I don't quite think so (if I may say so), although, that said, your emoticon (what a horrid word!) use did not go unnoticed(!)...

Best,

Alistair

Pretty much on the same level, I'd say...

Best,

Alistair

Fugue first preoccupied Sorabji in the early 1920s, his first known example being the somewhat modest one from his relatively short piano work Prelude Interlude and Fugue. The first really important one is the double fugue that comprises the central thrust of his First Organ Symphony and is perhaps the only case in his work of a fugue forming a part, rather than the whole, of a movement (his later coda-stretti really being parts of the fugues that precede them). Thereafter, there is a large on in his Dies Iræ variations completed in 1926 and one to close his First Toccata two years later (this latter almost containing suggestions of a "pilot-piece" for OC). And that's it, before OC itself (excepting his plans for the unfinished Passacaglia of 1929, which was to comprise a prelude, a passacaglia, a cadenza and a fugue but of which he got only as far as variation 76 of the passacaglia - the work has recently been edited and completed by Alexander Abercrombie). I'm not so sure, however, (and did I really sy so?!) that it's correct to suggest that his pre-OC fugues "increase in scale and in weight relative to the other sections of a given work", since only the first part of that is really true; the fugues get larger, but then so does what surrounds them.

OC is very much the exception in Sorabji's output where fugues are concerned, in that it is his only work punctuated by a series of fugues (four, in this work, as you know); the motivation for this (and indeed certain other characteristics of OC) undoubtedly had its roots in Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica. The fugues of OC are themselves cumulative in that the first has just the one subject and the others are double, triple and quadruple fugues respectively. The principal character of the first fugue (whose subject is the shortest of them all in OC) is that of severity and austerity and an examination of the subjects of the others reveals a gradually increasing contrast between them, to the point at which the four in the final fugue are really quite unlike one another.

Thereafter, Sorabji's fugal preoccupations led him often to conclude large-scale pieces with fugues which were often themselves on quite an ambitious scale, though never again after OC did he infuse any single work with such a preponderance of fugal writing. That said, OC was much nearer the beginning than the end of his fugal explorations; the last of which is to be found in his variations and fugue on a theme of Rimsky-Korsakov entitled Il Grido del Gallino d'Oro, which postdates OC by almost half a century.

The principal defining character that sets Sorabji's fugues apart from much of his other writing is the rhythmic simplicity, rarely in any of his fugues are there any rhythm patterns more complex than might be found in Bach or Beethoven. Sorabji often found himself working out his fugues by making much use of inversions, cancrizans and cancrizans inversions of his subjects and this is one of his fugal persuasions that appears to have prompted some listeners (evidently including yourself) to criticise his fugues for their perceived aridity; I am by no means convinced by this, being mindful of the fact that a less than adequate performance of any one of them is far more likely to convey such an impression than is the music itself (and I've heard ample evidence of this factor in different performances of other composers' fugues to corroborate this!). Others have expressed concern at the sheer length and pitch range of some of Sorabji's fugue subjects, but these are, I think, characteristics of Sorabji's approach to fugue that set him apart from most other writers of fugues rather than mere causes for concerned perplexity.

At this point, I think that the best thing I can do is to defer to Jonathan Powell, who will hopefully record OC before too long (in my 'umble opinion, he ought to have done that already!)...

Best,

Alistair

Here are five further examples of Bach's so effective half-diminished sevenths in his Forty-Eight.

1) in Fugue 4 of the First Book:



2) in Fugue 5 of the First Book, with great emphasis:



3) in Fugue 16 of the First Book. The chord at C sounds like something straight out of Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony, and the half-diminished seventh comes again right after the bar-line (at D:



4) in Prelude 13 of the Second Book the chord is used at E, quite fleetingly but very definitely, as part of one of Bach's many inventive cadences:



5) finally (for now) we observe its typically telling use at F as a passing but by no means insignificant note in Fugue 17 of the Second Book:



Of course there are many more examples among the many works of this greatest of all composers.

Seconded. I'm afraid I was unable to contribute much once the thread devoloped towards Sorabji.

But I learned, so thanks to all.

TBC....

I quote from the renownéd Tovey's Essays in Musical Analysis (1935-9) (i think), where he talks at length on the subject of symphonies by CPE Bach.

(apologies for the neither prelude- nor fugue-motivated nature of this post)

"The symphonies of Philipp Emanuel Bach beautifully display the gradual emancipation of the orchestra from its slave-state dependence on the continuo. The emancipation was not the philanthropic process of emancipating slaves. It was the still nobler and more austere problem of teaching the orchestra, including the most aristocratic solo instruments, to serve themselves."

Now, forgive me, but I find the tone and style of the language he uses pretty laughable to be honest. It's just all so over-the-top (and in this modern age the words 'out of touch' don't do it justice). Not that I'm advocating being in touch at all, and of course many of his writings still represent the top of their field, but the above is, I hope, a reason why he is not so much appreciated.

But one could hardly argue against 'noble' as a singularly appropriate term for it! That would be another value judgement perhaps...