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Composer, librettist, pianist, conductor, teacher, philosopher, aesthetician and critic, Ferruccio Busoni was a Renaissance<\/a><\/strong> man. A visionary and idealist, he spent a lifetime striving for a personal voice at a time when musical language was undergoing seismic shifts in emphasis. Cosmopolitan and open-minded, he anticipated many of the subsequent developments in music that would take place years after his death.<\/p> For these reasons alone, it is difficult to understand the current neglect of a musician who was one of the towering figures in early 20th-century music. <\/p> Perhaps one factor that prevents him from being more widely acknowledged is that his immense achievement as a composer does not fit into a specific national tradition. Whereas the music of his contemporaries Sibelius<\/a><\/strong> and Nielsen<\/a><\/strong> seems inextricably linked to their homelands, Busoni was more a citizen of the world.<\/p> Ferruccio Busoni was born in Empoli, Tuscany, Italy on 1 April. The family moves to Trieste when he is just a few months old, transplanting him into a cosmopolitan, German-orientated environment. <\/p> In 1875 he entered the Vienna Conservatory at the age of nine. Though encouraged by Brahms<\/a><\/strong> and Hanslick, he was dissatisfied with the tuition, and left after just two years.<\/p> In 1881 Busoni begins composition lessons in Graz with Wilhelm Mayer who fostered his love of Mozart<\/a><\/strong> and his interest in mysticism and orientalism.<\/p> He then took up teaching posts in cities including Helsinki, Moscow and New York. <\/p> Thereafter he mainly resided in Berlin, only leaving the German capital temporarily during World War I<\/a><\/strong> for New York, Bologna and Z\u00fcrich. In essence, Busoni\u2019s musical makeup thus bestrides a German and Italian<\/a><\/strong> duality almost unique in music.<\/p> But lack of a clearly defined national identity is only one of many facets of Busoni\u2019s musical outlook that defies classification. Given his traditional compositional training and the kind of music he wrote up to 1900, which covers most genres from ambitious orchestral scores and piano works to polished chamber music, he seems on the surface to have been a product of his time.<\/p> Like Liszt<\/a><\/strong>, who was one of his idols, he was best known in the musical world as a brilliant pianist who dazzled audiences with sublime readings of late Beethoven<\/a><\/strong>. He also followed his great predecessor in his strong predilection for transcription, reconfiguring in particular the keyboard music of Bach<\/a><\/strong> to impressive effect. Listening to the magnificent cathedral of sound that is unleashed in Busoni\u2019s wonderful arrangement of the great master\u2019s Chaconne for solo violin, you could be forgiven for thinking of him as a representative of late Romanticism<\/p> Yet to pigeonhole Busoni as a Romantic composer<\/a><\/strong> is misleading. True, the 1904 Piano Concerto is a work of excess. Lasting well over an hour in performance, it matches the scale and extravagance of Mahler\u2019s Second and Third Symphonies. Not only does it boast one of the most difficult piano parts in the repertory, but in the fifth and final movement Busoni introduces a male-voice choir that intones a mystic \u2018Hymn to Allah\u2019 drawn from Adam Oehlenschl\u00e4ger\u2019s 1805 play Aladdin<\/strong><\/a><\/i>.<\/p>When and where was Ferruccio Busoni born?<\/h2>
Who did Busoni study with?<\/h2>
Busoni\u2019s music<\/h2>