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Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 – 27 July 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and teacher. His international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary figures of his time, and he was a sought-after keyboard instructor and a teacher of composition.

From an early age, Busoni was an outstanding if sometimes controversial pianist. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory and then with Wilhelm Mayer and Carl Reinecke. After brief periods teaching in Helsinki, Boston, and Moscow, he devoted himself to composing, teaching, and touring as a virtuoso pianist in Europe and the United States. His writings on music were influential, and covered not only aesthetics but considerations of microtones and other innovative topics. He was based in Berlin from 1894 but spent much of World War I in Switzerland.

He began composing in his early years in a late romantic style, but after 1907, when he published his Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, he developed a more individual style, often with elements of atonality. His visits to America led to interest in North American indigenous tribal melodies which were reflected in some of his works. His compositions include works for piano, among them a monumental Piano Concerto, and transcriptions of the works of others, notably Johann Sebastian Bach (published as the Bach-Busoni Editions). He also wrote chamber music, vocal and orchestral works, and operas—one of which, Doktor Faust, he left unfinished when he died, in Berlin, at the age of 58.

Biography

Early career

Ferruccio Dante Michelangiolo Benvenuto was born on 1 April 1866 in the Tuscan town of Empoli, the only child of two professional musicians, Ferdinando, a clarinettist, and Anna (née Weiss), a pianist. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to Trieste. A child prodigy, largely taught by his father, he began performing and composing at the age of seven. In an autobiographical note he comments "My father knew little about the pianoforte and was erratic in rhythm, so he made up for these shortcomings with an indescribable combination of energy, severity and pedantry." Busoni made his public debut as a pianist in a concert with his parents at the Schiller-Verein in Trieste on 24 November 1873 playing the first movement of Mozart's Sonata in C Major, and pieces by Schumann and Clementi. Commercially promoted by his parents in a series of further concerts, Busoni later said of this period, "I never had a childhood." In 1875, he made his concerto début playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24.

From the ages of nine to eleven, with the help of a patron, Busoni studied at the Vienna Conservatory. His first performances in Vienna were glowingly received by the critic Eduard Hanslick. In 1877, Busoni heard the playing of Franz Liszt, and was introduced to the composer, who admired his skill. In the following year, Busoni composed a four-movement concerto for piano and string quartet. After leaving Vienna, he had a brief period of study in Graz with Wilhelm Mayer, and conducted a performance of his own composition Stabat Mater, Op. 55 in the composer's initial numbering sequence, (BV 119, now lost) in 1879. Other early pieces were published at this time, including settings of Ave Maria (Opp. 1 and 2; BV 67) and some piano pieces.

He was elected in 1881 to the Accademia Filharmonica of Bologna, the youngest person to receive this honour since Mozart. In the mid 1880s, Busoni was based in Vienna where he met with Karl Goldmark and helped to prepare the vocal score for the latter's 1886 opera Merlin. He also met Johannes Brahms, to whom he dedicated two sets of piano Études, and who recommended him to undertake study in Leipzig with Carl Reinecke. During this period, Busoni supported himself by giving recitals, and also by the financial support of a patron, the Baronin von Tedesco. He also continued to compose, and made his first attempt at an opera, Sigune, which he worked on from 1886 to 1889 before abandoning it. He described how, finding himself penniless in Leipzig, he appealed to the publisher Schwalm to take his compositions. Schwalm demurred, but said he would commission a fantasy on Peter Cornelius's opera The Barber of Baghdad for fifty marks down, and a hundred on completion. The next morning, Busoni turned up at Schwalm's office, and asked for 150 marks, handing over the completed work, and saying "I worked from nine at night to three thirty, without a piano, and not knowing the opera beforehand."

Helsingfors, Moscow, and America (1888–1893)

In 1888, the musicologist Hugo Riemann recommended Busoni to Martin Wegelius, director of the Institute of Music at Helsingfors (now Helsinki, Finland, then part of the Russian Empire), for the vacant position of advanced piano instructor. This was Busoni's first permanent post. Amongst his close colleagues and associates there were the conductor and composer Armas Järnefelt, the writer Adolf Paul, and the composer Jean Sibelius, with whom he struck up a continuing friendship. Paul described Busoni at this time as "a small, slender Italian with chestnut beard, grey eyes, young and gay, with ... a small round cap perched proudly on his thick artist's curls".

Between 1888 and 1890, Busoni gave about thirty piano recitals and chamber concerts in Helsingfors; amongst his compositions at this period were a set of Finnish folksongs for piano duet (Op. 27). In 1889, visiting Leipzig, he heard a performance on the organ of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565), and was persuaded by his pupil Kathi Petri—the mother of his future pupil Egon Petri, then only five years old—to transcribe it for piano. Busoni's biographer Edward Dent writes that "This was not only the beginning of transcriptions, but ... the beginning of that style of pianoforte touch and technique which was entirely creation." Returning to Helsingfors, in March of the same year Busoni met his future wife, Gerda Sjöstrand, the daughter of the Swedish sculptor Carl Eneas Sjöstrand, and proposed to her within a week. He composed Kultaselle ("To the Beloved") for cello and piano for her (BV 237; published in 1891 without an opus number).

In 1890, Busoni published his first edition of Bach works: the two- and three-part Inventions. In the same year he won the prize for composition, with his Konzertstück ("Concert Piece") for piano and orchestra Op. 31a (BV 236), at the first Anton Rubinstein Competition, initiated by Anton Rubinstein himself at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. As a consequence he was invited to visit and teach at the Moscow Conservatoire. Gerda joined him in Moscow where they promptly married. His first concert in Moscow, when he performed Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, was warmly received. But living in Moscow did not suit the Busonis for both financial and professional reasons; he felt excluded by his nationalistically inclined Russian colleagues. So when Busoni received an approach from William Steinway to teach at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, he was happy to take the opportunity, particularly since the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at that time was Arthur Nikisch, whom he had known since 1876 when they performed together at a concert in Vienna.

Busoni's first son, Benvenuto (known as Benni), was born in Boston in 1892, but Busoni's experience at New England Conservatory proved unsatisfactory. After a year he resigned from the Conservatory and launched himself into a series of recitals across the Eastern US.

Berlin, 1893–1913: "A new epoch"

Busoni was at the Berlin premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Falstaff in April 1893. The result was to force on him a re-evaluation of the potential of Italian musical traditions which he had so far ignored in favour of the German traditions, and in particular the models of Brahms and the orchestral techniques of Liszt and Wagner. Busoni immediately began to draft an adulatory letter to Verdi (which he never summoned the courage to send), in which he addressed him as "Italy's leading composer" and "one of the noblest persons of our time", and in which he explained that "Falstaff provoked in me such a revolution of spirit that I can ... date the beginning of a new epoch in my artistic life from that time."

In 1894, Busoni settled in Berlin, which he henceforth regarded as his home base, except during the years around World War I. He had earlier felt unsympathetic toward the city: in an 1889 letter to Gerda he had described it as "this Jewish city that I hate, irritating, idle, arrogant, parvenu". The city was swiftly growing in population and influence during this period and determined to stake itself as the musical capital of the united Germany, but as Busoni's friend the English composer Bernard van Dieren pointed out, "international virtuosi who for practical reasons chose Berlin as their abode were not so much concerned with questions of prestige", and for Busoni the city's development as "the centre of the musical industry develop an atmosphere which detested more than the deepest pool of stagnant convention".

Berlin proved an excellent base for Busoni's European tours. As in the previous two years in the US, the composer had to depend for his living on exhausting but remunerative tours as a piano virtuoso; in addition at this period he was remitting substantial amounts to his parents, who continued to depend on his income. Busoni's programming and style as a recitalist initially raised concerns in some of Europe's musical centres. His first concerts in London, in 1897, met with mixed comments. The Musical Times reported that he "commenced in a manner to irritate the genuine amateurs by playing a ridiculous travesty of one of Bach's masterly Organ Preludes and Fugues, but he made amends by an interpretation of Chopin's Studies (Op. 25) which was of course unequal but, on the whole, interesting". In Paris, the critic Arthur Dandelot commented "this artist has certainly great qualities of technique and charm", but strongly objected to his addition of chromatic passages to parts of Liszt's St. François de Paule marchant sur les flots.

Busoni's international reputation rose swiftly, and he frequently performed in Berlin and other European capitals and regional centres (including Manchester, Birmingham, Marseilles, Florence, and many German and Austrian cities) throughout this period, as well as returning to America for four visits between 1904 and 1915. This journeying life led van Dieren to call him "a musical Ishmael" (after the Biblical wanderer). The musicologist Antony Beaumont considers Busoni's six Liszt recitals in Berlin of 1911 as the climax of his pre-war career as a pianist.

Busoni's performing commitments somewhat stifled his creative capacity during this period: in 1896 he wrote "I have great success as a pianist, the composer I conceal for the present." His monumental Piano Concerto (whose five movements last over an hour and include an offstage male chorus) was written between 1901 and 1904. In 1904 and 1905, the composer wrote his Turandot Suite as incidental music for Carlo Gozzi's play of the same name. A major project undertaken at this time was the opera Die Brautwahl, based on a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann, first performed (to a lukewarm reception) in Berlin in 1912. Busoni also began to produce solo piano works which clearly revealed a more mature style, including the Elegies (BV 249; 1907), the suite An die Jugend (BV 252; 1909) and the first two piano sonatinas, BV 257 (1910) and BV 259 (1912).

In a series of orchestral concerts in Berlin between 1902 and 1909, both as pianist and conductor, Busoni particularly promoted contemporary music from outside Germany (though he avoided contemporary music, except for his own, in his solo recitals). The series, which was held at the Beethovensaal (Beethoven Hall), included German premieres of music by Edward Elgar, Sibelius, César Franck, Claude Debussy, Vincent d'Indy, Carl Nielsen and Béla Bartók. The concerts also included premieres of some of Busoni's own works of the period, among them, in 1904, the Piano Concerto, in which he was the soloist under conductor Karl Muck; in 1905, his Turandot Suite, and, in 1907, his Comedy Overture. Music of older masters was included, but sometimes with an unexpected twist. For example, Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto with the eccentric first movement cadenza by Charles-Valentin Alkan (which includes references to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony). The concerts aroused much publicity but generated aggressive comments from critics. Couling suggests the programming of the concerts was "generally regarded as a provocation".

During the period Busoni undertook teaching at masterclasses at Weimar, Vienna and Basel. In 1900 he was invited by Duke Karl-Alexander of Weimar to lead a masterclass for fifteen young virtuosi. This concept was more amenable to Busoni than teaching formally in a Conservatory: the twice-weekly seminars were successful and were repeated in the following year. Pupils included Maud Allan, who later became famous as a dancer and remained a friend. His experience in Vienna in 1907 was less satisfactory, although amongst his more rewarding pupils were Ignaz Friedman, Leo Sirota, Louis Gruenberg, Józef Turczyński and Louis Closson; the latter four were dedicatees of pieces in Busoni's 1909 piano album An die Jugend. But arguments with the Directorate of the Vienna Conservatoire, under whose auspices the classes were held, soured the atmosphere. In the autumn of 1910 Busoni gave masterclasses and also carried out a series of recitals in Basel.

In the years before World War I, Busoni steadily extended his contacts in the art world in general as well as amongst musicians. Arnold Schoenberg, with whom Busoni had been in correspondence since 1903, settled in Berlin in 1911 partially as a consequence of Busoni lobbying on his behalf. In 1913 Busoni arranged at his own apartment a private performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire which was attended by, amongst others, Willem Mengelberg, Edgard Varèse, and Artur Schnabel. In Paris in 1912 Busoni had meetings with Gabriele D'Annunzio who proposed collaboration in a ballet or opera. He also met with the Futurist artists Filippo Marinetti and Umberto Boccioni.

World War I and Switzerland (1913–1920)

Following a series of concerts in Northern Italy in spring 1913, Busoni was offered the directorship of the Liceo Rossini in Bologna. He had recently moved to an apartment in Viktoria-Luise-Platz in Schöneberg, Berlin, but took up the offer, intending to spend his summers in Berlin. The posting proved unsuccessful. Bologna was a cultural backwater, despite occasional visits from celebrities such as Isadora Duncan. Busoni's piano pupils were untalented, and he had constant arguments with the local authorities. After the outbreak of World War I, in August 1914, he asked for a year of absence to play an American tour; in fact he was never to return. Virtually his sole permanent achievement at the school was to have modernized its sanitary facilities. He had however during this time composed another concertante work for piano and orchestra, the Indian Fantasy. The piece is based on melodies and rhythms from various American Indian tribes; Busoni derived them from a book he had received from his former pupil, the ethnomusicologist Natalie Curtis Burlin during his 1910 tour of the USA. The work was premiered with Busoni as soloist in March 1914, in Berlin.

From June 1914 to January 1915, Busoni was in Berlin. As a native of a neutral country (Italy) living in Germany, Busoni was not greatly concerned, at first, by the outbreak of war. During this period, he began to work seriously on the libretto for his proposed opera Doktor Faust. In January 1915 he left for a concert tour of the US, which was to be his last visit there. During this time he continued work on his Bach edition, including his version of the Goldberg Variations. Upon the composer's return to Europe, Italy had entered the war. Busoni therefore chose to base himself from 1915 in Switzerland. In Zurich, he found local supporters in Volkmar Andreae (conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra) and Philipp Jarnach. His friend José Vianna da Motta also taught piano in Geneva at this time. Andreae arranged for Busoni to give concerts with his orchestra. Jarnach, who was 23 when he met Busoni, in 1915, became Busoni's indispensable assistant, among other things preparing piano scores of his operas; Busoni referred to him as his famulus. While in America, Busoni had carried out further work on Doktor Faust, and had written the libretto of his one-act opera Arlecchino. He completed it in Zurich and, to provide a full evening at the theatre, reworked his earlier Turandot into a one-act piece. The two were premiered together in Zurich in May 1917.

In Italy in 1916, Busoni met again with the artist Boccioni, who painted his portrait; Busoni was deeply affected when a few months later Boccioni was killed (in a riding accident) whilst on military training, and published an article strongly critical of war. An expanded re-issue of Busoni's 1907 work A New Esthetic of Music let to a virulent counter-attack from the German composer Hans Pfitzner and an extended war of words. Busoni continued to experiment with microtones: in America he had obtained some harmonium reeds tuned in third-tones, and he claimed that he "had worked out the theory of a system of thirds of tones in two rows, each separated from each other by a semitone".

Although he met with many other artistic personalities also based in Switzerland during the war (including Stefan Zweig, who noted his extensive drinking, and James Joyce), Busoni soon found his circumstances limiting. After the end of the war, he again undertook concert tours in England, Paris and Italy. In London, he met with the composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji who played his Piano Sonata No. 1 for him (he had dedicated it to Busoni). Busoni was sufficiently impressed to write a letter of recommendation for Sorabji. When Busoni's former pupil Leo Kestenberg, by then an official at the Ministry of Culture in the German Weimar Republic, invited him to return to Germany with the promise of a teaching post and productions of his operas, he was very glad to take the opportunity.

Final years (1920–1924)

In 1920, Busoni returned to the Berlin apartment at Viktoria-Luise-Platz 11, Berlin-Schöneberg that he had left in 1915. His health began to decline, but he continued to give concerts. His main concern was to complete Doktor Faust, the libretto of which had been published in Germany in 1918. In 1921 he wrote "Like a subterranean river, heard but not seen, the music for Faust roars and flows continually in the depths of my aspirations".

Berlin was the heart of the musical world of the Weimar Republic. Busoni's works, including his operas, were regularly programmed. Health permitting, he continued to perform; problems of hyperinflation in Germany meant that he needed to undertake tours of England. His last appearance as a pianist was in Berlin in May 1922, playing Beethoven's Emperor Concerto. Among his composition pupils in Berlin were Kurt Weill, Wladimir Vogel, and Robert Blum, and during these last years Busoni also had contact with Varèse, Stravinsky, the conductor Hermann Scherchen, and others.