KAIKHOSRU SHAPURJI SORABJI

PIANO SONATA III

Publication by J. Curwen & Sons

Corrected edition by Tellef Johnson
Sorabji completed his one-movement Sonata III for Piano (1922; 75 pp.) on 5
May 1922 in Palermo; he called it “a gehenna-like work of some hour and a
quarter’s duration” and “a piano symphony” that he soon hoped to play “to my
Phee” (Philip Heseltine) and possibly also to the occultist Aleister Crowley. 95
The score was published in 1924 by J. Curwen and Sons. Unlike its two
predecessors, it was not discussed in the musical press other than by Percival
Garratt (1877–1953), who simply noted that Eastern composers were now
writing in Western idioms and that Sorabji’s latest sonata “appears to begin
where Scriabin left off”. Since the work was not yet published when his Sackbut
96
article appeared in June 1924, Christopher à Becket Williams could not do more
than mention the existence of “long fugal and contrapuntal stretches” and a
duration of about an hour and a half. Therefore, the only contemporary writer
97
to offer comments was David Branson, whose comments have already been
quoted in connection with Sonata seconda for Piano.
In 1930 Sorabji described the work’s style to Erik Chisholm as a turning point
in his production.
This work does not lend itself to ordinary formal analysis at all—the work however grows out of
the initial rising sequence of quavers which I call a radix. It is not a theme in the ordinary sense at
all. It pervades in one form or another the entire work. Development proceeds rather I think on
the lines of what the biologists call mitosis i.e. cellfission and division. The work is asymmetrical
and polyrhythmic; it is an attempt to create a music that shall stand entirely on its own feet by
reason of its inner logic and sense-cohesion without any support from formalistic or formalistically
derived adjuncts. […] Extensive use is made however in all this apparently anarchic freedom, of
scholastic devices applied in rigid strictness, canons, fugato and the like which you will spot easily
enough for yourself on investigation that the work marks a turning point I feel… my later manner
in it with its strongly marked architectonic prepossessions is I think foreshadowed in it fairly
plainly.
98
We have already quoted in the section devoted to Sonata seconda for Piano a
comment of 1953 that Sorabji also applied to the present work, namely, that his
grasp of the techniques required to give coherence and cohesiveness to a
“ceaseless musical fabric” was not yet up to the par.
Like its predecessor(s), Sonata III for Piano consists of discrete sections with
frequent tempo changes. Sorabji sometimes calls for a “fragmented” style that
strongly suggests the music of the 1950s. The work is governed by a generating
motive; as in the previous sonata this is a meandering upward gesture that recurs
throughout in the most manifold shapes ( example 7.5). Another important
motive outlines the melodic movement 3–2–1, sometimes expanded, and used
as the top note in chordal passages (EDpp. 67, 71, 77); one may wish to see a
preliminary form earlier in the work (pp. 8, 27, 35). There are also strettos or
brief canonic passages (pp. 6, 25–27, 66–67, 76–77), sections built on swift
scales (pp. 69–70), and powerful chordal climaxes (pp. 8, 39, 60–61, 64, 71, 77–
80). The last such passage occurs as the culmination of a stretto; it is the first
appearance in Sorabji’s work of an extended section in which long chains of
powerful chords in both hands, covering the entire range of the keyboard, are
used to create a most massive effect, then totally unheard of in piano music. The
sonority of C# assumes much importance in this passage; in fact, the climax leads
to a series of four powerful chords in C# major, with fermatas. The melodic
movement of the upper line (p. 80) may be seen not only as almost identical with
the opening motive, but also as a retrograde form of the 3–2–1 outline. The
scalar gesture that concludes the work ends on A, the lowest note of the
keyboard; yet Sorabji would probably have extended it to C< if the Bösendorfer
Imperial keyboard had been as present in his mind as it would be in the mid-
1930s. Obviously, only an acute musical intelligence can make sense of such
tortuous atonal music and give the music the forward pull needed to make it lift
off.
The manuscript contains an additional page with two ossias for the final
“cataclysmic” scale run in both hands: one uses instead so-called blind
(alternating) octaves, the other “blind chords”, if one may coin the expression.
Sorabji considered that the single octave rush was preferable and that the
performer should disregard the two ossias.99
Excerpted from Opus sorabjianum: The Life and Works of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, © Marc-André
Roberge 2019 et seq., reproduced by permission of the author from a version especially revised and
formatted for the present edition; full original text linked to on page.
http://www.sorabji-archive.co.uk/books/opus-sorabjianum.php