Feruccio Busoni, an Italian composer, pianist, teacher of piano and composition, and a conductor was a child prodigy. He is known for his manifesto Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, controversial in his time.
Early Life of Busoni
Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto Ferruccio Busoni was a German-Italian composer and pianist who settled in Berlin. Born on April 1866 in Empoli to musician parents, with Italian father and German pianist mother, he appeared in public as a pianist at the age of seven.
In 1876, the family settled in Graz, where he produced his first published works. He composed intensively during his youth and aged 17, he wrote an oratorio Il sabato de villaggio that received acclaim. He then moved to Vienna, to Leipzig and eventually Berlin.
Career and Musical Influence
Busoni taught in Helsinki, Moscow and the USA. It was during these travels that he met prominent composers like Brahms, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Mahler. He gave up teaching and worked as a virtuoso pianist based in Berlin until 1914. During the war, he retired to Switzerland to compose. He returned to Berlin after the war but health failed him. He died of kidney disease in 1924.
Championed Other Composers, and a Conductor
At the turn of the century, in 1902, as well as maintaining his keen appreciation of J.S. Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, his interests broadened to a wider range of influence that included modern music. He championed the works of Bartok and Schoenberg. He also began conducting modern music concerts including works by Debussy, Bartok, Sibelius and himself.
He adopted an aesthetic by which he intended a return to the clarity and musical motivation of Bach and Mozart, at the same time his works such as virtuoso Fantasia contrappuntistica and the Second Sonatina, all for piano, showed his awareness of the latest modern developments including Schoenberg's most recent music. He embarked on a new stylistic journey that incorporated Italianate (monumental Piano Concerto with chorus), occult (Sonatina seconda), virtuoso (Toccata), post-Bachian polyphonic (Fantasia contrappuntistica), and Mozartian (opera Arlecchino) elements. Even his masterpiece, the opera Doktor Faust) rejected Wagnerian music-drama in favour of a profoundly humanist and visionary aesthetic.
The Musical Innovator: Traditional and Modern
Busoni's ideas distilled in Sketch of a new Aesthetic of Music (1907) look forward with enthusiasm to the use of microtones and electronic means. They were attacked by conservatives, and lead many to associate Busoni with the futurist movement.
The conflicts unresolved in his musical mind between classical recovery and futurism, Mozart calm and Listzian flamboyance, German substance and Italian vocality, all inform his larger compositions, which include his Piano Concerto, works on American Indian themes and operas, and even Doktor Faust, where the protagonist's search after knowledge and innovations is finally soothed.
Prolific Composer and Pianist
He was extremely prolific. As a pianist Busoni was considered to have the most powerful individuality and greatest technical mastery since Liszt and Rubinstein. As a composer he was admired by Mahler and Schoenberg alike (one premiered his Berceuse elegiaque in 1909, and the other arranged it). Most of his piano music requires a virtuoso Lisztian technique.
Editor and Bach's Translator
He was an editor and transcriber of Bach's work, such as the famous piano arrangement of the D minor Chaconne for violin. His Bach transcriptions were published in a seven-volume edition.
Last Years
Doktor Faust, his final important work, remained unfinished, completed by Jarnach after Busoni's death and produced in Dresden a year later.
Busoni's Operas
- Arlecchino (Harlequin or The windows), 1914-1916
- Doktor Faust, 1916-1924 (Completed by Jarnach after Busoni's death)
- Turandot, 1917
Recommended Resource:
Ferrucio Busoni: A Musical Ishmael by Della Couling (2005)
Sources:
The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, ed. by Stanley Sadie (2000)
The Encyclopedia of Music by Max Wade-Matthews & Wendy Thompson (2004)
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