Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji
Sorabji in 1917
Born	Leon Dudley Sorabji (1892-08-14)14 August 1892 Chingford, Essex, England
Died	15 October 1988(1988-10-15) (aged 96) Winfrith Newburgh, Dorset, England
Occupations	Composer music critic pianist writer
Works	List of compositions

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (born Leon Dudley Sorabji; 14 August 1892 – 15 October 1988) was an English composer, music critic, and pianist. He wrote music for over 70 years. He was one of the most important 20th-century composers. He wrote many famous songs for the piano, such as nocturnes such as Gulistān and Villa Tasca. He also wrote very long and complicated songs. He wrote 7 symphonies for piano solo, 4 toccatas, Sequentia cyclica and 100 Transcendental Studies. He was homosexual and had mixed ancestry. This led him to him being alone for a lot of his life.

Sorabji had private education. His mother was English. His father was a Parsi businessman from India. His father started a trust fund so that his family would not need to work. Sorabji was not a virtuoso and did not play in many performances. However, he played some of his music in public from 1920 and 1936. From the late 1930s to 1976, he changed his music. Very few people heard his music at this time. He was only known in these years this time because of his writings. He wrote the books Around Music and Mi contra fa: The Immoralisings of a Machiavellian Musician. He also left London and moved to Corfe Castle, Dorset. Most of the information known about his later life is from letters that he wrote to friends.

Sorabji taught himself to be a composer. At first, he made modernist music. However, he was then influenced by people like Ferruccio Busoni, Claude Debussy and Karol Szymanowski. He started to use baroque forms and polyrhythms. He also used both tonal and atonal music. He used lots of ornamentation. He mostly composed for the piano. However, he also wrote for orchestras, chambers and organs. Most of his music was never published until the 2000s. Interest in his music has grown since then.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

• The website of The Sorabji Archive has up-to-date information on scores, performances, recordings and broadcasts of Sorabji's music.
• The Sorabji Resource Site, by Marc-André Roberge, is an large repository of lists, compilations, tables, analytical charts and links about many aspects of Sorabji's life and works. One of its menu entries is about the author's Opus sorabjianum: The Life and Works of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, with a link to the complete file in PDF format (available as a free download).
• Free scores by Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)