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Image:Ferruccio Busoni - Project Gutenberg eText
15604.png|thumbnail|right|228px|Ferruccio Busoni
Dante Michaelangelo Benvenuto Ferruccio Busoni
(April 1, 1866 – July 27, 1924) was an
Italy|Italian composer, pianist, music teacher and
conducting|conductor.

==Biography==

Busoni was born in Empoli in Italy, the only child
of two professional musicians: his Italian/German
mother a pianist, his Italian father a
clarinettist. They were often touring during his
childhood, and he was brought up in Trieste for
the most part.

Busoni was a child prodigy.  He made his public
debut on the piano with his parents, at the age of
seven. A couple of years later he played some of
his own compositions in Vienna where he heard
Franz Liszt play, and met Liszt, Johannes Brahms
and Anton Rubinstein.

Busoni had a brief period of study in Graz before
leaving to Leipzig in 1886. He subsequently held
several teaching posts, the first in 1888 at
Helsinki, where he met his wife, Gerda Sjöstrand.
He taught in Moscow in 1890, and in the United
States from 1891 to 1894 where he also toured as a
virtuoso pianist.

In 1894 he settled in Berlin giving a series of
concerts there both as pianist and conductor. He
particularly promoted contemporary music. He also
continued to teach in a number of masterclasses at
Weimar, Germany|Weimar, Vienna and Basel, among
his pupils being Claudio Arrau and Egon Petri.

During World War I, Busoni lived first in Bologna,
where he directed the conservatory, and later in
Zürich. He refused to perform in any countries
which were involved in the war. He returned to
Berlin in 1920 where he gave masterclasses in
composition. He had several composition pupils who
went on to become famous, including Kurt Weill,
Edgar Varèse and Stefan Wolpe.

Busoni died in Berlin from a kidney disease. He
was interred in the Städtischen Friedhof III,
Berlin-Schöneberg, Stubenrauchstraße 43-45.  
He left a few recordings of his playing as well as
a number of piano rolls. His compositions were
largely neglected for many years after his death,
but he was remembered as a great virtuoso and
arranger of Bach for the piano. Around the 1980s
there was a revival of interest in his
compositions. He is commemorated by a plaque at
the site of his last residence in
Berlin-Schöneberg, Viktoria-Luise-Platz 11.

==Busoni's music==

Busoni's music is typically
counterpoint|contrapuntally complex, with several
melodic lines unwinding at once. Although his
music is never entirely atonality|atonal in the
Schoenbergian sense, his later works are often in
indeterminate key (music)|key. In the program
notes for the premiere of his Sonatina seconda of
1912, Busoni calls the work senza tonalità
(without tonality). Johann Sebastian Bach and
Franz Liszt are often identified as key
influences, though some of his music has a
Neoclassicism_(music)|neo-classical bent, and
includes melodies resembling Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart. Many of his works are for piano.

Some idea of Busoni's mature attitude to
composition can be gained from his 1907 manifesto,
Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, a publication
somewhat controversial in its time. As well as
discussing then little-explored areas such as
electronic music and microtonal music (both
techniques he never employed), he asserted that
music should distill the essence of music of the
past to make something new.

Many of Busoni's works are based on music of the
past, especially on the music of Johann Sebastian
Bach. He arranged several of Bach's works for the
piano, including the famous Toccata and Fugue in D
Minor (originally for organ (music)|organ) and the
chaconne from the D minor violin partita. Thus
some consider him an originator of Neoclassicism
(music)|neoclassicism in music.

The first version of Busoni's largest and best
known solo piano work, Fantasia Contrappuntistica,
was published in 1910. About half an hour in
length, it is essentially an extended fantasy on
the final incomplete fugue from Bach's The Art of
Fugue. It uses several melodic figures found in
Bach's work, most notably the BACH motif (B flat,
A, C, B natural). Busoni revised the work a number
of times and arranged it for two pianos. Versions
have also been made for organ (music)|organ and
for orchestra.

As well as those of Bach, Busoni used elements of
other composers' works. The fourth movement of An
die Jugend (1909), for instance, uses two of
Niccolo Paganini's Caprices for solo violin
(numbers 11 and 15), while the 1920 piece Piano
Sonatina No. 6 (Fantasia da camera super Carmen)
is based on themes from Georges Bizet's opera
Carmen.

Busoni was a virtuoso pianist, and his works for
piano are difficult to perform. The Piano Concerto
(1904) is probably the largest such work ever
written. It lasts for over an hour, requiring
great stamina of the soloist, and is written for a
large orchestra with a male voice choir in the
last movement.

Busoni's suite for orchestra Turandot (1904),
probably his most popular orchestral work, was
expanded into his opera Turandot in 1917, and
Busoni completed two other operas, Die Brautwahl
(1911) and Arlecchino (opera)|Arlecchino (1917).
He began serious work on his best known opera,
Doktor Faust, in 1916, leaving it incomplete at
his death (it was finished by Philipp Jarnach).

==Busoni's editions==

Busoni also edited of music by other composers. 
The best known of these is his edition of the
complete Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach solo keyboard
works, which he edited with the assistance of his
students Egon Petri and Bruno Mugellini.  He adds
tempo markings, articulation and phrase markings,
dynamics and metronome markings to the original
Bach, as well as extensive performance
suggestions.  In the Goldberg Variations, for
example, he suggests cutting eight of the
variations for a "concert performance", as well as
substantially rewriting many sections.  The
edition remains controversial, but has recently
been reprinted.

On a smaller scale, Busoni edited works by Ludwig
van Beethoven|Beethoven, Johannes Brahms|Brahms,
Frédéric Chopin|Chopin, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart|Mozart. Franz Liszt|Liszt, Arnold
Schoenberg|Schoenberg and Robert
Schumann|Schumann.  The Busoni version of Liszt's
La Campanella was championed by pianists such as
Ignaz Friedman and Josef Lhevinne, but has since
fallen into obscurity.

==Recordings==

Busoni made a considerable number of piano rolls,
and a small number of these have been re-recorded
onto vinyl record or CD.  His recorded output on
gramophone record is much smaller and rarer.  It
includes the following pieces (recorded for
Columbia):

* Prelude & Fugue No. 1 (Bach)
* Etude Op. 25 No. 5 (Chopin)
* Chorale Prelude "Nun freut euch liebe Christen"
(Bach-Busoni)
* Ecossaisen (Beethoven)
* Prelude Op. 27 No. 7 & Etude Op. 10 No. 5
(Chopin) the two works are connected by an
improvisatory passage
* Etude Op. 10 No. 5 (Chopin)
* Nocturne Op. 15 No. 2 (Chopin)
* Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 (Liszt) this has
substantial cuts, to fit it on two sides of a 78
record.

Busoni also mentions recording the Gounod-Liszt
Faust Waltz in a letter to his wife in 1919. 
However, this recording was never released. 
Unfortunately for posterity, Busoni never recorded
his original works.

The value of these recordings in ascertaining
Busoni's performance style is a matter of some
dispute.  Many of his collegues and students
expressed disappointment with the recordings and
felt they did not truly represent Busoni's
pianism.  His student Egon Petri was horrified by
the piano roll recordings when they first appeared
on LP and said that it 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 and
recordings, only Feux follets (Liszt's 5th
Transcendental Etude) is really something unique. 
The rest is curiously unconvincing.  The
recordings, especially of Chopin, are a plain
misalliance".  However, Kaikhosru Sorabji, a
fervent admirer, found the records to be the best
piano recordings ever made when they were
released.

==See also==

*Fantasie on Two Motives from Mozart's "Marriage
of Figaro"

==References and external links==

*http://my.dreamwiz.com/fischer/Bach-Busoni/Bach-B
usoniE.htm A page on Busoni's transcriptions of
Bach's organ compositions
*Larry Sitsky, Busoni and the Piano.  Published
1986 by Greenwood Press.
*The Piano Quarterly Issue No. 108 (Winter
1979-80) has Busoni as the feature composer. 
Interviews with Gunnar Johansen and Guido Agosti.