Elegies (German: Elegien), BV 249, by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni is a set of solo piano pieces which can be played as a cycle or separately.
The harmonic language of the Elegies is extended, with the pedal used audaciously to blend disparate tones: unrelated triads are overlapped and juxtaposed; chords are constructed from intervals other than thirds; unusual and highly chromatic scales and runs, often differing from the surrounding harmonies, are extensively employed and varied; melodies, and solitary "sighs," moving by whole and half steps, magnify these disorienting effects.
"[7] Even the backward-looking pieces based on previously published works (the tarantella and neapolitan song from the Piano Concerto, and Frauengemach and Die Nächtlichen from the Turandot Suite) have been changed to reflect his new outlook.
"Every new composition would be avidly awaited, on the one hand by the blood-lusty opponents of the new, on the other by those eager to show themselves up-to-date.
August Spamuth's review in Signale für die musikalische Welt is representative: [Busoni] conducts, composes, agitates etc.
He is something of a born opposer of the Establishment and when that for which he strives with all his power, a new aesthetic of music, is established and recognized, Busoni will become its irreconcilable opponent.... Busoni's six elegies were a veritable source of dismay, with the exception of the fourth, which bears the title "Turandots Frauengemach."
He who knew something of Busoni's strivings for a new harmonic system and of his belief that he has already achieved new tonalities through curiously built scales, could certainly perceive a structural logic and an aesthetically ordered system of sound deployment in these pieces; but novelty seekers will have found as little "music" here as the normal, naïve listener ... No, no and no again, these were not the inspirations of a man ahead of his time, these were simply calculations.... What a weird creature, for instance, is the "waltz" entitled "Die Nächtlichen."