In my extensive research of that last posting I had to look up ‘Farsi’, to make sure I wasn’t confusing it with ‘Parsi‘. On the way I found the wonderful site farsijoke.com, for all the Farsi jokes your funnybone can handle. WARNING: looking at this site may break your monitor, or your brain.
I only remembered Parsi because it was the religion of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988)*, the loony British* composer of the notorious Opus Clavicembalisticum – a four-and-half hour long work for piano of ridiculous difficulty – and other works of similar dimension and complexity. Many passages of his keyboard music (for two hands) require the performer to read and play four, five or even, in one case, seven staves at a time.
In the 1930s he withdrew his music from publication, dismayed by musicians’ inability to play it accurately, and guaranteeing his obscurity, albeit with a growing cult following. He resented people making superficial inquiries about himself or his music, regarding them as intrusions on his work. He would also get very cross if you called him Leon Dudley**. On the other hand it is unlikely he would deign to meet you, given that he seldom left his castle in Dorset, with its sign on the gate:
Visitors Unwelcome.
Roman Catholic Nuns in Full Habit May Enter Without An Appointment.
* “TO THOSE WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, IF ANY, AND OTHERS WHO MIND ANYBODY’S BUSINESS BUT THEIR OWN. Dates and places of birth relating to myself given in various works of reference are invariably false.”
** “Certain lexographical canaille, one egregious and notorious specimen particularly, enraged at my complete success in defeating and frustrating their impudent impertinent and presumptuous nosings and pryings into what doesn’t concern them, and actuated, no doubt, by the mean malice of the base-born for their betters, have thought, as they would say, to take it out of me by suggesting that my name isn’t really my name.”
