Kaikhosru Sorabji to Philip Heseltine 36 (19 June 1922)

 175, CLARENCE GATE GARDENS.

REGENTS PARK,

N.W.1.

London.

 

19. June 22.

My dear Phee:

 

I have already told you once that Waldheim gives me no separate estimate for covers. It is always an inclusive estimate. I have no samples of cover paper by me now but the copy of the songs I send you will show you the sort of thing that looks very nice and suitable.

 

You must remember that printers require to be instructed down to the smallest details of title page & cover printing: size of type: distribution – Spacing and so on. My covers are the result of my own very careful and detailed instructions and if you want anything as well done, you must do the same.

 

The particular fount used I got from Waldheim Eberle bill-head: it took my fancy & I told them to use it. The best thing is to plan out on a piece of paper the size of your cover the exact position & wording you want as I always do with numbered references to the size of type you want.

 

Waldheim have not got anything like that stiff black paper of Breitkopf – that is why I could not have this from W.

 

Robert Lorenz who is a dear creature and one that I like persuaded me to go to Allinson’s studio and there play the 1^st and 2^nd Sonata in his Allinson’s (who expressed the keenest desire to hear them) and another Harvey Grace’s and another man’s hearing.

 

Allinson says I do not sufficiently consider the “limitations of the human ear” – my length, complexity and “lack of contrast” seem to upset him. Harvey Grace sighs for “diatonic discords” – like expecting a cat to have a penis of a paradoscure – otherwise quite sympathetic and reasonably intelligent. “The limitations of the human ear!” Why the bloody hell should I consider them when conscious of no such limitations in my own ear? Because one of the principles of a certain form of musical design is a continual alternation of contrasting sections why should I, who exist in a realm entirely outside those principles be controlled by them? Judge me if you like but I claim, and demand to be judged by the relation of my own work to its implied standards whatever they may be. That they that are not those of 99 out of 100 composers ought to protect me from such singularly and irritatingly inept criticism. Again: “if you make your work of such monstrous difficulty no one can play it but the very finest pianists’.’ What if it is only for the “very finest pianists”? What if it is for no one at all but its creator? In the very last resort there is the pianola. Says A. “you don’t paint a picture to lock up in a cellar”. Where is the analogy?? All the Sonatas are in process of publication or will be. The picture will be there for those who can bear to look upon it. “You are limiting your appeal so much it seems to me” – Is it not conceivable that in its very nature and essence this music can, and must only appeal to an extremely restricted audience? Supposing it is not good or meet that the mass should be able to hear it. Oh! the idleness of all this chatter as to what the artist should or should not do, resolving itself in the end into what others not fit mentally & spiritually to lick his arse would like him to do.

 

I shall go on as I have begun; regarding no ones taste & prejudices or wishes on earth but my own. I should scarcely consult the Art critics on the question of what sort of a... -- wife I should take unto myself were I of the breed that takes wives unto themselves the which praise be to God that I am not – still less shall I allow them to influence me in the infinitely more important matter of creating my monsters!

 

The 3rd Sonata is finished – a gehenna like work of some hour and a quarter’s duration a piano symphony which I hope to have the joy of playing to my Phee at a not too distant date.

 

The Beast Salvarsan is the dullest of dull dogs. He talked like Ralph Waldo Trine & the Theosophical Society. It was most depressing. He wants however to hear me play and when I’m finished with my Solstitial Fast which started last night Sunday at 6 and ends next Sunday at 6 P.M. he is coming to hear some of my demons.

 

He had on a red poplin silk waistcoat with gold buttons and his face is sunburnt up to the hat-line, above it’s lighter, making him look like a mask in a Chinese play. His face is that of a prosperous overfed fox-hunting tory squire – the unteachable in full pursuit of the unwearable.

 

 

[Aleister Crowley (1874-1947) - The Great Beast]

I take leave of you with much love.

 

Your Gote.