Ferruccio Busoni and His Legacy

Erinn E. Knyt

Description

Many students of renowned composer, conductor, and teacher Ferruccio Busoni had illustrious careers of their own, yet the extent to which their mentor's influence helped shape their success was largely unexplored until now. Through rich archival research including correspondence, essays, and scores, Erinn E. Knyt presents an evocative account of Busoni's idiosyncratic pedagogy—focused on aesthetic ideals rather than methodologies or techniques—and how this teaching style and philosophy can be seen and heard in the Nordic-inspired musical works of Sibelius, the unusual soundscapes of Varèse, the polystylistic meldings of music and technology in Louis Gruenberg's radio operas and film scores, the electronic music of Otto Luening, and the experimentalism of Philip Jarnach. Equal parts critical biography and interpretive analysis, Knyt's work compels a reconsideration of Busoni's legacy and puts forth the notion of a "Busoni School" as one that shaped the trajectory of twentieth-century music.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Unconventional Maestro
2. Janus-Faced Modernism
3. New Instruments, New Sounds, and New Musical Laws
4. From Opera to Film
5. New Sonic Landscapes
5. New Music of the Weimar Republic
7. Conclusions: "Passing the Torch"
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Music
• History
• Composer
• Musician
• History of classical music traditions
• Music of the United States
• Criticism
• Pedagogy
• Multiple signal classification

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253026897
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

FERRUCCIO BUSONI AND HIS LEGACY
FERRUCCIO BUSONI and HIS LEGACY

E RINN E. K NYT
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Erinn E. Knyt
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Knyt, Erinn E., author.
Title: Ferruccio Busoni and his legacy / Erinn E. Knyt.
Description: Bloomington ; Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016059667 (print) | LCCN 2017000759 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253026286 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253026842 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253026897 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Busoni, Ferruccio, 1866-1924-Influence. | Music-20th century-History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML 410.B98 K59 2017 (print) | LCC ML 410.B98 (ebook) | DDC 780.92-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016059667
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For Eric
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Unconventional Maestro
2. Janus-Faced Modernism
3. New Instruments, New Sounds, and New Musical Law
4. From Opera to Films
5. New Sonic Landscapes
6. New Music of the Weimar Republic
7. Conclusions: Passing the Torch
Selected Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK WOULD not have been possible without the support and encouragement of numerous scholars, colleagues, friends, and family members. I wish to thank my undergraduate and graduate professors for inspiring me to pursue a career in musicology and for awakening my interest in new music: George Barth, Karol Berger, Anna Maria Busse Berger, Sandra Graham, Tom Grey, Heather Hadlock, Stephen Hinton, and Christopher Reynolds. I also appreciate the advice of my colleague and mentor at UMass Amherst, Ernest May, who first inspired me to examine the Busoni-Var se connection, and to Neil Lerner for drawing my attention to Louis Gruenberg. One of my piano teachers, Julian White, who studied with Egon Petri, awakened my interest in Busoni. I also appreciate those who were willing to critique drafts: Austin Clarkson, Louis Epstein, Matthew Mugmon, Robert Nisbett, Raina Polivka, Emiliano Ricciardi, Marc-Andr Roberge, Suzanne Ryan, and other, anonymous readers. I am also indebted to my editor, Janice Frisch, for her advice and counsel. This project would not have been as complete without the assistance of those who helped me locate obscure letters, document, or scores, including Joan Gruenberg Cominos (daughter of Louis Gruenberg), Jean-Christophe Gero (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), Jonathan Hiam (New York Public Library), Ulrike Jarnach (daughter of Philipp Jarnach), Pam Juengling (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Henrica Lillsj ( bo Akademi Archives), Felix Meyer (Paul Sacher Stiftung), Laura Mills (Roosevelt University), Jerry McBride (Stanford University), Leo Monenen (Sibelius Academy), Judith Picard (Lienau Publishing House), Marja Pohjola (National Archives of Finland), Theresa Rowe (McGill University), Bradley Short (Washington University in St. Louis), Judith Grant Still (daughter of William Grant Still), and Petri Tuovinen (National Library of Finland). Also indispensable were the memories shared by Joan Gruenberg Cominos, Paul de Jong, Joel Feigin, Catherine Luening, Severine Neff, Eric Salzman, Harvey Sollberger, Richard Taruskin, Andrew Violette, Michael Finnissy, Alistair Hinton, Larry Sitsky, and Charles Wuorinen. Many thanks to Laura Arpiainen for her help with Finnish and Swedish translations and to Benjamin Ayotte for typesetting the music examples. This book would not have been possible without the generous support of a Faculty Research Grant from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and I gratefully acknowledge the support of the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Finally, I would like to express gratitude to my husband, Eric, and children, Kristof, Astrid, Erling, and Florian, for their endless patience as I worked on book drafts and went on numerous trips to archives and libraries.
FERRUCCIO BUSONI AND HIS LEGACY
Introduction

Ultimately it is always in a man s impact and not in his successes that his value is determined. And the influence that Busoni has had on our generation, not just as a pianist as most people take him to be, but as theoretician, teacher, innovator, creator-in short as a master in the old sense of the word which made the man and his work one-will perhaps be fully appreciated only by the next.
Stefan Zweig, Neue Freie Presse
AT THE TIME of his death, Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) was widely remembered as a pianist with legendary technique, but his activities as composer and author usually received only passing mention, while his role as a teacher was largely forgotten, except by his pupils. 1 He was widely praised for performances of his own J. S. Bach transcriptions, the late Beethoven sonatas, and complete cycles of works by Franz Liszt. By contrast, his compositions were little understood even by some of his students. Teeming with allusions to the past that were audibly juxtaposed to passages displaying new timbres, textures, harmonies, and scales, they seemed to stand outside main musical trends of his era. His aphoristic, mystical, and suggestive writings were inspirational but difficult to understand, and could be interpreted in any number of ways. 2 At the same time, his work as a composition teacher in the first decades of the twentieth century was overshadowed by the activities of other contemporaneous or near contemporaneous teachers, such as Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), who succeeded him in the Berlin master classes at the Akademie der K nste, and Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), to whom hundreds flocked as Paris became an important musical center after World War I.
Busoni s importance not only as a pianist, but also as an aesthetician, composer, piano teacher, and mentor of composition pupils during his Berlin master class (1921-1924) at the end of his life, is now beginning to be recognized. 3 Tamara Levitz, for instance, has documented the importance of Busoni s teaching on the lives and careers of his students (Kurt Weill, Wladimir Vogel, Walther Geiser, Robert Blum, Luc Balmer, Svetislav Stan i , Erwin Bodky, Hans Hirsch, and Heinz Joachim-Loch), the types of exercises he prescribed, and the class s cultural and political ramifications in the early Weimar Republic. In addition, as Levitz has shown, Busoni impacted many others during informal coffee hours ( Schwarzer Kaffee ) held in his home, including Stefan Wolpe, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Ernst Krenek, and Alois H ba. 4
However, Busoni s mentorship of composition pupils extended throughout his career, and well beyond the small circle of masterclass pupils. Even though Busoni was only officially affiliated with a single institution as a composition professor during this master class at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin, Busoni had previously been connected to several institutions as a professor of piano, including the Helsinki Music Institute (1888-1890), the Moscow Conservatory (1890-1891), and the New England Conservatory (1891-1892). 5 He unofficially taught composition to students at most of the institutions where he worked, including at the Liceo musicale in Bologna from 1913 to 1914, where he was officially an administrator. 6 In addition, his teaching of composition extended beyond the confines of traditional institutional settings-he taught and mentored composition students privately throughout his career.
Looking beyond the Berlin masterclass pupils offers a fuller vision of Busoni s activities as composition teacher. By documenting the relationship between Busoni and some of his significant pre-Berlin masterclass pupils, this book seeks to enrich understanding about his pedagogical activities, to reassess his importance as a composition teacher, and to contribute new knowledge to previously little-understood periods in the lives and careers of several significant composers of the early twentieth century. It documents how his teaching contributed to experimental strands of composition as his students pioneered new sounds and styles of music, such as electronic and film music, as well as new structures in more traditional genres.
Several of Busoni s pre-Berlin masterclass students went on to pursue successful careers in composition and teaching, and they credited Busoni with having been one of the most important influences on their development as composers. Among the more significant are Jean Sibelius, Edgard Var se, Otto Luening, Louis Gruenberg, and Philipp Jarnach. Other lesser-remembered figures include Guido Guerrini, Gino Tagliapietra, Bernard van Dieren, Gisella Selden-Goth, and Reinhold Laquai. 7 At the same time, Busoni mentored and promoted several composers who would become central figures in early twentieth-century music, including Schoenberg, B la Bart k, and Percy Grainger.
Studying Busoni s early- and mid-career composition pupils is especially significant because of his evolution as a thinker and composer. By the end of his life, his thoughts had turned inward, and he was p