Kaikhosru Sorabji

Leon Dudley Sorabji

Born to a Parsee Indian father (a mining engineer) and a Spanish Sicilian mother (an opera singer), Kaikhosru Sorabji was a prolific composer (completing over 100 pieces for piano and keyboard) and is best known for his epic composition Opus Clavicembalisticum for piano (1930), which has an approximate duration of four and a half hours. Despite having no formal training, he was also a pianist of some renown, performing in various European cities as well as Bombay but retreating from public performance as early as 1936, preferring to play at private gatherings of friends. Sorabji gave the first performance of Opus Clavicembalisticum himself, in Glasgow in 1930. Following a particularly poor subsequent performance, he stipulated that his music could only be played with his permission.

In addition, Sorabji was an established music critic, writing reviews, essays and letters on music for a range of publications. Indeed, his writing extended beyond music, covering topics such as economics, unemployment, racism and homosexuality. As a gay ‘Spanish-Sicilian’ Parsee living in early twentieth-century Britain, his experience of discrimination no doubt propelled him to write about these issues. Interestingly, Rozina Visram describes his views on colonialism as ‘ambivalent’: ‘critical of British rule, he was equally scathing of Indian activities’ (p. 291).