Ferruccio Busoni Research Articles

A Musical Life in Two Worlds: The Autobiography of Hugo Leichtentritt ed. by Mark DeVoto

A Musical Life in Two Worlds: Autobiography of Hugo Leichtentritt. Edited by Mark DeVoto. Boston: Harvard Musical Association, 2014. [xii, 624 p. ISBN 9780692229811. $75.] Illustrations, bibliographic references, index.In 1940, a committee of Harvard professors invited fugitives of Nazi Germany to describe their experiences under Adolf Hitler's regime. Hugo Leichtentritt (1874- 1951), an exact contemporary of Arnold Schoenberg and an eminent German musicologist who had been working as a lecturer at Harvard since 1933, set to the task with German thoroughness. result, however, was not a description of Nazi terror (Leichtentritt was lucky to leave Germany before all hell broke loose, taking with him more than twenty chests of books and a fine Steinway grand piano), but a 516-page autobiography, dedicated to the rich culture of Europe that Leichtentritt rightly feared would never be the same after the war. An avid diarist, Leichtentritt documented life around him (Mark DeVoto appends a sample of Leichtentritt's diary from 1893 to the autobiography). reader finds fascinating descriptions of Leichtentritt's hometown, Pleschen, and its inhabitants on the Polish-Russian frontier; the educational system of the old world; Harvard at the end of the nineteenth century, where Leichtentritt spent three years after his family emigrated to the United States; Boston and its musical life, including detailed accounts of concerts by such celebrities as Arthur Nikisch, Ferruccio Busoni, Ignace Jan Paderewski, and Eugen d'Albert, a concert life that the reader can compare to that of the Boston to which Leichtentritt returned in 1933, and to the European capitals Leichtentritt visited when his family moved back to Europe in 1894.The central location in the autobiography is Berlin, with which, as Leichtentritt writes in the preface, his entire career had been identified during the thirty-eight years he spent there. Many pages of the memoir are taken up with what Leichten - tritt describes as a sort of requiem on that now dead (p. 2). Berlin's importance in Leichtentritt's autobiography inspired Nicolas Slonimsky, who edited and published Leichtentritt's Music of the Western Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer - sity Press, 1956), to call it The Life of a City. Leichtentritt spent three years at the Hochschule in Berlin, directed by Joseph Joachim, and three years at the University of Berlin, where he earned a Ph.D. with music as a special field of concentration. After receiving his degree, Leichtentritt taught music history and theory at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Con servatory, gave private lessons in composition, wrote reviews in Die Vossische Zeitung and other prestigious newspapers, and tried his hand in composition, mainly after 1924. His main interest, however, remained musicology, which he pursued with passion and discipline, producing comprehensive volumes on topics such as Italian motets and the history of form. at the time, especially before the financial aftershocks of World War I, was being transformed into a leading cultural center that provided the young musician ample opportunities to develop his taste for high culture. Leichten tritt records in his diary that in 1897 he heard seventy-five concerts, given mostly by worldfamous artists and organizations, and twenty-four operas, some of them given two or three times, to which half a dozen ballets must be added (p. 121).It was hard not to get swept up by the euphoria that overtook Germany after it emerged from the Franco-Prussian War victorious and united. Leichtentritt describes the gigantic mood of celebration in as Germany was commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Sedan victory in 1895. Berlin was intoxicated with enthusiasm, and all over the huge city one could hardly see a house without more or less display of illumination (p. 127). euphoria remained until the beginning of World War I. Leichtentritt, himself Jewish but no less a loyal German patriot, greeted the war with a Quintet for Piano and Strings, the Finale of which was full of the enthusiasm that filled almost everybody in Germany during the first months of the war. …

Heinrich Schenker: selected correspondence

The work of Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935), widely regarded as the most important music theorist of the twentieth century, has shaped the teaching of music theory in the United States profoundly and influenced theorists there, in Europe, and throughout the world. Living and working in Vienna, Schenker maintained a vigorous correspondence with a large circle of professional musicians, writers, music critics, institutions, administrators, patrons, friends, and pupils. A large part of his correspondence was preserved after his death: some 7,000 letters, postcards, telegrams, etc., to and from 400 correspondents. His diaries record the fabric of his personal life and his activities as a private music teacher and writer; they also provide a detailed commentary on historical and political events and offer a window on to the conditions of life in Vienna. Taken together, these documents contribute vividly to the picture of cultural life in Vienna, and elsewhere, from the perspective of a Jewish intellectual and his circle of musical and artistic friends. Heinrich Schenker: Selected Correspondence represents a concise edition of some of the theorist's most important and revelatory letters and diary entries. It offers the full text of some 450 letters in English translation, organized into sections devoted to various aspects of his professional life: teaching, writing, administration, and maintaining contact with an ever widening circle including Ferruccio Busoni, Julius Rontgen, Otto Erich Deutsch, Alphons von Rothschild, Paul von Klenau, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Paul Hindemith, Moriz Violin, John Petrie Dunn, and Hans Weisse. Extracts from the diaries provide a summary of important parts of the correspondence that do not survive. The volume includes a detailed exposition of the editorial method, biographical notes on correspondents, and a substantial general introduction. Each of the sections is prefaced by an introduction which provides essential historical context, and the letters and diary entries are fully annotated.

Zauberklänge und singende Teufel

In Franz Schreker’s commentaries on his operas, but even more so in the scores themselves, an orientation toward Ferruccio Busoni’s music aesthetics becomes apparent. This is primarily exhibited in the idea of music’s role in opera being strategically legitimized by its inclusion in the story line, which Schreker takes a step further by thematizing his music as a subject unto itself. Thus, Schreker “stages” music as a transcendent and boundless medium in both his operatic plots and scores. He also realizes other ideas of Busoni, including the incorporation of compositional detail that exhibits parallels to Busoni’s own works.

Beware the Lamb: Staging Bach's Passions

AbstractThis article considers the twentieth- and twenty-first-century practice of presenting Johann Sebastian Bach's Passion compositions on stage, in light of recent debates about performativity, presence and liveness. By tracing the history of such stagings from Ferruccio Busoni's plans in the 1920s to contemporary versions by Peter Sellars, Alain Platel, and others, I explore the increasing tendency to turn these canonical works into politically or aesthetically relevant events. Through a close reading of the critical reception of each production, I show how stagings have the capacity to challenge productively our easy familiarity with these pieces outside their initial liturgical setting. Unlike a standard concert presentation, staged performances tend to confront audiences more immediately with the violent imagery and spiritual demands of the Passions, thereby continually renewing the dialogue between Bach's works and later audiences. The article thus offers a contribution to an anthropological enquiry into the present-day cult of Bach and the particular forms of aesthetic pleasure that classical music affords its twenty-first-century devotees.

Between Composition and Transcription: Ferruccio Busoni and Music Notation

Abstract‘The new art of music is derived from the old signs – and these now stand for the musical art itself.’1 With this statement, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) summarized his main criticism of traditional music notation – that it was lifeless and outdated. Based on an analysis of Busoni's organic method of keyboard notation (1909), an examination of composition sketches and performance scores, and an investigation of his writings about notation in aesthetic texts – in particular the Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1907) – this article shows how Busoni's multifaceted views about notation forged a middle ground between the work as text and the work as performance in an age enthralled to the idea of Werktreue. In addition, it traces the continuing influence of Busoni's ideas about notation on Arnold Schoenberg and other contemporaneous theorists and composers.

Ferruccio Busoni and the New England Conservatory: Piano Pedagogue in the Making

Ferruccio Busoni and the New England Conservatory: Piano Pedagogue in the Making

Ferruccio Busoni im Briefwechsel mit seinem Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel (review)

Reviewed by: Ferruccio Busoni im Briefwechsel mit seinem Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel Erinn Knyt Ferruccio Busoni im Briefwechsel mit seinem Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel. Edited by Eva Hanau. 2 vols. (Busoni-Editionen, edited by Albrecht Riethmüller.) Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 2012. [xvii, 734 p. + vi, 834 p. ISBN 9783765103186. €126.] Tables, index, work lists, facsimiles. As one of the most prolific letter writers of his day, Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) left behind a trove of correspondence that expresses his thoughts and motives with eloquence and elegance. The letters contain details about a wide range of topics related to his life, career, and work, including information about trips, teaching activities, colleagues, compositions, and editing projects. Several collections of Busoni's letters have already appeared in published form, including Ferruccio Busoni: Briefe an Henri, Katharina und Egon Petri, edited by Martina Weindel (Wilhelmshaven: F. Noetzel, 1999); Ferruccio Busoni: Selected Letters, edited and translated by Antony Beaumont (London: Faber and Faber, 1987); Der Briefwechsel zwischen Ferruccio Busoni und Volkmar Andreae, 1907-1923, in the Hundertachtundsiebzigstes Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeinen Musikgesellschaft Zürich (Zurich: Kommissionsverlag Hug, 1994) and Busoni: Briefe an Seine Frau, edited by Friedrich Schnapp (Zurich: Rotapfel Verlag, 1935). Many letters, however, can still only be accessed in archives or private collections. Moreover, the content of the letters can be difficult to decipher due to Busoni's at times scrawling handwriting. Ferruccio Busoni im Briefwechsel mit seinem Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel, a two-volume book set containing the complete surviving correspondence (more than 1,550 letters, postcards, and telegram messages) between Busoni and Breitkopf und Härtel, his main music publisher, greatly contributes to the number of his published letters. The original sources are currently located in the Breitkopf and Härtel archive in Wiesbaden and in the Musikabteilung, Busoni Nachlass der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Some of the exchanges between Busoni and Breitkopf and Härtel are mainly factual, documenting the exchange of manuscripts or the amount of honorariums. Others are philosophical essays, offering insight about his ideas and thought processes. Particularly numerous are letters documenting the editing of the collected [End Page 290] works of Franz Liszt and Johann Sebastian Bach (Johann Sebastian Bach, Klavierwerke, ed. Ferruccio Busoni, Egon Petri, and Bruno Mugellini, 25 vols. [Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1894-1923] and Franz Liszts Musikalische Werke [Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1907-36]). Extending from 1883, when Busoni was only 17 years old, to 1924, the year he died, the correspondence in this collection can also be read as a life chronicle. However, it should be noted that Busoni's responses to Breitkopf and Härtel are, disappointingly, missing from 1883-1894. The volumes are user-friendly, with indexes that allow the scholar to search for specific pieces or people. The correspondence can also be read chronologically, as organized, thus offering insight into Busoni's maturation as a composer and thinker. The correspondence is subdivided by time period, which unfortunately artificially divides ongoing exchanges about specific pieces or topics. A table at the end of the second volume provides shelf locations of original source material in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek. Volume 2 also contains brief commentaries summarizing Busoni's career and providing more specific details about each letter, including full citations for any pieces mentioned. Although the editor, Eva Hanau, succeeded in deciphering the handwriting most of the time, there are several places where she used [?] marks to indicate illegible text and [. . . ?] marks to indicate incomplete text. At times, these marks make it difficult to ascertain meanings. One of the least legible letters appears to have been letter 693A, vol. 2: "[. . . ?] Figaro-M-S. [. . . ?] mir eine Abschrift fertigen lassen, die allerdings absolut[?] zuverlässig sein müsste, zugleich[?] alle zufälligen Korrekturen u. eingetragenen Bemerkungen treu wiedergäbe?" (vol. 2, p. 463). Throughout the correspondence, the topic of Busoni's composition and editing projects is prevalent. Busoni's motivations and methods are revealed through the letters. For instance, they show that Busoni was interested in creating editions that were scholarly yet also useful for the performer. When working on the Liszt edition, he stated: "Unsere Absicht war, sobald eine kritische Unterlage geschaffen wäre, an die Vorbereitung einer praktischen...

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

ABSTRACTFerruccio 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.

Sibelius in the Old and New World: Aspects of His Music, Its Interpretation, and Reception (review)

Reviewed by: Sibelius in the Old and New World: Aspects of His Music, Its Interpretation, and Reception Carl Rahkonen Sibelius in the Old and New World: Aspects of His Music, Its Interpretation, and Reception. Edited by Timothy L. Jackson, Veijo Murtomäki, Colin Davis, and Timo Virtanen. (Inter disziplinäre Studien zur Musik, Band 6.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010. [433 p. ISBN 9783631560259. $101.95.] Illustrations, music examples, charts, graphs, footnotes, references, index. Similar to the editors' earlier Sibelius Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Sibelius in the Old and New World is a collection of scholarly articles. Most are based on presentations from the Fourth International Jean Sibelius Conference, held in January 2005 at the University of North Texas. Four of the twenty-one presentations are missing from this volume, but it does include five articles from other sources. The authors are musicologists, music theoreticians, and performers. The twenty-two articles here range from three to fifty-four [End Page 370] pages in length and are organized into four groups. The first group, "Historical and Cultural Studies," comprises ten articles. Gustav Djupsjöbacka, Rector at the Sibelius Academy, writes about the poets of Sibelius's vocal works. The vast majority of these works are settings of texts from Swedish-speaking Finns, as was Sibelius himself. He had studied Finnish in school, especially the epic-poem Kalevala, which, Djupsjöbacka says, "helped Sibelius form his personal musical idiom" (p. 18). For various reasons he avoided setting the texts of contemporary Finnish poets such as Aleksis Kivi, Eino Leino and V. A. Koskenniemi. Although concert pianist Folke Gräsbeck's article is entitled "The Five Complete Piano Trios," he describes every single movement or fragment composed by Sibelius for piano trio in their historical contexts, which amounts to some seventeen works. Gräsbeck writes from his own experience in playing and studying these works and makes a compelling case for their quality within the piano trio repertory. The kantele, a zither, is the national instrument of Finland. Conventional wisdom has held that Sibelius did not write music for the kantele, so Suvi Gräsbeck's article on his kantele music is particularly welcome. Sibelius composed a violin obbligato to a traditional five-string kantele waltz (JS 222), which was published in 1935. Two additional works for large kantele came to light only in 1989, which were probably composed between 1896-98 for his wife's cousin, Aili Järnefelt, who played the instrument and was left an invalid after a train accident. Michael Holmes's contribution on works for torviseitsikko (brass septet) is a summary of a longer article he submitted to the Historical Brass Society Journal. The international brass ensemble craze of the late nineteenth century appeared in Finland in the form of indigenous brass septets. Holmes has identified at least eight compositions for brass septet by Sibelius, which were written in three separate periods spanning the majority of his career. Barbara Hong (co-editor with Ruth-Esther Hillila of Historical Dictionary of the Music and Musicians of Finland [Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997]), offers an historical essay on "The Friends of Lesko, the Dog." Ferruccio Busoni, one of Sibelius's teachers at the Helsinki Music Institute, arrived in Finland with his Newfoundland dog, Lesko. Busoni's inner circle of students and friends, called the "Leskovites," included Sibelius, writer Adolf Paul, and brothers conductor Armas and artist Eero Järnefelt, who were to become Sibelius's brothers-in-law. They had an enormous influence on his education and early compositions. Hong's article provides an excellent complement to the description of the Leskovites in Glenda Goss's recent biography (Sibelius: A Composer's Life and the Awakening of Finland [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009]). Timothy Jackson's article "Sibelius the Political" is the longest (54 pages) and most controversial one in the book, so much so that it prompted a prepublication review in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Peter Monaghan, "A Composer's Ties to Nazi Germany Come Under New Scrutiny," 4 December 2009). Jackson argues that far from being an apolitical observer, Sibelius was compliant with Nazi propaganda efforts and was aware of the persecution of the...

"How I Compose": Ferruccio Busoni's Views about Invention, Quotation, and the Compositional Process

An anecdote circulating among pupils of Egon Petri (1881–1962), a protégé of Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), was the story Petri told of how on more than one occasion Busoni's wife was mistakenly introduced as "Mrs. Bach-Busoni." Whether fact or fiction, this social faux pas illustrates how closely Busoni's name has been associated with the names of composers whose works he arranged. Despite his prolific compositional career, he is remembered more as a transcriber and arranger than as a composer of original works. His practice of arranging others' works also affected his own compositions, which frequently contained borrowed material. Busoni's creative art thus blurred conventional boundaries between what is traditionally considered to be primary "original" works and subsidiary transcriptions or arrangements. While Busoni's tendency to blur boundaries between new pieces and arrangements has been already noted, his compositional aesthetics has only been cursorily studied. Relying on the essay "How I Compose," the section on notation from The Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1907), and unpublished sketches from the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, I examine Busoni's idiosyncratic compositional ideology, explain the meaning of his terms Idee, Einfall, Transkription and Bearbeitung in his compositional process, and show that Busoni valued the creativity involved in transforming already existing musical material no less than invention of the new. I illustrate Busoni's compositional aesthetics through analyses of his arrangements of Liszt's sixth Paganini Etude, Mozart's Piano Concerto, K. 453, and his Fantasia nach J. S. Bach.

Die Kunst des Anschlags. Elisabeth Caland und die Physio‐Ästhetik des Klavierspiels

The issue of how it is possible to play the piano without striking it was raised by Chopin: one must 'caresser' and not 'frapper' the piano. In her teachings on the art of piano playing, Elisabeth Caland (1862-1929) attempts to articulate a scientifically grounded solution to this complex (kin-)aesthetic problem. The solution turns on her intuitively discovered 'lowering of the shoulderblades' which was documented in 1904, through X-rays, by the Berlin physiologist René du Bois-Reymond, and recorded as a way of coordinating movement which had been unknown to physiology up to that time. Caland's physio-aesthetic of piano playing, which she worked out on the basis of du Bois-Reymond's observations, turns on the ideal of 'floating sound' put forward by her teacher Ludwig Deppe, and on Ferruccio Busoni's technique of piano playing. Her method makes essential use of what Feldenkrais would later call the 'sixth sense' (i.e. proprioceptive perception); in fact, it represents the first modern kinaesthetically based conception of piano playing. Caland's doctrine of touch was ahead of its time and it virtually disappeared from discussions of piano technique after 1930. But it has become accessible again through reprints of her most important writings: Deppe's doctrine of piano playing (1897), Sources of power in piano playing (1904), and Artistic piano playing (1910).

Zeus und Elida: Wolpe's Kunstjazz Opera

Wolpe's one-act buffa Zeus und Elida was one of three theatrical works composed between 1927 and 1929. Wolpe was influenced by the twelve-tone practices of Josef Matthias Hauer and Arnold Schoenberg, the Bauhaus theater of Oskar Schlemmer, the anarchic iconoclasm of Dada, the jazz music of the 1920s, and especially Ferruccio Busoni's Arlecchino and his aesthetic of opera. An essay on film music that Wolpe published in 1926 provides a link between Busoni and the composition of Zeus und Elida. This article examines the musical dramaturgy of the opera, with special attention to the use of dance genres, the scoring for a Kunstjazz orchestra and the technical challenges posed to the musicians. It concludes that Wolpe achieved in this opera a concept of the melos as an unfolding fabric of continuously varied actions that arose from Busoni's concept of polyphony. It proposes that in Zeus und Elida Wolpe achieved a concept of a dialectical musical dramaturgy that formed the basis of his later work as a composer and teacher in Palestine, which prompted Adorno to describe him as ‘an outsider in the best sense of the word’.

Ein Fest der Künste: Paul Cassirer. Der Kunsthändler als Verleger by Rahel E. Feilchenfeldt, Thomas Raff

28o Reviews Ein Fest der Kzinste: Paul Cassirer. Der Kunsthdndler als Verleger. Ed. by RAHEL E. FEILCHENFELDT and THOMAS RAFF. Munich: Beck. 2006. 423 pp. ?29.90. ISBN 978-3-406-54086-8. The natural follow-on from the bibliography of the Paul Cassirer Verlag edited by Rahel E. Feilchenfeldt and Markus Brandis (Munich: Saur, 2002), this volume was produced to accompany the splendid exhibition ofworks of art, books, and memora bilia associated with Paul Cassirer thepublisher andmounted inBerlin and Frankfurt in 2oo6. The sheer wealth ofmaterial frompublic and private collections displayed there can only be guessed at from the illustrations in this lavishly presented book. They include, beside images ofCassirer himself (byKalckreuth and Beckmann) and of the irrepressibleTilla Durieux, his second wife (byCorinth andMax Oppenheimer), portraits of Peter Hille, JuliusMaier-Graefe, Karl Kraus, Heinrich Mann, Rene Schickele, Ferruccio Busoni, Richard Strauss, and Ernst Bloch. Artists not already mentioned include the two older stars of thePaul Cassirer Verlag, Max Liebermann andMax Slevogt, the twoyounger leading lights,Barlach and Kokoschka, and many others (Gaul, Kolbe, Meidner). These names, and their relationship to and collabora tionwith Paul Cassirer, set the tone forthe twenty-fiveessays that make up thevolume. From a large assimilated Jewish family of successful industrialists, Paul Cassirer (I871-1926) firstmade his name as an art dealer ('Durch Manet und Monet zu money', as one caricature puts it).He soon branched out into art publishing, at first with his cousin Bruno (from I898 to I901 ),mainly reproducing works by theBerlin 'Sezession' and its leader Liebermann, and fromhis own exhibitions.With the found ingof thePan-Presse in I909 (until 192 I), he took thedecisive step into thehigh-class bibliophile market, yetwas never doctrinaire or esoteric, giving space to thehuge tal ents of Slevogt, Corinth, Barlach, and Beckmann as graphic artists. Itwas also in I909 thathe published his firsttitles inolder German literature (Lenz, Biuchner) and by the new generation (Wedekind). Cassirer was subsequently an important support for,say, Heinrich Mann or Toller, but itcould be said thathe effectively set up Kokoschka, Rene Schickele, and Else Lasker-Schiuler in their literarycareers. Business sensewent hand inhand with generosity (he bought a house for theyoung Ernst Bloch and paid him a retainer). There were forays into small magazines both during and after the FirstWorld War (Die weiflenBldtter isone) as well as intomusic publishing. The orations atCassirer's funeral in 1926 were delivered byMax Liebermann and Count Harry Kessler, both international in their orientation and at the same time representatives of the broad cultural interests and attainments of Berlin in the late imperial andWeimar periods. One is reminded, too, of the fragile and fragmented nature of theircommon heritage, much of itsoon toperish or to survive only inexile. Rahel E. Feilchenfeldt's introduction places Cassirer in this cultural context and highlights his versatility andmultiform talents.Other significant essays deal with Cas sirer and Liebermann and Slevogt (Sigrid Achenbach), Barlach (Sebastian Giesen), thePan-Presse (Stephanie Jacobs), the engraver Hermann Struck and Cassirer (Inka Bertz), Herwarth Walden, Karl Kraus, Loos, and Kokoschka (Friedrich Pfafflin), and Heinrich Mann and Cassirer (York-Gothart Mix). Ursel Berger and Josephine Gabler deal respectivelywith the sculptors Gaul and Kolbe, while Michael Assmann looks at Ludwig Meidner's apocalyptic writing and graphics. Markus Brandis's essay is a comprehensive account of theworkings of thePaul Cassirer Verlag as a cultural force in its time. Ursula Hudson-Wiedenmann writes on themusic published by Cassirer, while Karlheinz Weigand examines the young Ernst Bloch and Cassirer. Konrad Feilchenfeldt gives us some insight intoCassirer as a correspondent and a foretasteof a planned edition of his letters. This splendid and informative volume is highly recommended to all readers in MLR, I03. I, 2oo8 28i terested in the relationship of art and literature, in the history of publishing, in the emergence of the avant-garde, and inbibliophile presses. TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ROGER PAULIN Geheimes Deutschland: Stefan George und die Bruider Stauffenberg. By MANFRED RIEDEL. Cologne: Bohlau. 2006. 267 pp. E24.90. ISBN 978-3-4I2-07706-8. 'Geheimes Deutschland' ('Secret Germany' would hardly be an adequate translation) is a poem inStefan George's lastvolume of poetry,Das neueReich (1928). The term had been used before by members of theGeorge circle and by nineteenth...

Moriz Rosenthal in Word and Music: A Legacy of the Nineteenth Century (review)

Moriz Rosenthal in Word and Music: A Legacy of the Nineteenth Century. Edited and with an introduction by Mark Mitchell and Allan Evans. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. [xx, 184 p. ISBN 0-253-34660-6. $36.95.] Index, bibliographical notes, appendices, compact disc. As one of the foremost representatives of the so-called golden age of pianism, Moriz Rosenthal (1862-1946) earned esteem as much for his intellectual erudition and rapier wit as for the virtuosity and sensitivity of his playing. Born in what was then Poland, Rosenthal pursued studies with Chopin's pupil Karol Mikuli, then with Liszt's pupil Rafael Joseffy, and finally with Liszt himself at Weimar. He divided his performing career between Europe and the United States, but did not settle in this country until 1938, after which Rosenthal and his wife Hedwig Kanner devoted much time to teaching; their best-known pupil is Charles Rosen. (The book's preface contains Rosen's vivid personal recollections of Rosenthal.) Until now there has been no single or substantial source of information concerning Rosenthal's background and career or his attitudes toward music and piano playing. The present volume attempts to gather a selection of his more important writings, supplemented by additional material. Much appears in print, or in English translation, for the first time. Of the book's thirty-one chapters, eighteen are devoted to Rosenthal's own words, while the remaining thirteen contain reviews and observations by others, among them Eduard Hanslick, James Gibbons Huneker, and Kaikhosru Sorabji. (Disclosure: a copy of the original text of Rosenthal's Mahleriana chapter was furnished by the undersigned to co-editor Allan Evans in 2001 at his request.) Of prime interest is Rosenthal's unpublished autobiography, which unfortunately covers only the first fourteen years of his life. Later portions of the book offer the pianist's descriptions of his encounters with such notables as Anton Rubinstein, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss II, Gustav Mahler, and Ferruccio Busoni. Rosenthal's keen eye and ear for their individual peculiarities make these chapters particularly valuable. One of Rosenthal's own less-endearing qualities was his extreme sensitivity to criticism. Included is a caustic letter he sent to a critic who gave him a negative review, as well as the critic's published response to Rosenthal's letter. In 1922 Rosenthal became embroiled in an especially acrimonious situation that reflected Viennese musico-political intrigue at its zenith. Among the other players were critic Julius Korngold and his son, composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, then in his mid-20s. The dispute had been festering for a number of years and involved the elder Korngold's shameless promotion of his son's music. The present volume confines the matter to a single attack on Julius Korngold in a Viennese newspaper, incorporating a sworn statement from Rosenthal. Unfortunately the co-editors have failed to provide the full context of the scandal, which reveals considerably more detail, not all of it flattering to Rosenthal. This information is readily available in Brendan G. Carroll's The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1997), pp. 72-75 and 150. A four-page chronology gives the reader further biographical data on Rosenthal, but it is not supported by any specific references or documentation of sources. Some entries are questionable: in 1888, for example, Rosenthal is said to have played in New York on 13 November, during the Great Blizzard. Unfortunately it is an established fact that the Great Blizzard occurred between 11 and 14 March of that year. In general, source citations are hit-or-miss throughout the book, and the lack of a bibliography is a further liability. (Even the subject of the book is denied any listing of his published articles.) Endnotes for all chapters are gathered at the rear of the volume, and these provide, among other things, identification of most of the names mentioned in the text. …

Busoni in Berlin: Facetten eines kosmopolitischen Komponisten. Ed. by Albrecht Riethmüller and Hyesu Shin. pp. 283. (Steiner, Stuttgart, 2004, €39. ISBN 3-515-08603-X.)

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, five major Italian conferences (Florence, 1980; Bologna, Bolzano, and Florence, 1985; Empoli, 1999) were devoted to Ferruccio Busoni. They charted substantial areas of his many-faceted personality, sought to define his place in the social, political, and aesthetic context of twentieth-century music, and helped re-evaluate his achievements as composer, pianist, humanist, and visionary. A similar initiative in Germany, the chosen domicile of the itinerant virtuoso who spent much of his life ‘everywhere and nowhere’, was long overdue. For although at heart a Tuscan, Busoni lived and died in Berlin, published most of his mature compositions in Leipzig, and thought and wrote largely in German. He taught in Berlin on an official basis for less than three years, beginning in 1921, but it was there that younger composers were drawn most strongly into his sphere of influence. On the initiative of Albrecht Riethmüller, and aided by academic institutions in Mainz and Cologne, the Free University in Berlin has in recent years supported an Arbeitsstelle ‘Busoni-Editionen’, dedicated to the Herculean task of editing and publishing all Busoni’s surviving letters, as well as his complete essays and librettos. It was Riethmüller and his team who conceived and organized this conference, held in the Curt-Sachs-Saal of the Musical Instrument Museum, Berlin, in June 2001. While some contributors understood the title ‘Busoni in Berlin’ as defining a geographical boundary, others interpreted Busoni as a transmitter stationed in Berlin, who broadcast his dreams and prophecies to all with ears to hear. Accordingly, some contributors concentrated on concerts and archives in Berlin, while others discussed compositions less closely linked to Germany’s Hauptstadt: the Fantasia contrappuntistica, once compared by Busoni to a skyscraper, redolent of the New World and harbinger of new worlds in the broader sense; the Third Sonatina (‘ad usum infantis’), whose very title includes the epithet ‘American’; the works centred on Gozzi’s Turandot, conceived as a homage to Italy and the commedia dell’arte, but rooted (theoretically at least) in the ancient music of China and Arabia, Nubia and Egypt. A third group of contributors approached the wider issue of Busoni as prophet, investigating those composers who found strength in his vision of an ‘illustrious future’.

Reger's Historicist Modernism

In an article in 19th-Century Music published in 2002, I began to explore what I called modernism in music.1 This concept encompasses works composed in the Austro-German sphere in the years around 1900, which were intended and received as modern, but which derived their compositional energy primarily from techniques of a more remote past. Historicist modernism should be distinguished from neoclassicism, a somewhat later practice that crystallized around 1920. Exemplary neoclassical works, such as those by Stravinsky and Hindemith written in the decades between the world wars, tend to distance the musical past through a cosmopolitan lens. Works of modernism have a more urgent, elemental, and intense connection with the past, as in those of Max Reger that probe his psychic and musical relationships to Bach. We should briefly unpack the components of the term historicist Modernism as a phenomenon has been treated in a vast number of critical and historical writings. Die Modeme, as it was often called in German, refers to a set of beliefs and principles that in the broadest sense were shared by many creative artists in Europe from about the 1850s on. Many commentators point to Baudelaire's conception ofmodem, articulated in 1859, as foundational for this phase of For Baudelaire, (not yet an -ism) connoted not merely the presentness of an era, but rather a special quality ofle transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent that could be found in any period.2 The modem was thus set against not the old, but the eternal. The adjective modern and the substantive die Moderne appear frequently in German writings both from within and about the period 1880 to 1920. The nominal form can have the connotation of either or both of the English words modernity and modernism. In English, however, these words can have different meanings. I tend to understand modernity more as the condition or state of being modern; in this sense, comprises a situation that is almost passive, inevitable. Modernism is a more ideologically charged and voluntary phenomenon. It is in many cases an actual movement, propelled by a group of like-minded thinkers, artists, or critics. But modernism can also suggest a broader tent: in the years around 1900, among composers, critics, and the general public, it could encompass figures as different as Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Hans Pfitzner, Max von Schillings, Alexander Zemlinsky, Ferruccio Busoni, and Gustav Mahler.3

The Libretto as Literature: 'Doktor Faust' by Ferruccio Busoni by Nancy O. Chamness (review)

1078 Reviews The Libretto as Literature: 'Doktor Faust'by Ferruccio Busoni. By Nancy O. Chamness . (Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature, 44) New York, Washington/ Baltimore, and Bern: Lang. 2001. viii + 228pp. ?35. ISBN 0-8204-4077-9 (hbk). ' Faust is a common property of mankind, not a monopoly of Goethe', Nikolaus Lenau wrote to Georg Reinbeck in November 1833. These words inspired both Busoni's opera and Nancy Chamness's noteworthy study. In total agreement with her subject, she analyses detailed textual comparisons and contrasts from various examples ofthe Faust material. These are then related to more general theoretical problems explored by Busoni in practice and to recent critical views on the nature of opera. She summarizes the textual history of Busoni's libretto from as early as 1910 and shows why he made changes forstrictlyliterary reasons before applying musical setting. A definitive text emerges that takes into account Antony Beaumont's completion of the musical score (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1984). She further studies parallel texts from the several versions of the Faust material that Busoni used. After a close comparison of the texts, the conclusion comes 'that it is not useful or even logical to use Goethe's Faust as a standard for the libretto' (p. 194). Chamness focuses instead on the effectiveness of Busoni's libretto as a drama and on his conventional and innovatory uses of music. Her book summarizes recent theoretical works on the libretto in general as a specific genre and applies with persuasive ef? fect Volker Klotz's categories from Geschlossene und offeneForm im Drama (Munich: Hanser, 1969). Mellen University, Iowa Brian Keith-Smith ...

The Libretto as Literature: 'Doktor Faust' by Ferruccio Busoni

The Libretto as Literature: 'Doktor Faust' by Ferruccio Busoni

Art as a Vocation: Vladimir Vogel's dramma-oratorio ‘Jona ging doch nach Ninive’

The composer Vladimir Vogel was born in Moscow in 1896. His mother was Russian, his father a businessman who came from Dresden. After the end of the First World War Vogel went to Berlin where he was admitted to Ferruccio Busoni's masterclass, along with Kurt Weill. His studies completed, his career was at first extremely promising, but it came to an abrupt halt with the relinquishing of power to the National Socialists. In jeopardy on three counts, as a Communist, a Jew and a so-called Neutöner or ‘new-note composer’, Vogel roamed Europe for a number of years. Finally he found a refuge in Switzerland, where he produced new compositions until the end of his life without managing to emulate his own early success. He died in Zurich in 1984.

Brendan G. Carroll. The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press (an imprint of Timber Press), 1997. 464 pp. ISBN 1-57467-029-8 (hardcover)

Brendan G. Carroll. The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Portland, Oreg.: Amadeus Press (an imprint of Timber Press), 1997. 464 pp. ISBN 1-57467-029-8 (hardcover). Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 18, numéro 2, 1998, p. 1-134) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.