MusicatlasMusic
Composer, pianist, critic, and writer born in England of a Parsi father and an English mother (birth originally registered as Leon Dudley Sorabji). Largely self-taught as a composer, he derived his style from his study of the works of composers for whom he had a great admiration, among others Liszt, Busoni, Reger, Scriabin, and Szymanowski. He wrote more than a hundred works totalling some 11,000 manuscript pages, many for piano or giving the piano an important part. Several of his works, most of which are unpublished, are written on systems of four and five staves and sometimes as many as seven. His most often cited work, Opus clavicembalisticum (1929–30), consists of more than 250 pages and lasts four and a half hours. In the 1930s, following an inadequate performance of the first part of this work, he decided not to allow further performances of his works to prevent them from being disfigured. In 1976, however, he was convinced by friends to allow carefully chosen pianists to give public hearings of some of his works. Recent publications and recordings are now giving proofs that Sorabji, a unique personality in the history of twentieth-century music, is a major creative force in his own right.
Life
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- United Kingdom, Corfe Castle, God's Acre — 15 Oct 1988
