Communications

This column provides a forum for responses to the contents of this journal, and for information of interest to readers. The editor reserves the right to publish letters in excerpted form and to edit them for conciseness and clarity.

To the Editor:

Although it is heartening to see the various editions of piano works by Alkan, Busoni, Godowsky, Medtner, and Sorabji given prominent attention in Notes (60, no. 1 [September 2003]: 290-95), Robert Rimm's review of these editions contains far too many inaccuracies and misleading statements. Setting aside the rather bizarre decision to enlist a reviewer who endorses publications with which he was closely involved (even when so acknowledged), and who promotes his own writing (in the last paragraph), I call your attention to the following:

Marc-Andre Hamelin did not "contribute many corrections" to the Dover Alkan volume, as Rimm claims (p. 292). As Hamelin would willingly confirm, none were needed, since the original nineteenth-century Alkan editions were meticulously proofread by their composer. Rimm continues to have the illusion, three paragraphs later, that mistakes in Alkan's scores are "common." This is simply untrue.

Rimm offers what he calls a "perspective" on the length of Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano versus Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata by counting the respective pages, saying that the entire Beethoven work can be contained within the Alkan first movement. This gives the unwary reader a totally skewed impression. Musical length is measured by clock time, not pages or measure numbers. The actual playing time of the Alkan Concerto is about 49 to 51 minutes, of which the first movement approaches 30 minutes by itself. The timings of the majority of recorded performances of the complete "Hammerklavier" range from about 41 to 48 minutes.

I would be interested to know where Rimm has managed to study Alkan's "absorbing manuscripts . . . filled with bold, calligraphic strokes" (p. 292). Although facsimiles have appeared of one or two early or minor Alkan pieces, the remainder either do not exist or have never been made available. As Ronald Smith notes, "Few autographs of his published works have come to light" (Alkan: The Man, the Music [London: Kahn & Averill, 2000], 260).

Referring to the recent Carl Fischer volumes of Godowsky, Rimm claims that Godowsky's E-Minor Sonata is "the only work Godowsky composed in this form" (p. 294). Jeremy Nicholas's Godowsky, the Pianists' Pianist: A Biography of Leopold Godowsky (Hexham, Northumberland, Eng.: APR Publications and Recordings, 1989) mentions two additional sonatas that appear to be lost (pp. 9-10, 206).

The completion date for Godowsky's Java Suite is 1925, not 1919 as Rimm states. Godowksy completed the Triakontameron in 1920, not 1919, and his Passacaglia in 1927, not 1928 (although published in the latter year).

Rimm's review begins: "Composers from France, Italy, Lithuania, Russia, and India" (p. 290). These references to the respective composers are clear, with Sorabji obviously being the "composer from India." This, however, is a total misrepresentation and one which never failed to arouse Sorabji's own vituperation. Sorabji was not born in India; he was born in England. (He also took strong exception to all attempts to brand him an "English" composer.) His father, a Parsi, was indeed born in India, but by no stretch of the imagination does this mean that the composer is "from India." Nor did Sorabji ever live in India for any significant period of time. Rimm should really know better, because the publication Sorabji: A Critical Celebration (ed. Paul Rapoport [Aldershot, Hampshire, Eng.: Scolar Press; Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1992]) served him well in the writing of his own book. Here we find considerable detail about Sorabji's origins, especially on pp. 23-24, 68-69, and 221. Sorabji's own, widely reprinted statement (one of several such) is unequivocal: "Mr. Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wishes it to be known that he emphatically contradicts and repudiates certain completely inaccurate and objectionable public references to himself as an 'Indian' composer" (Rapoport, 24).

Donald Manildi
International Piano Archives at Maryland

The dates for Godowsky's compositions were editorial...