ABSTRACT
Thirty-eight of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji's letters to Heseltine are in the British Library, and 27 of these were written between October 1913 and August 1916. The inaccurate typing in Sorabji's letters to the author has been corrected without comment, and the punctuation of these letters has been systematically normalized. Aleksandr Skryabin was the composer Sorabji admired most, at least up through 1917 or 1918. The techniques Sorabji employed were largely mechanical and have been well understood, in the East and the West, for thousands of years. Sorabji's most dramatic public association with Heseltine occurred within the context of a rancorous and largely private debate with Ernest Newman. Heseltine's fate can be known with great exactness, if it is imagined in terms that apply to Sorabji: in Tantric Buddhism, yogic manipulations have clearly defined alchemical concomitants. Something like the practicum of Tantric Buddhism was almost as important a factor in Sorabji's life as musical composition, with which it was closely linked.
