CHAPTER I

 

            Busoni did not become an innovator all at once. The beginnings of his activity took place under very different artistic ideals. Let us look first at this time—the childhood, adolescence and youth of  our hero.

            In the north of Italy, in Tuscany, near Florence lies a little town called Empoli. There, on the first of April, 1866, the great future pianist was born. He was the only son of the Italian clarinettist Ferdinando Busoni and the pianist Anna Weiss, who was Italian on her mother’s side and German on her father’s. The boy’s parents concertized and led a wandering life, which the child, too, was obliged  to share. Eleven months after birth he was taken away from his native town, and, traveling from place to place, found himself in Paris in 1969, where the family planned to settle. However, the Franco-Prussian War that began in 1870 forced Busoni’s parents to abandon this intention. The boy’s father set off on an extended concert tour of Italy, while Ferruccio and his mother settled in Trieste in the home of his grandfather, Giuseppe Weiss.

            In Trieste—an Italian city, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,—the musical education of Busoni began. His abilities, as is usual among great musicians, manifested themselves early.  Already at four years of age he played the piano by ear. The first lessons of piano and musicianship were given by his mother, and soon the pupil could perform small four-hand pieces of Diabelli with his teacher.

            Busoni’s mother was a good pianist, quite successful on the stage (eight days before her son’s birth she performed in Rome in the presence of Liszt)[i];  her son remembered in her playing a faultless technique, great facility, and a certain "salon" approach "in the spirit of Thalberg’s art."[ii]

            In 1872, after the absence of two years, suddenly the father came back, and the boy’s life underwent great changes.

            Busoni’s father was a colorful, original personality. Far from lacking in talent, but deficient in general education and professionalism, he constantly nurtured grand plans, which usually greatly exceeded his rather modest real capacities. He did not wish to play in an orchestra, considering that beneath him, and, quite possibly, could not, for, according to his son, he  could not manage rhythm or sight-reading any too well.[iii]  But solo concerts, which had brought him "small fame"[iv] could not entirely satisfy his ambition, either. In search  of the road to fame he tried many and various ventures:  now attempting to write and publish poetry, then  "make" his son’s career, and so on. Ardent and out- spoken, unceremonious and despotic, always "temporarily" without a penny to his name, but full, nevertheless, of unswerving faith in the future, he often evoked ironic smiles of those around him and materially complicated the lives of his family members.

            His father’s fantasies left their mark on Busoni’s life from the very start. By his wish, the newborn was given four names:  Ferruccio-Dante-Michelangelo-Benvenuto—in the naive belief that "patronage" of the three great Tuscan artists (Dante Aligieri, Michelangelo Buonarotti, and Benvenuto Cellini) would guarantee the glorious future of the child. Naturally, having reached the age of awareness, Busoni hurriedly discarded the "heavy responsibility" tactlessly laid upon him by his father,  and rejected the two middle names, and, eventually, also the fourth, leaving to himself only the name Ferruccio.

            Back with his family, the father immediately began furious activity. Having insisted on moving the family away from the home of his father-in-law to a separate apartment, he dismissed his wife from further instruction of the child, and, thoroughly unembarrassed by his incompetence in the questions of pianism, himself undertook his education. These lessons are colorfully described in Busoni’s "autobiographical fragments":

            "My father knew little about piano-playing, and, in addition, did not have very good rhythm, but he compensated for these faults with absolutely indescribable energy, severity, and pedanticism. He could sit by my side for four hours a day, controlling every note and every finger. There could be no indulgence, rest, or slightest inattention on his part. The only pauses were precipitated by explosions of his unusually irascible temperament, which were followed by reproaches, dark prophecies, threats, an occasional box on the ear, and ample tears. Finally, there was repentance, the father’s consolation, and assurance that he wishes only the best—and the next day it all began again."[v]

            Having put it in his head at all costs to make another Mozart out of his son, Busoni’s father decided that the boy is most likely to reach this goal by following step by step the artistic path of the author of Don Giovanni. The latter, of course,  studied music from the age of four and performed at six. Busoni’s lessons began at the "correct" time. What was left was to prepare him successfully for a public debut, which took place—with, alas, a certain delay in the "plan"—in Trieste, on the 24th of November of 1873:  the seven year old Busoni took part in his parents’ concert, playing the first movement of Mozart’s C Major Sonata, the F Major Sonatina of Clementi and two pieces from Schumann’s Album for the Young: "Armes Waisenkind" and "Soldatenmarsch." The little pianist appeared under the dual name Weiss-Busoni—the father’s new idea, in the belief that the combination of two "big names" will create good publicity for the young prodigy.

            Around the same time, Busoni began to test himself in composition. In the summer of 1973 he wrote a few little piano pieces, which were soon followed by several other compositions for the piano, or for voice and piano.

            The successful Trieste debut opened the door to future performances by the young Ferruccio. On May 18, 1874 he performed "quite distinctly and with subtle details"[vi] the C minor Concerto of Mozart under his father’s baton, and on the 8th of February, 1876, gave his first full recital in Vienna, which included Haydn’s Trio in D Major (Busoni played the piano part from memory), a rondo of Mozart, Hummel’s Theme and Variations, and five small pieces of his own. A few other artists participated in the concert, including young Arthur Nikisch (the future famous conductor) who played the violin part in the Haydn and accompanied two singers on the piano.

            The Viennese concert of young Busoni did not pass unnoticed. On February 13th a detailed review by Edward Hanslick appeared in the Neue Freie Presse. The Austrian critic noted the "brilliant success" and the "unusual abilities" of the boy, which set him apart from the crowd of the "wonder-children," "whose wonder ends with their childhood."  "For a long time now," writes the critic, "no other child prodigy had elicited as much sympathy from me as little Ferruccio Busoni. That is because he is so little of the prodigy and so much of a good musician ...  His playing is fresh, natural, with that difficult to define, but immediately obvious musical instinct, which always finds the correct tempo, the correct accents, catches the spirit of the rhythm, clearly brings out the voices in the polyphonic episodes ..."   The critic also praised the "incredibly serious and masculine character" of the compositional experiments of the performer, which, together with his predilection for "lively figurations and combinatorial contrivances" testifies to a "loving study of Bach";  the same features distinguished the free fantasy, which Busoni improvised after the program,—"mainly in imitation and counterpoint"—on the themes given by the author of the review.

            This description of the early art of the Italian musician is confirmed by the later admission of Busoni himself that he "played Bach and studied counterpoint from the earliest childhood," which had then become his "mania," so that each of his childhood compositions contains "at least one fugato."[vii] Because of these "Bachisms" the early works of Busoni appeared to the contemporary critics as if "written two hundred years ago."[viii]

            The judgment of an authoritative critic made an impression on the musical world, particularly on the music publishers:  they began to bring out Busoni’s works from 1876-1877.  

            The stay in Vienna was commemorated for Busoni by one more important event— meeting Anton Rubinstein.  Upon hearing the young artist, Rubinstein wrote his opinion that the boy "possesses a most remarkable talent, both as a performer and as a composer" and "some day will bring glory to his country";  at the same time the great Russian pianist persistently recommended that his young colleague be relieved from public performances "to earn a living" and given an opportunity to "work seriously," obtain "a thorough education," but without "shoving" him into any conservatory.[ix]  The sensible advice of Rubinstein was not followed:  Busoni was compelled to continue concertizing to feed not only himself, but also his parents. Almost four years had passed until circumstances allowed him to devote somewhat more serious attention to his musical education. At the end of 1879, the thirteen-year-old Busoni left Trieste for another Austrian town—Graz, the capital of the province of Styria, where, on November 23 he conducted the performance of his Stabat Mater for chorus and string orchestra. A few days later he became a student of the noted local musician Dr. W. Meyer.

            Wilhelm Meyer (1831-1898)[x], better known as W. A. Remy, in those years enjoyed great popularity not so much as a composer, but as a superb teacher of music theory and composition;  among his students were such outstanding musicians as Reznichek[xi], Weingartner[xii] and Kienzl[xiii].                      

            Busoni studied with Mayer-Remy from December 1879 to March 1881, writing during that time many fugues, quartets, cantatas, a six-voice choral Mass a capella and thoroughly familiarizing himself with the theory and history of music;  in the future, the student remembered with gratitude his demanding and able teacher.[xiv]  This year and a quarter was the extent of Busoni’s "school" education—in composition and general musicianship;  as for the piano, after his mother and father, he took no more lessons from anyone, remaining, thus, practically self-taught .

            At the end of his studies with Remy, Busoni undertook a concert tour of Italy, which was a great success. Here, his father appeared again on the scene, with his maniacal aspiration to copy the biography of Mozart. As the latter was elected to the famous Philharmonic Academy in Bologna in the fifteenth year of his life, so the fifteen-year-old Busoni was required to seek the same honor. After passing an extremely difficult examination, in 1881 he, too, became a member of the Bolognese Academy—the first case after Mozart to be awarded this honorable title at such an early age. The junior Academician lingered in Bologna for some time and wrote the most extended of his works of those years—a gigantic, three hundred-page-long score of his cantata for chorus, soloists and orchestra Il Sabato del Villaggio on the text of a Leopardi poem. Unpublished, as were many of Busoni’s early works, the cantata was performed in Bologna in 1883 under a well-known conductor, L. Mancinelli. The same year saw the publication of Busoni’s transcription of the funeral march for the death of Sigfried from Wagner’s musical drama Götterdämmerung—his first experiment in the transcription genre that was destined to bring him so much fame in the future.

            As he became older, with each passing year Busoni felt more and more burdened by the eccentricities of his father, trying persistently to leave his guardianship, to begin an independent life. In the search for his own road in life, from 1884 he more noticeably separated himself from Italy, became "Germanized."  Living in Vienna and in other Austrian cities, he was drawn into the circle of noted local musicians, artists, literati, and fell under a strong influence of Brahms, to whom he dedicates his piano etudes op. 16 and op. 17.

              At this time, Busoni commenced another endeavor: from 1884 various newspapers and magazines  (L’Independente of Trieste, Grazer Tagepost, Zeitschrift für Musik, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and others) published — under the name of the author, and under his anagrammatical pseudonym Bruno Fierosucci — his correspondence, reviews and articles on music ("The State of Music in Italy," "Giovanni Sgambati," "Verdi’s Otello," "On the Anniversary of Don Juan," etc.). Among these articles, the detailed reviews of Anton Rubinstein’s Vienna concerts of February 1884 are of particular interest. The interpretations of the eminent Russian pianist made a great impression on Busoni,  especially those of Chopin—the B Minor Sonata and the C Minor Nocturne;  these performances were "more valuable than an entire course of study."[xv]  According to Schnapp, Rubinstein’s playing became, for the next few years, young Busoni’s "ideal" which he  occasionally copied;  as late as in the winter of 1890-91, listening to Rubinstein’s performance of "Ërlkönig," among other works, Busoni, as his wife related, "wept, like a child;  tears of fascination and joy ran down his cheeks."[xvi]

            At his meeting with Rubinstein in February of 1884, Busoni played his barely completed large piano sonata in F Minor (dedicated to Rubinstein);  the latter liked the work, but it remained unpublished.

            Busoni’s first performance in Berlin took place on April 14, 1885;  the program included the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue of Bach, Beethoven’s Appassionata and the performer’s own Variations and Fugue on Chopin’s C Minor Prelude. The public’s reception was cold. The young artist had to face the fact that at the age of nineteen the fame achieved by the "wonder-child" loses its value, and his position in the musical world must be won anew, on a different, and more solid basis than that which was useful in childhood.

            In 1886 (1887, according to other sources), Busoni finally realized his long-cherished plan to "get away from the unstable home situation":[xvii] he finally left the parental home and settled in Leipzig. Life there was far from easy. In need of money, he accepted every sort of employment:  he played, composed, wrote articles, produced piano scores of operas, piano transcriptions of Mozart and Mendelssohn symphonies, Schubert’s overtures and dances, the orchestral part of Schumann’s Concert Allegro. His letters give a lively description of Busoni’s conditions in Leipzig:

            "...Food, not only in quality, but in quantity leaves much to be desired... A few days ago my Bechstein arrived, and I had to give the movers my last thaler by the next morning. The night before, I am walking down the street and run into Schwalm (the owner of C. F. Kahnt publishing house—G. K.). I immediately stop him:  "Please take my compositions—I need the money."—"I can’t do that right now, but if you would like to write a little Fantasy on the Barber of Baghdad[xviii] for me, come to me in the morning, and I’ll give you fifty marks in advance and a hundred after it’s ready."—"Agreed!"  We said our goodbyes.

            The next morning I come for the fifty marks:  "Does our agreement still stand, Mr. Shwalm? One hundred after the job is done?"—"Of course! Here are the fifty!"—"And here is the finished work," and I take the manuscript out of the pocket. I worked from nine at night to three thirty, without a piano, and not knowing the opera beforehand."[xix]

            Life in Leipzig also had its bright side. There, Busoni found good friends—the Dutch violinist Henri Petri (1856-1914) and his family. Their closeness left its mark on the biography of the Italian artist. The head of the family—a concertmaster and leader of a then-popular quartet—became an ardent admirer and the first promoter of Busoni;  the grateful composer dedicated two of his works to him—the second String Quartet op. 26 and the violin concerto op. 35a.  Henri’s wife— the pianist Kathy Petri—suggested to Busoni the happy idea to undertake piano transcriptions of the organ works of Bach;  the inspirer is the object of the dedication of the first transcription—of the D Major Prelude and Fugue finished in 1888, and premiered by the transcriber for the Leipzig Bach Society. Another composition of those years is connected to the Petri family—the four violin Bagatelles op. 28, written, as the dedication informs us, "for the seven-year-old Egon Petri, for easy violin";  Egon, the son of Henri and Cathy, is the very Egon Petri (1881-1962),[xx] who eventually gave up the violin and become the famous pianist, the best-known student and follower of Busoni.

            In Leipzig, Busoni also met with other gifted musicians of his generation, then still as young as he, at the start of their careers, and destined to achieve renown later;  among them were Sinding, Delius, Novacek and Mahler. Among older musicians visiting Leipzig in those years, Grieg and Tchaikovsky took particular interest in Busoni.  Tchaikovsky heard Busoni’s First String Quartet op. 19 performed by Petri’s quartet and related his impressions of the work and its author in the chapter nine of Autobiographical Description of Travels Abroad in 1888. The great Russian composer calls the twenty-two-year-old Busoni "a remarkably interesting personality," possessing, besides talent, "strong charac- ter, brilliant mind," who "I have no doubt... will soon be talked about";  he considers it "highly desirable" that this "superb pianist appear among us in the near future."  As to the purely creative potential of Busoni, Tchaikovsky notices in him "a very strong talent in composition" and "an unusual seriousness of direction," but faults him for "forcing his nature," striving to "seem German," "be profound in a German manner," instead of "inventing new musical forms in the spirit of his own people,... rich in peculiarly Italian melodicity."[xxi]

            Despite all this, Busoni’s position in Leipzig remained so uncertain and materially insecure that in 1888 he accepted with pleasure the post, offered to him due to a recommendation of the well-known theoretician Hugo Riemann, of professor of piano at the recently opened Music institute in Helsingfors (now Helsinki).

 

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   © Dr. Svetlana Belsky.