Racial and anti-semitic ideologies are often symptomatic of a wider world-view rather than necessarily being the primary cause. It is that world-view that can be sedimented in music; though specific racial ideologies can also be made explicit through the use of iconic musical materials; I'm not aware of Sorabji doing the latter, though. But I get the impression from the above that you do not really believe that abstract instrumental music does have a social/political dimension?
But by what specific means do you believe it to be so "sedimented"? And do you consider that this "sedimentation" occurs automatically and inevitably, or only if the composer deliberately chooses for it to manifest itself?
The mysticism is indeed contrived in quite a bit of late Skryabin, emanating as it does from a handful of harmonic exoticisms with which he has little idea what to do other than repeat passages wholescale a tritone apart from their original key, or the like, or the sometimes rather predictable ways of pumping up the textural volume. Not all late Skryabin is like this, some of the figurations show some genuine imagination and spontaneity; in Sorabji's case there is almost none of that, but he did not have the technique of Skyrabin.
No, he had largely different techniques, as one might expect - but then how interesting is the "mysticism" in late Skryabin compared to the best of his musical arguments?
In the case of Sorabji, I see little evidence that his 'technique' enabled him to do much more than just spin out a perfumed surface, apply pedestrian accumulations of material, or create over-extended chains of banality with no distinctiveness whatsoever (such as in his fugues).
But that's your personal view, which may be shared by some but certainly not by others.
I think you'll find the definition of kitsch I used comes from Dahlhaus. I did refer to it, indeed. 'Tricks' is just a reference to compositional means.
I know that; I merely commented on its relevance here, since Sorabji was neither seeking nor achieved this in his work, nor was he any more interested in circus or other "tricks" when composing than he was in "mysticism" - "misty schism", as he sometimes called it (though I'm fairly sure this was not a term of his own original invention; he was quite wary of the Blavastskyesque, Crowleyan stuff on the basis that it was "contrived" - so "contrived mysticism" was not merely something Sorabji was uninterested in espousing but a phenomenon which he was wont to distrust and felt inclined to avoid.
Just take Baudelaire (actually in some ways my personal favourite of the three, but I have no illusions about him and the confused and conflicting ideologies that informed his work at all levels)...
I'm writing this as one who loves Baudelaire's poetry, but realises there's also a lot of aspects of his work that can't be overlooked (as with Eliot, as I said). Let's stick with Baudelaire for now. Baudelaire (like Proust in some ways) is open to some quite divergent interpretations; from that of Eliot himself who seemed to find some kindred spirit in hating the masses, bemoaning the decline of aristocratic civilisation, and so on, to that of the Marxist Walter Benjamin, for whom Baudelaire was an acute observer of the contradictions of nineteenth-century capitalism as made visible on the streets of Paris. Now, Benjamin has practically nothing to say about Baudelaire's misogyny or other reactionary tendencies; he is only looking at certain aspects of Baudelaire's work, and so should not be taken as a comprehensive account of the poet (neither should Eliot). Benjamin did not really talk about gender issues much at all (I haven't read all of his work, and may have missed something, but I have read quite a bit); it could possibly be argued that there are misogynistic elements in his early essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities, and that he consequently developed wilful blind-spots to this issue, but that's really a separate debate.
I don't know Sorabji's Baudelaire settings, but can see from the catalogue that he set 'Correspondances', 'L'irrémédiable' and 'Les chats'. The ideologies of nature in the first, the possible allusions to woman as a devillish force in the second, as well as possible gendered interpretations of the third, are all matters for consideration, depending upon how one reads the poems in question. To see how Sorabji responds to these texts I would have to know the works, of course; I have suspicions on which aspects of Baudelaire might have attracted him, which might be very different to those of Debussy, say (who didn't set any of the same poems); the Faure settings I do not have to hand. Another thread on Baudelaire settings might be most appropriate if we want to go into more detail on this. What I'm saying in essence is that I think it's a distinct possibility that Sorabji was attracted to these poets precisely because of their most reactionary elements, which I wouldn't really say in the case of Debussy (though wouldn't totally rule that out).
So you believe that Sorabji was attracted to the work of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine. etc. and set some of it for quite different reasons than was the case with Fauré, Debussy, etc.; abit convenient, that, surely?
I haven't explicitly said that his racial theories are made apparent in his music (though I'm not necessarily denying that either).
So what precisely are you saying about them in specific relation to his music, then?
Well, I'm quite amazed if you don't think that at the very least Sorabji aspired to grandeur.
I didn't say that. He aspired to many things and I think that he largely achieved what he set out to try to achieve in his work, but there is a difference between genuine and intrinsic grandeur of expression and mere grandiosity for its own sake and I got the impression earlier that it was the latter of which you were accusing him.
I think he is 'sad' because he wrote all this portentuous music that reveals his own compositional inadequacy and the emptiness of the claims he made for it.
What's "portentous" about the songs, Fantaisie Espagnole, Un Nido di Scatole, Tessuto d'Arabeschi, Gulistan, etc., etc.?
My 'supportive evidence' comes from listening to it.
In other words, it is your own personal response, no more, no less - and therefore not a fact.
For articulating how these things are manifest, you would find that my approaches owe a certain amount to earlier writings on Wagner and Stravinsky, by both Adorno and various others (though in modified forms), and other penetrating thinkers on the links between aestheticism, orientalism, certain varieties of romanticism and fascism, including Brecht, Benjamin, Lukacs, more recently Huyssen, Shattuck, Millett, Eagleton, Bordieu, Ahmad and various others (even occasionally McClary - much though I dislike her work, there are some things she identifies that I couldn't deny), though there are some details where I'd take issue with most of them. You could probably work out from that and knowing what else I've written what sort of form such a critique of Sorabji might take.
Yes, I can indeed, although that would be no substitute for reading the finished product; what I observe here is that you risk over-intellectualising your response to his work rather than allowing it to develop on more of a one-to-one basis - not for nothing has Richard Barrett observed that he doesn't need Adorno to tell him whether or not he likes to listen to Stravinsky.
No, I never had any contact with him, I only know his music, and more recently his writings. Both of these seem to reveal an awful lot - if you are suggesting that they are very far from the reality, on the basis of your experiences, then I'm quite prepared to listen.
In the space I have here, I can tell you only that his salient characteristsics included a warmth, sense of humour and generosity of spirit that are quite at odds with your view of him.
I know plenty about others around that circle and the sort of views they adhere to (not that uncommon in certain types of quasi-mystical cults), however, and it's from that I derive my opinions.
Ian, your are really missing the point here. I have met and corresponded with many people interested in Sorabji's work over the years and would have difficulty in remembering any who belonged to "certain types of quasi-mystical cults".
I am quite taken aback that so many of the Sorabji worshippers (and I'm afraid I do have to include you here) seem so unconcerned at the very least by his hatred for people, democracy, women, espousal of an aggressive form of neo-feudalism (seeing the Indian caste system as a model for society), or the fact that very similar ideologies (and indeed sometimes drawing upon particular appropriations of Eastern philosophies) were deeply entailed in the most pathologically hate-filled and genocidal regime the world has seen.
Then you should get to know your facts better before doing so. Sorabji did not "hate people" per se - he simply found the company of quite a few of them uncongenial but maintained a wide network (rather than a circle) of friends of many different persuasions, many of whom did not know one another. He didn't "hate women" either. He distrusted "democracy" in many of its governmental manifestations and, frankly, I can't say that I blame him. His views about the Indian caste system changed at least as radically as hid his views about Fauré and Richard Struass (about which he published his changes of mind) and Shostakovich (about which he didn't).
Sorabji's views do not seem fundamentally different from those of lots of other artists from the late-19th and early-20th century, just rather more extreme. Now I argue that these views are clearly manifested in the music itself.
We all know that you do, just as we know that you duck the issue of explaining how on the basis that it would take too much time and that this is not the place for such an essay.
I could argue to greater or lesser degrees some of the same principles are at play in Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Strindberg, Crowley, Pound or any number of others
You could and you do - but these were people whose business was words, whereas Sorabji's was mainly music.
But let me offer one possible explanation: in Sorabji's writings you can find some of the same sorts of disdain for industrial capitalism and bourgeois democracy that also informs some thinkers of the left (and of the pseudo-left). And by taking these apart from what he advocated he might seem like some sort of progressive thinker. But that could also be said of Thomas Carlyle or Timothy McVeigh or many others, all of whom hate capitalism as much as a Marxist. They want to go backwards (or rather pseudo-backwards, to some ideal of past civilisation that almost certainly never existed); socialists want to go forward. Those in the former group represent a more dangerous group of ideologues than simple upholders of the status quo. And, to this day, I continue to be alarmed by the extent to which whole aesthetic projects are founded upon such ideas; indeed a very large amount of artistic work from at the latest the mid-19th century onwards seems to be. This is something that various others have looked into in much more detail than I have, and would argue that those ideologies remain present in some forms right through to the present day. Whilst sometimes I think they overstate the case, I also believe they are touching upon something quite sinister, which is borne out by many of my experiences with artists and what they believe in, especially in the UK.
These are interesting concepts well worthy of discussion, but I cannot see that a Sorabjian context is the place in which to do so, particularly as his music is not "about" or even informed by such things.
Now I think we ought to give everyone else a chance here, lest this turn into a duologue rather than a dialogue!
Best,
Alistair
