Fruits of Sorabji's Indian summer: ‘Il tessuto d'arabeschi’ and ‘Fantasiettina atematica’

The Anglo-Indian composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988) is best known for his virtuosic, highly decorative and complex style of piano music and vast post-Romantic scale, as typified by his magnum opus, Opus Clavicembalisticum. In his last creative period (post-1973), however, he composed a number of more concise works which depart from the idiom of the piano. This article examines two of these works, Il tessuto d'arabeschi (1979) for flute and string quartet, and Fantasiettina Atematica (1981) for wind trio. It looks primarily at the place of these two works in Sorabji's oeuvre as a whole, but also the wider issues of Sorabji's compositional approach and musical attitudes in later life.