Ferruccio Busoni

Dante Michaelangelo Benvenuto Ferruccio Busoni (April 1, 1866 – July 27, 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, music teacher and conductor.

Busoni's music

Busoni's music is typically contrapuntally complex, with several melodic lines unwinding at once. Although his music is never entirely atonal in the Schoenbergian sense, his later works are often in indeterminate 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 neo-classical bent, and includes melodies resembling Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Many of his works are for piano.

Related Topics:
Contrapuntally - Melodic - Atonal - Key - Johann Sebastian Bach - Franz Liszt - Neo-classical - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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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.

Related Topics:
Electronic music - Microtonal music

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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) and the chaconne from the D minor violin partita. Thus some consider him an originator of neoclassicism in music.

Related Topics:
Johann Sebastian Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - Organ - Chaconne - Violin - Partita - Neoclassicism

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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 and for orchestra.

Related Topics:
Fantasia Contrappuntistica - The Art of Fugue - BACH motif - Organ

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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.

Related Topics:
An die Jugend - Niccolo Paganini - Georges Bizet - Carmen

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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.

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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 (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).

Related Topics:
Opera - Turandot - Die Brautwahl - Arlecchino - Doktor Faust - Philipp Jarnach

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