Liner notes from the Altarus disc of Sorabjis Le jardin perfume by Yonty

Solomon
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was born on the 14th August, 1892 in Essex, and died
on the 15th October, 1988, in Dorset. He lived most of his life in England. His
father was a Parsee from Bombay and his mother, by Sorabjis account, was a
Spanish-Sicilian opera singer from whom he had his first music lessons. She was
certainly a profound formative influence on the young man, and his devotion to
his Spanish-Sicilian roots (the precise details of which remain obscure at present)
was very evident throughout his life, not least in his adherence to a highly
ornate, Southern-European form of Catholicism. For all of that, he firmly believed
himself to be part of the Zoroastrian community, and in many ways the most
Eastern thing about him, (because orientalism is certainly not explicit in his
music) was the way in which he held to an untroubled philosophic calm and
detachment from the struggle which disrupts lesser lives. This spiritual
equilibrium proved to be of inestimable value to him during the distressing
months of his last illness when the aristocratic seclusion and independence
which he had achieved all of his life finally had to be abandoned.
From his earliest years, he was always eager to investigate the latest
contemporary music, and as a young man would buy and read through new
works, long before they were performed or publicly accepted. He maintained a
lively curiosity about all aspects of the arts throughout his life. He was a very
accomplished pianist and appeared on the concert stage on a number of
occasions albeit without apparently taking and pleasure in the process; his
concert-giving activities ceased in the 1930s. As late as his early twenties he had
no idea of pursuing a career as a composer, and in as much as he was
contemplating a musical career at all, was thinking of becoming a music critic.
He studied music theory with one Charles Trew who, after taking through a
detailed course of theoretical counterpoint, suddenly and unexpectedly told him
to go home and write something of his own. In Sorabjis words, I went home and
had no idea what to do about it, so I wrote down a few cadences, Frenchified
things la Ravel, and started to write a few songs. Then I started a piano
concerto, and by the time I realised what I was doing I could not stop myself.
In addition to his musical works (at least 104 in number, and all but a tiny
minority for solo keyboard or containing a concertante piano part), he was a
prolific writer of articles, reviews, letters to the editor, and lengthy personal
correspondences. Three collections of his essays also exist in book form, two of
which were published as Around Music and Mi contra Fa. These treat a very
wide range of subject matter, and within each subject his digressions and
elaborations reveal an intelligence qualified to utter on almost any subject under
the sun. The style of his writing is ornate, elaborate, often very beautiful,
frequently mordant, sometimes vituperative, and not infrequently hilariously
funny. His commentaries on composers virtually unknown in Britain at the time of
his writing in many cases turned out to be prophetic. The volume of his literary
utterance exceeds the output of many established literary figures and the easy
virtuosity with which he employs the English language puts to shame many
whose principal vocabulary is verbal rather than musical.
In Around Music (Unicorn Press, 1932), Sorabji provides us with a very clear
statement of his beliefs concerning the question of what music is, or should be,
and by extension, his own reasons for pursuing the art of music as a lifetimes
vocation. He considers the question of whether music is to be regarded as

merely a very high-class and superior form of entertainment, different only in

degree and not in kind from any other entertainment, or whether it is to be
looked upon as a holy and sacred thing to be approached with devoutness,
seriousness of mind, and intent and suggests that in fact, great works be
no longer performed, but celebrated like a religious ritual, that attendance at
their celebration be looked upon as participation in the rites of the Church. Music
and its public execution should, as Busoni wished, be surrounded with an
atmosphere of peculiar sanctity and reverence opportunities for hearing it
decreased, not increased, and the approach to the art should be surrounded with
every difficulty and obstacle, so that only the most worthy could ever reach to
the level of priest that is, as we now call it, public performer. For it is thus that a
performer, to my mind, functions. He is the medium, the consecrated medium, of
intercourse between the Faith and the believers. [] For this is what music,
perhaps above all other arts, most really and truly is a religion, a way to
enlightenment to the spirit, like devout meditation and contemplation Samadhi,
as it were. Only thus regarded, thus approached, can all its grandeur and beauty
enter into the soul, giving thereunto glimpses of Nirvana, the state wherein all
opposites, all contraries, are reconciled, all discords resolved, where the veils of
illusion are torn asunder and the inner eyes opened to the peace which passeth
all understanding. And again, in the chapter entitled Attitudes of mind towards
music: Still further removed, in the cant phrase, from the practical realities of
life is the religious outlook the attitude which regards Art as a religion, and the
practice of it an act of religious faith which is perhaps too transcendental and
far-fetched for a generation which reckons practically everything in terms of a
pass-book. This attitude is peculiarly and Oriental and particularly and Indian one
the act of Art, as I may perhaps call it, taking on the aspect and significance of
a rite, a religious celebration, and not only taking on the aspect thereof but
actually becoming a religious act, so inextricably interwoven are the conceptions
of Art and religion to the Indian mind.

An extended tone-picture lasting about 26 minutes, Le Jardin Parfum was

inspired by the mystical and erotic text called the Perfumed Garden by the
Sheikh Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Umar al-Nefzawi. Sorabjis close friend the
composer Erik Chisholm coined the phrase poisonous sweetness to describe
Sorabjis writing in this tropical-nocturne genre, and this description is
startlingly appropriate; Le Jardin Parfum must be among the most exquisitely,
suffocatingly beautiful music ever written. When the work was first published it
was received with some incomprehension by certain critics, including T. A.?
[Thomas Armstrong?] in the Musical Times of November 1st, 1928. Sorabjis
spirited response to this review provides the nearest to a programme note about
the piece that he ever wrote:
Sir, - As your good reviewer quite elaborates criticises my Jardin Parfum
because it isnt what I never intended it to be, perhaps I may venture to hope
that you will allow me to explain? This piece is in no manner of way an attempt
to extend the explorations of Scriabin or of anyone else, nor is it intended as a
cross-word puzzle for those who take months to grasp (and then dont) its quite
moderate technical and musical problems. And as it is my work the fact that it
lacks Scriabins logic is surely not only natural but very right and proper. It has
my logic, and that, I think, is what matters. And although no one can accuse me
of being optimistic as to the powers of the ordinary musicians intelligence, I
think that even I would have hesitated before expressing an opinion so insulting

to the latter as that implied in your reviewers remark, there is no logical

structural basis at all in Mr. Sorabjis work that is to be discovered by the
ordinary musician. That is to the say that the ordinary musician cannot
discover the theme around which, with its derivatives and various variants, the
entire work is woven a theme worked in one form or another into the fabric of
almost every page and for no other reason apparently than that it is not
docketed off into two-, three-, or four-bar phrases! I will be much more polite and
ask how a critic so sensitive, imaginative and cultivated, so adept in the
humaner letters, so exemplary, admirable and discreet as T.A. came to overlook
the obvious allusion of the title of my piece to the most famous work of that
great Arabian poet and writer the Sheik Nefzaoui? Sorabji himself played the
work in his only BBC broadcast on the 22nd April 1930. As he wrote to Chisholm
a few days later: A most interesting and gratifying result of my broadcast last
Tuesday has just arrived in the form of a letter from no less a person than
Frederick Delius. He ways he listened to my Jardin Parfum on the wireless (in
France where you doubtless know he lives at Grez-sur-laing [sic]) and wishes to
tell me that it interested him very much there is real sensuous beauty in it he
says. That from a composer who is known for his detestation of most
contemporary music [I think] is rather charming dont you? As Sorabjis
description implies, much of Le Jardin Parfum is derived from elaboration and
ornamentation of material presented at the outset, the whole consisting of an
elaborate tracery of intermingling polyrhythmic counterpoint. There is very little
variation of mood, rather an infinity of subtle shadings within music of one
character is present in the score (and demanded of the performer, a fact which
makes the technical demands of the piece go far beyond the question of mere
attainment of the notes). The piece is directed to be played pianissimo
throughout, but within this restriction Sorabji requires a huge range and many
levels of dynamic contrast; the degree of concentration required to sustain this
fragile, stifling atmosphere for almost half an hour is enormous. The richly exotic,
sultry tropical nocturne was a style to which Sorabji returned repeatedly; the
earliest extant work of this type is In the Hothouse of 1918; substantial later
examples include Djami (1928), Gulistan (1940), and movements of a number of
his large-scale solo piano works.
***
Yonty Solomon was born in South Africa, but has lived in London since 1963. He
attended the University of Cape Town and graduated with distinction in both
Music and Psychology. He studied the piano with Myra Hess in London, Guido
Agosti in Rome and Charles Rosen in the USA, winning several major
international competitions and awards including the Beethoven Medal. He has
performed throughout the world with major orchestra and chamber ensembles
(including his own, the Solomon Trio), and as solo recitalist, appearing regularly
at the South Bank concert halls and the Barbican Concert Hall in London; in 1992
he toured with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the English
Chamber Orchestra, and the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. His recordings
include solo and chamber repertoire for Altarus, Decca, IMP, Novello, and Philips.
The author of numerous articles on a wide range of musical subjects, he is
especially known for his published work on Bach, Schumann and the psychology
of musical communication. A number of distinguished contemporary composers
have written works dedicated to him, including Richard Rodney Bennett, Alistair
Hinton, Wilfred Josephs, Wilfrid Mellers, Usko Merilinen and Phillys Tate. His
interest in the music of Kaikhosru Sorabji began when the composer Erik
Chisholm, a close friend of Sorabji and Dean of the Faculty of Music at Cape

Town, introduced him to Sorabjis Opus Clavicembalisticum (of which he owned

the manuscript, now in the University of Cape Town Library) and other works. In
1976, Yonty Solomon was the first pianist to gain Sorabjis permission to perform
his music in England, since which time he has performed and broadcast many of
Sorabjis works. After one such broadcast in 1977, Sorabji wrote to him: You
have everything that I look for in a pianist who tackles Me unfailingly beautiful
tone, complete insight and sympathy with my way of musical thinking AND will
it was perfectly satisfying in every possible. Mille e mille grazie