Ebook: Around Music

As prolific a composer of articles, essays, reviews, letters-to-the-editor and personal correspondence as of music, Sorabji contributed much to the world of intelligent, thoughtful and penetrating criticism on a vast variety of subjects, including, of course, music. His style is as appealing as it is compelling; his wit is irrepressible, his erudition devastating and his terms of reference as wide-ranging as can be imagined. Jami, Leonardo, St. John of the Cross, Macchiavelli, Bach, Pareto, Liszt, Busoni, Guénon, Coomaraswamy, van Dieren, MacDiarmid, Godowsky, Sir Sacheverell Sitwell and Szymanowski are some of his idols; cant, humbug, democracy, egalitarianism, systematised mass education, cultural trendiness, sentimentality, linguistic imprecision, obscurantism, received opinion purveyors and busybodies are his bêtes noires. One who damns so-called “Musical Appreciation” classes as training in “how to obtain the highest rate of investment return from Beethoven” and the science of educational psychology as “the drawing of obscurity from fools” is arguably a preternatural controversialist; one who displays unfailing emotional and intellectual precision, pansophy and heroic sanctity in commending beaux idéaux to his readership is surely an instinctive and radiant communicator: one who does both is, uniquely and inevitably, Sorabji.

This is Sorabji's first published collection of essays, with some corrections and annotations in his own hand as well as from Alistair Hinton, and an annotated index by Marc-Andre Roberge.