Ferruccio Busoni’s compositions have the power to astonish listeners. His monumental Piano Concerto in C major, for example, is comprised of five movements, played without pause, that last nearly 75 minutes. In the final movement, a men’s chorus enters invisibly offstage, intoning a poem by Adam Oehlenschäger.
After encountering that work, you might want to retreat to something less astonishing. But if you pick, for example, his opera Doktor Faust, you are thrown off balance from the moment that the devil, a heroic high tenor, bursts onto the stage screaming Faust’s name. (This happens about 30 minutes into the first act, and from that point on, everything becomes expressionistic and disquieting.)
Yet beauty and lyricism can be found in Busoni’s works too. Let’s enjoy a video visit with him and hear him explain the artistic genesis of his unique works.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends of Classical Archives,
I am Ferruccio Busoni, born in 1866 in Empoli, near Florence — though I have never belonged entirely to one land. My mother was German, my father Italian; perhaps that is why I have always felt suspended between North and South, between discipline and imagination, between intellect and passion.
I was a child prodigy at the piano, and music soon carried me across Europe — Vienna, Leipzig, Helsinki, Moscow, Berlin. Each city taught me something different: the precision of the Germans, the breadth of the Russians, the clarity of the Italians. But I always sought a unity beyond borders — a universal art freed from nationalism.
As a composer, I was shaped by the past but drawn toward the future. I revered Johann Sebastian Bach above all, and much of my life was spent transcribing, reimagining, and continuing his work. Yet I was also restless — drawn to sounds and harmonies that had not yet found their place. My Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, written in 1907, tried to express this conviction: that music must evolve, that the composer must look forward, and that tonality itself was but one step in a long continuum.
I was fortunate to know remarkable minds. Franz Liszt’s spirit still hovered over my youth; I knew and admired Edvard Grieg during my years in Scandinavia; I conversed with Mahler, Schoenberg, and Richard Strauss, even when we disagreed. My pupils — among them Kurt Weill, Otto Luening, and Edgard Varèse — carried fragments of my vision into their own eras.
And yet, I never wished to abandon beauty. My Piano Concerto, vast and demanding, remains a testament to faith — faith in the instrument, in the orchestra, in the human imagination. My unfinished opera Doktor Faust was my last and most personal creation, a meditation on the artist’s eternal bargain with the unknown.
I died in Berlin in 1924, a city I loved for its energy and intellect. To the end, I believed that music’s future must grow from its past — that we are custodians of an art both ancient and unborn.
Thank you for listening — and for keeping alive the dialogue between what has been and what might yet be.
A Selection of Works by Ferruccio Busoni Available for Listening on Classical Archives
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Operas
Piano Works
- 3 Albumblätter, KiV 289
- An die Jugend, KiV254
- Fantasia contrappuntistica No.1, KiV256
- 24 Preludes, Op.37, KiV 181
Chamber Works
Concertos
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