Microtonal Restraint

This article proposes that the beginnings of twentieth-century microtonal music and thinking were shaped more by restraint in composers’ thinking than by a full embrace of the principle of ‘progress for progress’s sake’. Pioneering microtonal composers such as Ferruccio Busoni, Julián Carrillo, John Foulds, Alois Hába, Charles Ives and Richard Stein constitute an international group of breakaway modernists, whose music and writings suggest four tropes characterizing this first-generation microtonal music: the rediscovery of a microtonal past, the preservation of tonality, the refinement of tonality and the exercise of restraint. The article traces these tropes of early twentieth-century microtonal experiment in works by Carrillo, Foulds, Hába, Ives and Stein with reference to writings and music by Busoni, Nikolay Kul′bin, Harry Partch, Karol Szymanowski and Ivan Vyschnegradsky. It adds to the growing scholarship about early twentieth-century tonally based aesthetics and techniques, and broadens perspectives on the history of twentieth-century microtonal music.

Introduction

The Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music overviews the theme of the magician Faust and the history of the theme’s musical adaptation. The publication of the Spies Faust Book in 1587, a turning point in early modern culture, lay the ground for generations of adaptations of the Faust theme, including Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy, Doctor Faustus, and the Faust puppet plays that would prove inspirational to the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe but also composers such as Richard Wagner, Ferruccio Busoni, Hanns Eisler, Josef Berg, and Henri Pousseur. At the center of most of the compositions discussed in this book is Goethe’s Faust, a masterwork at once comic and tragic that has inspired a wide range of music. The music discussed here falls into three categories: symphonic, choral, chamber, and solo Faust works; Faust in opera; and Faust in ballet and musical theater.

Extending the Reach of Ferruccio Busoni’s Doktor Faust

This chapter documents the history and impact of the opera Doktor Faust (Doctor Faust), left incomplete by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni at his death in 1924, by surveying the completion proposed for the first performance (Dresden, 1925) by Busoni’s disciple Philipp Jarnach and, more recently, those offered by the musicologist Antony Beaumont and the composer Larry Sitsky, as well as the work’s translations, performances, and recordings. It examines works by Ronald Stevenson, Alistair Hinton, and Michael Finnissy, three composers from the United Kingdom on whom Busoni’s artistic figure has left a deep imprint and who have drawn on material from his masterpiece in a spirit of homage, thus drawing attention to its significance.

Franz Liszt's Heir: Ferruccio Busoni and Weimar

When Franz Liszt died, the world lost an innovative composer, mentor, and pianist. Although his influence did not die with him, few of his successors can claim to have walked in his footsteps – to have lived and taught in the same rooms – and to have shared many of his ideals. Ferruccio Busoni did just that when the Grand Duke Carl Alexander invited him to hold piano master classes in Weimar in 1900 and 1901, just as he had invited Liszt to do nearly two decades earlier (1881–1885).This article shows how Liszt's activities in Weimar as Pedagogue and as Kapellmeister (1848–1861) became models for Busoni as he sought to position himself as a prominent ‘musical polymath’ at the turn of the century. Yet Busoni not only emulated Liszt, he also promoted him in an age when the older composer was considered of only tangential importance.By producing authoritative editions of Liszt's music, and perhaps more significantly, by emulating Liszt's activities as a transcriber and composer, Busoni enhanced piano sonority while extending Liszt's ideas about the future of music. In that way, he shared attitudes associated with the Zukunftsmusik movement, and his outlook was rooted in Liszt's compositions, as opposed to Richard Wagner's. At the same time, he helped foster a lineage of young musicians who patterned their careers and music after Liszt.Drawing on surviving memoirs, letters, scores, essays and concert programmes, this article thus explores Liszt's impact on Busoni and his mentees. It reveals a musician not only emulating Liszt, but also expanding upon his ideas and promoting them to others.

Ferruccio Busoni and The Indians’ Book

Doing ethnography with music lies at the heart of this chapter. Browner’s “Ferruccio Busoni and The Indians’ Book” looks at the complex ethnographic transformations that affect American music beyond issues of individual identity. Between 1913 and 1915, Italian virtuoso pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni wrote three works based on transcriptions of Native American songs that he had received from Natalie Curtis, an ethnographer who was also his former theory pupil. Busoni’s use of American Indian melodies as a basis for European art music was unusual to say the least, and Browner considers his work from many perspectives.