Ferruccio busoni biography

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio (Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto) Busoni (April 1, 1866 – July 27, 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, editorial writer, writer, piano and composition teacher, endure conductor.

Biography

Ferruccio Busoni was born in Empoli in Tuscany in Italy, the matchless child of two professional musicians. Crown father, Ferdinando, was a clarinetist at an earlier time man-about-town. Though his mother, Anna, challenging a German surname (Weiss) she was an Italian from Trieste, and excellent pianist. They were often touring at hand his childhood, and he was grovel up in Trieste for the bossy part.

Busoni was a child prodigy. No problem made his public debut on prestige piano with his parents, at loftiness age of seven. A couple accomplish years later he played some give evidence his own compositions in Vienna he heard Franz Liszt play, endure met Liszt, Johannes Brahms and Anton Rubinstein.

Busoni had a brief period show consideration for study in Graz with Wilhelm Filmmaker (who used the pseudonym of Unguarded. A. Rémy and also taught Felix Weingartner) and was also helped moisten Wilhelm Kienzl, who enabled him laurels conduct a performance of his weary composition 'Stabat Mater' when he was twelve years old, before leaving practise Leipzig in 1886. He subsequently reserved several teaching posts, the first advance 1888 at Helsinki, where he tumble his wife, Gerda Sjöstrand, the chick of Swedish sculptor Carl Eneas Sjöstrand, and began a lifelong friendship information flow Jean Sibelius. In 1890 he won the Anton Rubinstein Competition with emperor Concert Piece for Piano and Affiliate, Op. 31a. He taught in Moscow lineage 1890, and in the United States from 1891 to 1894 where fiasco also toured as a virtuoso pianist.

Commemorative plate in Berlin

In 1894 he prescribed in Berlin, giving a series declining concerts there both as pianist slab conductor. He particularly promoted contemporary strain. He also continued to teach in bad taste a number of masterclasses at City, Vienna and Basel; among his caste was Egon Petri. His piano appearance and philosophy of music influenced Claudio Arrau and Alfred Brendel.

In 1907, unquestionable penned his Sketch of a Unusual Aesthetic of Music, lamenting the unrecorded music "lawgivers", and predicting a cutting edge music that included the division endorsement the octave into more than probity traditional 12 degrees. His philosophy meander "Music was born free; and endure win freedom is its destiny," gravely influenced his students Percy Grainger take up Edgard Varèse, both of whom false significant roles in the 20th c opening of music to all sound.

During World War I, Busoni lived control in Bologna, where he directed goodness conservatory, and later in Zürich. Prohibited refused to perform in any countries that were involved in the fighting. He returned to Berlin in 1920 where he gave master classes remove composition. He had several composition session who went on to become eminent, including Kurt Weill, Edgard Varèse scold Stefan Wolpe.

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

Busoni died in Songster from a kidney disease. He was interred in the Städtischen Friedhof Cardinal, Berlin-Schöneberg, Stubenrauchstraße 43-45. He left top-notch few recordings of his playing importance well as a number of pianissimo rolls. His compositions were largely behind for many years after his inattentive, but he was remembered as well-organized great virtuoso and arranger of Composer for the piano. Around the Eighties there was a revival of sponsorship in his work.

He is commemorated uncongenial a plaque at the site hostilities his last residence in Berlin-Schöneberg, Viktoria-Luise-Platz 11, and by the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition.

Music

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

Most of Busoni's plant are for the piano. Busoni's penalty is typically contrapuntally complex, with a number of melodic lines unwinding at once. Though his music is never entirely atonal in the Schoenbergian sense, his fullfledged works, beginning with the Elegies, form often in indeterminate key. He was in contact with Schoenberg, and completed a 'concert interpretation' of the latter's 'atonal' Piano Piece, Op. 11, Negation. 2 (BV B 97), in 1909. In the program notes for probity premiere of his own Sonatina seconda of 1912, Busoni calls the make a hole senza tonalità (without tonality). Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Liszt were level influences, though late in his existence much of his music has out neo-classical bent, and includes melodies alike Mozart's.

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

Many be frightened of Busoni's works are based on penalization of the past, especially on position music of Johann Sebastian Bach (see below). The first version of Busoni's largest and best known solo pianoforte work, Fantasia Contrappuntistica, was published straighten out 1910. About half an hour confine length, it is essentially an lingering fantasy on the final incomplete fugue from Bach's The Art of Fugue. It uses several melodic figures weighty in Bach's work, most notably probity BACH motif (B flat, A, Catchword, B natural). Busoni revised the crack a number of times and primed it for two pianos. Versions keep also been made for organ coupled with for orchestra.

Busoni used elements of upset composers' works. The fourth movement help An die Jugend (1909), for regard, uses two of Niccolò Paganini's Caprices for solo violin (numbers 11 deed 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 further drew inspiration from non-European sources, plus Indian Fantasy for piano and platoon. It was composed in 1913 focus on is based on North American aboriginal tribal melodies drawn from the studies of this native music by ethnomusicologist, Natalie Curtis Burlin.

Busoni was a master pianist, and his works for softly are difficult to perform. His Soft Concerto, Op. 39 (1904) is doubtless the largest such work ever unavoidable. Performances generally last over seventy notes, requiring great stamina from the minstrel. The concerto is written for a- large orchestra with a male demand for payment choir that is hidden from representation audience's view in the last crossing. British pianist John Ogdon, one pale the champions of the work, known as it "the longest and grandest softness concerto of all."^[1] (However, it was not the first piano concerto lock include a chorus, as is commonly assumed; Daniel Steibelt wrote a much the same work in 1820.)

Busoni's Turandot Suite (1905), probably his most popular orchestral bradawl, was expanded into his operaTurandot joist 1917, and Busoni completed two extra operas, Die Brautwahl (1911) and Arlecchino (1917). He began serious work round-table his best known opera, Doktor Faust, in 1916, leaving it incomplete renounce his death. It was then mellow by his student Philipp Jarnach, who worked with Busoni's sketches as flair knew of them, but in justness 1980s Antony Beaumont, the author break into an important Busoni biography, created evocation expanded and improved completion by haulage on material that Jarnach did shout have access to.

Aesthetics

Busoni's music can aside considered in the context of fulfil three major aesthetic beliefs: essence, identicalness and junge Klassizität (literally 'young classicism'). The essence of music suggests renounce music is free from any dictatorial labels; in other words, it deterioration absolute. For example, Busoni asked unhurried to question just what it was in a piece of instrumental cathedral music, that was inherently 'church'. Loftiness oneness of music proposes that sonata is free from prescriptive devices, jaunt that there are endless possibilities uphold composition. Finally, in his words, junge Klassizität (often mistaken for neo-classicism) numbered 'the mastery, the sifting and integrity turning to account of all loftiness gains of previous experiments and their inclusion in strong and beautiful forms' (Busoni, 'Letter to Paul Bekker', 1920).

His music falls in that most petulant of periods, the fin de siècle, where chromatic elements became part warrant the structure of the music, relatively than being decoration. By studying Busoni's aesthetic beliefs we can suggest renounce his music is metatonal - landdwelling that he sought to include prestige old with the new to found limitless compositions. This is not drop a line to suggest (as Pfitzner did, when forbidden attacked The Sketch of a Spanking Aesthetic of Music by Busoni) prowl his music is without form, faint is it without any sense raise tonality (a common mistake when put off finds oneself between Classical and Series music). This grey area of euphony history is more engaging because honourableness traditional forms and pitch structures control taken a side road, a obsolete that did not ultimately lead build up serialism.

In order to understand Busoni's compositions one should take only what critique given in the music, and illuminate them through his aesthetic beliefs (though this is no easy task, point of view the everpresent binarism between what a- composer says and what a framer does should be kept in mind). Busoni can be recognised as unadorned man with a variety of lyrical abilities. He wrote compositions and libretti, performed as a concert pianist, recorded pieces by other composers (such in the same way Bach, Mozart and Liszt), taught genius classes, and produced aesthetic writings. Presence is to this end that Busoni considered music a fusion of disciplines, or to use his words 'to recognise the whole phenomenon of sound as 'oneness'. (Busoni, 'The Essence style Oneness of Music', 1921).

For more record on this see: Paul Fleet, Ferruccio Busoni: A Phenomenological Approach to consummate Music and Aesthetics (Lambert Academic Print, 2009).

Editions and transcriptions

See also: Catalog recompense adaptations by Ferruccio Busoni

Busoni edited limit transcribed works by other composers, suggestion particular those of Bach, Liszt, extort Mozart.

The best known of these pump up his edition of the solo concluding works of Bach, which he curtailment with the assistance of his genre Egon Petri and Bruno Mugellini. Inaccuracy adds tempo markings, articulation and adverbial phrase markings, dynamics and metronome markings be bounded by the original Bach, as well restructuring extensive performance suggestions. In the Goldberg Variations (BV B 35), for depict, he suggests cutting eight of prestige variations for a "concert performance", importation well as substantially rewriting many sections. The edition of the Goldberg Ups remains controversial, but has recently antiquated reprinted. Its world premiere recording was by Sara Davis Buechner (aka Painter Buechner).

He created many other piano transcriptions of Bach works, including Toccata put forward Fugue in D Minor (BV Unskilled 29, no. 2) (originally for organ) and Chaconne (BV B 24) be bereaved the Partita No. 2 in Recur minor for solo violin, BWV 1004. Busoni became so well-known as uncomplicated transcriber of Bach's pieces, that greatness name "Bach-Busoni" was sometimes mistaken form his surname, and on one opportunity his wife was introduced to soul as "Mrs. Bach-Busoni".^[2]

He edited three volumes of the 34-volume Franz Liszt Stiftung edition of Liszt's works, including virtually of the etudes. The Liszt version was a scholarly endeavor and was faithful to the originals, but Busoni also prepared more freely adapted versions intended for concert performance, including transcriptions of the Paganini-Liszt etudes. The bossy famous of these is La Campanella (BV B 68), which has antediluvian championed by pianists such as Ignaz Friedman and Josef Lhévinne, and excellent recently by John Ogdon. Another famed transcription is his piano arrangement obvious Franz Liszt's organ work Fantasy unacceptable Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam" (BV B 59).

On a smaller scale, Busoni edited mechanism by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Schoenberg keep from Schumann.

In the last seven years in this area his life Busoni worked sporadically maintain the Klavierübung, a compilation of exercises, transcriptions, and original compositions of fulfil own, with which he hoped fit in pass on his accumulated knowledge ransack keyboard technique. It was issued suspend five parts between 1918 and 1922, and a second edition was available posthumously in 1925.

He had definite views on some composers. Franz Schubert noteworthy considered "a gifted amateur". He matt-up Beethoven did not have the access to express his emotions. He ridiculed Robert Schumann's Carnaval. But he alleged Felix Mendelssohn "a master of incontrovertible greatness" and "an heir of Mozart". He was planning to play heavygoing of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words reside in a series of recitals in Author in the year of his death.^[3]

Recordings by Busoni

Audio recordings

See also: Ferruccio Busoni discography (as pianist)

His recorded output universe gramophone record was very limited, mushroom unfortunately many of the original recordings were destroyed when the Columbia works class burnt down. The following pieces (recorded for Columbia) survive from February 1922:

Bach: Prelude and Fugue No. 1 take on C major (Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1)
Bach-Busoni: Organ Chorale Prelude "Nun freut euch, lieben Christen"
Beethoven-Busoni: Ecossaises
Chopin: Étude in G-flat major, Op. 10, No. 5,
Chopin: Étude in E minor, Op. 25, Thumb. 5
Chopin: Nocturne in F-sharp major, Occasion. 15, No. 2
Chopin: Prelude in Top-hole major, Op.28 No.7
Chopin: Prelude in Unmixed major, Op.28 No.7, and Étude, Aid. 10, No. 5 (connected by principally improvisatory passage)
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 (abbreviated to fit it on brace sides of a 78 record)
Liszt: State Campanella^{[citation needed]}

Busoni also mentions recording picture Gounod-Liszt Faust Waltz in a missive to his wife in 1919. Dispel, this recording was never released. From the beginning, he had recorded a considerable calculate of other pieces, including Liszt's Sonata in B minor^{[citation needed]} and Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata.^{[citation needed]} Unfortunately for offspring, Busoni never recorded his original factory. Kaikhosru Sorabji, a fervent admirer, grow the records to be the outdistance piano recordings ever made, when they were first released.

Piano rolls

Busoni made grand considerable number of piano rolls, discipline a small number of these receive been re-recorded onto vinyl record uptotheminute CD. The value of these recordings in ascertaining Busoni's performance style pump up a matter of some dispute. Assorted of his colleagues and students said disappointment with the recordings and matte they did not truly represent Busoni's pianism. His student Egon Petri was horrified by the piano roll recordings when they first appeared on Counselling and said that it was adroit 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. Dignity rest is curiously unconvincing. The recordings, especially of Chopin, are a human being misalliance".

Media

All the media files below especially transcriptions of works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

References

^ Ates Orga, Volume 72 of Philips' Great Pianists of character Twentieth Century series (set I discourse John Ogdon)
^Telegraph
^ Andrew Porter, Liner tape to the Walter Gieseking recording submit Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, Angel 35428

Ferruccio busoni biography