Ferruccio Busoni and the Absolute in Music: Form, Nature and Idee

ABSTRACT

Ferruccio Busoni could be called an advocate of absolute music because of his frequent description of music as ‘absolute’ and his discussion of music as consisting of pure tones and rhythms found in the vibrating universe. However, he developed idiosyncratic theories about the term, its usage and its ideal manifestation in Tonkunst that remain largely unexamined in scholarly literature. True, Carl Dahlhaus noted Busoni's use of the concept to refer to music unconstrained by traditional forms, but this is merely one aspect of Busoni's views, which also, paradoxically, allowed for and included the visual and explicit connections to culture. The hybridity of Busoni's notion, which this article explores through an examination of writings and representative compositions, is especially relevant for current musicological discourse about absolute music. Sitting uneasily with Dahlhaus's more consistent view of absolute music as music apart from text or programme as well as with new musicological approaches that seek to refute the notion of music's autonomy, Busoni's view of absolute music offers a fascinating middle ground between compositions as discrete artistic artefacts on the one hand and as representations of their immediate culture on the other.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Karol Berger, Judith Crispin, Paul Fleet, Tom Grey, Heather Hadlock and Stephen Hinton for their ideas, input and suggestions.

Notes

¹ Ferruccio Busoni, Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, trans. Theodore Baker (New York, 1911; repr. New York, 1962), 5–7 (p. 5). For the original text see Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Trieste, 1907; repr. Leipzig, 1916 and Wiesbaden, 1954). All quotations in this text are from the 1911 edition, unless otherwise specified.

²Albrecht von Massow, ‘Absolute Musik’, Terminologie der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Stuttgart, 1995), 13–29.

³Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Reger Lusting (Chicago, IL, 1978).

⁴Thomas S. Grey, Wagner's Musical Prose (Cambridge, 1995); Daniel K. L. Chua, Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge, 1999).

⁶Pederson, ‘Defining the Term “Absolute Music” Historically’, 261.

⁵Sanna Pederson, ‘Defining the Term “Absolute Music” Historically’, Music and Letters, 90 (2009), 240–62. Pederson's article followed Richard Taruskin's attempts to debunk the notion of the ‘music itself’, a notion predicated upon the concept of absolute music. Richard Taruskin, ‘A Myth of the Twentieth Century: The Rite of Spring, the Tradition of the New, and “the Music Itself”’, Modernism/Modernity, 2 (1995), 1–26.

⁷The slippage in her article between scholarly methodologies and regulative concepts is also problematic. She elevates new musicological approaches that stress compositions’ connection to culture by downplaying the existence and importance of a pervasive concept of absolute music manifested as abstract autonomous art music. Yet a pervasive concept of absolute music need not preclude new methodological ways of studying music.

⁸Massow, for instance, notes: ‘F. Busoni proceeds, on the other hand, in his Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (Leipzig, 1916), to define absolute music principally in contrast to formalism’ (‘F. Busoni wendet sich wiederum in seinem Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik d. Tonkunst (Lpz. 1916) prinzipiell dagegen, absolute Musik unter dem Aspekt des Formalen zu definieren’). Massow, ‘Absolute Musik’, 19.

⁹Antony Beaumont, Busoni the Composer (Bloomington, IN, 1985), 89.

¹⁰Larry Sitsky, Busoni and the Piano: The Works, the Writings, and the Recordings, Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance, 7 (New York, 1986), 296.

¹¹Judith Michelle Crispin, The Esoteric Musical Tradition of Ferruccio Busoni and its Reinvigoration in the Music of Larry Sitsky: The Operas ‘Doktor Faust’ and ‘The Golem’ (Lewiston, NY, 2007), 23–5.

¹²Martina Weindel, Ferruccio Busonis Äesthetik in seinen Briefen und Schriften, ed. Richard Schaal (Wilhelmshaven, 1996).

¹³Ferruccio Busoni, ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Rosamund Ley (London, 1957; repr. New York, 1965), 1–16; Von der Einheit der Musik: Verstreute Aufzeichnungen (Berlin, 1922). All quotations in this text are from the 1965 reprint, unless otherwise specified.

¹⁴‘“Neue Klassizität”?: Offener Brief an Paul Bekker’, Frankfurter allgemeine Zeitung, 7 February 1920; ‘Young Classicism’, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 19–23. ‘Vom Wesen der Musik: Anbahnung einer Verständigung für den immerwährenden Kalendar’, Melos, 4/1 (1 August 1924), 7–13; ‘The Essence of Music: A Paving of the Way to an Understanding of the Everlasting Calendar’, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 193–200.

¹⁵Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Lusting.

¹⁶ Tonkunst has a slightly different meaning from Musik, and was Busoni's chosen term in the title of his Sketch. Since there is no direct English equivalent of the term, I have chosen to retain Busoni's original here. Tonkunst refers to tone art, or the craftmanship of tones (composition), as opposed to the more general notion of music as natural tones not subjected to human creativity.

¹⁷Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 5.

¹⁸Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 5–6 (punctuation modified).

¹⁹‘Die Musik, die in der ästhetischen Umgangssprache “absolute” genannt wird, verdient nach Busoni den Namen nicht, einen Namen, der auf das “sinnliche Scheinen” des “Absoluten” in einer losgelösten, fessellosen Musik zielt. […] Busoni proklamiert eine “freie” Musik, losgelöst von überlieferten Formen und insofern “absolute”.’ Carl Dahlhaus, Die Idee der absoluten Musik (Kassel, 1978), 43 (trans. Erinn E. Knyt).

²⁰Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 6 (punctuation modified).

²¹Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 6 (punctuation modified)., 10.

²²Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 6 (punctuation modified)., 11–12.

²³Busoni did not want the music to narrate a story or plot, as it does in Strauss's Don Quixote, for instance. He did not like pieces in which the music had to follow a storyline – the fight with windmills, Sancho Panza falling off his donkey, etc. – but he did not mind if a dramatic plot suggested combinations of more abstract structures. Busoni, ‘Don Quixote’, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 175–6. The essay comes from a letter to his wife dated 18 February 1911. Busoni, ‘The Score of Doktor Faust’, Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 6 (punctuation modified)., 70–6 (pp. 75–6); Über die Möglichkeiten der Oper und über die Partitur des ‘Doktor Faust’ (Leipzig, 1926).

²⁴Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 6 (punctuation modified).

²⁵Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 13 (translation modified).

²⁶Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 13 (translation modified)., 8.

²⁷Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 13 (translation modified)., 7–8.

²⁸Wagner, quoted and translated in Pederson, ‘Defining the Term “Absolute Music” Historically’, 243 (n. 18): ‘So sind durch den Helden, der das weite, uferlose Meer der absoluten Musik bis an seine Grenzen durchschiffte.’ Richard Wagner, ‘Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft’, Dichtungen und Schriften, ed. Dieter Borchmeyer, 10 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), vi: Reformschriften 1849–1952, 9–157 (p. 56).

²⁹E. T. A. Hoffmann, ‘Beethoven's Instrumental Music’, E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings: ‘Kreisleriana’, ‘The Poet and the Composer’, Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke (Cambridge, 2004), 96–102 (p. 99).

³⁰Busoni, open letter to Hans Pfitzner of June 1917, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 17–18 (p. 18). Pfitzner wrote his pamphlet entitled ‘Futuristengefahr’ (‘Danger of Futurists’) largely in response to the 1916 version of Busoni's Sketch. Busoni published this open letter as a public reply to Pfitzner's attack: ‘Offener Brief ’, Vossische Zeitung, 3 June 1917, repr. in Ferruccio Busoni, Von der Einheit der Musik: Von Dritteltönen und Junger Klassizität von Bühnen und Bauten und anschliessenden Bezirken, ed. with commentary by Martina Weindel, Quellenkataloge zur Musikgeschichte, 36 (Wilhelmshaven, 2006), 87.

³¹Busoni, open letter to Hans Pfitzner of June 1917, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 18.

³²Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 7.

³³See Erinn E. Knyt, ‘“How I Compose”: Ferruccio Busoni's Views about Invention, Quotation, and the Compositional Process’, Journal of Musicology, 27 (2010), 224–64, for a more comprehensive description of the relationship between Ideen and compositional structures in Busoni's ideology and compositional aesthetics.

³⁴Adolf Bernhard Marx, Musical Form in the Age of Beethoven: Selected Writings on Theory and Method, ed. and trans. Scott Burnham (Cambridge, 1997), 36 (italics original).

³⁵Arnold Schoenberg, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique and Art of its Presentation, ed., trans. and with commentary by Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff (New York, 1995), 15–16 (italics original). This book is a translation of Schoenberg's unpublished manuscript ‘Der musikalische Gedanke und die Logik, Technik, und Kunst der Darstellung’, written sometime between 1923 and 1936.

³⁶Busoni, ‘How I Compose’, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 50–1. This essay originally appeared as ‘Wie ich komponiere?’, Der Konzertsaal (Berlin, May 1907), repr. in Busoni, Von der Einheit der Musik, ed. Weindel, 33. Die Brautwahl (The Bride Choice) was premièred in Hamburg in 1912.

³⁷Busoni published several versions of this composition (scored for one and two pianos). He also intended to score the piece for orchestra, but never completed the project. The first solo-piano version appeared in 1910. A second and shorter minore solo-piano version was published in 1912, and a version scored for two pianos appeared in 1922. All versions were originally published by Breitkopf & Härtel.

³⁸An analysis of the music shows that Busoni's diagram was not drawn to scale, if one were to equate architectural space to page-length. The opening section (marked as no. 1) occupies 21 of the 66 pages, or approximately 30% of the total page-length of the composition. Yet in the diagram, it appears to represent less than a twelfth of the total space of the building. A breakdown of the page-lengths of each section in the most recent edition by Breitkopf & Härtel is as follows:  1. Choral Introduction, pp. 3–23  2–4. Fugues 1–3, pp. 23–43  5. Intermezzo, pp. 44–5  6–8. Variations 1–3, pp. 46–54  9. Cadenza, pp. 55–7  10. Fugue 4, pp. 58–62  11–12. Chorale and Stretta, pp. 63–8. In Busoni's diagram, the amount of space allocated to each section therefore probably represents importance, rather than length. The fourth fugue is only five pages long, but is given substantially more space in the diagram than the first three fugues, which together occupy 21 pages. The fourth fugue is the most radical in conception and key. Its opening in B♭ minor is much more tonally remote in relation to the opening G major/minor choral introduction than the D minor centre of fugues 1–3. Moreover, Busoni's treatment of the subjects in fugue 4 is his own, rather than a transcription of Bach's music, as is the case with fugues 1–3. It is the climax that arrives after developmental variations and a cadenza.

³⁹Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 6 (punctuation modified).

⁴⁰Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 6 (punctuation modified)., 8.

⁴³Ferruccio Busoni, ‘The Realm of Music: An Epilogue to the New Aesthetic’, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 188–9. This essay originally appeared in a letter to his wife dated 3 March 1910.

⁴¹It is possible that Busoni could also be simultaneously drawing upon Friedrich Nietzsche's use of the term to refer to unconventional form in Wagner's music. Busoni admired Nietzsche's writings and was thoroughly acquainted with them.

⁴²Crispin, The Esoteric Musical Tradition of Ferruccio Busoni, 22–5.

⁴⁴Ferruccio Busoni, ‘The Realm of Music: An Epilogue to the New Aesthetic’, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 188–9. This essay originally appeared in a letter to his wife dated 3 March 1910., 189 (italics original).

⁴⁵Max Perl, Antiquariat, Bibliothek Ferruccio Busoni: Werke der Weltliteratur in schönen Gesamtausgaben und Erstdrucken, Illustrierte Bücher aller Jahrhunderte, Auction 96, 30–31 March 1925 (Berlin, 1925).

⁴⁶Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 4.

⁴⁷Busoni, ‘The Essence of Music’, 193.

⁴⁸The choice of the term ‘eternal harmony’ might also suggest connections to ancient theories of the harmony of the spheres.

⁴⁹Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 23.

⁵⁰Busoni, ‘Young Classicism’, 21.

⁵¹Busoni, ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, 1.

⁵²Busoni, ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, 6.

⁵³Busoni, ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, 14.

⁵⁴Busoni, ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, 7 (italics original).

⁵⁵Busoni, ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, 8.

⁵⁶Interestingly enough, in the English translation it initially appears that Busoni describes that opera as ‘absolute’. However, in the original German, the term ‘schlechtweg’ appears instead of ‘absolute’. A more accurate rendering would probably be ‘opera par excellence’ or ‘the epitome of opera’. Although not of terminological relevance for this article, the passage still provides an example of the type of opera that Busoni was idealizing.

⁵⁷Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 9.

⁵⁸The English translation uses the term ‘Classicism’, which is slightly less accurate than ‘Classicality’.

⁵⁹Busoni, ‘Young Classicism’, 20. Because of Busoni's non-linear notion of time, old and new compositions could be combined irrespective of style or musical language: audible quotations from Bach's tonal music could appear alongside newer experimental writing by Busoni. This is evident in such pieces as the Fantasia nach Bach or the Fantasia contrappuntistica. This differs from Stravinsky's neoclassical writing, which is more consistently atonal throughout.

⁶⁰The elegies were composed in 1907, but first published in 1908.

⁶¹The middle tarantella-like section material is borrowed from Busoni's Piano Concerto (1904).

⁶²Halm, however, idealized instrumental music as the epitome of the absolute. In his 1928 essay ‘Programmusik und absolute Musik’, he praised Bruckner's symphonies as the epitome of absolute music. He especially liked the first movement of the Ninth Symphony, where the best of Bach and Beethoven, of features of fugal and sonata form, were united. August Halm, ‘Programmusik und absolute Musik’, Der Kunstwart, 42 (1928–9), 147–52.