Kaikhosru Sorabji's Letters to Peter Warlock (Inglis/Smith: Routledge)

  Saturday [24 June 1922]   175, CLARENCE GATE GARDENS. REGENTS PARK, N.W.1.   Belovedest Prosdoscimus:-   By all means choose my paper if you like it. You don’t say what you think of the songs you Sod! And I wrote a swete dedication on them for you – Blast you!   Yes exactly! Who to turn to as agents? As far as I’m concerned I’ll be my own. The sale of my works is not so overpowering in size that I can’t cope with it and it ought to be rather amusing. But I’m concerned about you and Orr. Try Goodwin & Tabb why don’t you? I have nothing whatever to do with Robber BLion Kling-Klux-Klang.   I’m going away on July 24 th or 25 th for my holiday and right glad of it shall I be after nearly two years incessant writing Sonata II – Symphony – Sonata III.   Yes, Salvarsan is a good name for him [Aleister Crowley]: for he’s as much a fraud as that much boomed “remedy”. I’ve been reading a perfectly appalling dynamiti...

  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 t...

  28 April 1922.   My Phee:   Michaud consents to act as agent for Orr’s songs on a 50% Basis of commission. I’ve got that in writing from him so you can fire ahead. I’m the only person who has 40% but I’m naturally a “privileged person” (!) being the first and he having such a batch of my work. Keep discreet on this matter.   He says he wants £5000 more capital to extend the business – and as he’s an excellent straight creature – a vastly superior breed to the filthy old Kling or the equally poisonous old Volkert he deserves what help one can give him in the way of milking the moneyed ones. You had much better do all your future work with him as I’m doing and don’t be bled by Augener on whom I piss.   It would be an idea to interest Gerald Cooper in the L[ondon]. and C[ontinental]. as a possible purchaser of shares. Sound him on the subject. He, Michaud has weathered a very bad year and has faced the opposition of Augener who announced their ...

  12. 4.22.   Belovedest and Bestest Phee:-   Thanks for the card with the picture of the dell on it which is charming. But my angel surely I wrote you either from Palermo or Vienna telling you about the Concert?   I played the 2 Sonatas only at 5 oclock on Friday Jan. 13 in the Kammersaal of the Musikvereinsgebäude. The audience was small – all by invitation only not a hundred or any where near it but they were such an audience - - - pupils of Schönberg and D r. Wellecz . . . old Hertzka and Co. including the Kalmuck Litmus his nephew . . . . this creature’s mouth makes me think of a baby’s bottom or a pair of chicken and ham sausages superimposed lengthwise – and everybody came swarming round me after expressing the utmost amazement and ébahissement first at the music then of my playing of it – Dr Wellecz said . . “It is so difficult to us so new and strange, that you must give us time - - - such things in music we have never before heard: it is...