Busoni on Composition

"How I Compose": Ferruccio Busoni's Views about Invention, Quotation, and the CompositionalProcessAuthor(s): Erinn E. KnytSource: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Spring 2010), pp. 224-264Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jm.2010.27.2.224 .

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The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 27, Issue 2, pp. 224–264, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2010 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/ jm.2010.27.2.224.

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I would like to thank Stephen Hinton, Karol Berger, Heather Hadlock, Tom Grey, and my anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

1 Oral communication by Herbert Myers, lecturer at Stanford University and a former student of Egon Petri. See also Larry Sitsky, Busoni and the Piano: The Works, the Writings and the Recordings, Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance 7 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 177.

“How I Compose”: Ferruccio Busoni’s Views about Invention, Quotation, and the Compositional Process

ERINN E . KNYT

A n anecdote circulating among pupils of Egon

Petri (1881–1962), a protégé of Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), was the story Petri told of how on more than one occasion Busoni’s wife was mistak-enly introduced as “Mrs. Bach-Busoni.”1 Whether fact or fiction, this social faux pas illustrates how closely Busoni’s name has been associated with the names of composers whose works he arranged. Despite his prolific compo-sitional career, he is remembered more as a transcriber and arranger than as a composer of original works. His practice of arranging others’ works also affected his own compositions, which frequently contained borrowed material. Busoni’s creative art thus blurred conventional boundaries be-tween what are traditionally considered to be primary “original” works and subsidiary transcriptions or arrangements.

Busoni was by no means the only early twentieth-century com-poser who borrowed material from other composers’ work. As Linda

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Hutcheon, J. Peter Burkholder, Christopher Reynolds, and David Metzer have already documented, nineteenth- and twentieth-century compositions were filled with allusions and the mixing of the old and the new.2 Nor was Busoni the only keyboard composer to update, re-touch, transcribe, and revise the music of his predecessors. As Franz Liszt’s numerous transcriptions demonstrate, transcriptions and ar-rangements were part and parcel of a piano virtuoso’s repertory in the nineteenth century.

But what was an accepted compositional practice in the nineteenth century became aesthetically questionable in the early twentieth cen-tury, a time period when compositional originality—novelty of ideas and musical material—was highly prized. As a letter to his wife attests, Busoni encountered opposition to the programming of transcriptions in Milan as early as 1895:

The Board of the society for which I am playing is very highly es-teemed. The Directors are very conscientious (so they say), and permit no transcriptions in their programme. I was obliged, therefore, to withdraw the Tannhäuser Overture. But when I said that the Bach or-gan fugue was also a transcription they said it would be better not to mention that in the programme . . .3

Busoni himself considered the distinction between original composition and transcription less strict. Not only did his transcriptions include sub-stantial recompositions, but his original compositions often relied on borrowed materials that he juxtaposed and contrasted with his own mu-sic. As I demonstrate below by analyzing his compositional practice in the context of his aesthetic writings, Busoni valued arrangements no less than “new” compositions. In fact, one can argue that this creative mixture of borrowed and new materials expressed best his compositional ideals.

Background

In a brief essay entitled “The Value of the Arrangement” (Wert der Bearbeitung, 1910), Busoni illustrates just how vague the boundaries

2 See Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (London: Methuen, 1985); J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Christopher Reynolds, Mo-tives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century Music (London: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 2003); David Metzer, Quotation and Cultural Meaning in Twentieth-Century Music, New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

3 Busoni’s letter to Gerda Busoni, 5 Dec. 1895, in Ferruccio Busoni, Letters to His Wife, trans. Rosamund Ley, Da Capo Music Reprint Series (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975), 12.

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between arrangement and composition were for him. In the essay he defended his rescoring of Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody (Rhapsodie espagnole [Folies d’Espagne et jota aragonesa], composed 1858/published 1867) for piano and orchestra (1894):

Vivaldi’s concertos, Schubert’s lieder, Weber’s Invitation to the Dance can each be heard in their respective transformations by Bach’s organ, Liszt’s piano, and Berlioz’s orchestra. But where does arrangement be-gin? Of this Spanish Rhapsody there exists a second version by Liszt that bears the title: Grand Fantasy on Spanish Melodies. It is a different piece with some of the same motives. Which of them is the arrangement? The one that was written later? Or is the first not already an arrange-ment of Spanish folk songs? The former Spanish Fantasy begins with a motive that is identical to that in the dance in Mozart’s Figaro. And, Mozart himself had already borrowed the motive; it is not by him, but it is arranged. Furthermore, the same motive appears in Gluck’s ballet Don Juan. . . . We have been able to link convincingly the motivic mate-rial of both Spanish fantasies by Liszt with the names of Mozart, Gluck, Corelli, Glinka, and Mahler. My humble name now joins them. Man cannot create so much as merely use what exists on earth. And for the musi-cian what exists are tones and rhythms.

(Vivaldis Konzerte, Schuberts Lieder, Webers Aufforderung zum Tanz erklingen je in der Umlautung von Bachs Orgel, Liszts Klavier, Berlioz’ Orchester. Aber wo beginnt die Bearbeitung? Von dieser spanischen Rhapsodie existiert eine zweite Lisztsche Fassung, welche den Titel hat: Grosse Fantasie über spanische Weisen. Es ist ein anderes Stück, es sind zum Teil dieselben Motive. Welche von beiden ist die Bearbeitung? Die, die später geschrieben wurde? Oder ist nicht schon die erste eine Bear-beitung spanischer Volkslieder? Jene spanische Fantasie beginnt mit einem Motiv, welches mit dem Tanz in Mozarts “Figaro” gleichlautend ist. Und Mozart hat das Motiv auch bereits übernommen, es ist nicht von ihm, es ist bearbeitet. Überdies erschient—immer dasselbe Motiv noch in Glucks Ballet “Don Juan” . . . Das Motivmaterial der beiden spanischen Fanta-sien von Liszt haben wir nachweisbar mit den Namen Mozart, Gluck, Corelli, Glinka, Mahler in Verbindung bringen können. Nun tritt noch mein geringer Name hinzu. Der Mensch kann eben nicht schaffen, er kann nur verarbeiten, was sich auf der Erde vorfindet. Und für den Musiker sind es Töne und Rhythmen).4

4 Ferruccio Busoni, “Wert der Bearbeitung,” in Von der Einheit der Musik: von Drit-teltönen und Junger Klassizität, von Bühnen und Bauten, und anschliessenden Bezirken, Verstreute Aufzeichnungen, ed. Martina Weindel, Quellenkataloge zur Musikgeschichte, 36, ed. Rich-ard Schaal (Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 2006), 55–56. This essay originally appeared in a concert program in Berlin, in November 1910. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. For a somewhat different English translation see Busoni, The Essence of Music and Other Papers, trans. Rosamund Ley (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 87–89. In her translation Ley does not distinguish between transcription and arrangement. She erroneously translates the title of the essay as “Value of the Transcrip-tion” instead of the “Value of the Arrangement.”

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Convinced that the boundaries between the borrowed and the truly new are difficult to establish, Busoni questioned contemporaneous as-sessments of arrangements as being inferior to original compositions. By linking composers who used similar motives in their own pieces, he suggested that not just arrangements but also original compositions are often based upon “borrowed” material. Vivaldi’s concertos, for instance, became the basis for some original works by Bach. Busoni found simi-larities between the musical material used by such stylistically diverse composers as Liszt, Gluck, Mozart, and himself.

Important to Busoni’s reasoning and compositional practice was his belief that man cannot invent anything new because all music exists already in some form. He maintained that the tones and rhythms that composers use emanated from an inaudible heavenly source of music in the form of sound waves. Busoni did not simply revise ancient theo-ries about the harmony of the spheres, but drew specific links between the art of music (Tonkunst) and this inaudible source that, according to him, contained all possible motives, styles, and forms:

. . . electricity was there from the beginning also before we discovered it; just as everything undiscovered was in being from the beginning, and is therefore also now in being; so, too, the cosmic atmosphere teems with all forms, motives, and combinations of past and future music.5

For Busoni, composers were prophets and ambassadors rather than creators. They were people who divined music already in existence, and sought to capture it in their compositions. Although they could not in-vent anything new themselves, they could discover new or better ways of representing heavenly music in tangible form:

At times, and in rare cases, a mortal is by listening made aware of something immortal in the essence of music that melts in the hands as one tries to grasp it, is frozen as soon as one wishes to transplant it to earth, is extinguished as soon as it is drawn through the darkness of our mentality. Yet enough still remains recognizable of its heavenly ori-gin and of all that is high, noble and translucent in what surrounds us and we are able to discern; it appears to us the highest, noblest and most translucent.

Music is not, as the poet says, an “ambassador” of heaven, but the ambassadors of heaven are the chosen ones on whom the high charge is laid to bring us single rays of the original light through immeasur-able space. Hail to the prophets!6

5 Busoni, “The Essence of Music: A Paving of the Way to an Understanding of the Everlasting Calendar” [1924], in The Essence of Music and Other Papers, 197.

6 Ibid., 200.

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If composers could not invent anything new, distinctions and hi-erarchies between original compositions and arrangements based on the novelty of material or conception were obviously superfluous. For Busoni, the value of a composition resided not in originality, but in how fully it mirrored its heavenly model.

Busoni had few qualms about altering someone else’s piece of music, especially if he felt he was making the piece better (i.e., truer to its heav-enly model). This approach characterized his relationship not only to the music of older composers, but also to the music of his contemporaries. A heated exchange of letters in 1909–1910 between Arnold Schoenberg and Busoni over Busoni’s arrangement of Schoenberg’s Klavierstück, op. 11, no. 2 illustrates this compositional practice (see fig. 1).

Schoenberg sent his piano piece to Busoni to ask his opinion about it. Instead of commenting on the piece, Busoni arranged the composi-tion and sent the revised version back to Schoenberg with the follow-ing note: “To complete my confession, let me tell you that I have (with total lack of modesty) ‘rescored’ your piece. Although this remains my own business, I shall not fail to inform you, even at the risk of your be-ing annoyed with me.”7 He asserted that he had enhanced the com-position in several ways, but especially in terms of the piano writing: “Your means of expression are new, but not your piano textures, which are simply poorer. I believe you have a far greater command of, say, the orchestra.”8 Busoni believed that by extending or adding measures, changing registers and dynamics, and making figures more idiomatic for the piano, he had not only improved the piano writing and the form, but also came closer to realizing Schoenberg’s intentions than Schoenberg himself. (“I have penetrated so deeply and closely to your thoughts that I myself was irresistibly urged to translate your intentions into sound.”)9

Schoenberg disagreed and took offence at Busoni’s retouching of his music. Regardless of whether it improved the piece or not, Busoni’s arrangement challenged his authorship, and for Schoenberg author-ship was more important than any abstract concept of perfection:

I fear that a transcription, on the other hand, would either introduce what I avoid, either fundamentally or according to my preferences; add what I myself—within the limits of my personality—would never have devised, thus what is foreign or unattainable to me; omit what I

7 Busoni’s letter to Schoenberg, 2 August 1909, in Ferruccio Busoni, Selected Letters, trans. and ed. Antony Beaumont (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 386.

8 Busoni’s letter to Schoenberg, 16 July 1910, ibid., 407.9 Busoni’s letter to Schoenberg, 2 August, 1909, ibid., 386.

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would find necessary, or improve where I am and must remain imper-fect. Thus a transcription would be bound to do me violence: whether it helps or hinders my work.

He doubted that anyone but himself could improve his ideas and claimed that Busoni’s alterations to form, register, harmonies and pitches

figure 1. Busoni’s arrangement of Schoenberg, Klavierstück, op. 11, no. 2, mm. 1–14 (Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Busoni-Nachlass, 243)

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touched the aspects of the composition that were the most original and hence, the most important for him:

I can see exactly that wherever things misfire, something highly origi-nal was intended and I lack the courage to replace an interesting idea, which has not been quite successfully carried out with a “reliable” so-nority. And with a true work of art, the imagination of an outsider can achieve no more than this!10

From Schoenberg’s perspective, alterations were seen as an affront to the musical work:

I hope we shall reach an agreement. I hope you can see that I cannot condone alterations to the form without damning that aspect of my work. It seems to me like correcting the crooked lines in a picture of van Gogh’s and replacing them with correct straight ones . . . I am sure: he who knows how I write will realize this is not the spirit of my work.11

Schoenberg did not oppose arranging pieces of past historical periods in order to modernize them and to take advantage of newer instrumental possibilities; he supported Mahler’s reorchestration of Beethoven’s symphonies and orchestrated Bach’s Organ Prelude and Fugue in E Major, BWV 552.12 But accepting alterations to his own mu-sic was a different matter. Busoni’s blurred boundaries between com-positional intent and the arranger’s license touched a sensitive nerve and showed how unconventional Busoni’s approach had become by the early 1910s.

Busoni’s Compositional Process

Busoni’s views about composition and arrangement, so vividly il-lustrated by his exchange with Schoenberg, can be observed in his own compositional practice. From the beginning of his career, his works included a mixture of the borrowed, the reworked, and the new. He often appropriated other composers’ ideas and freely borrowed themes and even complete sections from other pieces.

Clues to why Busoni composed the way he did can be found in his aesthetic writings, in which he described the compositional process from initial spark to tangible manifestation. Each composition, he believed, began with an Idee (idea) in the composer’s mind. He considered such Ideen abstract, idealistic and “non-musical” entities taken from human

10 Schoenberg’s letter to Busoni, 24 August 1909, ibid., 393–95.11 Schoenberg’s letter to Busoni, 3 July 1910, ibid., 403.12 Schoenberg’s letter to Busoni, 24 August 1909, ibid., 394.

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experience. These ideas need not be entirely new, personal, or even musical; they can be drawn from other realms such as literature, ar-chitecture, or even from everyday events. Originally unrelated to mu-sic, these abstract thoughts become abstract musical conceptions (Ein-fälle) that are then transcribed into musical realizations and arranged into larger structures.13

Busoni was not the only composer at the time who considered the Idee to be a key factor in the construction of a musical masterpiece. Schoenberg wrote extensively about the concept, and his views can serve as a basis of comparison with Busoni’s ideas. Unlike Busoni, Schoenberg viewed the Idee in strictly musical terms and required that it originate with the composer. For Schoenberg, composing began with the novel conception of a personal, concrete, and new musical idea. The Idee was either a composer’s overall musical conception for an en-tire piece, or the reasoning behind the musical unfolding of the com-position; as Schoenberg put it, it was “thinking in tones and rhythms.”14 This is how Schoenberg described the Idee in his essay “New Music, Out-moded Music, Style and Idea”:

In its most common meaning, the term idea is used as a synonym for theme, melody, phrase, or motive. I myself consider the totality of a piece the idea: the idea that the creator wanted to present. But because of the lack of better terms I am forced to define the term idea in the following manner:

Every tone which is added to a beginning tone makes the mean-ing of that tone doubtful. If, for instance, G follows after C, the ear may not be sure whether this expresses C major or G major, or even F major or E minor; and the addition of other tones may not clarify this problem. In this manner there is produced a state of unrest, of imbal-ance which grows throughout most of the piece, and is enforced by similar functions of the rhythm. The method by which balance is re-stored seems to me to be the real idea of the composition.15

13 Busoni’s poietics bear some resemblance to eighteenth-century compositional aesthetics that were informed by rhetorical models. In the eighteenth century, as Lau-rence Dreyfus has noted in relation to Bach’s compositional process, the notion of in-vention, rather than inspiration based on creative personal imagination, was important during the compositional process. The invention of an idea or subject for a speech or a composition could be drawn from a wealth of pre-existing themes or topoi or the work of other authors. Once a proper idea had been decided upon, it was arranged or elaborated upon and executed. Laurence Dreyfus, Bach and the Patterns of Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 3.

14 Arnold Schoenberg, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique and Art of its Presen-tation, ed., and trans. and with a commentary by Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 15.

15 Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leon-ard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 122–23.

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In addition to the Idee, Schoenberg also used the term Gedanke to refer to the main germinal musical component of a piece, which he believed should also be novel and distinctive and originate with the composer. In his incomplete treatise on the musical idea, he argued that musical themes relate intimately to a piece’s textural, formal, and stylistic unfolding:

The contrapuntal idea [Gedanke] is distinguished from the homopho-nic idea [Gedanke] by its predisposition toward a different kind of im-age production. In homophonic (main- or upper-voiced) music im-ages arise through “developing variation”. . . . The contrapuntal idea [Gedanke] produces images that must differ greatly from one another in the total sound. . . . For a contrapuntal idea [Gedanke] has an ini-tial formulation that permits shifting the position of the various con-stituents (themes, gestalten, voices) in a kaleidoscope manner . . .16

In contrast, Busoni’s concept of the Idee is abstract and not spe-cifically musical. Moreover, different sections of a composition can be based on different Ideen. Busoni’s Idee is not necessarily an overarching vision for a complete composition. Virginia Allen Englund suggests that Busoni was using the term in a Platonic sense to denote a univer-sal absolute independent of the phenomenal world.17 Although she is correct to note that Busoni thought that the Idee transcended any tangible musical work, she ignores the fact that Busoni’s essays also im-ply a less abstract interpretation. Unlike Plato, Busoni did not believe that the Idee is an ideal metaphysical type that the phenomenal ob-ject merely represents. Neither was it related to specific compositions, musical tones, or rhythms. In Busoni’s aesthetics the Idee is a tangible image formed in the psyche of the composer as a result of his interac-tions with the world.

To designate a strictly musical idea Busoni used the term Einfall. The Einfall is not consistently distinguished in English translations from the more general Idee, and for this reason it has received little scholarly atten-tion. For Busoni, Einfall was an abstract musical concept intimately related to the Idee. The Einfall, like the Idee, was abstract in that it originated in the composer’s psyche and had no concrete audible manifestation or form. It was not necessarily the overall conception of a piece, as Schoenberg’s Idee, nor was it a specific tangible musical theme like Schoenberg’s Gedanke. The Idee of Gothic architecture, for instance, could lead to an

16 Schoenberg, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique and Art of its Presentation, 111.

17 Virginia Allen Englund, “Musical Idealism in Ferruccio Busoni’s Klavierübung” (DMA diss., University of Alabama, 1991), 3–4.

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Einfall consisting of related musical impressions, textures, styles, forms or even remembrances of themes that could be combined or transformed; counterpoint, ornamentation, fugues and fantasies might come to mind. For Busoni, Einfälle need not be restricted to any particular genre, form, or piece; an Einfall could assume different forms, manifestations, dimen-sions, and could be placed in various genres, just as a human could en-gage in different occupations. An Einfall could be reused in multiple pieces, and a single piece could contain more than one Einfall. The Ein-fall, like the Idee, need not be entirely novel or even one’s own. It could include the remembrance of a previously heard theme that the composer quotes, revises and places in a new context.

In the essay “How I Compose,” Busoni described the formation of the Idee and its related musical Einfall, demonstrating their difference by using a section from his opera Die Brautwahl (1912). He claimed that he borrowed the Idee for this section from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s literary description of an orthodox Jewish man. This Idee then became an abstract musical concept, an Einfall, which Busoni based on music already in existence, a Jewish melody. This Einfall needed to be tran-scribed into tangible tones, then arranged and expanded into a com-plete work:

How do people compose? I answer you willingly because it interests me to investigate the psychic mechanism. It can be said in a few words. First comes the idea [Idee], then the conception [Einfall], or one seeks for it, then follows the execution. . . . In the opera I am now working on, which is an opera and not a light opera, and it is not called the Braut-Wacht nor the Braut-Nacht, but the Brautwahl, a change of scene occurs with a drop curtain between.18 The scene fol-lowing shows a half-dark Weinstube in which an ancient mysterious Jew, Manasse, sits alone and silent. I used this intermission to paint with the orchestra a kind of portrait of this Hebrew. Old and surly, ghostlike and gruesome, rather than a big, imposing person and above all, called an “Orthodox.” “He seems to have come back from a time long past,” says E. T. A. Hoffmann, from whom I have bor-rowed the subject.

Do you see that now I have the idea [Idee]? From this there is a hint that an extremely old Jewish melody could be used as a musical motive—it will certainly be familiar to you from synagogue ritual. Thus the interval of time between idea [Idee] and conception [Einfall] was considerably shortened for me.19

18 The words Brautwahl, Brautwacht, and Brautnacht refer to different stages of mar-riage: the initial selection of the bride, the bride’s waiting for the groom, and the wed-ding night. The choice of Brautwahl for the opera’s title seems the most apt, however, given the plot’s emphasis on the quest for the bride’s hand in marriage.

19 Busoni, “How I Compose,” in The Essence of Music and other Papers, 50–51.

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Other parts of the opera were based on different Ideen and Einfälle. Busoni indicates, for instance, that the second part was based on a poem by Fouqué.20

Busoni often based his instrumental works on abstract Ideen drawn from literature, architecture, or human experience. Gothic architec-ture served as an inspiration for the Fantasia Contrappuntistica (1910); Busoni drew a rough sketch illustrating the architectural Idee behind the 1910 Grosse Fuge that eventually formed the basis for the conclusion of the Fantasia Contrappuntistica, a fugue based on music borrowed from J. S. Bach’s Art of Fugue. Busoni included a refined architectural diagram in the published version of the two-piano version explaining his vision behind the piece (see fig. 2). The Einfälle, themes from Bach’s Art of Fugue, aspects of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, contrapuntal textures, vast-ness of scope, improvisatory passages, and ornamental figures contrib-uted to this Gothic architectural style. Busoni exclaimed that though he had used another’s theme, he had turned it into something new: “That Bach did not even exhaust all the possibilities with his 16 fugues on the same motif is proved by my ‘Grosse Fuge’ which, when you compare it, introduces something like 20 pages of new combinations.”21 The death of his father provided the abstract Idee for the Fantasia nach J. S. Bach (1909). The musical realization of this Idee was a musical fantasy in F minor based on the interweaving of three chorale melodies and related organ pieces by J. S. Bach, along with newly composed material by Busoni, to be played with a dolente affect.22

Because of the abstract nature of music in general, Busoni did not think that music should imitate specific emotions or objects, but he believed a composition could evoke general human emotions, or reac-tions to universally experienced human events, like death. It could also reflect human approaches to organization and structure, to the way the human mind planned great and intricate buildings, and to the way an author imagined the internal characteristics of literary characters. But music was not to imitate specific buildings or create the likenesses of people. The musical artwork, Busoni believed, was related to abstract thoughts that passed through the composer’s mind.

For Busoni, the next step in the compositional process was to real-ize the Einfall in music. He described this step most clearly in his Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music. Although the process Busoni outlines—how

20 Busoni’s letter to Hugo Leichtentritt, 25 Feb. 1914, in Selected Letters, 176.21 Busoni’s letter to Egon Petri, 12 July 1910, ibid., 109.22 Busoni’s theories about representation in music are too complex to explore in

detail in this article. For further explanation, see chapter five in my forthcoming disserta-tion, “Ferruccio Busoni and the Ontology of the Musical Work: Permutations and Possi-bilities” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2010).

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an abstract musical concept is recorded on paper—is not unusual, Busoni’s choice of terminology is unexpected. He specifically deempha-sizes novelty of invention through his choice of the terms Transkription and Arrangement:

“Notation” [Skription] (“writing down”) brings up the subject of tran-scription [Transkription], nowadays a much misunderstood, almost dis-reputable concept [schimpflicher Begriff ]. The frequent antagonism, which I have excited with “transcriptions,” and the opposition to which an oftimes irrational criticism has provoked me, caused me to seek a clear understanding of this point. My final conclusion concern-ing it is this: Every notation is, in itself, the transcription [Transkrip-tion] of an abstract musical concept [Einfall ]. The instant the pen

figure 2. Diagram of the formal structure of the two-piano version of Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntistica für zwei Klaviere: Choralva-riationen über “Ehre sei Gott in der Hohe gefolgt” von einer Quadrupelfuge über ein Bachsches Fragment

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seizes it, the thought [Gedanke] loses its original form. The very inten-tion to write down the musical concept [Einfall ] compels a choice of measure and key. The form, and the sound means [Klangmittel ], which the composer must decide upon, still more closely define the way and the limits. It is much the same with man himself. Born naked and yet without definite aspirations, he decides, or at a given moment is made to decide, upon a career. From the moment of decision, although much that is original and imperishable in the musical concept [Ein-fall ] may live on, it is pressed [herabgedrückt] into the type of a genre [Klasse]. The musical concept [Einfall ] becomes a sonata or a con-certo; the man a soldier or a priest. That is an arrangement [Arrange-ment] of the original. From the first transcription to the second step is comparatively short and unimportant. And yet it is only the second, in general, of which any notice is taken; overlooking the fact that a tran-scription [Transkription] does not destroy the archetype, which is there-fore not lost through transcription.23

In the above-quoted passage Busoni specifically uses the term Tran-skription to refer to the translation of Einfälle into concrete musical themes, melodies, or motives. When composers capture their Einfälle in more tangible manners by notating them and setting them into keys and meters, they “transcribe” them in a manner similar to the transcrip-tion of folk melodies. Rather than the creation of a novel original, the process thus involves the musical realization of an abstract conception. Because performance is also the translation of the written medium into sound, Busoni views it as a type of transcription; the performer’s job is to perceive and revive the Einfall from its static notated state.

In his writings and compositions, Busoni uses the term Transkrip-tion not only in a more traditional manner to refer to the transferring of a piece from one instrumental medium to another (which he also calls Übertragung), but also to refer to the transferring of an Einfall into notation during composition, or from notation into aural sound during performance.24 The above-quoted passage suggests that Busoni saw a

23 Busoni, Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, [1911]. My revised translation is based on that by Theodor Baker in Three Classics in the Aesthetic of Music (New York: Dover Pub-lications, 1962), 84–85. I replaced the word “idea” in the English translation with the phrase “musical concept” to better reflect Busoni’s use of the German term Einfall. I also corrected a few errors in the translation.

24 In a literary sense the term Übertragung means “translation” (the translation from one language to another). Translation in this sense includes a degree of interpretation, since literal word-for-word translations rarely convey the originally intended meaning. When Busoni uses Übertragung with regard to music, there is no exact English equivalent of the term. The transfer from organ to piano, for instance, does not involve a change of language, only of medium. Nevertheless, this musical act also involves a degree of inter-pretive translation, since the new musical medium often requires a non-literal transfer of musical thoughts.

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parallel between the two. He argued that a transcription in the tra-ditional sense of the word is similar to the writing down of a melody, theme, or other compositional aspect of one’s own Einfall. Both require translation, the one from one instrument to another, the other from the abstract idea to concrete realization. By drawing parallels between the translating of another’s composition into a piece for a new instrument and the translating of one’s own Einfall into a tangible notated form, he conceptually related the process of composition and transcription.

The final step in the compositional process for Busoni was the elab-oration and expansion of the transcribed Einfall into a complete form or structure. His use of the term Arrangement to describe this process shows just how blurred the boundaries were for him between the cre-ation of new pieces and the creativity involved in the arrangement of sections of pieces already in existence. Although in popular usage the English term “arrangement” has been viewed fairly synonymously with the term “transcription” in reference to pieces arranged for other in-struments, in Busoni’s practice “arrangement” refers to the organizing of pitches, the developing of the transcribed Einfall, and to the working out of the transcribed musical conception into a composition.25 It also includes the choosing of the specific configuration and combination of notes and structures, the instrumentation and register, the phrasing and form, and the large-scale development and structure. Although there is probably some conceptual and practical overlap between the Transkription and the Arrangement of the Einfall, it seems that the former refers mainly to steps and decisions required for placing an abstract musical conception into concrete written form, whereas the latter in-volves creative elaboration and choices about how to develop the Einfall into the musical artwork. Busoni specifically mentioned the choice and placement of a “transcribed” Einfall into a genre or form as an example of Arrangement. For him even a composer’s choice to expand a motivic idea into a sonata or concerto counted as an Arrangement. Busoni thus considered any transformation of the Einfall, whether by the composer or by another individual, to be an arrangement. This aspect of the com-positional process greatly interested Busoni. The intricacy of the Ar-rangement, how well the musical material was organized, the uniqueness of structure, and the relation of the Einfall to the chosen instrument in terms of color and register, were no less important to him than the nov-elty of the conception.

25 See the definition of the term in The Harvard Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003): “The adaptation of a composition for a medium different from that for which it was originally composed. . . . The terms transcribe and transcription are sometimes used interchangeably with arrange and arrangement. Often, however, the former implies greater fidelity to the original.”

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Since Busoni believed that composition was primarily the arrange-ment of notes, he thought that it was impossible to determine where an arrangement (in the traditional sense of the word) ended and a new composition began. The mixture of arrangement, transcription, and original composition can be demonstrated in the fifth piece from his Fünf kurze Stücke zur Pflege des polyphonen Spiels (1923) he composed “af-ter Mozart” (nach Mozart). Whereas the first half of the piece is largely a transcription of the chorale tune “Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh darein,” taken from the Adagio of the two armored men in Mozart’s The Magic Flute (no. 21), the last page is an arrangement that conflates the cho-rale melody and the paired thirty-second-note accompanimental figures from the opera’s trio (no. 16) for the three boys. Throughout the piece Busoni interwove polyphonic figures and chromatic writing of his own conception.26

The various designations of Busoni’s transcriptions differentiate between the pieces according to the amount of borrowed material: Transkription or Übertragung indicate the reworking of a piece for a new instrument, Bearbeitung refers to a more invasive reworking of a work by another composer, and Nachdichtung means the quotation from and reinterpretation of one or multiple excerpts from one or more compo-sitions within the context of newly composed musical material.27 These categories frequently overlap. Moreover, one finds reworked versions of Busoni’s own pieces and explicit quotations or allusions to other com-posers’ works or to other musical styles even in those of his composi-tions that lack such designations.

For Busoni the difference between compositions and arrangements was conceptual. Borrowing or reworking musical material was an essen-tial part of his compositional process both in arrangements and in orig-inal compositions. The difference was that while a composer chooses his own Ideen and Einfälle, an arranger accesses and retouches anoth-er’s Einfälle. Since the quality of the Arrangement was no less important for him than the novelty of conception, he did not consider arrange-ments (Bearbeitungen) to be of lesser value than new compositions. He pointed out the inconsistency of those who denigrated arrangements but praised variations as “original” compositions:

Strangely enough, the variation-form is highly esteemed by the Wor-shippers of the Letter. That is singular; for the variation-form when built upon a borrowed theme produces a whole series of “arrange-ments” which, besides, are least respectful when most ingenious. So

26 I am grateful to Stephen Hinton for suggesting the inclusion of this example.27 Many Nachdichtungen are identified by the word “nach” in their title (see Fantasia

nach J. S. Bach).

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the arrangement is not good, because it varies the original; and the variation is good, although it “arranges” the original.28

Compositional Practice

The compositional process Busoni explained in his writings was more complicated in practice than in theory. A glimpse at Busoni’s sketches reveals that the compositional steps described above frequently over-lapped. On some occasions Busoni was still choosing meters and keys for themes (a phase that in theory he considered part of the Transkrip-tion of Einfälle) while already working on the phrasing, development, and overall structure (a phase he designated as the Arrangement). Yet it appears that the basic procedures Busoni described, and that origi-nated in his interest in the multiple ways notes could be “arranged,” did indeed inform how he composed.

Five sketches for the Nocturne Symphonique (1913), a piece that Busoni originally envisioned as a piano sonatina, reveal Busoni’s at-tempts to first transcribe his abstract musical conceptions into themes. The initial sketch includes only rudimentary pitches for theme two, suggestions for the key, and contours for other themes. Squiggly lines indicate the direction and shape of themes that Busoni transcribes into actual pitches only later. In further sketches the first theme appears ini-tially, it seems, as a counter melody to theme three. Later sketches in-clude more detail and the combination of themes into longer phrases, as well as harmonizations or contrapuntal treatment of themes. Busoni explores multiple ways the themes can be combined before eventually portraying the final ordering and configuration. Textural suggestions in prose in the initial sketch, “Imitat. Bass u. Mitt” (Imitation in the bass and middle voices) only become realities in later stages as Busoni begins “arranging” his themes. In the final two sketches Busoni reworks the material for specific instruments and adds nuanced interpretation markings while weaving the themes into a longer and more complete form.

Although Busoni does not explicitly indicate his Idee for the piece, the date of the composition implies a biographical context. Busoni wrote it during a time period when he was fascinated with magic and occultism, and was working on the score of Doktor Faust (1916–24). It is likely that these fascinations informed his Idee for the Nocturne Sym-phonique and its related Einfall. Such hypothesis could perhaps be sup-ported by the title word “nocturne,” with its association of night and darkness, as well as by the prevailing chromaticism, and by Busoni’s plan to use a glass harmonica in the final section of the composition.

28 Busoni, Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, 19.

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According to Antony Beaumont, Busoni was inspired by a specific liter-ary Ide :

Its literary inspiration undoubtedly comes from Mereshkovsky’s Leon-ardo romance; a scene from this book that particularly fired Busoni’s imagination was a courtly entertainment provided by Leonardo for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. The artist had devised a system of crystal spheres from which music emanated.29

Nothing in Busoni’s writings appear to definitively substantiate this claim. But it is provable that the Arrangement of the Einfall underwent a transformation during the compositional process, in which the piano sonatina (Busoni’s initial plan) turned into an orchestral piece. This is how Busoni described the transformation:

The third sonatina seems to have the character of a butterfly (hoping straight away for the best)—at any rate it is undergoing a metamor-phosis, has for the moment assumed the form of a caterpillar, is feed-ing on smuggled half-hours and crawling up the trunk of the orchestra tree.30

The Nocturne Symphonique later mutated again when it provided material for Doktor Faust. Themes and complete sections from it appear through-out the opera score; in the opening Symphonia from Doktor Faust, for instance, nearly atonal music quoted from the Nocturne Symphonique in-terrupts the neo-modal opening suggestive of pealing bells.

This obscuring of boundaries between composition and arrange-ment characterize Busoni’s entire oeuvre, as seen in his numerous com-positions published with hyphenated authorship designations such as Bach-Busoni, Mozart-Busoni, Liszt-Paganini-Busoni, and Busoni-Schoen-berg demonstrate. Some pieces, like the Fantasia nach J. S. Bach and the Kammerfantasie über Carmen (1920), acknowledge the borrowed material in their titles. Others contain short quotations, fragments, and allusions that are not acknowledged at all. Both in his original compositions and in his reworkings of other composers’ works Busoni was interested in refining, perfecting, and “arranging” the music, showing alternative means of expression for his and others’ Einfälle.

That Busoni’s practice was unusual at the time can be demon-strated by a brief comparison with another keyboard-composer, Leo-pold Godowsky (1870–1938), whom Busoni admired as a pianist. Both

29 Antony Beaumont, Busoni the Composer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985): 185.

30 Busoni’s letter to Egon Petri, 8 Oct. 1912, in Selected Letters, 156.

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Busoni and Godowsky were virtuoso pianists who were renowned for their arrangements and dynamic performances, and were also active as composers. But Godowsky, unlike Busoni, upheld clear distinctions between the “composed” and the “arranged.”

Godowsky’s arrangements, which are witty, lyrical, virtuosic, and ef-fective concert pieces, served mainly educational and virtuosic purposes. His arrangements of Chopin’s piano etudes range from nearly identical transcriptions for left hand only to freer arrangements. Godowsky often transcribed Chopin’s works for the greatest visual affect. The spectacle of watching a pianist playing Godowsky’s free left-hand arrangement of Chopin’s Etude in C Major, op. 10, no.1 (transposed to D-flat major), would have been sure to elicit surprise, wonderment, and adoration from listeners. In Godowsky’s version Chopin’s etude becomes at once an exercise for the left hand and a freakish display of sheer strength and virtuosity. Similarly spectacular is Godowsky’s arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that ends with a fff dynamic designation, left-hand tremolos, and octave runs that are reinforced by massive right-hand block chords featuring four-six notes each. This surely was in-tended to elicit applause from American concert audiences.

Unlike Busoni, Godowsky followed the example of other contem-poraneous performers by maintaining traditional hierarchies and dis-tinctions between new compositions and arrangements or transcrip-tions. His own compositions are usually based on original themes. And while he creatively arranged many pieces, he maintained reverence for the originals. In the preface to his Chopin studies, he specifically con-demned altering the slightest detail when performing the etudes in their original form:

Being adverse to any alterations in the original texts of any master works when played in their original form, the author would strongly condemn any artist for tampering ever so little with such works as those of Chopin. The original studies remain as intact now as they were before any arrangements of them were published; in fact, the au-thor claims that after assiduously studying the present versions, many hidden beauties in the original studies will reveal themselves even to the less observant student.31

Busoni had no such qualms about changing the original work. He changed something in nearly everything he performed or studied, in-cluding major pieces by such canonical figures as Mozart.32 The range

31 Leopold Godowsky, “Personal Remarks,” Studies after Frederic Chopin (Berlin, Schle-singer, n.d. [1903–1914]), iv.

32 Busoni’s prowess at the piano doubtless colored how he arranged pieces, as well as what pieces he altered. Yet although improvisations featured prominently in his early

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of Busoni’s alterations of his own and other composers’ works extends from minor interpretive choices and fairly literal transcriptions of pieces for different instruments, and the rearrangement of works for the same instrument, to quotation or parody of other composers’ works in his own compositions and the creation of multiple versions of pieces. The scope and spectrum of practices falling somewhere between com-position and arrangement in Busoni’s oeuvre is broad and can be il-lustrated using four examples: his edition of Bach’s Well Tempered-Clavier (book I 1894, book II 1916), of Liszt’s Grandes Étude de Paganini, no. 6 (1914), of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G Major, K. 453 (undated), and his Fantasia nach J. S. Bach.

As an editor Busoni wanted to present Bach’s text as accurately as possible. He studied autograph manuscripts and first editions whenever he could, compared multiple contemporary editions, and cited variant versions in footnotes. His edition of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier thus differed from other performance editions, such as Hans Bischoff’s less scholarly performance edition in 1883. Yet despite his scholarly intent, he, like Bischoff, also added his own ideas to the text, making no dis-tinction between Bach’s text and his own editorial insertions. He also included his own revised or recomposed versions of some preludes and fugues, some of which he considered to be equal or even superior to Bach’s original text.

Busoni’s most extensive revisions occur in the second book, which appeared in 1916. He revised Bach’s text assuming that he could show connections between the preludes and fugues better than Bach. His revisions were intended to correct what he perceived as weaknesses in Bach’s Arrangement of the pieces, for he felt that he understood Bach’s intentions—or more precisely, his Einfälle. In his introduction to the score he acknowledged that his additions were unusual:

The relationship between the obligatory prelude to its fugue does not seem to me to be established clearly enough. The preludes of the Well-Tempered Clavier obviously do not make it easy for one to become more certain over this question. As editor I have devoted some diligence to establishing a definite connection between prelude and fugue,

concert programs, they disappeared in his maturity. If he changed pieces more exten-sively for performance, he reworked the pieces first in writing and ironed out perceived flaws; he notated extensive changes before the time of performance and considered such to be acts of composition, however closely the revisions were linked to his performance engagements and recitals. A letter to his wife shows that when altering pieces, such as a sonata by Weber, he often studied and took into account multiple versions: “I was obliged to buy a copy of the Weber sonata and I took the Liszt edition ‘just to see’ (as one says in poker). Many of the things I have arranged and altered, which are almost self-evident, did not occur to Liszt. On the other hand, we have done some things alike . . .” Busoni’s letter to Gerda Busoni, 20 November 1901, in Letters to his Wife, 52.

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occasionally showing this by means of example. In the later examples I believe I have overstepped Bach’s intentions.

All changes and additions, however, follow the educational in-tention of giving the learner an insight into the mechanism of the composition.33

In his edition Busoni established thematic connections between pre-ludes and fugues, rescored fugues on four staves, included analyses of the compositional techniques employed, orchestrated sections, and even inserted alternate versions of the pieces. In the commentary on the fugue in F minor from book 2, for instance, he showed thematic relationships between voices and between the prelude and fugue while also providing examples that demonstrated further canonic and contra-puntal possibilities (see fig. 3). In examples 3 through 6 he illustrated alternate ways of combining the voices. Example 3 portrays a canon with voice entrances one measure apart at the subdominant. Example 4 shows a canon with entrances a half measure apart and with free in-tervallic relationships. Example 5 shows the opening of a canon at the tenth, and example 6 is a canon at the octave.

Busoni’s interest in exploring multiple realizations of Einfälle is demonstrated even more vividly in his version of the sixth Grandes Étude de Paganini by Liszt. Although Busoni had previously edited the Grandes Études de Paganini with fidelity to the text, he also made his own ar-rangements that were thoughtful compromises between Liszt’s version, Paganini’s original, and Busoni’s own conception of the pieces.

For a performer like Busoni it was not unusual to arrange a virtuoso etude. What was out of the ordinary was how he did it. Rather than completing definitive versions of each and publishing only his revised versions, Busoni included original and revised texts together and even published multiple versions of some etudes.34 In the sixth etude he de-rived his own compositional ideas from both Liszt’s and Paganini’s ver-sions, selecting features that he liked from each version. Rather than creating a new set of variations based on one original source, as Brahms and Rachmaninov did when composing variations on the same theme, he showed many possible realizations so that performers could compare multiple versions and choose from various possibilities. Probably it is be-cause of this fluidity of the published text that Busoni’s version—which

33 Busoni’s introduction to the Bach edition, in The Essence of Music and Other Papers, 99.

34 In the earlier published versions, only variations 2, 3, 4 and 6 include the Lisztian version in the score. Etudes 1 and 5 contain only Busoni’s arrangement. The autograph manuscripts, however, include Busoni’s alterations indicated directly in his performance scores. The final version (1925) of the etudes 1, 4, 5 and 6 also omit the Paganini and Liszt versions.

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figure 3. Busoni’s commentary on Bach’s Fugue in F-Sharp Minor, in Das wohltemperierte Klavier II, vol. 3, ed. Busoni, Egon Petri and Bruno Mugellini (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1916), 11 3) At the interval of one measure and at the relationship of the sub-dominant4) At the interval of a half-measure, four voices, with freer intervallic treatment of the beginning motive5) Counterpoint at the tenth6) Canon at the octave, combined over the first entry of the theme in the second part of the fugue (mm. 28–31); the original three-voice phrase unchanged, the Soprano addedBelow 6) Other canonic possibilities, such as that of augmentation and inversion, neither of which happen in the fugue, will be merely mentioned here, so that the student maintains space for his own thoughts.

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was simultaneously an arrangement, a composition, and a transcription—is largely forgotten, whereas Brahms’s and Rachmaninov’s variations on the same theme are considered masterpieces.

Both the published versions and autograph manuscripts (the latter located in Staatsbibliothek Berlin) document Busoni’s alterations in his arrangement. In his score multiple versions are positioned on top of one another, thereby creating an either/or situation as Liszt had previ-ously (but less systematically) done with his ossia passages in transcrip-tions, arrangements, and compositions. In his 1914 version of the sixth etude, Busoni provided the original Paganini version from the Caprice no. 24 in A Minor, Liszt’s 1838 and 1851 transcriptions/arrangements of the work for piano, and his own new arrangement. By placing his own arrangement neither in the highest nor in the lowest line, Busoni acknowledged the equal validity of each version (see fig. 4). In the pref-ace to the 1914 edition, he highlighted the novelty of his approach:

The editor has here for the first time placed both versions over one another and also placed them beside the original Paganini text as a clarifying guide. The variants of the editor attempt to show still further possibilities of transcription; they present the form that he has made for his own concert performance and the striving to more closely approach the original.

(Der Herausgeber hat hier zum ersten Male die beiden Versionen über-einander gestellt und ihnen dem Paganinischen Originaltext als erläutern-den Führer beigestellt. Die Varianten des Herasugebers wollen versuchen, noch andere Möglichkeiten der Transkription zu zeigen; sie stellen die Form dar, die er für den eigenen Konzertvortrag sich zurechtgelegt hat, und das Bestreben, dem Originale sich enger anzuschliessen).35

35 Busoni, “Preface,” Paganini-Liszt Etüde No. 6: Thema mit Variationen, eine Transkrip-tionsstudie (New York: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1914), i. Translation mine.

figure 3. (continued)

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figure 4. Busoni, Paganini-Liszt Etüde No. 6: Thema mit Variationen, eine Transkriptionsstudie, mm. 1–4, showing Liszt’s first and sec-ond versions, and Busoni’s own variant with Paganini’s origi-nal (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Busoni-Nachlass, 278), 1

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Busoni arranged the etudes for his own concert use. He etched al-terations directly in his own performance score, crossed out measures, and inserted loose leaf sheets of manuscript paper with his changes no-tated in corresponding locations.36 Additionally, Busoni intended the sixth etude to be an instructional aid in transcription, as indicated by the title page: “Paganini-Liszt Thema mit Variationen: Eine Transkrip-tionstudie von Ferruccio Busoni” (Paganini-Liszt Theme with Varia-tions: A Transcription Study by Ferruccio Busoni). Presenting the vari-ous versions together documents the piece’s genealogy and the many ways Einfälle could be recorded and realized.

Most significantly, Busoni’s method of notation showed the mul-tiple attempts, including his own, to access both the composer’s Einfall, and its origin in the treasury of motives found in the vibrating universe. Busoni believed that as an arranger he had as much access to this “orig-inal” as the composer. He could therefore perfect Paganini’s and Liszt’s attempts to arrange the Einfall by adding his own.

Busoni’s arrangement showed his own perspective on the piece. Throughout the score he selected aspects that he liked from previ-ous versions and added some of his own ideas. In the opening four measures of the theme, for instance, he retained the dramatic broken chords of the two Liszt versions, but in the original register of the Pa-ganini model. In the following measures he switched to the register of both Lisztian versions, only to choose the register of Paganini’s origi-nal again in measures 13–14. In variation 1 he copied Liszt’s second version, but changed the register in measures 5–8, placing pitches one octave higher than written. He also inserted a repetition of the second phrase and included his own ossia version in the second half. In varia-tion 3 he used the staccato textures from the first Lisztian version and the register of the second version while thinning bass textures and eliminating repetitions of block chords. In variation 11 he copied the texture and rhythm of the Paganini version in the first four mea-sures and modeled his own version after the second Lisztian version thereafter.

Throughout, he also chose lighter textures more closely associated with the violin, but used the basic arrangement of pitches selected by Liszt. The eighth variation is a varied rendition of the second Liszt ver-sion. Melody notes appear in a lighter broken (as opposed to block) form (see fig. 5). In variation 6, Busoni likewise lightened the bass, drawing attention to the treble line of the original Paganini version

36 The arrangements first appeared individually and then as a collection in the second edition of Busoni’s Klavierübung in 1925. The autograph manuscript for the sixth etude was dated 1913 and was first published in 1914. It appeared again in altered form in 1921 and 1925.

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figure 5. The first four measures of the four versions of variation 8 in Busoni, Paganini-Liszt Etüde No. 6 (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Busoni-Nachlass, 278), 37

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while changing the affective designation from Liszt’s con brio or con strepito to con leggiero. At the conclusion of the variation he copied Pa-ganini’s version in the treble, eliminating Liszt’s virtuosic and thicker right hand-octaves (see fig. 6). In the coda he featured brilliant single-note arpeggios closer to the Paganini model.

Busoni also offered performers the option to switch back and forth between versions. In one penciled comment inserted into the auto-graph of variation 3, he stated that the performer could switch from his to the Lisztian version should he or she decide to include a repetition (see fig. 7). He also included optional ossia passages to be used at the performer’s discretion. For instance, in variation 1, measures 11–14, he notated a slightly altered rendition to be inserted upon repetition that included extra dynamic markings and an alto voice. His version of vari-ation 4 consists solely of an alternate ossia rendition of the right-hand passage of the second Liszt version.

Busoni did not compose alternate versions of variations 2, 5, 7, 9, and 10. Because he still included Paganini’s and Liszt’s versions of each of the omitted variations, it is likely that he intended perform-ers to choose one of the earlier versions by the other composers. The more extensively revised 1925 version includes newly arranged versions of several variations that were initially omitted in the 1914 version.37

Busoni’s tendency to retouch or revise works based on others’ Einfälle was not limited to virtuosic pieces, but extended to more re-vered classical masterworks. His Mozart arrangements in particular in-cited ire from some concert reviewers, such as the anonymous critic quoted below:

Where shall we draw the historical line? How decide what music needs the hand of the retoucher? What music can suffer such liberties? And how far may the transcriber go in his arbitrariness, without offending both style and taste? Much that the early masters wrote seems dull and colorless to Busoni’s acutely developed tonal sense. . . . Personally, I conceive such treatment applied to Mozart as an act of violence done to the spirit and character of the music. For me, the transparency, the moderation in tonal volume, is no lack, but an integral part of its charm and characteristic quality; and I absolutely refuse to accept such changes as Busoni has made to the Andante of Mozart’s Ninth Piano Concerto.38

37 In the 1925 edition Busoni included an ossia transcription of variation 5 and added a second version of variation 6 as well. He also included an alternative version of variation 9. The ending coda is also more brilliant and original in the 1925 edition.

38 Untitled concert review, The Musical Leader, 1914 (Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Busoni-Nachlass, F4, 81).

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figure 6. The end of variation 6 in Busoni, Paganini-Liszt Etüde No. 6 (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Busoni-Nachlass, 278), 32. “Der Herausgeber lässt, beim öffentlichen Vortrag, diese Variante der Liszt’schen Version derselben Variation vorangehen.” (The editor allows, in public performance, this [Busoni’s] version of the variation to precede the one by Liszt.)

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figure 7. Variation 3 in Busoni, Paganini-Liszt Etüde No. 6 (Staatsbiblio-thek Berlin, Busoni-Nachlass, 278). 20. (“bei etwaiger Wieder-holung des II. Theiles, benutze man die Liszt’sche Version” [in the case of a repetition of the second part, use Liszt’s version])

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According to Daniell Revenaugh, Busoni originally intended to ar-range all of Mozart’s piano concertos for use on the modern piano. He also planned to create an edition of them.39 Little remains docu-mented of this project.40 But in one of the few surviving scores Busoni included his own version together with Mozart’s. As with the Paganini example, he appears to have wanted to document musical genealogy and give performers a chance to choose between versions. Busoni’s arrangement of the solo part in Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G Major, K. 453, survives only as an unfinished, unpublished, and undated man-uscript in an unknown hand in the Staatsbibliothek Berlin. It contains both the original and varied versions, with a piano reduction of the or-chestral part by Egon Petri appearing in pencil below the solo parts.41 Unfortunately the copyist included only the complete Mozart solo part, cadenzas by Busoni, and two fragments of Busoni’s arrangement of the solo part (one in the first movement and one in the second).42 The title page names Busoni as the arranger of the solo piano part and Petri as the arranger of the orchestral parts for two piano.43

Although the motivation for this arrangement is not explicitly stated, it was probably to modernize the piece for the concert grand piano of Busoni’s time, to perfect any perceived compositional defi-ciencies, and to show an additional, better realization. Certainly com-positional perfection was Busoni’s motivation to revise the rondo finale of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E Major, K. 482, in 1919, which Busoni believed Mozart had not had the time to perfect.44 He described the process of adding transitions and varied returns to the finale in a letter to the Polish musicologist Alicja Simon:

39 Oral communication by Petri’s student, Daniell Revenaugh, 25 October 2008. 40 Surviving Mozart Piano Concerto Arrangements by Busoni include: Concerto in

G Major, K. 453 (fragment), 1921?; Concerto in E Major, K. 482 (all lost, except finale), 1919; Duettino Concertante nach Mozart—Two piano (four hand), adaptation based loosely on the Concerto in F Major, K. 459, 1921; Concerto in E Major, K. 271 (only the Andantino movement), 1914.

41 Although undated, the manuscript was likely created around 1921, since Busoni first performed the concerto then. See Edward Dent, Ferruccio Busoni: A Biography [1933] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 327.

42 Daniell Revenaugh’s oral communication, 25 October 2008. Revenaugh con-tends that the handwriting on the clean but unfinished copy in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek is neither Busoni’s nor Petri’s, and surmises that the copyist was likely working from a now lost performance score.

43 Bearbeitung der Solostimme von Ferruccio Busoni. Übertragung des Orchesters von Egon Petri. Ausgabe für zwei Klaviere (Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Busoni-Nachlass, 341).

44 “Yesterday I revised the Rondo of that Mozart concerto, which I am going to play in Zurich. It is so full of places which are not worked out, obviously written quickly, easily and brilliantly. I believe it will be splendid now. That occupied me from early morning until 5:30 p.m.” Busoni’s letter to Gerda Busoni, 22 October 1919, in Letters to his Wife, 277.

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I have completed a concert-edition (with some license) of the Rondo-Finale from Mozart’s E concerto [K. 482]. As it now stands, it is a bril-liant piece (little science and much pleasure).

This work gave me the rare pleasure of observing how a “climax” was gradually built up from a piece which I had originally disparaged. At first I considered it too light-weight a counterpart to the sublime minor-key Adagio. But now I have come to admire the instinct with which the listener is drawn back out of those depths. It had gaps in it (evidently passages which had not been worked out); a cadenza was called for; two transitions were completely missing; the piano writing could bear a few (discreet) amendments; the theme returns six times in exactly the same guise: I took the liberty of introducing three variants.—In this way I enjoyed 3 stimulating mornings.—Now I am thinking of other things again.45

In the remaining fragments of his version of Mozart’s Concerto in G major, Busoni mainly altered textures and registers. In the manu-script, which presents Busoni’s arrangement of the solo exposition of the first movement, the left-hand Alberti bass figures are changed into alternating left-hand thirds. Throughout the passage he changed tex-tures and registers, added a second voice to single notes in the right and the left hands, and created chords in the bass where block intervals existed previously. In single-note right-hand passagework over sustained whole-note bass chords, he presumably relied on the pedal’s sustaining qualities so that the left hand could be free to harmonize the right a tenth below (see fig. 8). Busoni’s arrangement of the six-measure frag-ment appearing in the Andante mainly features registral displacement. He placed right-hand figural passagework one octave higher than indi-cated and replaced sustained notes with scales and arpeggios.

These modifications of the piano writing were not as structurally in-vasive as his revisions to the finale of the Concerto in E major, yet they represented important aspects of composition. According to Busoni how one scored a piece was an essential part of the Arrangement, not just a necessary step for its performance. In a treatise on orchestration he claimed that “orchestration is composition, not instrumentation.”46 Changing textures and registers was part of Busoni’s effort to reach a more perfect representation of Mozart’s Einfälle. Unlike Mahler’s reorchestration of Beethoven’s symphonies, which served a practical purpose, namely the introduction of modern instruments, Busoni’s ar-rangement had a conceptual aim, which was to show yet another com-positional possibility for performers.

45 Busoni’s letter to Alicja Simon, 28 Oct. 1919, in Selected Letters, 296.46 Busoni, from “Einleitung” in Aesthetik des Orchesters (Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Busoni-

Nachlass, C1–135).

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figure 8. Busoni’s arrangement of the solo part of Mozart, Piano Con-certo in G Major, K. 453 written below Mozart’s version (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Busoni-Nachlass, 341), 9

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In Busoni’s compositional practice it is just as difficult to distin-guish between the new and the borrowed as in his arrangements. He frequently derives the main motivic material from the works of others, and often borrows entire sections. Sometimes he bases even the Einfall on others’ music. This is characteristic especially of his Nachdichtungen, pieces that hover somewhere between new compositions and arrange-ments as extensive quotations are interwoven with new material.

In both literature and music the term Nachdichtung refers to the assimilation of a work in an older style into a newer and more modern idiom. In music Nachdichtung means a free translation or arrangement, as the word indicates, the writing of a poem after, or “in the manner of” another poet.47 Nachdichtung designates musical works that are based on themes, styles, or ideas of other composers, but represent at the same time the composer’s own conception of those elements.

Although Busoni did not use the term systematically, he did apply it to his Sonatina brevis, in signo Joannis Sebastiani Magni (1918), subtitled In freier Nachdichtung von Bachs kleiner Fantasie und Fuge D Moll.48 The fourth volume of his Bach edition is also labeled Kompositionen und Nachdichtungen. This volume contains, among other pieces, his Fantasia nach J. S. Bach and the Fantasia Contrappuntistica.

Busoni’s Nachdichtungen blur the boundaries between original com-position and arrangement, transcription, and paraphrase by featuring elements of each. They mix older compositions (either quoted exactly or in varied form) with newly composed sections, in other words they place the older music in new contexts. Ulrich Prinz has already demon-strated parallels between Nachdichtung technique and sixteenth-century compositional techniques in which previously composed works were reused and incorporated into new ones for dramatic or musical purpos-es.49 Both Busoni and sixteenth-century composers sometimes borrow one or more voices from another piece; both might quote themes and motives, copy fragments, or paraphrase works. Yet there are also some important differences between Busoni’s practice and earlier practices. Busoni’s technique includes juxtapositions of musics from different time periods. He places tonal sections next to bitonal ones and mixes old idioms with modern sounds. Sometimes Busoni also superimposes borrowed music or diverse styles.

47 Marc-André Roberge has previously discussed the meaning of this term and its relation to Busoni’s oeuvre. See “The Busoni Network and the Art of Transcription,” Canadian University Music Review 11, no. 1 (1991): 75–76.

48 The fantasy and fugue to which Busoni is referring is BWV 905. 49 Ulrich Prinz, “Ferruccio Busoni als Klavierkomponist” (Ph.D. diss., Heidelberg

University, 1970), 28.

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One such Nachdichtung was Busoni’s Fantasia nach J. S. Bach, which he composed in memory of his father. The Einfall for this piece, in-spired by the death of Busoni’s father, seems to have been a serious and reverential setting characterized by counterpoint and the invocation and quotation of several chorale melodies.

The Transkription process is difficult to trace, since the surviving au-tograph fragment contains only a few sketches. The choice of a minor key supports the mournful Idee. The Arrangement— that is, how Busoni decided to organize the Einfall into a complete composition—can be deducted from the finished piece. Slightly altered renditions of quota-tions from three chorale compositions by Bach—the organ variations Christ der du bist der helle Tag (BWV 766), the fughetta Gottes Sohn ist kom-men (BWV 703), and the organ chorale prelude Lob sei dem allmächtigen Gott (BWV 602)—are juxtaposed with newly composed sections that also borrow motivic material from the quotations. Busoni’s choice of these three chorales had probably been influenced by the intervallic similari-ties between their melodies (all three melodies begin with either step-wise or skipping rising thirds) and their shared religious aura, which Busoni, who rejected Christianity, evoked without any religious function.

The piece features a range of techniques falling somewhere be-tween arrangement and composition: transcription from organ to pi-ano, adaptation and quotation, and the creation of new material based on borrowed motives. Busoni quotes variations 1, 2 and 7 from BWV 766; he uses the chordal chorale texture presented in variation 1 in its original key and copies the melodic line and harmonies. He thick-ens the texture by doubling notes in order to create a more massive and organ-like sonority on the piano. Variation 2 also appears in its entirety with only minor changes in phrasing and expression mark-ings. Variation 7 exhibits only minor changes before it dissolves into free sequential adaptation of the material. Busoni maintains the overall contrapuntal and imitative style of BWV 703; he copies the subject and its answer on the dominant in the alto voice, but he elaborates upon Bach’s material, extending it from twenty-one to forty-two measures while adding bass octaves and more complex harmonies (see fig. 9 and ex. 1). He quotes the chorale melody of BWV 602, but transposes it into A major with free imitation of the sixteenth- and thirty-second-note figures in the accompanying voices. He quotes the first six mea-sures of the melody closely, using full four-voice chords in the right hand and octaves in the left hand before breaking off just before the melodic cadential figure of the chorale (see fig. 10 and ex. 2).

Busoni inserted newly composed sections between the quotations and framed the piece with new material. Even these newly composed sections derive from the chorale melodies. Busoni wrote the opening

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figure 9. Quotation of J. S. Bach’s fughetta Gottes Sohn ist kommen (BWV 703) in Busoni’s manuscript of his Fantasia nach J. S. Bach (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Busoni-Nachlass, 239), 5

thirteen measures in the neo-Baroque style of instrumental prelude or fantasia, characterized by rising sequential figures. Rising stepwise mo-tion outlining a third (F, G, A or A ) in constant sixteenth notes ap-pears in the bass, along with a longer fragment of the chorale melody that emerges in the upper voice in measure 3. Although the pedal in

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34

5

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11

14

17

20

example 1. J. S. Bach, Gottes Sohn ist kommen, in Chorale Preludes V: Kirn-berger Chorale Preludes, BWV 690–713, Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe, vol. 40, ed. Ernst Naumann (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1893), 21

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figure 10. Quotation of J. S. Bach’s organ chorale prelude Lob sei dem allmächtigen Gott (BWV 602) in Busoni, Fantasia nach J. S. Bach (Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Busoni-Nachlass, 239), 7

the bass seems to establish F as the tonal center, there is no cadence in F. The lack of cadence and the strange scale patterns obscure the tonal-ity. In the following fifteen measures (mm. 14–29) Busoni develops sequentially the same three pitches, F, G and A . This time the pattern appears in retrograde over gentle left-hand arpeggios, which, together with an added chromatic inflection on G, contribute to the mournful (dolente) affect originating in the Idee. The material from the opening returns at the end, the melody sounding now in bell-like octaves over sixteenth notes. Peace (indicated by Busoni’s inscription of “Pax” in the score) is achieved as the music slowly dies away.

This mixture of new and old material is present in other pieces by Busoni. Die Brautwahl, for instance, contains material from the “Hebrews’

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example 2. J. S. Bach, Lob sei dem allmächtigen Gott, Chorale Preludes (Orgelbüchlein), BWV 599–644, organ score, Bach-Gesell-schaft Ausgabe, ed. Wilhelm Rust (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1878), 6

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March” of Giacomo Rossini’s Mosè (1818), quotations from Carissimi’s Jepthe (1648), German folksongs, and Gregorian chant, juxtaposed with various exotic scales. Doktor Faust combines a fragment from the Grego-rian Credo I, choral writing in the style of Palestrina, chorales, Baroque counterpoint, and a dance suite and multiple quotations borrowed from Busoni’s own oeuvre (like the nearly atonal passages from Nocturne Symphonique).50 Arlecchino (1914–16) contains quotations from the music of Mozart and imitates the styles of Gaetano Donizetti and Richard Wag-ner. In his Third Piano Elegy, Meine Seele bangt und hofft zu Dir (1907), Busoni quotes fragments from a Lutheran chorale, “Allein Gott in der Höh sei her,” derives motivic material from it, and places the borrowed motives in a mixture of bitonal, modal, or tonal settings. The opening of the piece presents only the initial ascending minor third of the melody, which becomes a generative melodic and rhythmic cell for the entire composition. The most complete (chromatically altered) seven-measure statement of the melodic line begins in measure 20, but dissolves before its completion into descending sequential reiterations of a two-note de-scending melodic pattern derived from the chorale.

Conclusion

We have seen repeatedly how composing original pieces and creating arrangements were closely related in Busoni’s mind. For him novelty of conception was not necessarily a prerequisite for a musical work. Neither the Idee nor the Einfall had to originate with the composer; both could be appropriated from another source. The composer’s role was not to invent, but to form and develop the material. But even the working out of the Einfall could involve the reuse of themes, motives, or even com-plete sections of pieces. According to Busoni Tonkunst was never entirely new, yet it was eternally young and eternally classic, as it evolved from the source of music and from one piece to the next throughout time. Where the old left off and the new began was debatable.

This mixing of borrowed and original material was not unique to Busoni’s aesthetics, especially not in the first decades of the twen-tieth century when neoclassicism was on the rise. But the degree to which Busoni conflated practices of arrangement and composition in his writings and compositions was unusual, as can be illustrated by comparative examples. In 1909 Mahler combined and reorchestrated two suites by Bach. Offering little in the way of newly composed ma-terial, the resulting orchestra suite can be considered as an arrange-ment of Bach’s music. In 1933 Rachmaninov transcribed the prelude,

50 Antony Beaumont has already documented many of the quotations and allusions in Doktor Faust. See Beaumont, Busoni the Composer.

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gavotte, and gigue from Bach’s third Violin Partita for keyboard, adding richer harmonies and contrapuntal textures. Like Mahler, he added little new material. Between 1918 and 1922 Schoenberg and his circle arranged pieces for the Society for the Private Performance of Music. These arrangements served a practical purpose: they enabled the Society to provide expert performances of contemporary music in chamber settings. Perhaps a closer parallel to Busoni’s practice is Schoenberg’s transcription of Handel’s Concerto Grosso, op. 6, no. 7 as his Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (1933). Not only did Schoenberg modernize the instrumentation, but he also sought to improve the thematic development and correct perceived compo-sitional defects. The procedure, however, was not typical of Schoen-berg’s compositional practice and little of his modern style appears in the piece. Stravinsky’s reuse of pieces by Pergolesi in his Pulcinella Suite (1920–21) was closer to Busoni’s practice. Yet despite the bor-rowed material, Stravinsky saw Pulcinella primarily as his original com-position, in which familiar music was defamiliarized through strident harmonies and new instrumental colors. Moreover, Stravinsky never appropriated or arranged revered classics, even though his neoclas-sicist period continued well into the later 1940s.

Many contemporaneous keyboard virtuosi created new arrange-ments for their own use, especially of Bach’s music. A performer of arrangements by Bach, Mozart, Liszt and others, Busoni was an heir to this virtuoso tradition. One can argue that the boundaries between original composition and arrangement or transcription had already been blurred in nineteenth-century keyboard works, especially in Liszt’s opera fantasies and in his transcriptions of orchestral works such as Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.51 Busoni’s approach, which included jux-taposition of exact quotations with newly composed sections that de-rived from quoted material and featured contrasting tonal languages, was nonetheless idiosyncratic. He alone published multiple versions of the same piece in order to show diverse solutions for the realizations of the Idee, thereby revealing musical genealogies and presenting the per-former with alternatives.

From today’s perspective, Busoni’s approach to composition seems refreshingly liberating. As he liked to say, it was quality—“good” versus “bad” music—that eventually mattered. In his time, when originality was valued beyond quality, he could not achieve the exalted status of an original composer and was denigrated to the underappreciated position of the arranger. Yet by calling into question the musical hierarchies of

51 Jonathan Sanvi Kregor, “Franz Liszt and the Vocabularies of Transcription, 1833–1865” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2007).

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his own era, he articulated an alternative view, which ultimately proved him to be one of the most original thinkers of his day.

Stanford University

ABSTRACT

An anecdote circulating among pupils of Egon Petri (1881–1962), a protégé of Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), was the story Petri told of how on more than one occasion Busoni’s wife was mistakenly intro-duced as “Mrs. Bach-Busoni.” Whether fact or fiction, this social faux pas illustrates how closely Busoni’s name has been associated with the names of composers whose works he arranged. Despite his prolific com-positional career, he is remembered more as a transcriber and arranger than as a composer of original works. His practice of arranging others’ works also affected his own compositions, which frequently contained borrowed material. Busoni’s creative art thus blurred conventional boundaries between what is traditionally considered to be primary “original” works and subsidiary transcriptions or arrangements.

While Busoni’s tendency to blur boundaries between new pieces and arrangements has been already noted, his compositional aesthet-ics has only been cursorily studied. Relying on the essay “How I Com-pose,” the section on notation from The Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Mu-sic (1907), and unpublished sketches from the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, I examine Busoni’s idiosyncratic compositional ideology, explain the meaning of his terms Idee, Einfall, Transkription and Bearbeitung in his compositional process, and show that Busoni valued the creativity in-volved in transforming already existing musical material no less than invention of the new. I illustrate Busoni’s compositional aesthetics through analyses of his arrangements of Liszt’s sixth Paganini Etude, Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K. 453, and his Fantasia nach J. S. Bach.

Keywords: arrangement, J. S. Bach, Ferruccio Busoni, Fantasia nach J. S. Bach, musical borrowing, transcription.

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Documents

Busoni on Composition