In August 1916 Busoni had finished composing the one-act opera Arlecchino, but it needed a companion work to provide a full evening's entertainment.

[5][6][7] Antony Beaumont has suggested that Busoni's decision to compose incidental music for Carlo Gozzi's play may have been prompted by the impending centennial (in 1906) of the playwright's death.

[10] [discuss] Busoni prepared some sketches of incidental music for Gozzi's Chinese fable as early as 1904,[11] but did not apply himself exclusively to the task until the summer of 1905, when he remained alone in Berlin, while his wife Gerda and the children were away in Godinne, Belgium.

[6][12] During this period of concentrated work, from June to the middle of August, he went more or less chronologically through the play, composing music for those places where Gozzi explicitly called for it and also wherever his theatrical instincts suggested it could enhance the drama.

[6] The themes and melodies Busoni chose for the Turandot music were based solely on oriental motifs of Chinese, but also Persian, Turkish, and Indian origin.

[13] Beaumont shows how almost all the thematic material in the Turandot music is drawn from Volume I of Ambros' Geschichte der Musik.

[16] Some of the music in the manuscripts is also designed for melodramas to be used with the play: each of the three riddles is preceded by enigmatic brass chords; initially Kalaf's replies were meant to be sung, although Busoni eventually dropped this idea.

Babbo [Daddy] will be pleased to hear that I have made a new attempt at a theatre work, but in an unconventional way; not with an opera but with descriptive music for a spoken drama.

Nothing would be more natural than to attempt to put on a play by an Italian writer which has by now become a classic (and yet, because it has been forgotten, remains a novelty), but unfortunately the state of affairs in our country gives no cause for hope.

For the production one would require not only an élite theatrical company but also great opulence and excellent taste in the design of costumes and scenery and, furthermore, a first rate orchestra.

L'amore delle tre melarance [The Love of Three Oranges], L'augellin Belverde [The Green Bird] and others were greatly in vogue in rococo times, but then they vanished without trace.

I have chosen the tale of the cruel, seductive Chinese princess (or Persian, who knows) Turandot, who demands of her suitors the solutions of three riddles, at the risk of their losing their heads if they fail.

[12] Gustav Mahler conducted Busoni's Turandot Suite with the New York Philharmonic in two concerts at Carnegie Hall on 10 and 11 March 1910.

[21][discuss] Busoni was keen to have the incidental music performed along with Gozzi's play as he had originally conceived, and by early October 1906 at the latest had approached the actor-director Max Reinhardt about a production.

Busoni refused to allow changes to the score: the required 60-piece orchestra, unusually large for a play, inflated the prospective budget enormously and immediately became a major problem.

[discuss] He had also been jointly developing an aeroplane with his brother Hans from late 1904 onwards, and in 1910 Vollmöller flew their No.4 prototype a record 150 km non-stop from Canstatt (now Stuttgart) to Lake Constance.

[28] From February 1906 to October 1911 he composed his first opera, Die Brautwahl ("The Bridal Quest", BV 258), an enormously lengthy and ambitious "musical-fantastic comedy" based on a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann.

[30] His compositional growth during the intervening years is revealed in the new piece: Antony Beaumont describes the opening half as "one of the finest passages in all of the Turandot music.

"[4] Vollmöller's Turandot with Busoni's music was finally first performed at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, on 27 October 1911, with a very expensive orchestra conducted by Oskar Fried.

[citation needed] Theatrical reviews of the production were mixed, one (justifiable) criticism being that the music from a 60-piece orchestra did not so much highlight as paint over the action.

[25] Turandot (with Stern's scenery and costumes, and Fried conducting) opened on 8 January 1913 at the St James's Theatre, London.

Johan Wijsman (the dedicatee of the Berceuse, BV 252), had made an unauthorised reduced version of Busoni's score for a 20-piece theatre orchestra.

Draber, 21 Jan 1913, he wrote: St. Saëns (and Rimsky K.) also contributed to the Turandot music (because mine was insufficient) - which was played in Varieté style by a 20-piece orchestra.