Busoni worked on the Klavierübung at various times during the last seven years of his life, and with it, he hoped to pass on his accumulated knowledge of keyboard technique.

The Klavierübung is not a comprehensive or systematic graduated course of study, nor is it intended for beginning or intermediate students.

Instead it assumes the student has mastered standard piano technique and has reached a virtuoso level.

Busoni proceeds by adding refinements, short cuts, and unusual solutions for pianistic problems encountered in a performing artist's repertoire.

[1] Edward J. Dent, author of the first definitive biography of Busoni, had this to say about the exercises and studies in the Klavierübung: "...they are all extraordinarily interesting and stimulating.

They are interesting too as helping to elucidate some of Busoni's other compositions, for the studies show how certain of his harmonic devices grew out of purely pianistic principles based on definite positions of the hands on the keyboard.

Each tutorial begins with exercises and moves on to short original pieces and adaptions or transcriptions of excerpts from the repertory.

For instance, the first tutorial starts with traditional scales (although the fingerings are unorthodox), then adds two excerpts which require power and speed: the first is from Liszt's Totentanz, and the second is based on two bars in Busoni's "Turandots Frauengemach" [Turandot's Bedchamber] (Book 4 from Elegien, BV 249).

This is followed by two original compositions: a 16-bar "Tempo di Valse" and a 33-bar "Preludio," both of which emphasize legato scales at moderate speed.

Busoni frequently lists at the bottom one or more pieces from the repertoire as examples (in German: Beispiele) suitable for further study.

"[5] Because of distractions, including ill health, and other concerns, not least being the work on his lifelong masterpiece, the opera Doktor Faust (unfinished at the time of his death in 1924), many planned components of the Klavierübung were delayed or never fully realized.

A "Chromaticon" for Part 4, mentioned in a footnote to the foreword, had to be abandoned, and was hurriedly replaced with his edition of Eight Etudes by Cramer (BV B 53) first published in 1897.

[6] From December 1923 to January 1924 Busoni did manage to reorganize and enrich the material for a second edition of 284 pages.

Entitled Klavierübung in zehn Büchern [Piano Tutorial in Ten Books], it was published posthumously in 1925 as Volume VIII of the Bach-Busoni Edition.

Fortunately, it is now available online (see, for example, this page at the International Music Score Library Project).

Sieben kurze Stücke zur Pflege des polyphonen Spiels (score)