Hi lunar,

The Jami symphony is one long fantasy, especially the 1st and 3rd movements. There are no 'forms' to hang on to and that is very daunting. Sorabji wrote a lot of such pieces and they consist of a number of melodic/harmonic/textural ideas, ranging from quite long to very short, which are usually laid out early in the work and then ruthlessly developed alone and in every combination. The bigger the work the more of these ideas there are. In several works he actually identifies and numbers these ideas which can reach 30+. Sadly he didn't in the Jami although with familiarity many can be identified. And familiarity is key. Like so much great art, there is reward in study (although that sounds too academic). The more you put in, the more you get out.

The greater part of sorabji's output however, does involve formal procedures particulary baroque forms such as the fugue and the passacaglia but inevitably taken to extreme. Any day now the 7CD studio recording of Sequentia Cyclica, his variations on the Dies Irae, will be released and is available to stream and download now. It is possibly his best work and not least because in it's 27 movements it covers every facet of his style including a number of 'character' pieces around some of his favourite composers. Many of the movements are 10-20 minutes and all stand alone as well. There's also a monster passacaglia (100 iterations) and a massive 6 part fugue so everything you could possibly want.

There's a Quote from Krol Roger in the Jami Symphony.

Thanks Dietz and Errikos and everyone for your encouraging comments.

At the moment only a facsimile of the manuscript is available from the Sorabji Archive for £50 which is very reasonable for 823 pages of A3 miniature score. A critical typeset edition is in preperation but some way off.

Sorabji knew Skryabin's music very well and praised it highly early in his career but soured to it later in life. There is section of the video from about 50 minutes which has a lot of quotes from Sorabji about his favourite composers inlcuding Mahler, Busoni, Medtner, Skryabin and Szymanowski.

Originally Posted by: agitato

His music sounds a lot like Messiaen to my naive ears, I wonder who influenced who.

Anand

Interesting point Anand - Sorabji's dates are 1892-1988 Messiaen's are 1908-1992. Sorabji will have known of Messiaen's music but it is very unlikely the other way round particularly as there were virtually no performances of Sorabji's music between 1930s and 1990s as a result of Sorabji placing a moratorium on performances. There are certain aspects of Sorabji's use of non-tonal consonance that may sound familiar to Messiaen but in this, Sorabji was influenced more by the likes of Szymanovski.

The complete performance is now on my YouTube channel and this inlcudes a commentary throughout the whole 2 hours+ with descriptions of the music as it progresses as well as information on and quotes from Sorabji and some technical details about how the performance was created.

The link is: https://youtu.be/WEgNozDWagU

Thanks William & Paolo.

The instruments used were nearly all of them! But to be precise;

Piccolo, Flute 1, Flute 2, Alto Flute, Oboe 1, Oboe 2, English Horn 1, Hecklephone, Clarinet Eb, Clarinet Full, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet,  Bassoon, Bassoon 2, Contra Bassoon.

Horn Triple, Horn Stopped, Trumpet C, Trumpet C muted, Tenor Trombone, Bass Trombone, Tenor Trombone mute A, Tuba, Contrabass Tuba, Tuba muted.

Vienna Choir (fortunately the chorus is wordless throughout)

Solo Violin, Orchestral Violins, Orchestral Violas, Orchestral Celli, Orchestral Bassi, Chamber violins, Chamber Violas, Chamber Celli, Chamber Bassi, Harp 1

Bosendorfer Imperial, KH Organ, Celesta, Glockenspiel, Xylophone, Marimba, Gongs

Timpani A, Bass Drum, Snare Drums a4, Field Drum A, Castanets, Tambourines A-D, Triangles A-D, Cymbal A, Cymbal D, Tam - Series A+B.

The total loaded in RAM is 30GBs. I have 145 channels across 22 VEs. I use the Vienna Konzerthaus GrosserSal Stage with two microphones.

I'm lucky to have a monster PC which copes easily. Even at full pelt CPU usage doesn't get above 60% and CPU temperature just over 50 degrees.

Sorabji wrote a few other orchestral works and 11 piano concertos. The only orchestral piece performed live is his 5th Piano concerto which is for failry normal forces and is available on CD. It's a much earlier work than the 'Jami' Symphony and less approachable (he mellowed with age).

There is one even bigger work his 'Messa Alta Sinfonica' possible 30 minutes longer, similar orchestral and choral forces but also 8 vocal soloists.

I've been plugging away for years on a realisation of Sorabji's 2nd Symphony 'Jami' and have reached a milestone at the completion of the whole of the 3rd movement. This movement is a continuous stretch of music lasting just over 2 hours. The whole of the symphony is likely to come in at over 4.5 hours.

The performance is created using Sibelius and the symphonic cube with VEpro 6 and MIR, no keyboard just a plethora of midi instructions and bastardisation of the notation to make it sound half decent.

The orchestration is six of each wind, 8, 6, 4, 2 brass, a double size string section able to split into 30 parts, two sets of timpani, fairly standard tuned and untuned percussion, 2 harps, celesta, piano and organ and as massive a chorus as you can get able to split into 32 parts. There is also a Baritone solo in the last movement but he doesn't appear in the 3rd.

[complete performance now available - https://youtu.be/WEgNozDWagU ]

You can also read some disriptionof the music on my blog should you be so inclined.

I will release the whole movement over the next few months but realise that is a lot for most people to chew.

The music is often beautiful and wonderous and always extraordinary.

Constructive criticism of the production welcome.

If your curiosity about Sorabji has been tickled you can visit his official website here.

What midi message do I use in sibelius to turn an instruments (percussion) release sample on and off?

I installed the update for VEPro6 and incurred frequent and lengthy dropouts from various instruments. I uninstalled and reinstalled but still the same thing so I have rolled back to earlier version and it's working fine.

What gives?

I know you can embed midi data in a score to adjust individual instruments master volume (usually CC7). I have full orchestra and chorus. 120 individual instruments (staves) grouped into folders for each main group (wood wind, brass etc etc) and then sub folders for each sub group (flutes, oboes, sopranos, chamber violins etc etc). I can adjust the master volume of the folders/subfolders in VEpro but can I embed midi data in the score to adjust the folder/sub-folder volume levels during performance/playback?

The optimizing manual says for orchestral strings to use instriments with "[VSL Orchestral Strings]" at the end.

My list of available instruments only includes this option for Violin 1 and not Violin 2, Viola, Cellos or Doublebasses!

What gives?

Hi Andi,

I shall try to do a clean reinstall of the roompacks. I have two roompacks the Vienna Konzerthaus and the Studios & Soundstages. In my software installer area I have these:

The date for these is 2013 are these the correct files to download?

When I have tried this before I have been getting this message:

but I have never received an activation code for the new licence.

The only license in my eL c is:

you said the installation path is C:\ProgramData\VSL\Vienna MIR - did you mean C:\Program Files\VSL\Vienna MIR? My C drive doesn't have a ProgramData folder:

My program Files folder has these subfolders:

Thanks

Hi Andi, sorry yes things had progressed but are still not resolved. But I'll try some more and come back if I need to.

.

Thanks bbelius, my set up is such that I don't need to record any live instruments I just use the PC to create virtual performances with VSL and sibelius. The good thing about the M-audio deltaphile 2496 was that it ws so cheap. Would you alter your recommendations?

would a creative soundblaster card work with VSL OK?

when i built my last PC i used an M-audio Delta Audiophile 2496 PCIe sound card. They're not made any more what should I be using now?

When using Cymbals in a VI Pro, how do I assign a CC controller number to the release slider on the advanced perform tab. If you right click on it it flashes which I think means you can assign a controller from a midi keyboard. But how do I assign a controller when just using Sibelius which you can of course do for any slider function on the basic page.

Thanks

I have 24 instruments in two instances of  Ve Pro the 2nd being VE Pro event input. There are 16 instruments in the first and 8 in the second. I have set up the score and playback confiuration carefully and in accordence with the Optimizing playback guide. The whole of the 1st VE Pro react properly. The 1st three insturments in the 2nd VE Pro event input react correctly but bizzarly the 4th to 9th instruments do not. They do not react to any dynamic or articualtion changes. I've tried everything I can think of but to no avail. It  is an all brass arrangement. The 1st VE Pro has 1 x piccolo trumpet, 9 x cornets, 1 x flugel horn, 3 x triple horns and 2 x wagner tubas. The 1st 3 instruments in the VE Pro event input are two tenor trombones and a bass trombone, they react properly. The next 6 instruments that are not reacting are 2 x euphoniums and 4 x tubas. I have followed the optimizing guide carefully and can't resolve this. It seems strange that 3 intruments in one instance would react OK but 6 in the same instance don't! Any ideas?

I have set up a wind quintet. I am using VSL house library I am using the VE woodwinds and brass Sound set and I am using the sibelius woodwind+brass 2.6 woodwinds 1 and brass 1 extended presets. The flute, oboe clarinet and horn all react as expected to legato, sfz, flutter etc but the bassoon does not. The legato plays staccato, flutter plays sus no vib, sfz plays performance legato.

What gives?

I've succesfully downloaded, registered and installed the new Clarinet. I've run the directory manager which shows it with all my other instrument although why it puts it in the piccolo folder I don't know. But when I open a VI it doesn't appear in the list of instruments.

I haven't been able to resolve this problem. I am still getting rhythmic inaccuracies in playback which vary from one playback to another.

Listen to this 15 second excerpt and here's the score.

And this short extract and its score.

I've messed about with the playback options. I've tried changing the buffer size.

Andy or anyone else any suggestions?

I'm sure I've asked this question before but can't find it.

I'm getting rhythmic jitters in playback. I've gone into performance and set Espressivo and rubato to senza and Rhythmic feel to straight but I'm still getting random innacuracies notes stumbling over each other. It sounds very human but I do want it absolutely straight.

Yes, sorry not well explained. I need 3 seperate VEPro instances to cope with all the string staves. Because I have four string collections "Appassionata" "Orchestral" "Chamber" and "Solo" I have 24 different "Program Names" I can assign to each channel. So irrespective of what instrument in the score is using which stave I will simply go though all the channels and assign all 24 prgramme names in order and then repeat after 24 until I have assigned all channels. So String VRPro1 starts "Solo Violin" for channel 1, "Solo Viola" for channel 2, "Solo Cello" for channel 3 etc. In String VEPRO2 the first channel would be "Appassionata Violins" because that is the 17th programme name in my list and so on. Then I manually go through the Sibelius mixer and assign each string stave in order in the score to each VEPro and channel in order. So if the 12th string stave in the score is solo violin 12 that will be assigned to the 12th Channel in VEPRo 1 which has the Programme Name "Chamber Doublebasses".

The point is if you have lots of instruments with the same name make sure they all have different Programme names and no two channels in any VEPro instance has the same Programme name.

Not all projects are as extreme as mine though.

Indeed - when you have multiple instruments of the same type such as my current project which has 32 violin staves, 8 viola, 8 cello and 8 doublebass across 6 VEP instances the only thing to do is from the start set up your configuration to cycle through the complete set of programme names/sound IDs (24 in my case as I don't have divisi strings) so that there is only ever one of each kind in each VEP instance. It's time consuming at the start but less time consuming that trying to sort out the mess after the event if you let Sibelius do it's own thing. Same for the woodwing and brass as well.

I've run up a 19 minute piece by Sorabji. Called Ostinato it is the fifth movement of his Toccata Seconda a theme with 49 variations. It's made using sibelius and the Imperial Bosendorfer. You can listen to the mp3 here and if you would like to download the flac and read a bit more about it you can do so here where you can also access the first four movements if you get terribly interested.

Thanks for listening.

The man is as fascinating as his music and I should pass on that the long awaited magnum opus on his life and work by Professor Marc-André Roberge has been made available online for free. Yes, for free! check it out here.