The OC

Yesterday saw a rather special musical event in Oxford: the 17th performance (since it was written in 1930) of the Opus clavicembalisticum (hereafter OC) by Sorabji. Supplier of stamina and skill on this occasion was Jonathan Powell.

Sorabji was a very eccentric English/Parsi composer, roughly in the style of a mix of Busoni, Liszt and Scriabin. He was born a slightly less exotic “Leon Dudley Sorabji”, but changed his name to emphasise his Parsi identity. After an attempted performance of part of the OC in 1936, he banned further public performances of his work until the 1970s.

The OC is in twelve movements (some up to an hour in length), which start huge and increase from there. Among them are four fugal movements, containing in turn one, two, three and four separate fugues. Light relief is provided by a couple of sets of themes and variations, with 49 and 81 variations respectively. The dedication is a good example of the composer’s sense of humour and writing style:

TO MY TWO FRIENDS (E DUOBUS UNUM) HUGH M’DIARMID AND C.M. GRIEVE LIKEWISE TO THE EVERLASTING GLORY OF THOSE FEW MEN BLESSED AND SANCTIFIED IN THE CURSES AND EXECRATIONS OF THOSE MANY WHOSE PRAISE IS ETERNAL DAMNATION.

The concert was billed as four hours, plus intervals, so it started at 3.30. Quite a few of us also went to the pre-concert talk which started an hour earlier, given by Alistair Hinton–composer, friend of the composer, and founder of the Sorabji Archive. Possibly occasional Alasdair Gray impersonator.

The concert actually ended at 9pm, so with two 20 minute intervals, that was still almost five hours of music.

What kind of of audience turns up for such an event? Frankly, not much of one. I estimate we started with about 60, ⅔ of whom made it to the end. Fortunately this didn’t include the woman who brought her two young children, in the mistaken impression that five hours of modernist fugues would calm them down (they ejected themselves some time during the second movement); or the man who wandered out during one movement, and in again during the next. Or the chap at the back who had set his watch to beep every hour. At some points the poor herculean Mr Powell was driven to tut and shake his head whilst wrestling with his counterpoint. The survivors at 9 o’clock were almost all men of a certain age, a few of whom had brought along their own scores to follow along.

For those of us who did last to the end, it was quite an experience. While I can’t claim to have taken in every twist and turn, there was always something to enjoy, and Mr Powell kept the attention throughout. Once in a lifetime, this was a great way to spend a day.