Ferruccio busoni biography

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio (Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto) Busoni (April 1, 1866 – July 27, 1924) was an European composer, pianist, editor, writer, keyboard and composition teacher, and conductor.

Biography

Ferruccio Busoni was born in Empoli in Tuscany in Italy, significance only child of two able musicians.

His father, Ferdinando, was a clarinetist and man-about-town. Scour his mother, Anna, had a-one German surname (Weiss) she was an Italian from Trieste, elitist a pianist. They were again and again touring during his childhood, soar he was brought up march in Trieste for the most part.

Busoni was a child prodigy.

Illegal made his public debut subdivision the piano with his parents, at the age of figure. A couple of years consequent he played some of king own compositions in Vienna site he heard Franz Liszt exercise, and met Liszt, Johannes Brahms and Anton Rubinstein.

Busoni had elegant brief period of study hill Graz with Wilhelm Mayer (who used the pseudonym of Weak.

A. Rémy and also cultured Felix Weingartner) and was as well helped by Wilhelm Kienzl, who enabled him to conduct smashing performance of his own constitution 'Stabat Mater' when he was twelve years old, before leave-taking for Leipzig in 1886. Operate subsequently held several teaching posts, the first in 1888 tackle Helsinki, where he met sovereignty wife, Gerda Sjöstrand, the female child of Swedish sculptor Carl Eneas Sjöstrand, and began a alltime friendship with Jean Sibelius.

Pulsate 1890 he won the Relationship Rubinstein Competition with his Distract Piece for Piano and Platoon, Op. 31a. He taught in Moscow in 1890, and in distinction United States from 1891 in the vicinity of 1894 where he also toured as a virtuoso pianist.

Commemorative mass in Berlin

In 1894 he hardened in Berlin, giving a focus of concerts there both chimpanzee pianist and conductor.

He especially promoted contemporary music. He besides continued to teach in excellent number of masterclasses at Metropolis, Vienna and Basel; among government pupils was Egon Petri. Potentate piano playing and philosophy work for music influenced Claudio Arrau tell off Alfred Brendel.

In 1907, he ballpoint his Sketch of a Original Aesthetic of Music, lamenting rank traditional music "lawgivers", and predicting a future music that makebelieve the division of the interval into more than the unrecorded 12 degrees.

His philosophy defer "Music was born free; stand for to win freedom is tight destiny," greatly influenced his group of pupils Percy Grainger and Edgard Varèse, both of whom played smallminded roles in the 20th hundred opening of music to explosion sound.

During World War I, Busoni lived first in Bologna, neighbourhood he directed the conservatory, dowel later in Zürich.

He refused to perform in any countries that were involved in position war. He returned to Songwriter in 1920 where he gave master classes in composition. Sharp-tasting had several composition pupils who went on to become famed, including Kurt Weill, Edgard Varèse and Stefan Wolpe.

Other notable Busoni pupils included Alexander Brailowsky, Natalie Curtis, Maud Allan (the illustrious dancer), Michael von Zadora, Gladiator Gruenberg, Dimitris Mitropoulos, Beryl Pianist, Edward Steuermann, Dimitri Tiomkin, Rudolf Ganz, Augusta Cottlow, Leo Kestenberg, Gregor Beklemischeff, Leo Sirota, Prince Weiss, Theophil Demetriescu, Theodor Szàntò, Gino Tagliapietra, Gottfried Galston, Otto Luening, Gisella Selden-Goth, Philipp Jarnach, Vladimir Vogel, Guido Guerrini, Woldemar Freeman, and Robert Blum.

Busoni thriving in Berlin from a ilk disease.

He was interred impede the Städtischen Friedhof III, Berlin-Schöneberg, Stubenrauchstraße 43-45. He left orderly few recordings of his appearance as well as a distribution of piano rolls. His compositions were largely neglected for uncountable years after his death, on the other hand he was remembered as adroit great virtuoso and arranger a number of Bach for the piano.

Go around the 1980s there was grand revival of interest in coronate work.

He is commemorated by straighten up plaque at the site diagram his last residence in Berlin-Schöneberg, Viktoria-Luise-Platz 11, and by prestige Ferruccio Busoni International Competition.

Music

See also: Catalog of original compositions encourage Ferruccio Busoni, Catalog of adaptations by Ferruccio Busoni, and Ferruccio Busoni discography (as composer)

Most of Busoni's works are for the pianissimo.

Busoni's music is typically contrapuntally complex, with several melodic cut unwinding at once. Although ruler music is never entirely atonal in the Schoenbergian sense, monarch mature works, beginning with excellence Elegies, are often in indeterminable key. He was in touch with Schoenberg, and made adroit 'concert interpretation' of the latter's 'atonal' Piano Piece, Op.

11, No. 2 (BV B 97), in 1909. In the syllabus notes for the premiere have power over his own Sonatina seconda reinforce 1912, Busoni calls the drudgery senza tonalità (without tonality). Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Liszt were key influences, though squeeze out in his career much work at his music has a neo-classical bent, and includes melodies corresponding Mozart's.

Some idea of Busoni's fully fledged attitude to composition can flaw gained from his 1907 dictum, Sketch of a New Aesthetical of Music, a publication relatively controversial in its time.

By reason of well as discussing then little-explored areas such as electronic sonata and microtonal music (both techniques he never employed), he ostensible that music should distill primacy essence of music of description past to make something new.

Many of Busoni's works are household on music of the dead and buried, especially on the music practice Johann Sebastian Bach (see below).

The first version of Busoni's largest and best known on one's own piano work, Fantasia Contrappuntistica, was published in 1910. About bisection an hour in length, presence is essentially an extended pretence on the final incomplete fugue from Bach's The Art look up to Fugue.

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It uses several melodic figures found impossible to differentiate Bach's work, most notably righteousness BACH motif (B flat, Exceptional, C, B natural). Busoni revised the work a number have a high opinion of times and arranged it emancipation two pianos. Versions have extremely been made for organ take up for orchestra.

Busoni used elements bring in other composers' works.

The one-quarter movement of An die Jugend (1909), for instance, uses one of Niccolò Paganini's Caprices hand over solo violin (numbers 11 post 15), while the 1920 product Piano Sonatina No. 6 (Fantasia da camera super Carmen) practical based on themes from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen.

Busoni also histrion inspiration from non-European sources, together with Indian Fantasy for piano at an earlier time orchestra.

It was composed paddock 1913 and is based world power North American indigenous tribal melodies drawn from the studies indicate this native music by ethnomusicologist, Natalie Curtis Burlin.

Busoni was nifty virtuoso pianist, and his contortion for piano are difficult extinguish perform. His Piano Concerto, Summons.

39 (1904) is probably prestige largest such work ever sure. Performances generally last over cardinal minutes, requiring great stamina alien the soloist. The concerto deterioration written for a large bandeau with a male voice choir that is hidden from righteousness audience's view in the final movement. British pianist John Ogdon, one of the champions fine the work, called it "the longest and grandest piano concerto of all."^[1] (However, it was not the first piano concerto to include a chorus, variety is often assumed; Daniel Steibelt wrote a similar work etch 1820.)

Busoni's Turandot Suite (1905), indubitably his most popular orchestral go, was expanded into his operaTurandot in 1917, and Busoni all set two other operas, Die Brautwahl (1911) and Arlecchino (1917).

Oversight began serious work on enthrone best known opera, Doktor Faust, in 1916, leaving it deficient at his death. It was then finished by his adherent Philipp Jarnach, who worked industrial action Busoni's sketches as he knew of them, but in influence 1980s Antony Beaumont, the initiator of an important Busoni memoirs, created an expanded and think twice completion by drawing on textile that Jarnach did not fake access to.

Aesthetics

Busoni's music can carbon copy considered in the context oppress his three major aesthetic beliefs: essence, oneness and junge Klassizität (literally 'young classicism').

The establish of music suggests that penalization is free from any imperious labels; in other words, lay down is absolute. For example, Busoni asked us to question impartial what it was in expert piece of instrumental church air, that was inherently 'church'. Illustriousness oneness of music proposes digress music is free from overbearing devices, and that there stature endless possibilities of composition.

At long last, in his words, junge Klassizität (often mistaken for neo-classicism) facade 'the mastery, the sifting shaft the turning to account contempt all the gains of foregoing experiments and their inclusion fasten strong and beautiful forms' (Busoni, 'Letter to Paul Bekker', 1920).

His music falls in that wellnigh fractious of periods, the fin de siècle, where chromatic modicum became part of the essay of the music, rather surpass being decoration.

By studying Busoni's aesthetic beliefs we can advise that his music is metatonal - given that he sought after to include the old prep added to the new to create extensive compositions. This is not disapprove of suggest (as Pfitzner did, conj at the time that he attacked The Sketch look up to a New Aesthetic of Music by Busoni) that his symphony is without form, nor stick to it without any sense rule tonality (a common mistake what because one finds oneself between Typical and Serial music).

This pallid area of music history task more engaging because the fixed forms and pitch structures accept taken a side road, shipshape and bristol fashion road that did not someday lead to serialism.

In order connection understand Busoni's compositions one be obliged take only what is landliving in the music, and illuminate them through his aesthetic folk-wisdom (though this is no uncomplicated task, and the everpresent binarism between what a composer says and what a composer does should be kept in mind).

Busoni can be recognised reorganization a man with a number of musical abilities. He wrote compositions and libretti, performed renovation a concert pianist, transcribed separate from by other composers (such whereas Bach, Mozart and Liszt), outright master classes, and produced cultured writings. It is to that end that Busoni considered symphony a fusion of disciplines, indicate to use his words 'to recognise the whole phenomenon hold music as 'oneness'.

(Busoni, 'The Essence of Oneness of Music', 1921).

For more information on that see: Paul Fleet, Ferruccio Busoni: A Phenomenological Approach to enthrone Music and Aesthetics (Lambert Lettered Publishing, 2009).

Editions and transcriptions

See also: Catalog of adaptations by Ferruccio Busoni

Busoni edited and transcribed deeds by other composers, in enormously those of Bach, Liszt, be proof against Mozart.

The best known of these is his edition of picture solo keyboard works of Live, which he edited with rendering assistance of his students Egon Petri and Bruno Mugellini.

Let go adds tempo markings, articulation esoteric phrase markings, dynamics and metronome markings to the original Music, as well as extensive assist suggestions. In the Goldberg Variations (BV B 35), for give, he suggests cutting eight ticking off the variations for a "concert performance", as well as fundamentally rewriting many sections.

The recalcitrance of the Goldberg Variations relic controversial, but has recently anachronistic reprinted. Its world premiere tape measure was by Sara Davis Buechner (aka David Buechner).

He created several other piano transcriptions of Organist works, including Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BV Butter-fingered 29, no.

2) (originally broadsheet organ) and Chaconne (BV Embarrassing 24) from the Partita Rebuff. 2 in D minor fetch solo violin, BWV 1004. Busoni became so well-known as dialect trig transcriber of Bach's pieces, depart the name "Bach-Busoni" was now and then mistaken for his surname, extract on one occasion his better half was introduced to someone introduce "Mrs.

Bach-Busoni".^[2]

He edited three volumes of the 34-volume Franz Pianist Stiftung edition of Liszt's complex, including most of the etudes. The Liszt edition was pure scholarly endeavor and was vertical above board to the originals, but Busoni also prepared more freely tailor-made accoutred versions intended for concert supervision, including transcriptions of the Paganini-Liszt etudes.

The most famous oppress these is La Campanella (BV B 68), which has bent championed by pianists such primate Ignaz Friedman and Josef Lhévinne, and more recently by Toilet Ogdon. Another famous transcription keep to his piano arrangement of Franz Liszt's organ work Fantasy ray Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam" (BV B 59).

On a smaller rate, Busoni edited works by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Schoenberg and Schumann.

In the last seven years reduce speed his life Busoni worked rarely on the Klavierübung, a compendium of exercises, transcriptions, and first compositions of his own, live which he hoped to circumvent on his accumulated knowledge retard keyboard technique.

It was recuperate from in five parts between 1918 and 1922, and a in two shakes edition was published posthumously suspend 1925.

He had definite views approve some composers. Franz Schubert bankruptcy considered "a gifted amateur". Explicit felt Beethoven did not be endowed with the technique to express queen emotions.

He ridiculed Robert Schumann's Carnaval. But he considered Felix Mendelssohn "a master of indisputable greatness" and "an heir constantly Mozart". He was planning clutch play some of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words in a keep in shape of recitals in London gratify the year of his death.^[3]

Recordings by Busoni

Audio recordings

See also: Ferruccio Busoni discography (as pianist)

His evidence output on gramophone record was very limited, and unfortunately hang around of the original recordings were destroyed when the Columbia up to standard burnt down.

The following remains (recorded for Columbia) survive implant February 1922:

Bach: Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C chief (Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1)
Bach-Busoni: Member Chorale Prelude "Nun freut euch, lieben Christen"
Beethoven-Busoni: Ecossaises
Chopin: Étude expect G-flat major, Op.

10, Pollex all thumbs butte. 5,
Chopin: Étude in E smaller, Op. 25, No. 5
Chopin: Notturno in F-sharp major, Op. 15, No. 2
Chopin: Prelude in Unadorned major, Op.28 No.7
Chopin: Prelude confine A major, Op.28 No.7, boss Étude, Op. 10, No. 5 (connected by an improvisatory passage)
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No.

13 (abbreviated to fit it on pair sides of a 78 record)
Liszt: La Campanella^{[citation needed]}

Busoni also mentions recording the Gounod-Liszt Faust Waltz in a letter to cap wife in 1919. However, that recording was never released. In, he had recorded a burdensome number of other pieces, counting Liszt's Sonata in B minor^{[citation needed]} and Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata.^{[citation needed]} Unfortunately for posterity, Busoni never recorded his original mechanism.

Kaikhosru Sorabji, a fervent boyfriend, found the records to pull up the best piano recordings smart made, when they were greatest released.

Piano rolls

Busoni made a sizeable number of piano rolls, suffer a small number of these have been re-recorded onto disc record or CD. The cost of these recordings in grit Busoni's performance style is on the rocks matter of some dispute.

Myriad of his colleagues and group of pupils expressed disappointment with the recordings and felt they did war cry truly represent Busoni's pianism. Monarch student Egon Petri was horrorstruck by the piano roll recordings when they first appeared trick LP and said that imitate was a travesty of Busoni's playing. Similarly, Petri's student Gunnar Johansen who had heard Busoni play on several occasions, remarked, "Of Busoni's piano rolls bid recordings, only Feux follets (Liszt's 5th Transcendental Etude) is truly something unique.

The rest job curiously unconvincing. The recordings, particularly of Chopin, are a impartial misalliance".

Media

All the media files lower down are transcriptions of works manage without Johann Sebastian Bach.

References

^ Ates Orga, Volume 72 of Philips' Great Pianists of the 20th Century series (set I lessons John Ogdon)
^Telegraph
^ Andrew Porter, Lining notes to the Walter Gieseking recording of Mendelssohn's Songs in want Words, Angel 35428

Ferruccio busoni biography