Opus Clavicembalisticum
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Opus Clavicembalisticum is a solo piano piece composed by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, completed on June 26, 1930. The piece is notable for its length and difficulty: at the time of its completion it was the longest piano piece in existence. Its duration is around four hours, depending on tempo. Several of Sorabji's later works, such as the Symphonic Variations (which occupy 484 pages of manuscript — probably about eight hours of music, similar in duration to Frederic Rzewski's work The Road) are even longer. It is considered by many to be the most difficult piece of music ever written for the piano.[citation needed] Sorabji was inspired to compose the work after hearing a performance of Busoni's Fantasia Contrappuntistica, and Opus Clavicembalisticum seems to be a homage to Busoni's work.
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[edit] Structure
Opus Clavicembalisticum has twelve movements, of hugely varying dimensions: from a brief cadenza, lasting only three minutes, to a mammoth interlude, containing a toccata, adagio, and passacaglia (with 81 variations), requiring around an hour to play. The work's movements are set in three parts, each larger than the last:
| Pars Prima | |
| I | Introito |
| II. | Preludio-Corale |
| III. | Fuga I |
| IV. | Fantasia |
| V. | Fuga a due soggetti |
| Pars Altera | |
| VI. | Interludium Primum (Thema cum XLIX Variationibus) |
| VII. | Cadenza I |
| VIII. | Fuga Tertia Triplex |
| Pars Tertia | |
| IX. | Interludium Alterum (Toccata, Adagio, Passacaglia cum LXXXI Variationibus) |
| X. | Cadenza II |
| XI. | Fuga IV. Quadruplex |
| XII. | Coda-Stretta |
[edit] Composition and dedication
In a letter upon completion of the massive work, Sorabji wrote to a friend of his:
With a wracking head and literally my whole body shaking as with ague I write this and tell you I have just this afternoon early finished Clavicembalisticum... The closing 4 pages are so cataclysmic and catastrophic as anything I've ever done — the harmony bites like nitric acid — the counterpoint grinds like the mills of God...
The dedication on the title page reads:
To the everlasting glory of those few men blessed and sanctified in the curses and execrations of those many whose praise is eternal damnation.
[edit] Performances
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There have only been a handful of performances of Opus Clavicembalisticum. The first was by Sorabji himself in 1930. Pars Prima was performed by John Tobin in 1936, who was known to have taken around twice as long to perform the score as Sorabji intended Pars Prima to last. This performance and its reception led to Sorabji's notorious ban on public performances of his works, claiming that "no performance at all is vastly preferable to an obscene travesty". Sorabji maintained this ban until the late 1970s. The next public performance of Opus Clavicembalisticum took place in 1982, at the hands of the Australian pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge. A recording of the performance was released on a set of four LPs, which are now out of print. Madge went on to perform it in its entirety on five other occasions, including one in 1983, a recording of which was released by BIS in 1999. This recording has often been criticized due to its severely low accuracy in terms of pitch and rhythm. Vast stretches of the score are presented by Madge with little respect for the actual written notation. In many cases, the complex polytonal chords, typical of Sorabji's harmonic language, are reduced to seemingly random combinations of tone-clusters, disfiguring the music beyond recognition. John Ogdon performed the work twice, towards the end of his life, and produced a studio recording of the work. Jonathan Powell has performed it on five occasions, and will begin a studio recording of the work after two more public performances of the work. The currently available recordings are widely considered to be highly unsatisfactory. The only other complete performance of this work in public was given by Daan Vandewalle although a number of pianists have performed excerpts, usually the first two movements. For example, J. J. Schmid performed part of the work at the Biennale Bern 03. [1]
