While Opus Clavicembalisticum gets a lot of attention for being the most notoriously difficult work in the piano literature, people haven’t realized that, post 1930, Sorabji had other works that dwarfed its size and ambition sitting in manuscript copy. Efforts by the Sorabji Archive to distribute Sorabji’s music has helped the few adventurous to glean insight into what other behemoths the composer left behind, but the sheer impenetrability of the manuscripts have made this difficult.

Now newly type-set, Opus Archimagicum can clearly call its fame as one of Sorabji’s largest and most forbidding compositions, but is it better than the O.C.?

That is entirely subjective, but a side-by-side comparison of both works’ internal key elements may be of interest here.

Sorabji continued the juxtaposition of contrasting movements in a number of other large works over the next forty years with varying results. Of particular interest is the Sixth Piano Symphony, which is the only other large-scale multi-movement work in three distinct parts that comes close to the proportional balance of form found in the Opus Archimagicum.