Kaikhosru Sorabji is perhaps my favourite composer. I find much of his music absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, I am no music analyst, and consequently know nothing about the way music is made, nor do I know what to look for when composing music. Here is a sample of a part of one of his works:
His music seems to be highly structured. When I first heard the piece, it sounded to me like someone playing random notes on the piano. When I heard the music more, though, it became clear that Sorabji knew exactly what he was doing with all those notes all over the place. I don't believe he chose these notes randomly - the work, despite seeming to be formless, has actually got an underlying order. The chords have got rather linear movement between them. This work, despite sounding consciously atonal, is not so. It is a development of the late Romantic tradition and the idea of increasing chromaticism taken to its logical extremes, perhaps more like an extreme form of Scriabin than Schönberg. It does not take the leap towards conscious atonality and arrhythmia the way many contemporary works do, but instead opts for subconscious atonality and arrhythmia that seems to arise naturally, as opposed to the serialists who built their works out of consciously designed tone rows, combinations of the 12 pitches. This work was created in 1930, as a sort of response to Busoni's Fantasia Cantrappuntistica, a work of the late Romantic period, but it is more than a reply - it transcends Busoni and incorporates new ideas into it.
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