Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji - Writings

Writings

As a writer, Sorabji is best known for his music criticism, the bulk of which are the books Around Music (1932) and Mi contra fa: The Immoralisings of a Machiavellian Musician (1947). Sorabji contributed to various well-known publications dealing with music in England, including The New Age, The New English Weekly, The Musical Times and Musical Opinion. Some of those submissions were revised by him and included in his two books of music criticism. His writings also devote attention to various non-musical issues; he was, among other things, a proponent of birth control, legalized abortion and a critic of British rule in India. As an "invert" at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in England, he wrote of the biological and social realities that homosexuals were facing during much of his lifetime.

Sorabji first expressed interest in becoming a music critic in 1914 and started contributing as one to The New Age in 1924, after having had various letters to the editor published by it. By 1930, Sorabji had become disillusioned with concert life and developed a growing interest in gramophone recordings, believing that he would eventually lose all reason for attending concerts. In 1945 Sorabji stopped doing regular reviewing and submitted his writings to correspondence columns in various journals only occasionally. While his earlier writings reflect a contempt for the music world in general—from its businessmen to its performers—his later reviews tend to be more detailed and less caustic.

Although in his youth Sorabji was attracted to what were then the newest developments in European art music, his music tastes—viewed historically—were essentially conservative. He had affinity particularly with late-Romantic and Impressionist composers such as Mahler, Debussy, Medtner and Delius, while his main bêtes noires were Stravinsky, the late Schoenberg and Hindemith. He rejected serialism and dodecaphony, because he saw both as being based on artificial precepts, and criticised even the later tonal works and transcriptions of Schoenberg. He loathed the rhythmic character of Stravinsky's music, as well as what he perceived as its brutality and lack of melodicism. In turn, he viewed Stravinsky's neoclassicism as a sign of lack of imagination. Shostakovich and Fauré are among the composers whom Sorabji initially condemned but later admired. His writings also give an idea as to his attitude towards performance practice, which was a strongly Romantic (i.e., free) one. He dismissed performers such as Albert Schweitzer, and praised Egon Petri and Wanda Landowska, among others, for their ability to "re-create" music. (Sorabji also encouraged a less-than-literal approach to his own compositions.)