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Ferruccio Busoni and the Absolute inMusic: Form, Nature and IdeeErinn E. KnytPublished online: 24 May 2012.

To cite this article: Erinn E. Knyt (2012) Ferruccio Busoni and the Absolute in Music:Form, Nature and Idee , Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 137:1, 35-69, DOI:10.1080/02690403.2012.669936

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

ERINN E. KNYT

‘ABSOLUTE music! What the lawgivers mean by this is perhaps remotest of all from

the absolute in music.’ With these enigmatic words, Ferruccio Busoni (1866�1924)

opened his second aphoristic essay in the Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1907).1

Busoni was aware of one common use of the term ‘absolute music’, to refer to

instrumental compositions that contained tonal progressions and structures based on

traditional genres and forms but were free from programmatic or ‘extra-musical’

associations. However, he rejected that view of absolute music and developed an

idiosyncratic concept that he termed ‘the absolute in music’. What he meant by this

term is not readily apparent. Nor, moreover, has the topic received any detailed

attention in the existing scholarship on Busoni.By contrast, the concept of ‘absolute music’ has been thoroughly addressed by

scholars. Musicologists have questioned what aestheticians, composers and musicians

meant by the term and the concept, whether the latter functioned as regulative and/

or normative in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and what its relevance

is for scholarly methodologies and discourse. Albrecht von Massow, for instance,

provides a history of the term by documenting in detail its varied meanings in

primary sources.2 Carl Dahlhaus discusses the concept (rather than the term) and its

broad prevalence in nineteenth-century thought.3 Thomas S. Grey explores both the

concept and the term in relation to Richard Wagner’s writings and music, and

Daniel K. L. Chua, in his ‘anti-history’ of absolute music, addresses the difficulty of

E-mail: eknyt@music.umass.eduI would like to thank Karol Berger, Judith Crispin, Paul Fleet, Tom Grey, Heather Hadlock and

Stephen Hinton for their ideas, input and suggestions.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 Asthetik der Tonkunst(Trieste, 1907; repr. Leipzig, 1916 and Wiesbaden, 1954). All quotations in this text are from the1911 edition, unless otherwise specified.

2 Albrecht von Massow, ‘Absolute Musik’, Terminologie der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans

Heinrich Eggebrecht (Stuttgart, 1995), 13�29.3 Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Reger Lusting (Chicago, IL, 1978).

ISSN 0269-0403 print/ISSN 1471-6933 online

# The Royal Musical Association

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Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 137, no. 1, 35�69

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writing about the elusive ideal of absolute music that can never be fully captured in

compositions.4

Most recently, Sanna Pederson has called into question the importance of the

concept of absolute music for scholarly discourse and methodologies. She scrutinizes

Dahlhaus’s claim that there was a prevalent and fairly unified concept of absolute

music that served as a regulative force for the creation of compositions from the

nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries by examining diverse historical meanings

of the term in the writings of Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard

Hanslick, August Halm and Ernst Kurth.5 Based on the term’s infrequent occurrence

and inconsistent usage, especially in the nineteenth century, Pederson’s conclusion is

that the idea of a pervasive concept of absolute music was largely a fiction formulated

by scholars in reaction to Marxist ideology:

In 1989, Dahlhaus’s death and the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the end of his view ofmusic and the world. Those who attacked absolute music were no longer regarded as left-wing political radicals; they were able to capitalize on their critique with articles that werewidely read and cited. However, as I hope I have shown, what they were attacking was insome ways a straw man, an ‘idea’ of absolute music that was the product of the era thathad only just ended.6

Yet her reliance on a very limited number of sources (she mentions only Kurth’s and

Halm’s writings in the early twentieth century), her focus on the signifier to the

exclusion of the signified, and her confusing conflation of scholarly methodologies

and regulative concepts call Pederson’s claims themselves into question. This

inconsistent usage of terminology does not negate the existence of a pervasive

aesthetic concept any more than that of the term ‘sonata form’ by early practitioners

negates the form’s prevalence.7 Is the idea or concept of a pervasive notion of absolute

music a ‘straw man’ constructed by scholars, as Pederson suggests, or was it a real and

important aesthetic concept that influenced composers’ philosophies and compos-

itional practice?

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

5 Sanna 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 ‘musicitself ’, 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.

6 Pederson, ‘Defining the Term ‘‘Absolute Music’’ Historically’, 261.7 The slippage in her article between scholarly methodologies and regulative concepts is also

problematic. She elevates new musicological approaches that stress compositions’ connection toculture 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 notpreclude new methodological ways of studying music.

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An examination of Busoni’s writings and music, which Pederson and Chuaoverlook, and which Dahlhaus and Massow mention only briefly in terms ofBusoni’s use of the term ‘absolute’ in order to reject traditional forms as means oforganization, casts further doubt on Pederson’s claims by providing one moreexample of a composer for whom the concept of absolute music served as anunderlying aesthetic ideal that crucially informed how he composed. For the termand the concept permeate his writings, and Busoni used it to suggest newdirections in composition.8

Background information

Important and pervasive as the concept of absolute music was for Busoni, there is stillno single scholarly study that explores the many facets, meanings and dimensions ofhis views on the subject, how they relate to his evolving compositional style, andwhat their relevance is for current discourse about absolute music. Even monographsdedicated to Busoni’s compositions and aesthetics, such as those by AntonyBeaumont, Larry Sitsky, Judith Crispin and Martina Weindel, have explored onlylimited aspects of Busoni’s views about absolute music. Beaumont briefly mentionsBusoni’s usage of the term ‘absolute music’ to refer to formal freedom, and he alsoincorporates brief discussions of the related concept of the essence of music intoanalyses of Busoni’s compositions, including Doktor Faust.9 Sitsky mentionsBusoni’s belief in the existence of an abstract source of music from whichcompositions are derived/transcribed, but most of his book is devoted to analysesof Busoni’s piano pieces.10 Crispin explores Busoni’s notion of an abstract source ofmusic, Ur-Musik, which according to him, she notes, exists outside time and issimilar to nature.11 Yet this abstract source of music is not the focus of her text andfits within a larger discussion of Busoni’s fascination with the occult and thesupernatural. Weindel also discusses many of the aesthetic concepts associated withBusoni’s notion of absolute music, such as Ur-Musik (which she likens to musicamundana), ‘the essence of music’ and ‘the oneness of music’. But her text does notinclude a comprehensive exploration of Busoni’s multifaceted understanding of

8 Massow, for instance, notes: ‘F. Busoni proceeds, on the other hand, in his Sketch of a New Aestheticof Music (Leipzig, 1916), to define absolute music principally in contrast to formalism’ (‘F. Busoni

wendet sich wiederum in seinem Entwurf einer neuen Asthetik d. Tonkunst (Lpz. 1916) prinzipielldagegen, absolute Musik unter dem Aspekt des Formalen zu definieren’). Massow, ‘AbsoluteMusik’, 19.

9 Antony Beaumont, Busoni the Composer (Bloomington, IN, 1985), 89.10 Larry Sitsky, Busoni and the Piano: The Works, the Writings, and the Recordings, Contributions to the

Study of Music and Dance, 7 (New York, 1986), 296.11 Judith 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.

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absolute music; nor does she make extensive connections between Busoni’s aestheticsand his compositions.12

The present article seeks to explore Busoni’s view of absolute music morecomprehensively by examining his usage of the term and the concept throughout hisaesthetic writings, the manner in which these relate to his compositional practice,and the ways in which his ideals changed over time. It specifically analyses Busoni’sseven invocations of the term ‘absolute’ in his Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, theuse of the term in his essay ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’ (1922), and theidealization throughout his writings of many features associated with contempor-aneous notions of absolute music, such as the abstractness of tones, the supremacy ofmusic among art forms, and a close relationship between form and content.13 It alsoshows how his ideas about abstract music were tied to his mature compositionaltheories of the ‘oneness of music’ and ‘Young Classicality’.

Delineating Busoni’s understanding of absolute music is complicated, in part, forterminological reasons: he used the term interchangeably to refer both to his owntheories and to more traditional ones. Additionally, his conception of absolute musicis intertwined with other abstract concepts, such as the essence of music and theoneness of music. I take these conceptual intersections into account and additionallyconsider the inevitable maturation of Busoni’s theories over time, from the ideasexpressed in the Sketch to those discussed in ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’ andother later essays, such as his letter of 1920 to Paul Bekker about Young Classicality,and his essay ‘The Essence of Music: A Paving of the Way to an Understanding ofthe Everlasting Calendar’ (1924).14 Moreover, the writings themselves are oftenambiguous and suggestive, and therefore require close and comparative readings totry to discern Busoni’s meanings.

Additionally, many of Busoni’s theories were also explications of how hecomposed, and thus should be considered in conjunction with analyses of hiscompositions. Even though, as he realized and acknowledged, his aesthetic ideals andaspirations would only ever partially be fulfilled in compositions, this does not meanthat they did not exist as ideals. Their ultimately unattainable quality made them allthe more appealing to Busoni, for whom ironic distance served as a means ofapprehending the profound.

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

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

14 ‘‘‘Neue Klassizitat ’’?: 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. ‘VomWesen der Musik: Anbahnung einer Verstandigung fur den immerwahrenden Kalendar’, Melos, 4/1

(1 August 1924), 7�13; ‘The Essence of Music: A Paving of the Way to an Understanding of theEverlasting Calendar’, The Essence and Oneness of Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 193�200.

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By taking the many facets of Busoni’s ideals into account, this article shows thatBusoni, while drawing upon many aspects common to a contemporaneous conceptof absolute music, nevertheless arrived at his own idiosyncratic understanding ofabsolute music. The reaction to traditional forms mentioned by Dahlhaus andMassow is, in fact, only one aspect of Busoni’s mature notion of absolute music. Hesought to reconcile new modes of expression with abstract ideals of the absolute inorder to create new musical structures. In so doing, he drew unexpected connectionsbetween absolute music, the visual and music’s explicit connections to culture.

Indeed, the hybridity of Busoni’s notion of absolute music is probably a factor thathas contributed to its neglect in scholarly discourse. For it sits uneasily both withDahlhaus’s more consistent view of absolute music as music apart from text orprogramme15 and with Pederson’s new musicological approach, which seeks torefute the notion of music’s autonomy. Yet it is perhaps this breadth of conceptionthat is most fascinating and that makes Busoni’s views especially relevant for currentdiscourse about absolute music and music’s relation to everything else that plays arole in the creation of Tonkunst.16

Busoni’s vision of absolute music

Busoni’s view of absolute music can be discerned, in part, by examining his usage ofthe term ‘absolute music’. Busoni uses it only seven times in his main aesthetic text,the Sketch. Five of the instances occur in an essay devoted to the subject of absolutemusic, the other two in his discussion of programme music.

Busoni uses the term interchangeably both to refer to his own conception ofabsolute music and in the more traditional sense. However, when referring toabsolute music in the formalistic sense he mostly (in every instance except the last)places the term in quotation marks. In this way, it is usually possible to distinguishbetween the various meanings. This differentiation is evident, for instance, in anextension of the quotation initially presented at the beginning of this article:‘Absolute music! What the lawgivers mean by this is perhaps remotest of all from theabsolute in music. [Their] ‘‘absolute music’’ is a form-play without poetic program,in which the form is intended to have the leading part.’17

In the seven passages in the Sketch that use the term, Busoni initially presents anegative definition � that is, he spells out what he does not believe absolute musicentails. He initially rejects a formalist view of absolute music, that is, a view ofideal compositions being shaped according to the conventions of the tonal system

15 Dahlhaus, 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’soriginal 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.17 Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 5.

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into traditional formal moulds (although he does not specify whose formalist

model he is reacting to).

‘Absolute music’ is a form-play without poetic program, in which the form is intendedto have the leading part. But form in itself is the opposite pole of absolute music, onwhich was bestowed the divine prerogative of buoyancy, of freedom from the limitationsof matter.18

It is Busoni’s rejection of formalism that has received the most scholarly attention.

As Dahlhaus notes, probably basing his thoughts on this passage, freedom from

traditional formal moulds was essential to Busoni’s theory of the absolute in music.

Yet it was not the only aspect:

According to Busoni, music that in the colloquial aesthetic is called ‘absolute’ does thename a disservice, a name aimed at the perceptible appearance of the ‘absolute’ in a‘detached’ and unfettered music. [. . .] Busoni proclaims a ‘free’ music released from thetraditional forms and thus ‘absolute’.19

Busoni especially disliked formalistic approaches because of the restrictions

governing harmonic progressions, main tonal areas and overall structure. The

sarcastic tone of his description of the systematic and predictable order suggested by

a formalist mentality makes his distaste for it amply evident: ‘Per contra, ‘‘absolute

music’’ is something very sober, which reminds one of music-desks in orderly rows,

of the relation of Tonic to Dominant, of Developments and Codas.’20

During his ensuing discussion of programme music, in which he invokes the term

‘absolute’ twice more, it is clear that Busoni’s notion of the absolute in music also

precludes explicit representation or mimesis, which he associated primarily with

Wagner:

The name of Wagner leads to program music. This has been set up as a contrast to so-called ‘absolute’ music and these concepts have become so petrified that even personsof intelligence hold one or the other dogma, without recognition for a third possibilitybeyond and above the other two. In reality, program music is precisely as one-sided andlimited as that which is called ‘absolute’ music.21

18 Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 5�6 (punctuation modified).19 ‘Die Musik, die in der asthetischen Umgangssprache ‘‘absolute’’ genannt wird, verdient nach Busoni

den Namen nicht, einen Namen, der auf das ‘‘sinnliche Scheinen’’ des ‘‘Absoluten’’ in einer

losgelosten, fessellosen Musik zielt. [. . .] Busoni proklamiert eine ‘‘freie’’ Musik, losgelost vonuberlieferten Formen und insofern ‘‘absolute’’.’ Carl Dahlhaus, Die Idee der absoluten Musik (Kassel,1978), 43 (trans. Erinn E. Knyt).

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

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Busoni was as adamantly opposed to the creation of musical works in which visual

mimesis or programmatic representation was the main organizational component or

goal as he was to pieces in which formal moulds dictated the content and structure.

While not forbidding an occasional use of mimesis for special effect, he considered it

unnatural to music and antithetical to his notion of absolute music:

True, there are unequivocal descriptive effects of tone-painting (from these the entireprinciple took its rise), but these means of expression are few and trivial, covering but avery small section of musical art. Begin with the debasement of tone to noise in imitatingsounds of nature � the rolling of thunder, the roar of forests, the cries of animals; thenthose somewhat less evident, symbolic � imitations of visual impressions, like thelightning flash, springing movement, the flight of birds; again, those intelligible onlythrough mediation of the reflective brain, such as the trumpet-call as a warlike symbol, theshawm to betoken ruralism, march-rhythm to signify strides, characterization ofatonalities � national instruments and airs � and we have a complete inventory of thearsenal of program music. Movement and repose, minor and major, high and low, in theircustomary significance, round out the list. � These are auxiliaries, of which good use canbe made on a broad canvas, but which, taken by themselves, are no more to be calledmusic than wax figures may pass for monuments.22

He specifically reacted against having motives and form systematically bound to the

text or the dramatic programme, as they arguably are in much of Wagner’s music,

and he rejected explicit programmes as a basis for the large-scale organization of

compositions.23

Like Arthur Schopenhauer, Busoni also believed that mimicking specific emotions

was antithetical to absolute music, even though he thought that music would

inevitably interpret and express general human emotions; he considered music and

emotions to be compatible, thanks to the temporal fluidity of both:

In a picture, the illustration of a sunset ends with a frame; the limitless naturalphenomenon is enclosed in quadrilateral bounds; the cloud form chosen for depictionremains unchanging forever. Music can grow brighter or darker, shift hither or yon andfinally fade away like the sunset glow itself ; and instinct leads the creative musician toemploy the tones and press the same key within the human breast, and awaken the sameresponse, as the processes in Nature.24

22 Ibid., 11�12.23 Busoni 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 withwindmills, 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 Onenessof Music and Other Papers, trans. Ley, 175�6. The essay comes from a letter to his wife dated 18February 1911. Busoni, ‘The Score of Doktor Faust’, ibid., 70�6 (pp. 75�6); Uber die Moglichkeitender Oper und uber die Partitur des ‘Doktor Faust’ (Leipzig, 1926).

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

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Busoni believed that music incites general emotions and moods in listeners andportrays the inner truth about ‘soul-states’ of characters representatively in anopera, without specifically imitating them:

To music, indeed, is given to set in vibration our human moods: dread (Leporello),oppression of soul, invigoration, lassitude (Beethoven’s last quartets), decision (Wotan),hesitation, despondency, encouragement, harshness, tenderness, excitement, tranquillity,the feeling of surprise or expectancy and still others; likewise the inner echo of externaloccurrences is bound up in these moods of the soul. But not the moving cause itself of thosespiritual affections; � not the joy over an avoided danger, not the danger itself, or the kind ofdanger which caused dread; an emotional state, yes, but not the psychic species of thisemotion, such as envy or jealousy; and it is equally futile to attempt the expression, throughmusic, of moral characteristics (vanity, cleverness), or abstract ideas like truth and justice. Isit possible to imagine how a poor but contented man could be represented by music? Thecontentment, the soul-state, can be interpreted by music; but where does the poverty appear,or the important ethic problem stated in the words ‘poor but contented’?25

While rejecting formalism and mimesis, Busoni embraced a notion of absolutemusic that still had a great deal to do with content and structure. Yet he sought hisown means of organizing the musical content, a means that lies on a spectrumsomewhere between formalism and programme music. For he envisioned Tonkunstas being shaped by human ideas rather than by musical systems or traditions. And inhis maturity, he paradoxically encouraged combining music with other art forms inorder to help it achieve greater autonomy.

Instead of the sonata or symphony, Busoni favoured structures that would never beduplicated, such as free fantasias or mixtures of several genres. He idealized forms thatsounded as if they were improvised, regardless of how carefully planned they were inadvance: ‘Indeed, all composers have drawn nearest to the true nature of music inpreparatory and intermediary passages (preludes and transitions), where they felt atliberty to disregard symmetrical proportions and unconsciously drew free breath.’26

Busoni’s ideal realization of absolute music in 1907 was keyboard music written ina fantasia style. He praised Beethoven for nearly achieving the absolute in music inthe introduction to the fugue in the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, op. 106, which isformally free and displays elements of the fantasia: ‘He [Beethoven] did not quitereach absolute music, but in certain moments he divined it, as in the introduction tothe fugue of the Sonata for Hammerklavier.’27 This introductory section that Busonilauds moves rapidly through or tonicizes keys as remotely related as F major, G=

major and B major, and fluctuates between largo, un poco piu vivace and allegrotempo markings. It also contains scales and arpeggios in a quasi-improvisatory style(see Example 1).

25 Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 13 (translation modified).26 Ibid., 8.27 Ibid., 7�8.

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Example 1. Busoni’s ideal of absolute music in 1907. Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata, op. 106

(1819), Largo (opening).

4 3

3 4 2 1 3

1 4 2 3 1 1 5 1 2❉

1 5 31

2 1 43 3 3 2

4 13

3

❉ ❉ ❉ 4 35 2 1 1 2

una corda tre corde

Un poco più vivace ( = 88)

2 1 4

❉

23

24 5

2

4 5 43 3

tre corde

3

51

3

❉ ❉ ❉

Largo ( = 76)

Per la misura si conta nel Largo sempre quattro semicrome cio è

3dolce

3

una corda

FERRUCCIO BUSONI AND THE ABSOLUTE IN MUSIC 43

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Example 1 (continued)

❉ ❉ ❉

una corda

( = 76)Tempo I

4

cordetre

53

41

42

31 2 1

53

4

1

41

31 3 2

15

2 1

23 4 5 3 4

1 21 2

4

1 3 2 23

2 1 3 1 3

❉ ❉

2

una corda

( = 76)Tempo I

cordetre

( = 112)Allegro

3

cresc.1

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Instrumental music by Beethoven would not have been an unusual choice for anexemplary model of absolute music. Wagner, who coined the term ‘absolutemusic’ (albeit, in the first instance, as an essentially pejorative category), describedBeethoven as ‘the hero who explored the broad, shoreless sea of absolute music to itslimits’.28 But the fantasia-like transitional section characterized by rapid changes oftempo, texture and style in the ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata would have beenunexpected. Busoni’s choice differs somewhat from that of E. T. A. Hoffmann,who venerated Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 in C minor for its short motives that aredeveloped extensively throughout the composition and treated in intricate counter-point. It also differed from the contemporaneous value system, in which the sonataallegro form in its many manifestations was considered the apotheosis of Tonkunst.29

Busoni’s advocacy of fantasia-like formal structures for instrumental compositionsdid not mean that he encouraged the obscuring of any sense of formal structure.Many of his fantasies are quite masterfully planned, however improvisatory they maysound in performance. He specifically disliked free forms generated by emotions,such as are found in much expressionist music. Indeed, in response to HansPfitzner’s accusations of futuristic tendencies in his aesthetics and music, Busoniresponded with an emphatic support of and reverence for well-structured forms: ‘Iam a worshipper of Form! I have remained sufficiently a Latin for that.’30 It is justthat he envisioned forms unique to each composition: ‘But I demand � no! theorganism of art demands � that every idea fashions its own form for itself; theorganism � not I � revolts against having one single form for all ideas.’31

He specifically reacted to the use of traditional forms as models for achievingquality musical structures. Adopting a characteristically ironic tone, Busoni pointedout the ludicrousness of valuing originality of theme and content while insisting onfollowing traditional formal moulds based on expected harmonic progressions andareas: ‘Is it not singular to demand of a composer originality in all things and to

28 Wagner, 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).

29 E. 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).

30 Busoni, open letter to Hans Pfitzner of June 1917, The Essence and Oneness of Music and OtherPapers, trans. Ley, 17�18 (p. 18). Pfitzner wrote his pamphlet entitled ‘Futuristengefahr’ (‘Danger ofFuturists’) largely in response to the 1916 version of Busoni’s Sketch. Busoni published this openletter 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 Dritteltonen und Junger Klassizitat von Buhnen undBauten und anschliessenden Bezirken, ed. with commentary by Martina Weindel, Quellenkataloge zurMusikgeschichte, 36 (Wilhelmshaven, 2006), 87.

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

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forbid it as regards form? No wonder that, once he becomes original, he is accused of

‘‘formlessness’’.’32

Busoni instead envisioned that each piece could be shaped uniquely, based on a

human idea drawn from the composer’s psyche or surroundings. This is probablyone of the most original aspects of his notion of the absolute in music. He idealized

forms constructed in relation to cultural ideas rather than genres, formal moulds,harmonic progressions or rules of tonality that were central to formalist notions of

absolute music. He esteemed pieces in which ideas (Ideen) drawn from architecture,literature or general human experiences could lead to abstract musical conceptions(Einfalle) that in turn could be transcribed into themes or melodies and developed

into complete and related structures.33

The concept of having ideas shape musical structure was by no means Busoni’s

invention. But in other theories the human Idee was either purely musical in nature,or else inseparably bonded with it. Adolf Bernhard Marx, for instance, had already

spoken of a human thought that would inform all the details of a piece from thesmallest cell to the complete musical structure. However, Marx was envisioning aninseparable union between music and idea or human spirit, as ‘living spirit, revealedin corporeal/sensuous form [Gestalt]’.34 Arnold Schoenberg also wrote extensivelyabout musical Ideen. But for Schoenberg, Ideen were purely musical conceptions for

pieces. They were ‘thinking in tones and rhythms ’.35

Busoni’s Ideen were unlike explicit programmes in that they provided the impetus

for musical concepts that influenced textures, structures, themes and styles withoutproviding any narrative or explicit images. Yet they were also not specifically musical.

They had to be translated into an abstract musical idea, an Einfall, that then had toreceive concrete form in tones and rhythms. As mentioned in Busoni’s essay ‘How ICompose’, the literary Idee of a fictitious Orthodox Jewish man derived from

E. T. A. Hoffmann led to the thought of a Jewish melody, which was written downand interwoven into Busoni’s opera Die Brautwahl.36 This bears certain similarities

32 Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 7.33 See 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 andcompositional aesthetics.

34 Adolf 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).

35 Arnold Schoenberg, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique and Art of its Presentation, ed., trans. andwith 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 1936.36 Busoni, ‘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 premieredin Hamburg in 1912.

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to Liszt’s derivation of motives representing the attributes of characters from Faust inhis ‘Faust’ Symphony. The motives were transformed and developed throughout thecomposition into an unconventional structure in a manner similar to thedevelopment of characters in a novel, yet according to musical logic. However, adifference was that Busoni did not envision a union of the musical with the Idee. TheJewish melody did not represent what the Jewish Orthodox man looked like, butrather had an abstract musical association with Jewishness in general. The melodywas a symbol that had no direct connection to the character in the way in whichLiszt’s themes, representing specific attributes associated with Faust, Gretchen orMephistopheles, did.

Busoni’s Idee could inform structure as well as content, and it was in this way thathe sought systems of formal organization apart from traditional formal moulds whilerejecting programmatic systems of organization. The Idee of Gothic architecture inBusoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica � a piece based on the juxtaposition of his ownpiano elegy on a chorale melody and his completed fantasia version of J. S. Bach’sArt of Fugue � led to an Einfall consisting of musical impressions, textures, styles,forms and even remembrances of themes that could be combined or transformed;these included counterpoint, ornamentation and formal vastness.37 Although notclearly related to any single traditional form, the piece still had a carefully plannedstructure and formal shape based on the architectural concept that consisted of thejuxtaposition of fugal, variation and freer fantasia sections. Busoni illustrated hisformal conception with a diagram that he published together with the two-pianoversion of the piece (see Figure 1). From the diagram, it seems that he conceived of thefirst three fugues and the three variations in groups, just like matching pillars in abuilding. Connecting cadenzas and intermezzos interspersed between these musicalpillars are mainly passageways, albeit interesting and important ones. Hence, they arepositioned both between and behind the main pillars in the diagram. The finalfugue was the crowning pinnacle in Busoni’s mind. Although by no means the longestsection in the composition, it stood alone as the largest and most glorious archway. Informal terms, it served as the climax that led to a concluding chorale and coda.38

37 Busoni 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-pianoversion 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 byBreitkopf & Hartel.

38 An analysis of the music shows that Busoni’s diagram was not drawn to scale, if one were to equatearchitectural space to page-length. The opening section (marked as no. 1) occupies 21 of the 66pages, 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 & Hartel is as follows:

1. Choral Introduction, pp. 3�23

2�4. Fugues 1�3, pp. 23�435. Intermezzo, pp. 44�5

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But Busoni thought of absolute music as music that was free, and not just in terms

of form. In his writings, he frequently described music in nature as free, and

considered musical tones to be abstract and nearly synonymous with nature itself,

Figure 1. Busoni, diagram of the formal structure of the two-piano version of the Fantasiacontrappuntistica.

6�8. Variations 1�3, pp. 46�549. Cadenza, pp. 55�710. Fugue 4, pp. 58�6211�12. Chorale and Stretta, pp. 63�8.

In Busoni’s diagram, the amount of space allocated to each section therefore probably representsimportance, rather than length. The fourth fugue is only five pages long, but is given substantiallymore 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 tonallyremote in relation to the opening G major/minor choral introduction than the D minor centre offugues 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 afterdevelopmental variations and a cadenza.

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since sound emanated from the natural world; tones derived from a natural sourcerather than the tonal system. He contrasted his vision of the natural freedom of toneswith the boundedness of instrumental formalistic Tonkunst so frequently equatedwith absolute music:

But form in itself is the opposite pole of absolute music, on which is bestowed the divineprerogative of buoyancy, of freedom from the limitations of matter [. . .]. Music can growbrighter or darker, shift hither or yon, and finally fade away like the sunset glow itself; andinstinct leads the creative musician to employ the tones that press the same key within thehuman breast, and awaken the same response, as the processes in Nature.39

One example of Busoni’s equation of absolute music with music in nature that isfreed from systematization can be observed in a passage venerating the music ofBach. The section in question occurs shortly after the previously mentioned passagepraising Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata as having approached absolute music.Busoni cites Bach as a parallel exemplary model, but substitutes the term Ur-Musikfor absolute music:

He [Beethoven] did not quite reach absolute music, but in certain moments he divined it,as in the introduction to the fugue of the Sonata for Hammerklavier [. . .]. Next toBeethoven, Bach bears the closest affinity to primordial music [Ur-Musik ]. His organfantasias (but not the fugues) have indubitably a strong dash of what might be labeled‘Man and Nature’.40

Bach’s organ fantasias, with their rapid modulations of key, formal novelty andimprovisatory character, certainly have parallels with the fantasia section in the‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata.

By creating a terminological and conceptual parallelism between absolute musicand Ur-Musik in these two passages, Busoni further illuminated his understanding ofthe absolute in music. He was specifically nominating Bach’s organ fantasies, and byanalogy also the section preceding the fugue in the ‘Hammerklavier’, as bestrepresenting music of nature and hence also the absolute in music.

Given the proliferation of literature by German authors from Goethe to Schenkerwho refer to organic processes of nature or the parallel processes of themorphological unfolding of small motivic cells or a triad of nature, and whoattached the prefix Ur- to create words like Urpflanze, Ursatz and Urlinie, of whichBusoni and his circle were aware, the term Ur-Musik must have ties to such theoriesand to notions of music in nature.41 As other scholars, such as Crispin, have already

39 Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 6 (punctuation modified).40 Ibid., 8.41 It 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 andwas thoroughly acquainted with them.

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noted, Busoni used the term Ur-Musik to refer to a natural musical source that wasgenerative for Tonkunst, but on a more universal scale than previous theories.42

It referred to an inaudible primordial source of all music that is found in nature andprovides germinal material for all compositions from all time periods. It containsmelodies and themes, instrumental timbres and registers, and every imaginablecombination of sounds:

Innumerable are its voices; compared with them the murmuring of the harp is a din; theblare of a thousand trombones is a chirrup. All, all melodies heard before or never heard,resound completely and simultaneously, carry you, hang over you, or skim lightly pastyou.43

It is similar to musica mundana in that it vibrates inaudibly, but it appears in themore scientific form of sound waves in heavenly bodies like stars:

Come follow me into the realm of music [. . .]. Listen, every star has its rhythm and everyworld its measure. And on each of the stars and each of the worlds, the heart of everyseparate living being is beating its own individual way [. . .]. Unthought-of scales extendlike hands from one world to another, stationary and yet eternally in motion!44

However metaphysical this notion of Ur-Musik might seem, on the basis of thesepassages, it was also influenced by contemporaneous discussions of acoustics. Auctionrecords show that Busoni owned a copy of On the Sensations of Tone as a PhysiologicalBasis for the Theory of Music (Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologischeGrundlage fur die Theorie der Musik, 1863) by Hermann von Helmholtz, the leadingGerman scholar on physioacoustic perception in the nineteenth century.45 The bookdescribes tones as waves transmitted through the air to the perceptive ear.

Tones were, according to Busoni, incorporeal, fluid and abstract, and henceunlimited by constraints of time or inherent meaning. Rather than possessing anearthly body that could be seen or touched, like sculptures, paintings or architecture,music, consisting of sound waves, sails through the air invisibly, and unhindered byconstraints of matter, location or systematization:

Young as it is, this child, we already recognize that it possesses one radiant attribute whichsignalizes it beyond all its elder sisters. And the lawgivers will not see this marvelousattribute, lest their laws should be thrown to the winds. This child � it floats on air! It

42 Crispin, The Esoteric Musical Tradition of Ferruccio Busoni, 22�5.43 Ferruccio 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 1910.44 Ibid., 189 (italics original).45 Max Perl, Antiquariat, Bibliothek Ferruccio Busoni: Werke der Weltliteratur in schonen Gesamtausgaben

und Erstdrucken, Illustrierte Bucher aller Jahrhunderte, Auction 96, 30�31 March 1925 (Berlin,1925).

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touches not the earth with its feet. It knows no law of gravitation. It is well nighincorporeal. Its material is transparent. It is sonorous air. It is almost Nature herself. It is �free.46

The primordial source, Ur-Musik, is absolute music. It contains and encompassesthe possibility for every imaginable scale, theme, form or style of music. So whyshould composers limit themselves to the tonal system and to traditional forms, orother compositional conventions, Busoni asked? Yet this Ur-Musik can be perceivedonly by those with special insight, and is thus more difficult to follow than anestablished system. The composer’s job, according to Busoni, was to perceive andlisten to this primordial natural source of music and transcribe it into audiblecompositions.47

Busoni’s notion of the primordial natural source of music, and hence absolutemusic, permeates all his writings and serves as an ideal that Tonkunst should mirror.However, drawing connections between the source and Busoni’s compositionalideals, and understanding his meanings, can be confusing from a terminologicalstandpoint, for Busoni used at different stages of his life several different terms todescribe the source of music. While these different terms convey slightly differentemphases, each refers to this idealistic source of inaudible music in nature that is notbound by human rules or conventions and that provides germinal material foraudible compositions.48 In his early writings, Busoni described music in its naturalstate as ‘eternal harmony’ or (on one occasion only) Ur-Musik, while in his moremature writings he referred to ‘the essence of music’. The term Ur-Musik drawsattention to the idea of its germinal properties. The term ‘eternal harmony’emphasizes the unchanging and timeless nature of music that transcends andencompasses any temporary fashion or system of organizing tones, such as modalityor tonality. The ‘essence of music’ is a term that Busoni uses to describe music in itshighest and purest form.

Absolute music and Tonkunst

Although there are no varying degrees of absoluteness, and Busoni realized that theabsolute was an unattainable ideal that compositions reflect with varying degrees ofsuccess, he nevertheless strove after his ideal of absolute music when he composed.Busoni’s views about absolute music were intimately connected to his compositionalstyle and aesthetics. In particular, they were tied to the compositional theories ofmusical oneness and Young Classicality that he formulated in the 1920s and inwhich he praised strong and beautiful forms as well as polystylism.

46 Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 4.47 Busoni, ‘The Essence of Music’, 193.48 The choice of the term ‘eternal harmony’ might also suggest connections to ancient theories of the

harmony of the spheres.

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The most succinct connection between Busoni’s mature vision of absolute musicand compositional practice appears in ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, where hedescribes his compositional ideal of musical oneness. Like a rainbow constituted ofinnumerable gradations of hues, the essence of music, the primordial source ofmusic, which is synonymous with Busoni’s ideal of absolute music, containsunlimited possible combinations of tones, scales and styles of music, of which thetonal system is only one of many possibilities: ‘What we call now our tonal system isnothing more than a set of ‘‘signs’’; an ingenious device to grasp somewhat of thateternal harmony; a meager pocket-edition of that encyclopedic work; artificial lightinstead of sun.’49

Since all music is one in its primordial state, and since all music is pure tone,Tonkunst should reflect that unity, Busoni contended. Music was, according to him,subjected to division into further categories and systematization only by humansduring the process of composition or listening. These divisions limited the potentialof Tonkunst :

I feel the idea of Oneness in music as one of the most important yet uncomprehendedtruths. I mean the idea that music is music, in and for itself, and that it is not split up intodifferent classes: apart from cases where words, title, situations and meanings obviouslyput it in different categories. There is no music which is Church music in itself, but onlyabsolute music to which sacred words are put or which is performed in church.50

Busoni thought that audible Tonkunst should polystylistically reflect the totality ofpossibilities contained in the source. It should not only be of the highest quality,however that may be defined, but should also contain scales, themes or styles ofmusic of diverse types and from diverse time periods. Any stylistic restraintsprevented Tonkunst from reflecting the absolute:

The time has come to recognize the whole phenomenon of music as a ‘oneness’ and nolonger split it up according to its purpose, form, and sound-medium. It should berecognized from two premises exclusively, that of its content and that of its quality.51

Busoni specifically encouraged composers to avoid segregating music according tostyle, purpose, instrumentation or genre. He championed polystylistic compositionsin which diverse instruments, a mixture of sacred, theatrical and symphonic writing,and diverse scalar and harmonic systems appear together in the same piece, regardlessof specific institutional setting, venue or intended performance purpose. Heenvisioned music in which instrumental compositions featured dramatic or operaticmoments, and operatic works contained extended instrumental interludes and solos.Sacred chorale melodies would also appear in secular concert works. He valorized

49 Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 23.50 Busoni, ‘Young Classicism’, 21.51 Busoni, ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, 1.

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works in which tonal, modal and experimental modes of organization coexisted and

in which traditional boundaries did not exist.Busoni used the term ‘absolute’ in ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’ only once

to express his new ideal of absolute music. It appeared in a passage describing histheories about a new type of opera. For the mature Busoni, absolute music stillreferred to pure tone and free forms, but it was manifested in a different genre fromthat which he had previously imagined. It was no longer abstract instrumental music,as it was for E. T. A. Hoffmann. Neither was it the opposite of music drama, as itwas for Wagner. It was rather a new type of opera, a musico-dramatic complex in

which music and drama function simultaneously, but independently.Busoni noted the seeming implausibility of his claim that opera, in which textual,

visual and musical elements occur simultaneously, could most closely approachabsolute music. He contended that a combination of music with other art forms didnot necessarily have to make it less abstract, less formally free, and hence lessautonomous:

In fact � and it may sound paradoxical! � the composition of opera leads us back to purerand more absolute music because by means of the suggested future and [the] banishmentof everything illustrative, only those elements which are organically suitable to musicattain their own rights: the content, feeling, and the form, synonymous with spirit, heart,and understanding.52

Busoni reasoned that if the idiosyncratic nature of each art form is still upheld,textual, dramatic and visual elements can free music from any tendency towardmimesis. The music can stylistically or structurally correspond to (but not explicitly

mimic or follow) the suggestions of dramatic scenes, while the dramatic actionprovides visual clues about the music’s underlying Ideen. In Doktor Faust, forinstance, abstract instrumental variations that vary in tempo and charactercorrespond to the names and characters of six different spirits on the stage thatpossess equally diverse characters. Gravis’s (weighty) variation, for instance, containsponderous music in the bass register, while Levis’s (light) variation featurespianissimo paired quavers. The textures, registers and tempos thus correspond tothe characters in an abstract way even as abstract motives are presented, varied anddeveloped. The music neither paints an explicit picture, as it does in Strauss’s DonQuixote, nor narrates explicit events, but it does correspond to the drama.

Busoni claimed that in opera, music can still be ‘absolute’ and should avoid theimitation of anything visual. He argued that music accompanying the drama shouldbe conceived according to musical logic and the non-representative nature of music;it should be formally coherent and clever, and should be expressive. It should form

52 Ibid., 6.

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a complete musical score that would still be meaningful if removed from thedramatic context, but one that nevertheless is appropriate for the scenes of thedrama:

Once again, I maintain that a good opera score, independently of the text, should be ableto establish itself musically and the poem should further this aim in every way [. . .]. Onlythe soundness and cleanness of the score is able, after its short existence on the stage isover, to preserve an opera as an artistic monument for posterity [. . .]. On this account,much may be prescribed by the composer to the poet, but almost nothing by the poet tothe composer.53

Busoni’s vision of a combination of the arts thus did not involve a ‘union’between them in the Lisztian manner of textless psychological programmes meldedto instrumental music in which the themes represent the characters. Nor did itimitate the Wagnerian solution of the union of melody and poetry in speech songand the leitmotivic commentary on the action in which the music is dependentupon the plot and text for its specificity. Busoni envisioned an artwork in whichmusical, dramatic and visual elements remain separate, but occur simultaneouslyand form a ‘oneness’, as he called it in his mature writings (such as ‘The Essenceand Oneness of Music’):

It is, with the opera, a question of a musical work of the combined arts [‘musikalische’Gesamtkunstwerk ] as against the Bayreuth conception of it as a work of the combinedarts [Gesamtkunstwerk ] (if Wagner is to be brought forward now and forever, in order toset the mind of the 1921 reader at rest by naming the standard on which he placesreliance).54

For Busoni, the emphasis was on the music. The mature Busoni believed thatmusic could most closely approach the absolute in music when combined with theother arts because they provided a context for the combination of music of differentstyles, historical periods, instruments, genres, purposes and forms while simul-taneously inciting original musical structures. It allowed Tonkunst to reflect theoneness found in the primordial source of music. Busoni strove to achieve similardiversity in his instrumental works, but he nevertheless believed that an ideal plotthat invoked diverse styles of music, genres, forms and instruments would necessarilyinvite an even greater array of possibilities. In short, Busoni saw the operatic genreas inviting the elimination of barriers normally governing the composition ofindividual instrumental works and inviting the diversity found within the naturalprimordial source of music.

Busoni’s ideal piece in his maturity was Mozart’s The Magic Flute : ‘The MagicFlute, to my mind, is ‘‘absolute’’ opera and it is surprising that, in Germany,

53 Busoni, ‘The Essence and Oneness of Music’, 14.54 Ibid., 7 (italics original).

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especially, it has not been set up as a sign-post for opera.’55 Busoni liked the

composition because of its ‘oneness’, its polystylistic juxtapositions of high and low,

the religious, the humorous and the didactic, the fantastical and the realistic, and the

seemingly desultory progression of the plot.56

The mention of the term ‘absolute’ in relation to opera represents a progression

from Busoni’s earlier writings in which he idealized fantasia-like sections in keyboard

pieces by Beethoven and Bach. Nonetheless, he maintained his earlier belief in the

importance of formal freedom. In the case of opera, he rejected traditional operatic

forms and specifically reacted to the prospect of having motives and form

systematically bound to the dramatic programme as Wagner had done:

Wagner, a German-Titan, who touches our earthly horizon in orchestral tone-effect, whointensified the form of expression, but fashioned it into a system (music-drama,declamation, leading motive), is on this account incapable of further intensification.His category begins and ends with himself.57

He wanted the music to be free to follow its own logic and thus encouraged having

dramatic events contribute toward novel formal structures. In his maturity, Busoni

often achieved this not just by fantasia-style structures, but also by placing multiple

genres next to or on top of one another. He called for new forms that, embodied in

his theories of Young Classicality, drew upon, yet transformed, past formal

traditions.58 Often mistakenly confused with neoclassicism in the style of Stravinsky,

characterized by the defamiliarization of eighteenth-century genres, Busoni’s theory

had more to do with timeless ‘classical’ qualities, such as solid forms, balance and

proportion, and with the passing on, reuse and transformation of past musical

compositions, traditions and experiments. Unlike Stravinsky, Busoni often quoted

from older music, placing the quotations next to newer experimental writing.

Alternatively, he used fragments of older forms, placing them in new formal

contexts. Music, according to Busoni, could be eternally young, yet eternally classical

when elements of past and present musical styles, forms and conventions converged

within a single composition. He described his theory thus: ‘By ‘‘Young Classic-

[ality]’’ I mean the mastery, the sifting, and the turning into account of all gains of

55 Ibid., 8.56 Interestingly 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 thetype of opera that Busoni was idealizing.

57 Busoni, Sketch, trans. Baker, 9.58 The English translation uses the term ‘Classicism’, which is slightly less accurate than ‘Classicality’.

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previous experiments and their inclusion in strong and beautiful forms. The art willbe old and new at the same time at first.’59

In terms of form, Busoni often borrowed from traditional forms, such as the sonata,the rondo or the variation, but combined them in unconventional and unexpectedways in order to achieve the balance and proportion that he was seeking, and that hebelieved was well suited to the particular musical content and the Idee. A combinationof sonata form, canon, variation and fantasy, for instance, creates a unique formalstructure in his Kammerfantasie uber Carmen (1920), an instrumental piece basedon themes from Bizet’s opera (see Table 1). Structurally, the piece features a stringof five contrasting sections, each featuring a different melodic quotation fromthe opera: the opening instrumental accompaniment for the Act 4 scene i chorus,

TABLE 1BUSONI’S KAMMERFANTASIE UBER CARMEN

A. SECTION 1 � CANONICBars 1�81Keys: A major/C major, D major/F major

Quotation: Chorus from Act 4, ‘A deux Cuartos!’Tempo: Allegro deciso

B. SECTION 2 � CHARACTER PIECEBars 82�109

Key: D = majorQuotation: Don Jose’s canzonetta ‘La fleur que tu m’avais jetee’Tempo: Andantino

C. SECTION 3 � VARIATIONS

Bars 110�68Keys: D = major, D minorQuotation: Carmen’s habanera, ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’Tempo: Andante tranquillo, tempo della habanera

D. SECTION 4 � CONTINUING DEVELOPMENTBars 169�256Keys: chromatic transition, A majorQuotation: Opening prelude theme, arena music, ‘Les voici!’

Tempo: Tempestuoso, Allegro ritenuto

E. SECTION 5 � CODABars 257�71Key: F > minor

Quotation: ‘Fate theme’ (transformed)Tempo: Andante visionario

59 Busoni, ‘Young Classicism’, 20. Because of Busoni’s non-linear notion of time, old and newcompositions could be combined irrespective of style or musical language: audible quotations fromBach’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’sneoclassical writing, which is more consistently atonal throughout.

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‘A deux Cuartos!’, Don Jose’s Act 2 canzonetta, ‘La fleur que tu m’avais jetee’,Carmen’s Act 1 habanera, ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’, and the Act 4 arena marchmusic, ‘Les voici!’. To this Busoni adds a coda featuring the Carmen fate motive.

Each quotation features different styles and textures, from the canonic openingchorus through the lyric character-sketch setting for Don Jose’s aria to the brilliantvariations on Carmen’s habanera and the mysterious transcendental coda. Under-lying these contrasting sections is an overall harmonic structure that alludes to sonataallegro form, yet without the classical sense of dramatic harmonic departure andreturn. The piece begins in A major and there is a return to A major/F > minor at theend of the composition. Both A major sections are to be played quickly and with fullvolume. The slow middle section centres on the key of D= major (a third rela-tionship to A, if considered enharmonically).

Busoni uses this overall structure, as well as thematic development, to provideunity behind the stylistically contrasting sections. The fate motive and thematicfragmentation and variation are threaded throughout the composition. AlthoughBusoni develops the habanera theme using variation technique, more extensivedevelopment is also applied to the arena music. Busoni fragments, transposes andintervallically alters the theme (presenting abbreviated two-bar versions in C > majorand D minor), while inserting newly composed arpeggios that eventually overtakethe fragmented theme.

Absolute Tonkunst

The theories that Busoni articulated were more than ephemeral ideas; they werenotions that were connected to his compositional practice, and they matured andchanged even as his compositional style did. His piano elegies of 1908, the firstcompositions to be published after the first version of the Sketch, also appear tocorrespond closely to theories presented in the Sketch in that they represent his firstexperiments with radical scales, non-traditional tonality and unconventional formalstructures.60 Doktor Faust would also have been inconceivable before the secondGerman version of the Sketch (1916), in which he articulated and worked throughaesthetic ideas about opera.

Although it was, by definition, impossible fully to realize an ideal of absolutemusic in practice, many of Busoni’s pieces aspire toward the articulated thoughts ofthe composer�philosopher�performer, as can be illustrated by reference to three ofhis works. The first two � the piano suite Macchiette medioevali (1882�3) and hissecond piano elegy, All’ Italia! in modo napolitano61 � illustrate Busoni’s avoidance ofmimesis and his idiosyncratic treatment of form despite his reliance on Ideen drawnfrom human experience or culture, while the opera Doktor Faust demonstrates his

60 The elegies were composed in 1907, but first published in 1908.61 The middle tarantella-like section material is borrowed from Busoni’s Piano Concerto (1904).

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attempts to portray the absolute in music in terms of the infinity of possibilitiesfound in eternal harmony, the musical oneness described in his mature writings.

Early piano character sketches written before the appearance of Busoni’sfirst aesthetic treatise mainly appear in simple ABA format with little structuraloriginality. Even his first fantasias feature constraint of style. The Fantasia in modoantico (1896), for instance, appears in a simple ABA form with sombre block-chordalsections surrounding rapid contrapuntal writing. However, even these pieces avoidblatant mimesis or programmatic narration in favour of more abstract associations.Busoni’s approach is reminiscent of Robert Schumann’s in his character sketches. Inhis youthful piano suite Macchiette medioevali, for instance (see Example 2), Busonipresents a series of short movements, each named after a medieval stock character. Butthe music is non-mimetic. It relates in style and character to the titles, withoutmimicking specific sounds or sights, such as the bleating of lambs, birdsong or the gaitof a horse. Busoni invokes the aura of a generic ‘lady’ in the first movement of thesuite using music idioms sometimes associated with the feminine, such as imperfectcadences, unstable harmonies, tonal relationships based on thirds, and irregularrhythms. The first main cadence in bars 4�5 is weakened by a ii�I progression thatends with the fifth of the chord in the top part. The next important cadence in bar 10ends with a third in the top part. Overall, the tonal structure of the movement is basedon third relationships (F major and D minor with a temporary tonicization of A=

major as well). Rhythmically, Busoni also creates a sense of unpredictability andinstability by using phrasing to disrupt the metre. Some of the phrases are five beatslong within a triple-metre time signature.

Busoni likewise employs more abstract musical representation in his piano elegies.But he does it in conjunction with a freer (fantasia-like) treatment of form that moreclosely aligns with his early ideal of absolute music as expressed in his Sketch.Busoni’s compositional approach can be observed, for instance, in All’ Italia! in modonapolitano, a piece that borrows material from the fourth movement of the PianoConcerto (1904) but presents it in a more experimental setting (see Example 3).

The structure and content of the piece are informed by the Idee of Italy. In termsof content, the piece contains two Italian folk melodies and lively tarantella-likedance rhythms in the middle section that coincide with the Italian Idee, yet it avoidsconcrete imitation of specific people or objects in Naples. The two melodies are the‘Canzone del Serpentino’ in the tarantella section and ‘Fenesta che lucivi’ in theopening and closing sections. Structurally, these melody quotations are at the ‘heart’of the composition. Busoni ‘sandwiches’ the melody and tarantella rhythms withinmore experimental musical sections characterized by a fluctuation between B or B=

and F > tonal centres and by the use of exotic scales. Yet even the experimentalmaterial derives from the Italian melodies.

Much of the piano writing is composed in a quasi-improvisatory fantasia style withplenty of unexpected modulations and free arpeggios. Yet underlying this is acarefully planned and unique structure. Although the piece alludes to a basic ABA

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structure with an introduction, a section based on ‘Fenesta che lucivi’, a contrasting

middle section featuring the ‘Canzone del Serpentino’, and a return to ‘Fenesta che

lucivi’ before a brief concluding section that alludes to the introduction, the form is

actually quite novel. It is a conflation of several traditional forms � ABA, palindrome

and variation.The overall structure of the piece resembles ABA form, with the last 28 bars rep-

resenting motivic material from the opening 58 bars after a period of contrasting

‘tarantella’ material. The return is far from exact, especially in terms of tonality � the

piece begins in B minor and ends in B= major. Moreover, the motivic material returns

in a developed or altered form. Nevertheless, intervallic relationships in the motives

and a return to chordal and arpeggiated textures create a clear sense of return.This return in fact presents the initial motivic material in reverse order, from the

largest to the smallest units, thus giving the piece a palindromic form. Busoni opens

Example 2. Busoni, Macchiette medioevali, op. 33 (1882�3), ‘Dama’, bars 1�11.

3

43

rit. a tempo 3

3

Moderato con delicatezza ( = 108)

4

8

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the first A section with motivic material that proves germinal for, foreshadows, and

eventually unfolds into, a complete melody. The return correspondingly disintegrates

from longer thematic fragments back down to the smallest motivic cellular unit.The opening bar of the piece presents a melodic minor second (d >/d >?�d h/d h?)

before gradually unfolding into larger motives and longer melodic phrases

foreshadowing the ensuing melody, just as the ending retracts from longer lines to

brief motives. By bar 5, the motive develops into paired three-note motives (b?, a >?,g ? and f >?, e >?, d ?). The opening repetitive bass pattern also gradually expands and

unfolds in this manner until the complete ‘Fenesta che lucivi’ melody appears in bar

26; the melody also features linear elements and paired major and minor seconds,

but presented in retrograde with new rhythmic patterns (see Example 4).

Example 3. Busoni, All’ Italia! in modo napolitano, from Elegien (1908), bars 1�7.

sempre chiaroscuro

dolce

Andante barcarolo

( un pò pesante )

4

6

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To these formal features, Busoni added variation form. The ‘Fenesta che lucivi’quotation that gradually emerges from motivic development eventually becomes thesubject for a series of variations in a quasi-improvisatory and fantasia-like style. Theinitial eight-bar statement of the melody is accompanied by gentle left-hand arpeggios.It is immediately varied in transposition with new accompanimental material beforefragmenting and dissolving into a transition leading into the tarantella section. Duringthe variation, the piece rapidly shifts harmonies and includes remotely related chords.F > major, D minor, F major, D major, B= minor, C > major, C= minor, C major andG > major chords follow in quick succession as they harmonize the Italian melody andcomplement continuous scales and arpeggios (see Example 5).

The blending of traditional structures, ABA, palindrome and variation forms, withinvocations of the fantasia led to a novel and unique structure that could soundimprovised. Numerous arpeggiated figures modulating through a number of keys

Example 4. ‘Fenesta che lucivi’ quotation, Busoni, All’ Italia! in modo napolitano, from Elegien ,

bars 26�33.

m.d.

2 5

❉

3 ten.

mezza voce

( Canzone )

32

29

26

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Example 5. Fantasia-style writing, Busoni, All’ Italia! in modo napolitano, from Elegien, bars 46�52.

1

6

1 4 1 5

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appear not only in the variation section, but also as transitional material throughoutthe piece.

While All’ Italia! in modo napolitano represents Busoni’s early ideal of absolutemusic, Doktor Faust is his most mature attempt to approach his ideal of absolutemusic. Not only does the score predominantly avoid explicit mimesis, it alsocorresponds with his views of musical oneness and, hence, polystylism.

The plot and scenes of Doktor Faust provide the context for the combination andinterweaving of diverse styles � a Gregorian Credo, a Baroque organ fantasy andpolychoral writing, impressionistic symphonic writing and orchestral variations � intoa musical score. Modal, tonal and atonal elements also intermingle. Motivic connec-tions and recurring themes or quotations simultaneously provide large-scale musicalcoherence coinciding with, but not mimicking, the text or the drama proceeding onthe stage. Fragments of recitatives and arias are incorporated into larger scene com-plexes that also include instrumental rondos and symphonic instrumental writing.

In the ‘Zweites Bild’, for instance (‘Schenke in Wittenberg’; see Example 6), Busonicreates an extended scene complex based on a juxtaposition of instrumental and vocalgenres. It features a diversity of musical styles that correspond to the dramatic action,yet without explicitly following or imitating it: instrumental minuet, drinking songand learned counterpoint, for instance. An energetic and rustic homophonicinstrumental minuet opens the Wittenberg tavern scene as jaunty rhythms in simpletriple metre in C minor surround a lyrical and tranquil inner section that featureslearned counterpoint and chromaticism. As a scene of university students drinking andengaging in a platonic debate in the tavern emerges when the curtain rises, a drinkingsong that quotes from the commencement song, ‘Gaudeamus igitur’, celebrating thejoys and mayhem of student life, is juxtaposed with learned counterpoint as voicesengage in imitative polyphony with the orchestra. Tonality and chromaticism, the baseand the learned, mingle together, as do Latin and German text. The opening of thissection is predominantly tonal, but Busoni’s method of tonal organization is notalways systematic or traditional. Main cadences do, in fact, support C minor as a mainkey area, but the harmonic areas in between slither chromatically or sequentially tounexpected regions � an imperfect cadence is followed by a tonicization of F beginningin bar 12. As the minuet continues to descend stepwise, it proceeds to E= beforereturning to G. The tranquillo middle section is tonally unstable, featuring risingchromatic progressions that lead to D=. The return to C minor and the minuetmaterial ends in the unexpected key of D major and leads into an extended musicalcomplex featuring a string of contrasting sections, including a double chorus, aninstrumental polonaise, a Reformation hymn melody, a brief recitative, and musicwritten in the manner of a waltz. Neo-tonal, atonal and chromatic sections appearwithin the same scene.

Busoni considered it impossible actually to attain the ‘absolute’ in tangible works.But this did not mean that it was not a very real concept for him � it was certainlyworth striving for and influenced how he composed. Remaining an incomplete

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fragment at the time of his death, Busoni’s Doktor Faust represented a strivingtoward an ideal of absolute music and a simultaneous acknowledgement of itsintangibility. The sections corresponding with the entrances of Helena, whorepresented absolute beauty and absolute music, were left unfinished, left to theimagination for those who could divine the essence of music itself.

Example 6. Busoni, Doktor Faust, ‘Zweites Bild’, bars 1�50 (piano reduction by Egon Petri and

Michael Zadora).

Cor.

9

Fiati

1

ArpaFiati

Viol.

5

ruvidonon legato

Archi

Allegro robustoIn modo di Minuetto rustico

Clar.

Ob.Tromb.

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Example 6 (continued)

C. Fag.Fag.Basso

Bassi

21

So

Ten.Chor (noch hinter dem Vorhange)

lang man Ju gend hat, lebt man als Nim mer satt:

17 8

cresc.Tr.

Bassi

Tromb.

13 8

pizz.

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Example 6 (continued)

35

15

Tr.

24

15

24

15

24

Fl.

ArpaFiatiArchi

stringendo

mus i gi tur! Pro sit, pro sit!

30

Pro sit, pro sit, pro sit!

Cor.

FiatiTr. Archi 1

Bah! Gau de a

25 2

Ju ve nes dum su mus!

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Example 6 (continued)

1 5

48

Leh re recht be grei fet…

Fag.

Viol.

Fl.

44 1. Student (Solo)3 Tranquillo, a tempo

Faust sitzend; die Unbeteiligten mehr abseits.)(Studenten an verschiedenen Tischen in geteilten Gruppen. Die Disputierenden enger um

-daß Ihr mir die pla to ni sche

39

Vorhang

Glsp.Tr.Fiati

3

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Conclusions

Although it would be premature, on the basis of the example of a single composer, tomake any broad claims about the relative importance of absolute music as anaesthetic concept in the early twentieth century, the present study of Busoni doesseem to support the idea that it was not just cold-war politics, as some have argued,that gave meaning to a notion of abstract autonomous music and a concept ofabsolute music � especially in the twentieth century. And Busoni joins other andbetter-known contemporaneous composers, scholars and musicians, for whom theconcept of absolute music was important. August Halm called for a ‘third culture’ ofmusic and proposed an understanding of absolute music featuring new forms andstructures and that moved beyond Beethoven and Bach.62 He, like Ernst Kurth, likedBruckner’s symphonies, which conflated fugal and sonata forms. Schoenbergreconciled atonal and dodecaphonic means of organization with compositionaltechniques closely allied with absolute music ideals in the formalist sense � thematicdevelopment and transformation, wherein content and form are closely related, arecharacteristic of his compositional style.

As a composer and aesthetician in the first decades of the twentieth century, Busoni,like Schoenberg, wrestled with how to understand and create Tonkunst in relation to arapidly changing world, musical scene and compositional aesthetics. He, like manyothers of his generation, promoted the extension and breakdown of tonality, a cultureof forms that seemed to him to have run its course. How to understand and createcompositions according to music’s own logic, given that its very laws and languagewere in fluctuation, was a legitimate dilemma.

By articulating new ways in which music could be organized that took intoaccount the breakdown of tonality without relying on any particular new system oforganization (such as dodecaphonism, serialism, expressionism or impressionism),and that also accounted for the composer’s interaction with culture and the world atlarge through his integration of human Idee with musical content and structure,Busoni posited an alternative way of viewing, creating and listening to music basedon his own vision of absolute music. This vision, he hoped, reflected both his ownage and an undying spirit of music that transcended cultural taste.

As Dahlhaus has noted, there were many variations on how the idea or concept ofabsolute music manifested itself aesthetically and compositionally. Yet these variationsdo not preclude an underlying latent unity of thought idealizing abstract autonomousmusic. In rejecting traditional formalism based on the system of tonality and relatedinstrumental forms, Busoni was nevertheless embracing the underlying concept, while

62 Halm, 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 absolutemusic. 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 undabsolute Musik’, Der Kunstwart, 42 (1928�9), 147�52.

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creating his own variation that left room for music’s connections to other art formsand culture.

The apotheosis of composition for Busoni was not the most skilfully composedtonal sonata or symphony, but this does not mean that absolute music was not animportant aesthetic concept for him. The absolute in music for Busoni was at once acondition of music and a normative badge of prestige. It was a facet of music’snatural state and an ideal for Tonkunst to emulate. He thought of it both as freesound waves and as an aural palette of an infinite number of hues channelled intounique structures based on the Ideen of human creators.

Even while embracing music as materially abstract, Busoni recognized that therewas no clear dividing line between music, the creation of Tonkunst, and much elsebesides. In articulating ways in which music maintained its autonomy while stillinteracting with the other arts and human culture, his view of the absolute in music isparticularly striking and profound, offering a middle ground between compositions asdiscrete artistic artefacts on the one hand and as representations of their immediateculture on the other.

ABSTRACTFerruccio Busoni could be called an advocate of absolute music because of his frequentdescription of music as ‘absolute’ and his discussion of music as consisting of pure tones andrhythms found in the vibrating universe. However, he developed idiosyncratic theories aboutthe term, its usage and its ideal manifestation in Tonkunst that remain largely unexamined inscholarly literature. True, Carl Dahlhaus noted Busoni’s use of the concept to refer to musicunconstrained by traditional forms, but this is merely one aspect of Busoni’s views, whichalso, 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 ofwritings and representative compositions, is especially relevant for current musicologicaldiscourse about absolute music. Sitting uneasily with Dahlhaus’s more consistent view ofabsolute music as music apart from text or programme as well as with new musicologicalapproaches that seek to refute the notion of music’s autonomy, Busoni’s view of absolutemusic offers a fascinating middle ground between compositions as discrete artistic artefacts onthe one hand and as representations of their immediate culture on the other.

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