Piano Music - Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni

📖 "I want to attain the unknown! What I already know is boundless. But I want to go even further. The final word still eludes me."
Der mächtige Zauberer (1905)

📖 "The function of the creative artist consists of making laws, not in following laws already made."
Claude Debussy, Ferruccio Busoni, Charles Ives (1962). “Three Classics in the Aesthetic of Music: Monsieur Croche the Dilettante Hater”

📖 "Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny."
Claude Debussy, Ferruccio Busoni, Charles Ives (1962). “Three Classics in the Aesthetic of Music: Monsieur Croche the Dilettante Hater”

📖 "Music is the art of sounds in the movement of time."
"The Essence of Music" by Ferruccio Busoni, 1923.

📖 "Music is sonorous air."

📖 "Take it for granted from the beginning that everything is possible on the piano, even when it seems impossible to you, or really is so.
In Letter to Woltersdorf, 1898

📖 "Respect the pianoforte! It gives a single man command over something complete: in its ability to go from very soft to very loud in one and the same register it excels all other instruments. The trumpet can blare, but not sigh; the lute is contrary; the pianoforte can do both. Its range embraces the highest and lowest practicable notes. Respect the pianoforte!
In Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1911)

📖 "In order to get beyond the virtuoso level, one must first be a virtuoso: one arrives at something more, not something different."
In Stuckenschmidt's Ferruccio Busoni (1967)

📖 "In fine piano playing all the details are important. For instance, it is quite easy to conceive of compositions demanding a very smooth running performance in which one jarring or harsh note indicating faulty artistic calculation upon the part of the player would ruin the entire interpretation."
Busoni quoted in Alec Rowley Do's and Don'ts for Musicians. A Handbook for Teachers and Performers

📖 “It is often perfection in little things which distinguishes the performance of the great pianist from that of the novice. The novice usually manages to get the so-called main points, but he does not work for the little niceties of interpretation which are almost invariably the defining characteristic of the interpretations of the real artist—that is, the performer who has formed the habit of stopping at nothing short of his highest ideal of perfection."
Ferruccio Busoni in James Francis Cooke's Great Pianists on Piano Playing

📖 “There is a detail which few students observe which is of such vast importance that one is tempted to say that the main part of successful musical progress depends upon it. This is the detail of learning to listen. Every sound that is produced during the practice period should be heard. That is, it should be heard with ears open to give that sound the intelligent analysis which it deserves. Hours and hours are wasted by students strumming away on keyboards and giving no more attention to the sounds they produce than would the inmates of a deaf and dumb asylum. These students all expect to become fine performers even though they may not aim to become virtuosos. To them the piano keyboard is a kind of gymnasium attached to a musical instrument. They may of course acquire strong fingers, but they will have to learn to listen before they can hope to become even passable performers. At my own recitals no one in the audience listens more attentively than I do. I strive to hear every note and while I am playing my attention is so concentrated upon the one purpose of delivering the work in the most artistic manner dictated by the composer’s demands and my conception of the piece, that I am little conscious of anything else. I have also learned that I must continually have my mind alert to opportunities for improvement. I am always in quest of new beauties and even while playing in public it is possible to conceive of new details that come like revelations."
Ferruccio Busoni in James Francis Cooke's Great Pianists on Piano Playing

📖 "In my own development as an artist it has been made evident to me time and again, that success comes from the careful observance of details."
Busoni quoted in Alec Rowley Do's and Don'ts for Musicians. A Handbook for Teachers and Performers

📖 "After much study, I discovered what I believed to be the technical cause of my defects, and then I returned to Europe and for two years devoted myself almost exclusively to technical study along the individual lines I had devised. To my great delight details that had always defied me, the rebellious trills, the faltering bravura passages, the uneven runs, all came into beautiful submission and with them came a new delight in playing."
Busoni quoted in Alec Rowley Do's and Don'ts for Musicians. A Handbook for Teachers and Performers

📖 "I never neglect an opportunity to improve, no matter how perfect a previous interpretation may have seemed to me. In fact, I often go directly from the concert and practise for hours upon the very pieces that I have been playing, because during the concert new ideas have come to me. These are very precious, and to neglect them … would be ridiculous in the extreme."
Busoni quoted in Alec Rowley Do's and Don'ts for Musicians. A Handbook for Teachers and Performers

📖 On Importance of DETAILS OF PHRASING AND ACCENTUATION
“Some students look upon phrasing as a detail that can be postponed until other supposedly more important things are accomplished. The very musical meaning of any composition depends upon the correct understanding and delivery of the phrases which make that composition. To neglect the phrases would be about as sensible as it would be for the great actor to neglect the proper thought division in the interpretation of his lines. 
The greatest masterpiece of dramatic literature whether it be Romeo and Juliet, 
Antigone, La Malade Imaginaire or The Doll’s House becomes  nonsense if the thought divisions indicated by the verbal phrases are not carefully determined and expressed. Great actors spend hours and hours seeking for the best method of expressing the author’s meaning. No pianist of ability would think of giving less careful attention to phrasing. … Phrasing is anything but a detail. Fine phrasing depends first upon a knowledge of music which enables one to define the limitations of the phrase and then upon a knowledge of pianoforte playing which enables one to execute it properly. Phrasing is closely allied to the subject of accentuation and both subjects are intimately connected with that of fingering. Without the proper fingers it is often impossible to execute certain phrases correctly. Generally, the accents are considered of importance because they are supposed to fall in certain set parts of given measures, thus indicating the meter.
Ferruccio Busoni in James Francis Cooke's Great Pianists on Piano Playing

📖 ON THE STUDY OF BACH
“In the study of the subject of accentuation and phrasing it would not be possible for anyone to recommend anything more instructive than the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. The immortal Thüringian composer was the master-weaver of all. His tapestries have never been equalled in refinement, color, breadth and general beauty. Why is Bach so valuable for the  student? This is an easy question to answer. It is because his works are so constructed that they compel one to study these details. Even if the student has only mastered the intricacies of the Two Voice Inventions, it is safe to say that he has become a better player. More than this, Bach forces the student to think. 
If the student has never thought before during his practice periods, he will soon find that it is quite impossible for him to encompass the difficulties of Bach without the closest mental application. In fact, he may also discover that it is possible for him to work out some of his musical problems while away from the keyboard. Many of the most perplexing 
musical questions and difficulties that have ever confronted me have been solved mentally…"
Ferruccio Busoni in James Francis Cooke's Great Pianists on Piano Playing

Quotes by Ferruccio Busoni

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Piano Music by Busoni

Books by and about Busoni

Some Recordings of Ferruccio Busoni's Works and Playing

Bach-Busoni Choralvorspiel (Choral Prelude) Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein (recorded in 1922)

List of Busoni's Piano Works

List of Busoni's Writings / Essays

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