Ferruccio Busoni

His international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary figures of his time, and he was a sought-after keyboard instructor and a teacher of composition.

Ferruccio Dante Michelangiolo Benvenuto Busoni[i] was born on 1 April 1866 in the Tuscan town of Empoli, the only child of two professional musicians, Ferdinando, a clarinettist, and Anna (née Weiss), a pianist.

In an autobiographical note he comments "My father knew little about the pianoforte and was erratic in rhythm, so he made up for these shortcomings with an indescribable combination of energy, severity and pedantry.

"[2] Busoni made his public debut as a pianist in a concert with his parents at the Schiller-Verein in Trieste on 24 November 1873 playing the first movement of Mozart's Sonata in C major, and pieces by Schumann and Clementi.

"[11] In 1888, the musicologist Hugo Riemann recommended Busoni to Martin Wegelius, director of the Institute of Music at Helsingfors (now Helsinki, Finland, then part of the Russian Empire), for the vacant position of advanced piano instructor.

The Musical Times reported that he "commenced in a manner to irritate the genuine amateurs [i.e. music-lovers] by playing a ridiculous travesty of one of Bach's masterly Organ Preludes and Fugues, but he made amends by an interpretation of Chopin's Studies (Op.

[34] In Paris, the critic Arthur Dandelot commented "this artist has certainly great qualities of technique and charm", but strongly objected to his addition of chromatic passages to parts of Liszt's St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots.

[35] Busoni's international reputation rose swiftly, and he frequently performed in Berlin and other European capitals and regional centres (including Manchester, Birmingham, Marseilles, Florence, and many German and Austrian cities) throughout this period, as well as returning to America for four visits between 1904 and 1915.

[38] Busoni's performing commitments somewhat stifled his creative capacity during this period: in 1896 he wrote "I have great success as a pianist, the composer I conceal for the present.

[41] A major project undertaken at this time was the opera Die Brautwahl, based on a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann, first performed (to a lukewarm reception) in Berlin in 1912.

[44] The series, which was held at the Beethovensaal (Beethoven Hall), included German premieres of music by Edward Elgar, Sibelius, César Franck, Claude Debussy, Vincent d'Indy, Carl Nielsen and Béla Bartók.

The concerts also included premieres of some of Busoni's own works of the period, among them, in 1904, the Piano Concerto, in which he was the soloist under conductor Karl Muck; in 1905, his Turandot Suite, and, in 1907, his Comedy Overture.

In 1913 Busoni arranged at his own apartment a private performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire which was attended by, amongst others, Willem Mengelberg, Edgard Varèse, and Artur Schnabel.

The piece is based on melodies and rhythms from various American Indian tribes; Busoni derived them from a book he had received from his former pupil, the ethnomusicologist Natalie Curtis Burlin during his 1910 tour of the US.

[62] An expanded re-issue of Busoni's 1907 work A New Esthetic of Music let to a virulent counter-attack from the German composer Hans Pfitzner and an extended war of words.

[63] Busoni continued to experiment with microtones: in America he had obtained some harmonium reeds tuned in third-tones, and he claimed that he "had worked out the theory of a system of thirds of tones in two rows, each separated from each other by a semitone".

[64] Although he met with many other artistic personalities also based in Switzerland during the war (including Stefan Zweig, who noted his extensive drinking, and James Joyce),[65] Busoni soon found his circumstances limiting.

[67] When Busoni's former pupil Leo Kestenberg, by then an official at the Ministry of Culture in the German Weimar Republic, invited him to return to Germany with the promise of a teaching post and productions of his operas, he was very glad to take the opportunity.

[70] Among his composition pupils in Berlin were Kurt Weill, Wladimir Vogel, and Robert Blum, and during these last years Busoni also had contact with Varèse, Stravinsky, the conductor Hermann Scherchen, and others.

"[75] Sir Henry Wood was surprised to hear Busoni playing, with two hands in double octaves, passages in a Mozart concerto written as single notes.

)[80] The Kindermann Busoni Verzeichnis lists over 200 compositions in the period to 1900, which are met with very rarely in the contemporary repertoire or in recording, mostly featuring piano, either as solo instrument or accompanying others, but also including some works for chamber ensemble and some for orchestra, amongst them two large-scale suites and a violin concerto.

[81] Antony Beaumont notes that Busoni wrote virtually no chamber music after 1898 and no songs between 1886 and 1918, commenting that this was "part of the process of freeing himself from his Leipzig background ... [evoking] worlds of middle-class respectability in which he was not at home, and [in which] the shadows of Schumann, Brahms and Wolf loomed too large.

"[82] The first decade of the 20th century is described by Brendel as being for Busoni "a creative pause" after which he "finally gained an artistic profile of his own" as opposed to the "easy routine which had kept his entire earlier production on the tracks of eclecticism".

[91] These transcriptions go beyond literal reproduction of the music for piano and often involve substantial recreation, although never straying from the original rhythmic outlines, melody notes and harmony.

The Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music), first published in 1907, set out the principles underlying his performances and his mature compositions.

A collection of reflections which are "the outcome of convictions long held and slowly matured", the Sketch asserts that "The spirit of an artwork ... remains[s] unchanged in value through changing years" but its form, manner of expression, and the conventions of the era when it was created, "are transient and age rapidly".

[105] Writing in 1917, Hugo Leichtentritt described Busoni's mature style as having elements in common with those of Sibelius, Debussy, Alexander Scriabin, and Schoenberg, noting in particular his movement away from traditional major and minor scales towards atonality.

"[110] In the last seven years of his life Busoni worked sporadically on his Klavierübung, a compilation of exercises, transcriptions, and original compositions of his own, with which he hoped to pass on his accumulated knowledge of keyboard technique.

[113] Busoni also made keyboard transcriptions of works by Mozart, Franz Schubert, Niels Gade and others in the period 1886–1891 for the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel.

"[123] Helmut Wirth has written that Busoni's "ambivalent nature, striving to reconcile tradition with innovation, his gifts as a composer and the profundity of his theoretical writings make [him] one of the most interesting figures in the history of 20th-century music.