Sorabjis Studies
Essay by Kenneth Derus
Works are like rattlesnakes - how they strike us depends on how we grasp them. We
see Sorabji's Studies on paper. We hear them. We remember what we've heard. In
each case, there are limits to what we see and hear and remember. Times and
sometimes places where the objects of our experience begin and end. We see part of
a page and part of a table. We hear the cello but not the jackhammer. We remember
just so much of an evening or a lifetime, or a jumble of experiences that existed at
very different times. Memories interest me most. Memories in this case of music I've
heard. I don't care about when my memories begin and end. I care about when what
I'm remembering begins and ends.
When we remember, we make some of the things we remember - in particular by
separating experiences which are remembered from experiences which aren't. Most
things have permanent parts. Captain Hook has two hands at some times and one
hand at other times, but he has most of his parts at all of his times. The things we
remember hearing are literally things, even when they have no permanent proper
part. The melody we remember hearing coincides with this note at this time and that
note at that time; no note of it exists at more than one time, but it is nevertheless a
single changing thing.1
When I take off my glasses, the things I no longer see color the things I do see.
When I remember music in less time than it takes me to hear it, not every part of the
object of my memory is the object of part of my memory; but the things which find no
counterpart in my memory experience nevertheless metaphorically color it. I've said
this before,2 but it's also true that remembering can put structure back into memory
experience - by creating permanent or long-lived proper parts out of the experience
we remember. This is what I mean by grasping. I can grasp the 'bass part' from any
of the Studies - as part of something I heard yesterday and remember now.3 Some
parts have intermittent existence. Depending on when I make the bass part begin
and end - in relation to the object of memory of which it is a part - it may or may not
be the object of a proper part of the memory experience I'm having now.
The times of what I'm remembering are past times. In particular, the first and last
times of the proper parts, if any, of what I'm remembering are past times. But some of
these first and last times are first and last times only now, and later, by virtue of my
present and future grasp of past experience. My grasp may change, but I can also
have an unchanging grasp of changing past experience. Past experience is limited,
or bounded, at a later time.4
Sights have a spatial aspect. We could consider the faces we see in clouds as a
function of how we grasp the things we look at. But non-spatial experiences can have
more than one part at a time, because parts of experience can be superposed. Most
of the chords we hear and remember consist of superposed notes.5
Implicit in all this is an at least one-dimensional kinematics - governing motion within
memory experience scaled to motion within the things we remember. Retrospective
motion - propelled in some cases by the longest limbs of musical experience. To
paraphrase Clifford Truesdell on the kinematics of vorticity in relation to the laws of
physics: A kinematical result is a result valid forever, no matter how time and fashion
may change the way intentionality gets naturalized by cognitive science.
Georg Kreisel has reminded me that Goethe said, in effect, "How should I know?"
when Eckermann asked him if Faust had a guiding idea. The best works surprise
everybody, and their authors most of all. Sorabji's music serves as a basis for
interesting memories, the way clouds serve as a basis for the faces we see in them;
but the music gets the bulk of the credit for this, not Sorabji. Sorabji gets as much
credit as I get when my children tell jokes that make people laugh.
Stanislaw Ulam was more brilliant than ever, after his attack of encephalitis, but more
than ever he needed first-rate mathematical collaborators, to flesh out his ideas.
Sorabji's music needs active and sophisticated collaboration in this sense. Besides
performers and listeners, it needs to be finished by those of us who have heard it.
Finishing, in this case, involves a paring away, not a fleshing out. Remembered
properly, the music serves up none of the detail that makes it uniquely exciting to
hear.
The Studies as ars memorativa. Mostly single-minded. Mostly short. Exercises for us,
instead of performers. The place where we learn, in baby steps, to grasp what we've
heard. One hundred rattlesnakes, on the road to a useful appreciation of the Tantrik
Symphony.
Imagination can make anything out of anything, but the same can't be said for
fingers. Anybody who can play the Studies must marvel at the cluelessness of those
who believe that pianistic difficulties begin with Godowsky and end with Finnissy or
Barrett. Douglas Taylor's quip about contrary motion for one hand isn't far from the
truth. Brains are even rarer than fingers. I can barely think of anyone thoughtful
enough to make sense of music such as this in the concert hall. Fredrik Ulln,
obviously. The American violinist Katherine Hughes. Two or three others.
Sorabji the anti-Feldman. His symmetries are crippled in every possible way on every
possible time-scale6 - except when we remember him. But actually hearing him can't
be beat. The Studies unwind like the Latin sentences of De bello gallico - with
exquisite syntactical irritability - , or like the body-motion of a high-spirited horse who
knows where he's going. They leave us saddle sore, but not because it takes eight
hours to hear them all. It's more a question of having to hang onto our seat while we
listen.7
Every part is an improper part of itself. The only permanent part of a weakly
permanent part is improper. Coincident parts are identical at times. In the jargon of
ontology, I'm claiming that the impermanent objects of musical experience are
nevertheless continuants, not occurrents. This is not a popular view.
2
E.g. in the CD booklet for Geoffrey Madge's recent recording of George Flynn's
Derus Simples, and my out-of-date contribution to Paul Rapoport's Sorabji book.
3
There are no bass lines in a world of continuants, except as ways to talk about and
represent parts of changing hearing experience.
4
Limits aren't parts of experience but limits have times.
5
Superposed parts exist at the same time and place without being identical. We can
have a place without a space, even when the converse isn't true.
Elastic subjects and casual procedures; but also, on paper, wrong page numbers,
odd distributions - e.g. of interval-studies in the work at hand - , ambiguous notation,
problematical Italian. Barely noticeable things, like the deliberate mistakes of a comic
ballroom dancer.
7
Progress is smooth everywhere except locally, in the immediate neighborhood of
change. Each moment of the music leaves us painfully unprepared for the next. It's
no accident. Mephisto says "Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint" and Sorabji says it
too.
Kenneth Derus 2003. Kenneth Derus is a former director of the Center for
Combinatorial Mathematics and the dedicatee of piano works by Kaikhosru Sorabji,
George Flynn, and Carlo Grante, among others. He has written about music for
Tempo and The New Grove but is mainly concerned with the mereotopology of
memory experience.
