Humour, Popular Culture, Trivia, Etc.

This page lists, in chronological order, various items that make fun of Sorabji and of his music (such as articles published as April Fools’ Day jokes) as well as various bits of trivia or unusual events and use of, or reference to, Sorabji’s personality or music in the arts and popular culture.

1969-70: Series of Letters to Sorabji

Between August 1969 and September 1970 Sorabji received a series of letters from different sources, but obviously penned by the same person, inviting him to make musical contributions to groups with Socialist sympathies.

Letter signed “L. J. Pinchnep, Secretary, Socialists in Art Movement”, inviting Sorabji to give a lecture in London “on the social context of your own music”.
Letter from “Emmanuel G. Dodin”, who introduced himself as “a well[-]known writer of lyrics from America” who had been asked by the North Kensington Labour Party to write an anthem for the Band of Socialist Youth on a text beginning with “Rise, Red Youth, and sweep the Tories / Hand and heart into the sea, / Find how glorious civil war is, / Follow Sorabji and me!” Asked whether Sorabji might want to write something “in the style of the late Sir Edward Elgar”.
Letter from “B. V. D. Humperstone” who, as a pianist and drummer, enjoyed playing Sorabji’s music. Invited him on the basis of his “well[-]known Socialist sympathies” to join a committee “of extremely rich left[-]wing businessmen” who had formed a Society whose main object was the return to power of the Labour administration.
Letter from “I. S. Bull”, purportedly from the Music Department of the BBC, containing a short poem entitled Silver Skates by the “distinguished American poet Herb Hofmann”, to be used to introduce “the world ice-skating finals to be televised next Spring from Alice Springs in Australia”. Asked Sorabji for a “cheerful tune, rather along the lines of a television commercial”.
Letter from “L. C. Bradley, Secretary, The Friends of Covent Garden”, inviting Sorabji to write an opera on one of two subjects (or a combination thereof): “a fictitious revolution in Britain, based on a recent book, in which Communist forces successfully take over the country” or “an erotic fantasy based on the novel Fanny Hill” that would cash in on the “current cult of nudity”.

1989: Marc-André Hamelin, Praeambulum to an Imaginary Piano Symphony

From 23 to 26 January 1989 the pianist Marc-André Hamelin wrote a Praeambulum to an Imaginary Piano Symphony: Homage to Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) (4 pp.) which carries at the end the following inscription (in French, here rendered in English): “To my very dear friend Marc-André Roberge, one of the boldest defenders [or champions] of the Sorabji ‘cause’, as a token of admiration, gratitude, and friendship.” The piece may have been played only once, for the dedicatee’s private ears, on 31 May 1989, in a practice studio at the Faculty of Music at Laval University (Québec City). It is fully playable, and not more difficult than any piece by Sorabji with the same “look and feel”. There is much humour in the interpretive directions: gridando, con brutalità; quasi confuso; comme un marteau pneumatique [like a pneumatic drill]; etc. This “exponentiation” of Sorabji's directions was part of the fun of writing the short homage piece. Looking at the piece a few years later, he found that he had overdone this aspect to some extent. A copy of the manuscript can be ordered from the Sorabji Archive. See a fuller description of the events surrounding the first performance on a separate page.

1989: Marc-André Hamelin, Christmas Card to Marc-André Roberge

In December 1989, the pianist Marc-André Hamelin sent to Marc-André Roberge a Christmas card in which a modified version of the opening of “Interludium primum” (p. 59) from Opus clavicembalisticum (1929-30; 253 pp.) is reproduced in hand. It is entitled “VI. Thema cum DCLXXVIII Var. — Lentissimo e grave”.

Sorabji’s stepwise theme in long note-values is replaced with the opening of “Prendre un verre de bière mon minou / Prendre un verre de bière ras’l’trou” [variant: right thru], which is a well-known humorous song from the early 1950s recorded in 1958 by the Famille Soucy (RCA Victor, LCP 3004), a group of singers active in Québec between 1949 and 1975, mostly in Montréal nightclubs. The song’s initial line can be roughly translated as “[I feel like] taking a glass of beer, my sweetie; [I feel like] taking a glass of beer right down my throat.”

The musical excerpt, which concludes with “Fine?” above a fermata, is followed by the “(je n’avais pas menti...)” [I was not lying], which refers to a previous letter in which Hamelin, much to Roberge’s amusement, had mentioned the “cantus firmus”; it also complements a statement written elsewhere on the card: “Il vous sera impossible de partager ce qui se trouve au verso de cette carte avec qui que ce soit. C’est mon cas aussi!” [The two of you will not be able to share with anyone what appears on the reverse of this card. This is also true for me!].

Obviously, only a native of Québec could know this popular song performed in parties, usually when things start heating up, and relish seeing it merged with an excerpt from Sorabji’s best-known work.

1992: Use of the Latin Language in Paul Rapoport’s Sorabji: A Critical Celebration

Many readers of Paul Rapoport’s Sorabji: A Critical Celebration will have wondered about the meaning of the various Latin inscriptions and about the identity of a name mentioned in the Acknowledgements. With the author’s help, who kindly contributed much of the content of what follows, it is now possible to unravel these mysteries.

Acknowledgements: The final name in the fifth paragraph of the Acknowledgements is “Opus Ampersand (Ancaster)”, whose index entry (p. 449) reads “Ampersand, Opus: xiii”. Opus Ampersand was the name of Rapoport’ s cat, whose biography follows:

Opus Ampersand, a.k.a. Opus &, b. May 10, 1976 in Edmonton; d. January 31, 1995 in Ancaster. KSS often sent greetings to her, as did Frank Holliday. Her biography:

EPUSSTLE

Ms. Ampersand learned purring and pouncing from her mother Ginger and brother Nutmeg before attending Kittygarten. Later she graduated from the University of the Catskills with a major in mewsic, having studied conduckting with Leopard Stokowski and self defense with Dame Myra Hiss.

Her least favourite music was Bless this Mouse, and A Mighty Fortress is our Dog by J. S. Bark, but she liked Magnificats, Tails of Hoffman, and the Scattish Symphony by Felix the Mendelssohn. Her prefurred composers were Paw Hindemith, Vincent Purrsicatti, Claw DePussy, and Lionpride Amadeus Meowzart. She explained that Byrd is an acquired taste.

At the age of 12, she won the famous Montreyowl competition by a whisker. In her spare time she learned languages (e.g. Siamese, Burmese, Russian Blue) and caught flies for the Detroit Tigers.

Dedications: The book has two dedications involving three persons (p. [v]). The first one, to Frank Holliday and Norman P. Gentieu, reads “sine quibus non talis liber”, which translates as “without whom this book would not have existed”. The second one, to Nicolas Slonimsky, reads “sine quo non tale sæculum”, which means “without whom this century would not have existed” (in Rapoport’s words, Slonimsky was “a creator of the 20th century”).

Final inscription:

Deæ gratias maximas ac summas laudes, nam MCMXCII vere redactor
huius Opusculi Sorabjilibrarioli dactylographiam confecit,
domi suæ Ancastris, apud Canadenses bar-
barissimos et crapulosissimos.
[vide pp. 187, 191]

F i n e m
coronat
Opus

To the Goddess, greatest and highest praises {a parody of Sorabji’s words, with a nod to feminism, which he had no use for}, for indeed in 1992 the editor of this little work, a book about Sorabji, finished typing [it], at his house in Ancaster, amongst the most barbaric and crapulous Canadians.

Opus crowns the [book’s] end

{The references to pp. 187 and 191 are, respectively, to the transcription of the dedication of Opus clavicembalisticum (1929-30; 253 pp.) and to the triangular shape of Sorabji’s transcription in the score of Symphony [no. 2], “Jāmī”, for Large Orchestra, Wordless Chorus, and Baritone Solo (1942-51; 826 pp.) of an excerpt from the epilogue of the traditional Arabic tale of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon in the translation by Joseph-Charles Mardrus.

“Finem coronat Opus” is an inversion of the well-known expression “Finis coronat Opus”, which means “The end crowns the work”. Rapoport writes: “In the photo below, she is doing just that; the pages are upside down. Moreover, I was determined to give her the last word in the book; in one of my earlier books, she gets the first word, because its title is Opus est [Opus est — Six Composers from Northern Europe: Matthijs Vermeulen, Vagn Holmboe, Havergal Brian, Allan Pettersson, Fartein Valen, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (London: Kahn & Averill, 1978; New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1979)].”}

Paul Rapoport and Opus Ampersand (seated on the manuscript of Sorabji: A Critical Celebration), in 1992

Paul Rapoport in his Ancaster home on 8 June 1992, with Opus Ampersand, seated on the upside-down camera-ready copy of Sorabji: A Critical Celebration (photograph given to the author by Paul Rapoport in 1992)

2004: Opus amorassissimo

Jed Distler (American composer), review of a recording (on eight CDs) of a recently discovered piano work of 6,969 pages entitled Opus amorassissimo [recte amorassissimum] en [recte in] tre atti, LXIX variationibus, cadenza, romanza e fuga (Ommaggio [sic] a Ronaldus Jeremici Stevensonicus), performed by Hugh G. Rackshawn on Altarus 412004(CD); published in Classics Today, 1 April 2004 (now inactive link: <http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=7409>), full text available on the Yahoo! Sorabji discussion group as message 647).

2006: Fake Sorabji Comic Book Cover

On 7 October 2006 a “Johnny Heartbeat” uploaded a picture showing the cover of a fake Sorabji comic book. It shows a drawing of Sorabji with his beringed left hand on his chin as well as the title “The Adventures of Sorabji / into the Clavicembalisticum!”. One reads in the upper left corner the title ”Archmagicomics”, which refers to Sonata V (Opus archimagicum) (1934-35; 336 pp.).

2005-2008: Frank Rothkamm’s Opus Spongebobicum

Between 2005 and 2008 the German-born (and resident of Los Angeles) composer or [sic] conceptual artist Frank Holger Rothkamm wrote a 36:33-minute piece for MIDI-fied piano entitled Opus Spongebobicum, the title of which is an acknowledged reference to Opus clavicembalisticum (1929-30; 253 pp.). The work has its own page on the artist’s site, and the cover of the Flux Records FLX9 recording features a big yellow sponge.

The music consists of 40 variations on the opening notes of the theme of the Nickelodeon animated television series “SpongeBob SquarePants” (1999-), with the last variation consisting of a recording of the needle playing the last grooves of a vinyl record. The 102-page score (2,155 bars, 15,919 notes) appears to be a transfer from the MIDI file to score notation. Quantization was not used, witness the numerous dotted short notes, the many ledger lines resulting from not using 8^va lines, and the constant visual collisions between left- and right-hand staves.

The following listing (grouped into eight sections for the sake of visual convenience) gives the correspondence between variation number and initial bar number:

1 = 1, 2 = 22, 3 = 122, 4 = 182, 5 = 243
6 = 302, 7 = 372, 8 = 386, 9 = 426, 10 = 500
11 = 559, 12 = 602, 13 = 621, 14 = 681, 15 = 734
16 = 760, 17 = 798, 18 = 817, 19 = 919, 20 = 957
21 = 1027, 22 = 1092, 23 = 1148, 24 = 1207, 25 = 1235
26 = 1294, 27 = 1352, 28 = 1414, 29 = 1450, 30 = 1524
31 = 1571, 32 = 1691, 33 = 1755, 34 = 1811, 35 = 1817
36 = 1886, 37 = 1944, 38 = 2014, 39 = 2110, 40 = blank

2009: Opus clavicembalisticum Featured in Advertising

In February 2009 the Vicks company launched for some three weeks in the United Kingdom an advertising campaign on commercial radio for their cough drops featuring, as background music, Jonathan Powell playing from Sorabji’s Opus clavicembalisticum. This was made known on 2 February 2009 on the Sorabji Forum by Alistair Hinton (And now for something completely different...) in the form of a riddle that sent group members searching for the answer, using as starting point Hinton’s hint that Sorabji often signed himself off in his letters as “Corfe Drop” (a pun on Corfe Castle, his place of residence in later life).

2009: Sorabji Featured in Anthony Gormley’s One & Other

On 13 July 2009 at 11:00 p.m., Jim Penn, a frequent poster on the Sorabji Forum, participated in the public artwork by the British sculptor Anthony Gormley entitled One & Other, in which each of 2,400 selected volunteers, over a period of 100 days (6 July to 14 October 2009), twenty-four hours a day, spent one hour each on the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. The aim was to present an image of themselves and a representation of the whole of humanity. Penn announced his participation on the Sorabji Forum on 10 July 2009 and briefly reported immediately after the hour allotted to him; while on the plinth he listened to Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in Helmut Walcha’s recording and to the final movement of Sorabji’s Symphony [no. 1] for Organ (1924; 81 pp.) in Kevin Bowyer’s recording. See also Penn’s page on the project’s site for an “About me” paragraph.

2012: Sorabji Featured as Background Music in a Documentary on Yoga

On 5 January 2012 a feature-length documentary entitled Breath of the Gods: A Journey to the Origins of Modern Yoga, by the German director Jan Schmidt-Garre, who has already produced several documentaries on music and musicians, has its theatrical release in Germany. A clip available on YouTube has Pastiche on the Hindu Merchant’s Song from “Sadko” by Rimsky-Korsakov (1922; 4 pp.) played by Marc-André Hamelin as background music. Sorabji is mentioned by the director on page Filming (in) the Orient. Schmidt-Garre directed the DVD Marc-André Hamelin: No Limits, released as part of the series Legato: The World of the Piano (EuroArts 2055788; 2007).

Late 2000s: Sorabji on Social Networking Websites

Pages for Sorabji can be found on MySpace (started on 14 May 2008, with a presentation text in Italian) and Facebook. Performances and various items can be found on YouTube. (No attempt will be made on the Sorabji Resource Site to keep track of what appears on social networking websites.)