05]
IIb Preludio quasi toccata [6:36]
IIc Aria fiorita [11:01]
IId Interludio [5:33]
IIe Notturno [22:41]
IIf Nexus - Quasi fuga - Coda-Epilogo - Punta d’organo [29:38]

But I do not know how accurate this is as I have neither listened to the work nor seen the score.

Then you know where to obtain either or both!

Its performer is said to be a northern american named "Donna" something, which I always find a most unfortunate appellation, since it means does it not simply "woman" in one of those Latin languages.

Not "something" but "Amato", though your comments would not likely endear you to her in the way that her surname might otherwise be thought to suggest; what you claim to "find" about her forename is up to you and no one else.

Were I she I would change it.

Mercifully, you aren't.

But she must be no slouch (excuse the americanism) when it comes to tinkling the jolly old ivories. Have there over the years been any Britons ready to tackle it we wonder? Sometimes americans boldly venture in where Britons fear to set foot.

"No slouch" indeed - and, whilst no one else has yet performed all or part of that particular work, the English pianist Jonathan Powell - a "non-slouch"(!) par excellence, has set his fingers to work on more than 24 hours' worth of Sorabji's music in total to date, from the briefest of songs (with sopranos Sarah Leonard and Loré Lixenberg) to the world première (in 2010 in Glasgow) of Sequentia Cyclica super Dies Iræ, which occupied no less than 430 minutes plus intervals.

This recording has now been out for more than a year, incidentally.

Out of (not very much) interest, incidentally, why the lower case "a" for "americans" and the upper case "B" for "Britons"? Patronising? Surely not!

I personally have no "nelly", by the way; nor - I have it on the most excellent authority - did Sorabji have one. On whose "nelly" this contention might rest therefore remains uncertain. Perhaps this "nelly" is some kind of australian concept or notion (and I'm not sure that my omission to capitalise the first "a" of "australian" is "patronising" or otherwise, although it is not intended to be such)...

[Neil McGowan]

the symphony for solo piano, arising as it did out of the view that the piano is capable of expressing everthing worth expressing

Where does that leave the composer's organ works, one wonders?

[ahinton]

the symphony for solo piano, arising as it did out of the view that the piano is capable of expressing everything worth expressing

Where does that leave the composer's organ works, one wonders?

"One" need not wonder at this at all, since "it" "leaves" them precisely where they are at present, which is with the first of his three symphonies for the instrument (these are the only works by him for organ solo, in case anyone wondered about this) having been performed on quite a few occasions and recorded back in 1988, the year of the composer's death, the second having been edited in a handwritten edition by Kevin Bowyer and subsequently having received a number of partial performances leading to the world première of the complete work in Glasgow in 2010 and a second complete performance a few days latger in Amsterdam as part of that year's Holland Festival and the third and last scheduled for its world première, again in Glasgow, in June next year, all complete and partial performances and recordings having been given to date by the one organist, Kevin Bowyer - and with new typeset editions of all three in the process of preparation, again, at the hands of Kevin Bowyer; I trust that this answers your question and would have less than no idea what I could possibly think to write about this in the hopefully unlikely event that it didn't...

[Neil McGowan]

I trust that this answers your question

Not really. In fact not at all.

We can only presume that the works for organ express things which less worth expressing.  ;)  Not that I've ever found the organ capable of expressing much.

[ahinton]

I trust that this answers your question

Not really. In fact not at all.

Then "too bad, so sad", say I; I cannot imagine what more information you might want or need about Sorabji's three organ sympohonies, lest it be the fact that his works for organ solo are all on a vast scale, unlike his piano music which varies from aphoristic fragments lasting a few seconds to symphonies and other works occupying several hours.

We can only presume that the works for organ express things which less worth expressing.

"We" (whoever that may be) may presume whatever "we" might care to presume, while others may consider there to be few things less worth presuming.

Not that I've ever found the organ capable of expressing much.

I can't do much about your finding capabilities, I'm afraid.

[guest54]

. . . PLEASE do not hyphenate "piano-forte" . . .

Well . . . um . . . what was good enough for . . . er . . .

[ahinton]

. . . PLEASE do not hyphenate "piano-forte" . . .

Well . . . um . . . what was good enough for . . . er . . .

But of what vintage might this text be (notwithstanding the fact of its having been "Digitised by Google")?

And anyway, what's the matter with the word "piano"? There's no law against its proper use, you know...

All that said, it would surely be better for everyone here if the work itself -to which Mr G has drawn attention here by instigating this topic - could assume centre stage for discussion in place of unenlightening observations on the pianist's name, Dorset men, hyphenated pianos, the expressive capabilities or otherwise of the organ, the allleged misfortune associated with calling someone a woman and such like extraneosities; for example, has anyone here yet heard the symphony and/or seen/read its score?

[Neil McGowan]

I cannot imagine what more information you might want or need about Sorabji's three organ sympohonies, lest it be the fact that his works for organ solo are all on a vast scale

The same can be said of the Arndale Centre in Manchester.

[ahinton]

I cannot imagine what more information you might want or need about Sorabji's three organ sympohonies, lest it be the fact that his works for organ solo are all on a vast scale

The same can be said of the Arndale Centre in Manchester.

Indeed - if anyone wants to mention it - but, since I was trying to help you in finding out what more you needed to know (if anything), your point is...?...

[guest54]

what's the matter with the word "piano"? There's no law against its proper use, you know...

Well quite simply the problem is that it loses half the meaning! So there is in that sense a law - an æsthetic one. The whole great thing about the piano-forte is that it is able to produce both soft and loud sounds. That is what its name so proudly and precisely conveys. The abbreviation "piano" meaning "soft" alone is no more than a kind of tag. It is just like saying "the voice" ("the phone") when one really intends "tele-phone," "the light" ("the photo") when one really intends "photo-graph," and "the afar" ("the telly") when one wishes to signify "tele-vision."

All crippled, all so terribly vulgar, all utterly corrupted in respect to meaning.

All that said, it would surely be better for everyone here if the work itself - to which Mr G has drawn attention here by instigating this topic - could assume centre stage for discussion . . . for example, has anyone here yet heard the symphony and/or seen/read its score?

I have somehow or other picked up over the years the scores of a number of Sorabji's productions, but I regret to say the Fifth Symphony is not among them. Would the Member perhaps give us an introduction? I am always particularly interested in a composer's intentions; i.e. what did he set out to achieve, why was the work written; that sort of thing. Also illuminating would be something about the use of any motifs, and something about the form: first subject, second subject, third subject, recapitulations, codas, and so on. Many commentators have simply flailed about in the ocean. His lengthy fugues have attracted a good deal of not particularly informative literature; they seem often to come as a kind of culmination do they not. But it can be difficult to attach a fugue to a work commenced in a non-fugal style. Many youthful composers newly graduated from their conservatorium fall down with their fugues - suddenly in their finales and for no particular reason a fugue starts up, and as suddenly stops, or sometimes just peters out; few of van Beethoven's even are completely convincing. Did Sorabji have anything to say about his use of the fugue, and did his attitude to the fugal form change and develop over the course of his long life?

[Neil McGowan]

what's the matter with the word "piano"? There's no law against its proper use, you know...

Well quite simply the problem is that it loses half the meaning!

Indeed so. Coming up towards 1.5 decades living where I do, I've long become used to calling the instrument the fortepiano - as it's been known here ever since they were first imported. [The term fortepiano refers to the modern instrument - upon which, for example, entrants in the Tchaikovsky Competition perform]   It's never called a forte, far less a piano. :)  Should mention be needed of the instrument's earlier forebear, it's called a Hammerklavier in Russian.

[ahinton]

what's the matter with the word "piano"? There's no law against its proper use, you know...

Well quite simply the problem is that it loses half the meaning! So there is in that sense a law - an æsthetic one. The whole great thing about the piano-forte is that it is able to produce both soft and loud sounds. That is what its name so proudly and precisely conveys. The abbreviation "piano" meaning "soft" alone is no more than a kind of tag. It is just like saying "the voice" ("the phone") when one really intends "tele-phone," "the light" ("the photo") when one really intends "photo-graph," and "the afar" ("the telly") when one wishes to signify "tele-vision."

All crippled, all so terribly vulgar, all utterly corrupted in respect to meaning.

The piano "(pianoforte" if you will, though you'd obviously prefer "piano-forte", despite there being no obviously immutable law in support of that hyphen, which was, after all, what gave rise to this digression) is, quite obviously capable of producing more than merely soft and loud sounds, its dynamic range being vast (especially in the hands of pianists such as John Ogdon) and vastly varied; however, the nub of the problem that you then go on to illustrate with three further examples which you choose to hyphen-ate (sorry!) is one of an assumption that language and its use should never change and/or, if it does, such change can be regarded only as "crippled", "vulgar" and "utterly corrupted", when such a stance makes no sense not only in the light of the fact that almost everything in life changes all the time without giving rise to crippling, vulgarity or utter corruption (our climate, for example, is constantly changing, yet not even the darkest of those of dark green persuasion who seek to blame humankind for all aspects of such change would go so far as to describe it as crippling, vulgar or corrupt) but also in terms of the fact that, until Signor Cristofori released his invention (or thereabouts), we'd not likely have been using any such terminology to denote a stringed keyboard instrument in any case. Do you regard "cello" as somehow crippled, vulgar and corrupt and prefer to use "violon-cello"? You hyphenate "inter-net"; should all words beginning "inter" therefore include hyphens thereafter, in Grewish English? I also note Mr McG's response to this matter with interest, although the fact that confusion would inevitably arise from the use of the term "fortepiano" (hyphenated or otherwise) to denote a modern concert grand piano is surely down to a different usage convention in a different country (of which, incidentally, I was unaware until Mr McG drew it to our attention, for which I am indebted to him).

Anyway, as I wrote, this is something of a digression from the principal topic, to which I will return as soon as I am able; I can't do it now, as I have other pressing commitments but I anticipate being able to return to it within a day or so.

[guest54]

Well . . . here is something to entertain the members in the mean-time:

[ahinton]

I have somehow or other picked up over the years the scores of a number of Sorabji's productions, but I regret to say the Fifth Symphony is not among them. Would the Member perhaps give us an introduction? I am always particularly interested in a composer's intentions; i.e. what did he set out to achieve, why was the work written; that sort of thing. Also illuminating would be something about the use of any motifs, and something about the form: first subject, second subject, third subject, recapitulations, codas, and so on. Many commentators have simply flailed about in the ocean. His lengthy fugues have attracted a good deal of not particularly informative literature; they seem often to come as a kind of culmination do they not. But it can be difficult to attach a fugue to a work commenced in a non-fugal style. Many youthful composers newly graduated from their conservatorium fall down with their fugues - suddenly in their finales and for no particular reason a fugue starts up, and as suddenly stops, or sometimes just peters out; few of van Beethoven's even are completely convincing. Did Sorabji have anything to say about his use of the fugue, and did his attitude to the fugal form change and develop over the course of his long life?

You will not likely have picked up a score of this symphony unless you had approached us for it. It exists in both ms. form and in a typeset edition by Simon Abrahams. Mr Abrahams also drew on an earlier handwritten edition of two of its movements made by Chris Rice when preparing his work. We supply the ms. and Mr Abrahams's excellent edition. I imagine that most if not all of the Sorabji scores that you have picked up in the past will be of the now long since out-of-print publications that emerged between 1919 and 1931.

I will confine my remarks on the symphony to the following mainly historical background. It is a work of considerable significance in the composer's output in that he had resolved in around 1968 to cease composing, his most recent work at that time being a three-movement chamber work of some 30 minutes' duration entitled Concertino non Grosso and scored for the rather unusual ensemble of 4 violins, viola, cello and piano. He seems to have been able to maintain that resolve for almost four years, but then he made a tiny setting for baritone and organ of a Benedizione di San Francesco d'Assisi in 1972, whereupon he promptly propelled himself into another symphony for piano solo, thereby launching a new "last period" that was to continue largely unabated for almost a decade and included this and his final piano symphony, a large-scale Symphonic Nocturne (also for piano), the last of his eleven works for piano and orchestra (entitled Opusculum Clavisymphonicum), a substantial set of piano variations on a theme from Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or and some shorter works, mainly for piano, all of which demonstrate, among other more important things, that, even into his 80s, Sorabji continued to be "no slouch". He blamed me for getting his compositional juices flowing again with this symphony but, much as it would be pleasant - indeed, an honour - to be able to take the credit for this, the truth is that he could simply hold his ideas back no longer.

Sorabji actually composed not six but seven symphonies for piano solo; the first and largest of these dates from the early 1930s and appears originally to have been intended as a work for piano solo with solo voices, chorus and orchestra but, as there is no evidence either of the texts that he might have chosen to set in it or any orchestral material, it seems that he abandoned this idea almost at the outset and decided that it would instead be a self-sufficient work for piano alone. His next piano symnphony, dating from the late 1930s and subtitled Tantrik is unnumbered in its score and the remaining five are numbered from 2 - 6; our catalogue preserves this numbering (and adds "no. 1" to the Tantrik Symphony) and we effectively regard the earlier one as "no. 0". To date, of Sorabji's seven piano symphonies, only those numbered 4 and 5 have been performed, only no. 4 has been broadcast and only no. 5 has also been commercially recorded.

As I have mentioned, the fifth is the shortest of Sorabji's piano symphonies but, that said, it is by no means "short" per se, running as it does to around a whisker above two hours, as you alrfeady realise. Although the composer does not specify one, an interval could conceivably be taken after the first movement in performance, although there is no real necessity for one as there is in the work's immediate symphonic predecessor, whose opening movement occupies around an hour and a half.

I should at this point note that Sorabji was, for most of his creative life, quite remarkably reticent in commenting on his works; he included brief introductory notes in the mss. of his Piano Sonata No. 4 (1928-29) and Opus Clavicembalisticum (1929-30), but these were written largely for the premières that he gave of these works in Glasgow in two separate concerts in 1930. Other than these and a handful of other rather briefer examples in a very few his scores and a few observations in private correspondence, his customary preference was to let the music speak for itself and leave performers and listeners to make up their own minds about it. This stance may have been influenced in part by Delius's complaint in the early 1920s that music worthy of the name should be able to stand up on its own two feet without being "helped" to do so by means of copious verbiage about it, but I think that is was also due to the sheer speed at which the composer usually got his thoughts down onto paper as though if he let his mind wander for a moment away from the notes themselves he might risk losing a little concentration (and it may be interesting to note that he almost never made any sketches at all, preferring to write everything down into final draft).

A typical mature Sorabji first-movement symphonic "form" (first exemplified in his Piano Sonata No. 4 and adopted almost exclusively thereafter in his symphonies for piano solo and the remaining two for organ solo) tends to involve a substantial exposition embracing a large number of themes and motifs separated by little or no episodic material (almost as though in the manner of a dramatis personæ, so to speak) followed by a lengthy section akin to a kind of "development", towards the close of which the purpose and character of all of those themes and motifs (often too many in number to take in fully at first presentation) coalesces into greater sense; this seems to me to be a kind of offshoot of Sibelian symphonic procedures and Sorabji made no secret of his admiration and respect for the Finnish composer (even though, unsurprisingly, none of his music sounds remotely Sibelian in any other sense).

Fugue certainly remained an abiding persuasion for Sorabji, from the relatively brief example in his 1922 Prelude Interlude and Fugue for piano right through to the one that closes the Rimsky-Korsakov variations 57 yerars later. You write that his fugues "seem often to come as a kind of culmination"; often, indeed, though not always, two of the most remarkable examples where they do not do so being the massive one in his Symphonic Variations for piano and that in the symphony under consideration here, in each of which an extended and largely quiet coda follows the fugue's conclusion.

I am puzzled by your remark that "it can be difficult to attach a fugue to a work commenced in a non-fugal style"; such perceived difficulty evidently didn't bother Brahms (think of the Händel variations) or Reger or indeed other composers who from time to time concluded sets of variations with one.

You then observe that "many youthful composers newly graduated from their conservatorium fall down with their fugues - suddenly in their finales and for no particular reason a fugue starts up, and as suddenly stops, or sometimes just peters out". You offer up no examples but, if one sets aside the fledgling new-conservatory-graduate composers for a moment and considers the remainder of your argument, one might perhaps think of the fugues in the finales of Walton's First Symphony and Szymanowski's Second Symphony were it not for the fact that, to me at least, neither merely "peters out" or otherwise fails to justify its existence and position in the work. I've been "guilty" of this kind of thing myself (if indeed "guilt" be deemed appropriate here); indeed, I've never written (other than as exercises) any fugue in a work that stands alone or indeed is other than part of a movement. More often than not, in examples such as the above, we're dealing here with fugato passages or otherwise not fully worked-out fugues, whereas Sorabji always completes his fugues (apart, one might say, from the sextuple one which doesn't quite manage to crown the vast finale of his Third Organ Symphony and which, rather than concluding satisfactorily, simply collapses in on itself under its own ever-increasingly massive weight - a most startling effect that I look forward to encountering for the first time when the symphony is premièred in Glasgow by Kevin Bowyer in a little over a year from now).

"Few of...Beethoven's even are completely convincing"? To you, perhaps, but we'll have to beg to differ on that! While dong so, incidentally - and in response to your "fugue as culmination" argument - it is worthy of note that, whilst Beethoven's late quartet in B flat closes with a truly ambitious and big-boned fugue, the C# minor one opens with one that could hardly be more different in character from it.

You ask if Sorabji had "anything to say about his use of the fugue" and "did his attitude to the fugal form change and develop over the course of his long life?". As I have already stated, he rarely had anything to say about any of his work and there's scant evidence of substantial change as such in his attitude to fugue over all those years, although it is remarkable that, as several observers have notes, no two of his fugues (or indeed their subjects) sound remotely like one another; that said, not only the fugues in his final decade but also much of the rest of his piano writing throughout that time, technically challenging though it remains, does evidence something of a textural thinning-down and a paring back of some of the complexity the informs the big ambitious works from the 1930s in particular.

For more information, your are, of course, welcome to consult the liner notes in the 2-CD set that you illustrate in your opening post in this thread.