Sorabji Resource Site: Web Sites Devoted to Sorabji

Websites Devoted to Sorabji

This page lists, in chronological order of creation, the various websites (past and present) devoted to Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji and to information and discussion about his life and works. It will serve to document the history of how the web was used by a group of pioneers as a medium for the discovery of his music.

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Dates	Name	Comments
Dates	Name	Comments
1996-	Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji	This site was created in February 1996 by Erica Schulman Kane, a violist with a PhD in physics from Columbia University (1994). Although it has not been updated since 2006 (if not before), the site has been hosted on the server of McGill University (Montréal) since its inception thanks to Joel Wapnick, now professor emeritus of music education at the Schulich School of Music at McGill (and also a world champion in Scrabble™), who became interested in Sorabji’s music after attending Marc-André Roberge’s lecture “Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji: Crackpot or Genius? — A Lecture on the sui generis Composer” (McGill University, Faculty of Music, 17 March 1983).
2001-10-19	Yahoo! Discussion Group (link to the Wayback Machine for announcement of closure)	Founded on 17 February 2001 by Erica Schulman Kane, this discussion group only became active on 6 August 2001, when Marc-André Roberge, having learning from Schulman that she had not yet advertised the creation of the site, posted the first message and sent an invitation to join to those Sorabjians whose email addresses he knew. As of 21 October 2019, the group had 319 members, but there had been no activity since November 2014. In 2019 the company closed the groups and officially shut down the site on 15 December 2020, with all content deleted are no longer accessible.
2006-2007	Sorabji Forum	The Sorabji Forum <http://sorabji.ath.cx/> was founded on 21 April 2006 by Ryan Hayes (also known as “ryguillian”), from Chicago. Due to technical problems on the server, the site was taken down in early 2007 and has never been reactivated. It was replaced by a Sorabji Forum hosted by the Sorabji Archive (see below).
2006-	Sorabji Archive, The	The creation of the Sorabji Archive’s website was announced on 26 July 2006 on MusicWeb (message no longer available) and on 7 August 2006 on Music & Vision. Maintained by Vasilios Tsokis (media system designer), Frazer Jarvis (lecturer in the Department of Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield), and John Wagstaffe, it provides detailed information on Sorabji’s works, their editions and their performances. There are also pages devoted to the works of Marc-André Hamelin and Alistair Hinton, which are also available from the Archive.
2007-	Sorabji Forum, The	The Sorabji Forum was established on 3 February 2007, with Alistair Hinton (curator/founder of the Sorabji Archive), Vasilios Tsokis, and Frazer Jarvis as administrators. It replaced Ryan Hayes’s Sorabji Forum, which was briefly active in 2006. It comprises 175 members as of 12 June 2024. Being hosted by the Sorabji Archive, it can be considered the official Sorabji website. After an interruption of a few months resulting from a virus attack in January 2011, the Forum resumed its activities on 15 June.
2008-	Sorabji Organ Project, The (website no longer active; <http://www.sorabji-organ.org/>)	The Sorabji Organ Project was announced on 22 April 2008. Its purpose was to document Kevin Bowyer’s work on the edition and performance of Sorabji’s three organ symphonies.
2009-	Opus Archimagicum	The website Opus Archimagicum, by the pianist Tellef Johnson, was launched on 30 November 2009. It is dedicated to information on the Sonata V (Opus archimagicum) (1934-35; 336 pp.) and essays on various related topics. A preliminary description of its contents, announcing recordings of excerpts, was posted on the Sorabji Forum on 6 November 2009. The website was down for an extended period of time from January 2013 at the latest; it was backline online as of October 2018.
2010-08-14	Sorabji Resource Site	The Sorabji Resource Site is the creation of Marc-André Roberge, who began work on it on 17 March 2008. Its purpose is to make available in the form of lists, compilations, tables, analytical charts, links, etc., much of the material that he has collected since he began working seriously on Sorabji in 1992. The launch of the website was announced on the Sorabji Forum on 11 August 2010.
2013-11-29	Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (Facebook)	This Facebook page is the work of Sean Vaughn Owen, the author of the remarkable dissertation entitled “Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji: An Oral Biography” (University of Southampton, 2006). It is described as being “dedicated to the life, music and writings of the remarkable Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988)”. It consists of short vignettes (paragraphs of information, quotations, thoughts, etc., by or about Sorabji), with illustrations (photographs, book covers, record jackets, sample pages of scores, etc.).