Ferruccio Busoni and the ‘‘Halfness’’ of Frédéric Chopin · Ferruccio Busoni and the ‘‘Halfness’’ of Frédéric Chopin ERINN E. KNYT F erruccio Busoni (1866–1924)

Ferruccio Busoni

and the ‘‘Halfness’’

of Frederic Chopin

ERINN E. KNYT

Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) championedFrederic Chopin’s music. Yet his performances often elicited responsesof shock, dismay, or even outrage because they rebelled against theprevalent sentimental style of interpretation associated with an ‘‘effem-inate’’ Chopin.1 Even some of Busoni’s staunchest admirers had troubleappreciating his repetition of measures or structural wholes in the pre-ludes or etudes, his registral alterations, and his intellectual approach.Grigory Kogan, for instance, writes:

Only a handful of devoted ‘‘Busonists,’’ fanatically loyal to their idol,unconditionally revered his ‘‘revolution in Chopin interpretation,’’arguing that this composer, too, was played ‘‘superbly,’’ ‘‘splendidly,’’

Shorter versions of this paper were presented in 2012 at the annualmeeting of the American Musicological Society in New Orleansand at the International Musicological Society Meeting in Rome.Thanks are due to Jeffrey Kallberg and other audience membersfor their helpful feedback and suggestions. I am also grateful toJean-Christophe Gero (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), Pam Juengling(University of Massachusetts Amherst), and Jerry McBride (Stan-ford University) for their assistance in locating sources. Unlessindicated below, all translations are mine.

1 Busoni sometimes also treated the preludes as introductions, as is evident from his1922 acoustic recording for Columbia records in which he improvises a connective passagebetween Chopin’s Prelude in A Major, op. 28, no. 7, and Etude in G-Flat Major, op. 10,no. 5. Busoni, piano, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) and His Pupils, Columbia L1432, L1445,L1456, and L1470, 1922, 78RPM (CD reissue 2004, Naxos 8.110777). This CD and othersound recordings referenced in this article are reissued compilations of numerous earlydisc and roll recordings. The Busoni performances featured on this CD were originallyrecorded with Columbia records in 1922 (L1432, L1445, L1456, and L1470, 1922, 78RPM).

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The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 34, Issue 2, pp. 241–280, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347. © 2017by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permissionto photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permis-sions web page, www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/JM.2017.34.2.241

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and ‘‘masterfully,’’ [and] passionately debated the ‘‘silly’’ assertion that‘‘Busoni does not succeed in Chopin.’’ Nevertheless, the vast majority ofcritics were of the opposite opinion. Acknowledging the technicalperfection and aural charms of Busoni’s Chopin, admiring the manydiscoveries and certain successes of the artist, the majority still found hisinterpretation of Chopin on the whole unsuccessful, unconvincing, sofar removed from the spirit of Chopin’s music as to occasionally resem-ble a caricature.2

Kogan’s description reflects the general consensus of those who actuallyobserved Busoni performing. A concert reviewer for the Boston Herald,for instance, stated in 1904 that Busoni’s performance of Chopin’s sec-ond sonata was unlike any he had ever heard:

The performance of Chopin’s sonata was as though the music had beenremoved from its proper atmosphere. There were the notes of Chopinin the first movement and in the scherzo, but the neurotic spirit of thecomposer was not in them. The performance of the funeral marchreminded one of the useful little dictionary of all words but familiar.3

It was not just reviewers who were unsettled by Busoni’s Chopin inter-pretations. Fellow pianists were also disturbed by his renditions. ArthurRubinstein, for instance, was enthralled by his Liszt performances, butquestioned his interpretations of Beethoven and Chopin:

When [Busoni] played the famous Campanella, it became a breathtakingexperience, although his Beethoven and Chopin, I must admit, left meentirely cold. To my amazement, he would approach Beethoven’s lastsonatas in a sarcastic mood, taking great liberties with tempi andrhythm, while his Chopin, always technically brilliant, lacked thewarmth and tenderness so important in his works.4

Frank Merrick was also shocked when he heard Busoni pedal the open-ing of the Ballade in G Minor, op. 23, in an unconventional manner inorder to achieve the indicated pesante effect. Rather than following Cho-pin’s phrasing markings, Busoni reportedly played the opening mea-sures without pedal and with a dry staccato touch.5

Although scholars have documented Busoni’s interpretive eccentric-ities, the rationale behind them and their significance for the evolution

2 Grigory Kogan, Busoni as Pianist, trans. and annotated by Svetlana Belsky (Roche-ster, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010), 31.

3 ‘‘Mr. Busoni’s Recital,’’ The Boston Herald, 20 February 1904.4 Arthur Rubinstein, quoted in Joseph Horowitz, Arrau on Music and Performance

(Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1982), 87.5 Frank Merrick, quoted in James Methuen-Campbell, Chopin Playing: From the Com-

poser to the Present Day (London: Victor Gollancz, 1981), 197.

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of Chopin interpretation in the twentieth century remain largely unex-plored.6 Through analyses of recordings, concert programs, recitalreviews, and an unpublished essay by Busoni, I connect Busoni’s uncon-ventional Chopin interpretations to an idiosyncratic perception ofChopin’s character based on the cultural ideas of his own age. As JeffreyKallberg, Lawrence Kramer, and other scholars have shown, in thenineteenth century Chopin and his music were commonly viewed aseffeminate, childish, or sickly.7 Busoni’s essay reveals that he, too,acknowledged poetic, feminine, and emotive characteristics in themusic. Yet this was problematic for Busoni, who was obsessed with man-liness in an age in which traditional gender roles were gradually chang-ing. He simultaneously discovered ‘‘half-manly’’ and ‘‘half-dramatic’’elements. What he strove to portray in his interpretations was the‘‘whole’’ of Chopin and his music while distancing himself from thegendered ‘‘halfness,’’ as he called it, that informed many earlier andcontemporaneous sentimental interpretations. In so doing, he becamea pioneer of bolder Chopin interpretation and of monumentalist pro-gramming. His portrait of Chopin reveals how cultural ideas inform theevolution of music interpretation.

Chopin and Gendered Discourse

Criticisms of Busoni’s performances of Chopin were based on estab-lished performance traditions and rooted in notions of gender. It wasnot uncommon in the nineteenth century for performers and criticsalike to associate the frail, sickly Chopin and his small-scale miniatureswith the feminine. Chopin did not consider such associations deroga-tory; he even perpetuated this perception and capitalized on the femi-nine appeal of his interpretations, as evidenced by some of his letters:‘‘Lichnowski, Beethoven’s patron, wanted to give me his pianoforte forthe concert—that was a generous offer—because it seemed to him thatmine was too weak, – but that is my way of playing, which, again, pleased

6 Kogan, Kenneth Hamilton, and Larry Sitsky, for instance, have mentioned Busoni’snotorious textual changes. Piero Rattalino has even classified the types of alterationsBusoni made to Chopin’s music. Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianismand Modern Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 101–2; Larry Sitsky, Busoniand the Piano: The Works, the Writings, and the Recordings (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986),327; Piero Rattalino, ‘‘Chopin and Busoni: Absolute Incompatibility or CompatibleDiversity?,’’ trans. Eric Siegel, in Chopin and His Work in the Context of Culture: Studies, ed.Irena Poniatowska et al. (Krakow: Polska Akademia Chopinowska, 2003), 2:159–64.

7 Jeffrey Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Lawrence Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice,1800–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

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the ladies very much.’’8 Chopin was proud of the delicate nuances hemanaged and was critical of the more bombastic Germanic style of playing:

It is common opinion that I played too weakly, or, rather, too delicatelyfor the Germans who are used to piano pounding. I expect to find thisreproach in the daily newspaper, especially as the editor’s daughterbangs horribly. I don’t care, there always has to be a but somewhere,and I would rather have that one than that people say I play too hard.9

Chopin’s students and circle of friends helped perpetuate this fragileand delicate image. ‘‘His piano is so delicate,’’ related Moscheles, ‘‘thatto obtain the desired contrasts he did not need a powerful forte.’’10 Yet ifChopin reveled in a more delicate style of performance characteristic ofthe French jeu perle school, his interpretations were puzzling for theViennese, who favored drama and sonority.

Chopin’s interpretations and his music were described in genderedlanguage that was common parlance at the time. Just as lyrical secondthemes in sonatas or weak cadences were termed ‘‘feminine,’’ so wasChopin’s delicacy of interpretation. Yet in the case of Chopin, referencesextended beyond momentary cadential or thematic events to the overallstyle of the music. Reviews of Chopin’s compositions contain manyreferences to the feminine not often used in relation to the overall styleof other composers; they feature terms such as ‘‘delicacy, picturesque-ness, elegance, and humour.’’11 In Dwight’s Journal of Music (1856), Cho-pin’s music is described as exhibiting ‘‘coquetry’’ and ‘‘delicacy’’:

On these elegant sketches [the nocturnes], all the finesse, all the coque-try, all the infinitesimal delicacies, all the minute and barely perceptiblegraces, which, conglomerated into a whole, form what is termed style,must be lavished, in order to interpret fairly their infinite meaning—todevelop completely their manifold beauties.12

8 ‘‘Lichnowski, protector ow Beethovena, chciał mi swojego fortepianu dac na kon-cert—i to wiele—bo musie zdawało, _ze moj był za słaby, – ale to moj sposob grania, ktory sieznow damom bardzo podobał.’’ Chopin, letter of 12 September 1829 to Tytus Wojcie-chowski, Korespondencja Fryderyka Chopina, vol. I: 1816–1831, ed. Zofia Helman, ZbigniewSkowron, and Hanna Wroblewska-Straus (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2009), 302.

9 ‘‘Powszechny jednak_ze głos jest, i_z za słabo grałem, a raczej za delikatnie dla przyz-wyczajonych do tłuczenia fortepianow Niemcow. Spodziewam sie tego zarzutu w dzienniku,zwłaszcza _ze corka redaktora wali strasznie w instrument. Nic nie szkodzi, bo przecie niemo_zna nie miec _zadnego ale, a wole takie ani_zeli gdyby powiedziano, _ze gram za mocno.’’Chopin, letter of 12 August 1829 to his family, in Korespondencja Fryderyka Chopina, 274.

10 Ignaz Moscheles, quoted in Wanda Landowska, ‘‘L’interpretation de Chopin,’’ LeCourrier Musical 1 (1910): 24–26, at 24; repr. as Wanda Landowska, ‘‘The Interpretation ofChopin,’’ trans. V.J. Hill, The New Music Review and Church Music Review 12, no. 142 (1913):391–93, at 392.

11 Anonymous critic, ‘‘M. Chopin’s Matinee,’’ The Athenaeum, no. 1079 (1 July1848):660.12 ‘‘The Works of Chopin,’’ Dwight’s Journal of Music 10, no. 8 (22 November 1856): 58.


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The critic Jules Janin took this a step further, describing Chopin’s musicnot only as stylistically feminine, but also as embodying the soul andspirit of the feminine.13

In contrast to the French school of piano playing, which valueddelicacy and clarity, and the Viennese tradition, which favored dramaand architecture, widely lauded Chopin interpreters in the late nine-teenth century sought to recreate his more delicate spirit. Vladimir dePachmann, Eugen d’Albert, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Raffael Joseffy, andJosef Hofmann were praised for interpretations that reflected Chopin’sdelicate, ‘‘feminine’’ music. A New York Times reviewer, for instance,praised one of Pachmann’s all-Chopin recitals for ‘‘surpassingly beautifulliquidity of touch’’ and for playing with ‘‘feeling’’ and ‘‘thoughtful phras-ing.’’14 Describing Joseffy’s interpretation of the Chopin E Minor Con-certo, another reviewer wrote: ‘‘The crisp and delicate touch and the easygrace with which he handled the instrument were enough to elicit theenthusiasm he commanded continuously after the first movement of thisconcerto.’’15 By contrast, reviews of Joseffy playing Liszt and Bach pub-lished just three days later use the adjectives ‘‘brilliant,’’ ‘‘interesting,’’ and‘‘masterly.’’16

Interpreters of Chopin were criticized if their playing was too ‘‘mas-culine,’’ as was the case with both Busoni and Emil Sauer. In the words ofAdolf Weissmann: ‘‘A Vladimir de Pachmann gives us the rare, consum-mate Chopin of the salon, while an Emil Sauer accentuates it, often in alltoo masculine a way, with a firm rhythm.’’17 Because Busoni’s Chopininterpretations were not tender, delicate, or sentimental, Busoni wassometimes thought to be indifferent to the music. In reality he was partof a slowly growing group of interpreters who viewed jeu perle ideals ina negative light and sought to distance themselves from accusations ofeffeminacy associated with cultural decadence and decline.18 This was thecase even if it meant reinterpreting Chopin’s spirit in a new, ‘‘masculine’’manner that was hardly Chopinesque. Alfredo Casella observes that Buso-ni consciously played Chopin’s music in a heroic manner that was uncom-mon at the time:

13 Jules Janin, untitled article, Journal des Debats, 22 October 1849.14 ‘‘Amusements,’’ New York Times, 9 April 1890, 12.15 ‘‘Joseffy at Chickering Hall,’’ New York Times, 14 October 1879, 5.16 ‘‘Joseffy at Chickering Hall,’’ New York Times, 17 October 1879, 5.17 Adolf Weissmann, Chopin (Berlin: Schuster and Loeffler, 1912), 180.18 Alexandra Wilson, The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism, and Modernity (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Liz Constable et al., Perennial Decay: On theAesthetics and Politics of Decadence (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999);Stephen Downes, Music and Decadence in European Modernism: The Case of Central and EasternEurope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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The Chopin of Busoni not only had nothing in common with that of theother pianists, but it could also be said that none of those interpreta-tions resulted in much eloquence and such manly vigor, the real heroicvastness of that art.19

It was through this ‘‘manly’’ approach that Busoni helped usher in a newera of Chopin interpretation. Yet what was the reasoning behind Buso-ni’s ‘‘masculine’’ interpretations? How did they reflect growing fearsabout effeminacy?

Busoni and Chopin

Busoni did not write as extensively about Chopin as he did about hisfavorite composers: Bach, Mozart, and Liszt. Even so, what he did recordprovides a rationale for his ‘‘masculinized’’ Chopin interpretations,exposing his fears about effeminacy and offering an explanation for hisoften eccentric Chopin interpretations that seemingly contradictorilysought to retain some ‘‘feminine’’ characteristics, such as lyricism, evenwhile displaying dramatic heft, monumental scope, and objectivity.

Busoni’s writings confirm that he associated sentimentality andeffeminacy with Chopin’s music and Chopin’s era. His frequently quotedprogram notes accompanying an all-Chopin recital in Zurich in 1916praise Chopin for his musicality, but portray his overt subjectivity asa dated product of Chopin’s time:

Chopin’s greatest contribution was that he expressed his subjectiveworld without reservation, that he enriched harmony and developedpure pianism. His subjectivity was part of the tendency toward personalexpression that was common in his day.20

Throughout his writings, Busoni criticized Chopin for this ‘‘outdated’’sentimentality. In several footnotes to his edition of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, Busoni introduced comparisons between Bachand Chopin that evince his perception of vast differences between thetwo composers. In making these comparisons, Busoni was doubtlessthinking of Chopin’s own set of twenty-four preludes. In one passageBusoni claimed sentimentality had reached its zenith in Chopin: ‘‘Theunhappy leaning toward ‘elegant sentimentality,’ then spreading wider

19 ‘‘Il Chopin di Busoni non solo non aveva nulla di commune con quello degli altripianisti, ma si puo pure dire che da nessuna di quelle interpretazioni risultasse con tantaeloquenza e con tanta maschia vigorıa la reale vastita eroica di quell’arte.’’ Alfredo Casella,Il Pianoforte (Milan: G. Ricordi and Co., 1954), 85.

20 Busoni, concert program, April 1916, Zurich; Busoni, quoted in Rattalino, ‘‘Cho-pin and Busoni,’’ 159.


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and wider (with ramifications into our own time), reaches its climax inField, Henselt, Thalberg, and Chopin.’’21 Busoni admitted Chopin’sgenius in the realm of harmony—a genius obscured, he added, by lan-guid melodic lines:

Chopin’s puissant inspiration, however, forced its way through theslough of enervating, melodious phrase-writing and the dazzlingeuphony of mere virtuosic sleight-of-hand, to the height of teemingindividuality. In harmonic insight he makes a long stride toward themighty Sebastian.22

According to Busoni, Chopin’s music, unlike Bach’s, was sickly, reflect-ing the ‘‘languid,’’ ‘‘soft,’’ and ‘‘pining’’ physique of its creator:

The [Prelude in E Minor from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier]breathes melancholy, but not sentimentality or discouragement.There must be no fond pining away, no soft suspense, no lingering.For the grieving of a strong nature finds expression in very differenttones from that of a languid, sickly soul. Make this distinction betweenBach and Chopin, even where the former permits transient repose tothe full energy of his powers; here it breaks out unexpectedly, likea fountain of living water from the earth, like the flame of a hiddenfire.23

Busoni’s views about Chopin are more fully developed in an unpub-lished essay titled ‘‘Chopin: Eine Ansicht uber ihn,’’ which survives ina handwritten manuscript and a typewritten copy with a few textualalterations (mainly crossed out words or phrases) in the Busoni-Nachlass (figs. 1 and 2).24 He wrote the essay in Verona in September1908 while on a concert tour; during this transitional period he wasbeginning to work out ideas mentioned in his aphoristic aesthetic trea-tise Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1906).25 Having led a piano master

21 Busoni ‘‘Introduction,’’ in J. S. Bach, Well-Tempered Clavichord, Revised, Annotated,and Provided with Parallel Examples and Suggestions for the Study of Modern Pianoforte-Technique byFerruccio Busoni (New York: G. Schirmer, 1894).

22 Ibid., footnote to the introduction.23 Ibid., 58.24 Busoni’s Nachlass is housed at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbe-

sitz, Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv. The items in figures 1 and 2 are catalogued asMus. Nachl. Busoni C I, 3 and C I, 3: Beil, respectively; they are reproduced with permission.Although the existence of a typewritten version suggests Busoni was planning to publish thearticle, I have not been able to locate it in print. When quoting from this article, I useparentheses to enclose text in the handwritten version that was subsequently crossed outor omitted. A German transcription and an English translation appear in the appendix. Mythanks to the University of Massachusetts Amherst Translation Center for their assistancewith this translation.

25 Although he was very much occupied with the composition of his Hoffmanesqueopera, Die Brautwahl, it was in Verona that he began dreaming of creating a distinctively

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figure 1. Busoni, ‘‘Chopin: Eine Ansicht uber ihn,’’ manuscriptversion (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)

-national opera for Italy. In that regard, he busied himself reading about Leonardo da Vinci,whom he considered a possible topic for an opera. Busoni, letter of 9 September 1908 toGerda Busoni, quoted in Edward J. Dent, Ferruccio Busoni: A Biography (London: EulenbergBooks, 1974, orig. pub. 1933), 177–78. In particular, he was moving beyond an infatuationwith Schumann and more fully venerating Mozart and Liszt.


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class in Vienna from September 1907 to July 1908, Busoni had pianorepertoire very much on his mind; he was rethinking his musical rolemodels.

During this time of reevaluation and renewal, reconsidering Chopinand his musical importance was a logical step for Busoni. Nonetheless,Busoni added only one composition to his Chopin recital repertoire

figure 1. (Continued)

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after writing the essay: the Scherzo in C-Sharp Minor, op. 39, in 1912.26

Although Chopin had been a staple of his repertoire since his youth, hiscreative energies were gradually being directed elsewhere.

During this same period, gender roles and attributes were very muchon Busoni’s mind. In a letter to his wife, Busoni slipped in a reference to


26 Dent, Ferruccio Busoni, 323.


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his Chopin essay after writing extensively about perceived deficiencies ofItalian women. The letter, which includes colorful metaphors, revealsseveral contradictory attitudes. Men are rational and represented bynumbers, while women lack agency and talk in circles without thinking.Yet although Busoni viewed Italian women as childish and underdevel-oped socially, intellectually, and psychologically, he felt bereft withoutfeminine graces:


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I have been considering Italian women a little, and have come to theconclusion that their behaviour is the result of their lack of male rela-tionships. They only know their brothers and uncles; the harmless

figure 2. Busoni, ‘‘Chopin: Eine Ansicht uber ihn,’’ typewrittenversion (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)


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uncle, the terrifying uncle, the comical uncle. If, occasionally, they meettheir brothers’ friends, then certain themes and certain expressions areeliminated from the conversation. By brothers and uncles they aretreated like children, and by friends with a formality which always


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produces the same tone. But with the exception of these contacts, menjust remain categories for them. For them, there are men who are‘‘sympathetic,’’ ‘‘handsome,’’ ‘‘worthy of respect,’’ and ‘‘dangerous‘‘—all from hearsay, and the existence of men remains a legend in theirgirlish dreams which takes on some kind of untrue shape. The womenonly talk amongst themselves, and the circle of talk turns like the handof a clock round the figures. In connection with the enjoyment of travelin Italy, I find these conditions where ‘‘femininity’’ is left out mostoppressive. [ . . . ] But these are only reflections ‘‘in between,’’ so tospeak, for I have thought of other things; for example, I have writtendown my ideas about Chopin [emphasis mine].27

Busoni was evidently very much concerned with gender roles aroundthis time, and specifically obsessed with the concept of masculinity. Forhim manliness was associated with intellectual acuteness, leadership,strength, creativity, and vigor. Busoni notoriously and regularly put downwomen as intellectual inferiors even if he praised and valued delicacy inwomen.28 Busoni’s closest musical friends included, among others, EgonPetri, Philipp Jarnach, and Gottfried Galston. Although he welcomedwomen at tea and coffee hours in his home, he never admitted themto his innermost artistic circle. At social gatherings, his frequent punsand jokes were sometimes made at the expense of women.29 Moreover,he despised the concept of independent women and considered womenin places of authority a threat to his masculinity and to the social order heknew.30

Many of these attitudes resurface in his Chopin essay. Busoni revealsa conflicted attitude toward the composer and identifies a gender-basedflaw in Chopin—the man and the music—that reflects cultural fears

27 Busoni, letter of 13 September 1908 to Gerda Busoni, in Busoni, Letters to His Wife,trans. Rosamond Ley (New York: Da Capo Press, 1975, orig. pub. 1938), 136.

28 Ibid.29 Tamara Levitz vividly describes Busoni’s conflicted views: ‘‘Busoni aimed his jokes

and discussions at a male audience. Although a few women visited him regularly in his lastyears and strove to become part of his inner circle, Busoni relegated them to an inferiorposition. He accepted the presence of women who had formerly studied piano with him,however, because, as he told friends, he believed women should play the piano but notengage in intellectual pursuits. Busoni disapproved of women who displayed too muchindependence and character. He disliked the emancipated women he had met in theUnited States and the society women he had met in Vienna as a young man; he had notolerance for ‘stupid women.’ On the whole he doubted the intellectual capacities ofwomen, perhaps because he was surrounded by an adoring entourage that responded tohim the way young female audiences had responded to Liszt.’’ Tamara Levitz, ‘‘TeachingNew Classicality: Busoni’s Master Class in Composition, 1921–1924’’ (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Rochester, 1993), 117n8.

30 Busoni once reportedly ‘‘accused the female President of the Philharmonic Societyin New York of having killed Gustav Mahler.’’ Ibid., 117–18.


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about masculinity. He specifically cites difficulty respecting him as a man(Mann) as opposed to a human being (Mensch). This is significant crit-icism, considering both Busoni’s personal views about women anda widely accepted belief at the time that women were intellectually infe-rior.31 Busoni believed that Chopin was not a political leader, like Napo-leon, not an intellectual leader, like Goethe, and not a creative giant, likeBeethoven or Mozart. He was not ‘‘complete’’:

[Chopin] has attracted and repelled me, always, and my occasional lovefor him was lacking in respect, my admiration lacked love. The reasonshave now become clear to me. He impresses me neither as master nor asman. (I say intentionally ‘‘as a man’’ and not ‘‘as a human being’’because I feel something sexually incomplete in him.) Respected peo-ple cannot take him seriously; if juxtaposed to a Napoleon or a Goethe,he would cut a minor figure, whereas a Beethoven and even the cheer-ful young Mozart himself would have garnered respect from those greatfigures.32

Like many of his contemporaries, Busoni perceived Chopin to possessfeminine traits. Most disturbing, however, was Chopin’s weak intellectualcapability: ‘‘Chopin, after all, has something of the womanly in himself.(So that, for example, he becomes unbearably boring as soon as hebegins to speak earnestly.) If we analyze the ‘halfness’ in Chopin, thenwe will understand him.’’33

In addition to Chopin’s purported superficiality and subjectivity, histreatment of form, especially large-scale form, was feminine—and prob-lematic for Busoni. Chopin lacked the capacity to develop ideas, hethought; this was a significant criticism for Busoni, who idealized organicdevelopment:

The longer his pieces, the more insignificant they are. I would almostlike to say: he sometimes has great ideas, but he can’t bring them tofruition—he is more poet than composer. One can be a great poetwithout writing a line. A composer must form ‘‘shapes.’’ Chopin neverachieves that.34

Busoni also searched for manly and dramatic elements—that is,a heroic monumental side. Using metaphors associated with manliness,

31 Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), chs. 7–8.

32 Busoni, ‘‘Chopin, Eine Ansicht uber ihn.’’33 Ibid.34 Ibid.

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such as battle or sword fighting, Busoni claims that Chopin’s music con-tains manly moments that hint at dramatic opposition. Yet thesemoments dissipate quickly into elegant lines instead of creating sus-tained tensions; thus the music was only ‘‘half manly’’:35

If we saw ‘‘halfness’’ in his greatness, so we again meet it in Chopin’s‘‘dramatic art.’’ To be sure, he draws the sword, rolls his eyes, [and]cries ‘‘I dare you!’’ but no opponent rises to the challenge. We toleratehim even less easily, when after such excitement he elegantly transformsinto a lady, as if he were continuing to play the irreconcilable one. Thereconciling factor for us is that he is almost always sincere. He believesin his noble indignations and gets upset in earnestness.36

This ‘‘halfness’’ was nowhere more evident than in Chopin’s tex-tures, which are frequently divided between ‘‘feminine,’’ lyrical melo-dies, some of which resemble ornamented bel canto opera melodies,and more ‘‘masculine’’ contrapuntal accompaniments. Most astonish-ing, however, is Busoni’s claim that this ‘‘halfness’’ resulted in music thatwas ‘‘unpianistic’’: Chopin’s music did not take full advantage of the richtextural and coloristic possibilities of his instrument. Busoni objected tothe vocal (rather than keyboard) textures, and to what he perceived asless than physically optimal figurations:

However, where his halfness is most awkward, and where it can beirritating, is in his piano texture. Is it ‘‘pianistic’’ or not? Does it‘‘resound?’’ Does it ‘‘lie well?’’ Does it emerge from the instrument,from the fingers, or from Chopin’s music? The first I might almost liketo deny outright. The second and third I concede reluctantly andregrettably in the sense that the fingers are often in the way of themusic, and the music in the way of the fingers—but about the instru-ment itself Chopin knows little. How else could he give his best melodicinspirations the worst conceivable positions on the piano? How couldhe divide the right and left hands from one another in such a way thatone constantly hears one or the other, but never both together asa whole? What does Chopin know of depth and height? Height is tohim the lengthening of a motion, depth the strengthening of a bassline. (One should view him beside the piano-composer Beethoven, andof that composer’s output only the variations from Opus 111.) Oneneed only observe Chopin’s awkward figurations of the left hand, whichat any price combine with the motif in the right hand, and which, their

35 On Chopin’s ambiguous sexual identity see Charles Neal and Dominic Davies, eds.,Issues In Therapy With Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual And Transgender Clients (Philadelphia, PA: OpenUniversity Press, 2000), 178; Nadine Hubbs, The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: GayModernists, American Music, and National Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press,2004), 127–28.

36 Busoni, ‘‘Chopin, Eine Ansicht uber ihn.’’


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unplayability notwithstanding, are dragged through all keys for the sakeof dry harmonic sequences. Here and in all his musical developmentsections the music is in the way of the fingers and thus evokes the mostunpleasant effects I know.37

Busoni’s portrait of Chopin is chimerical. He sees the man and hismusic as alternating between the feminine and the masculine. Like chi-merical creatures, Chopin and his music mutated back and forthbetween the two, especially in the large-scale works:

As is generally well known, these sonatas stand beside the four balladesin general estimation. They all tell the same story: all are ‘‘Valses’’ indisguise and swarm with the ‘‘halfnesses’’ of all aforementioned cate-gories. They are half-manly, half-dramatic, and half-pianistic. But evenhere poetic beauty, the genial rebelliousness, and the personal aspect ofChopin are effective.38

Rather than entirely reject the feminine, Busoni argued that the idealChopin united the masculine and the feminine. This balance led toa wholeness observable in very few pieces—just three or four unspecifiednocturnes. It is strange to find Busoni turning to the nocturne in thisregard; indeed Kallberg has shown how the nocturne, played by womenand strongly associated with tenderness and sentimentality, was associ-ated above all with the feminine.39 One can only wonder if Busoni wascomparing Chopin’s nocturnes, which (for Busoni) synthesize dreamy,lyrical, and heroic elements, to those by John Field, whose settings fea-ture supple melodies over graceful left-hand arpeggiations. Busoni, whopreferred suggestiveness, never specified which nocturnes by Chopin heidealized. He sarcastically suggested, however, that his favorite was notthe popular nocturne in E-Flat Major, probably a reference to the

37 Ibid.38 Ibid.39 This genre had been described in 1865 in Arrey von Dommer’s Lexicon as ‘‘given to

a gentle and quiet rapture, without thereby excluding cheerfulness; however elevated ideasand artful arrangement of the same remain distant from it. The whole amounts more to anagreeable amusement and awakening of a mellow frame of mind than to an energeticstimulation of deep feelings and passions. For that reason, modern piano music, like otherso-called character pieces as well as the notturno, is precisely suitable to sentimentalize andgush over as much as possible, without worry of encroachment on the harmony of the teatable by awakening strong feelings and thoughts.’’ Quoted in Kallberg, Chopin at the Bound-aries, 41. On the piano nocturne, including its derivation from vocal genres, see JeffreyKallberg, ‘‘‘Voice’ and the Nocturne,’’ in Pianist, Scholar, Connoisseur: Essays in Honor of JacobLateiner, ed. Bruce Brubaker and Jane Gottlieb (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 2000),1–46; James Parakilas, ‘‘‘Nuit plus belle qu’un beau jour’: Poetry, Song, and the Voice in thePiano Nocturne,’’ in The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, ed. Halina Goldberg (Bloo-mington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), 203–23.

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hackneyed op. 9, no. 2, ‘‘desecrated’’ on cornet-a-pistons for crowds onSunday afternoons:40

‘‘But the nocturnes, the nocturnes! Here is Chopin, here beginningand end!’’

First off I ask: Which ones? Do you mean that E-Flat Major piece that istrumpeted on the cornet-a-pistons in public gardens on Sundayafternoons?

I’m thinking of three or four that have nothing of halfness and—admit-tedly—represent the ‘‘entire’’ Chopin. They don’t encompass morethan about a quarter-hour of music, but a quarter-hour that one doesn’tforget.41

Busoni thus did not entirely reject a view of an effeminate Chopin andhis music, but claimed there was more to Chopin than this.

Fears of Effeminacy in Busoni’s Zeitgeist

Although the title of Busoni’s essay implies a new insight about Chopin,it more fully reveals Busoni’s own culture. Busoni lived in an era in whichshifts in gender roles led to unprecedented interest in gender and tomasculine fears about ‘‘new women’’—that is, independent, educated,and powerful women. In the period from 1880 to 1920, masculinistmisogyny was especially widespread.42 At the same time, wholeness, met-aphorically symbolized by the union of the feminine and the masculinein which the masculine has the upper hand, was idealized, leading tonewfound interest in androgyny and the hermaphrodite. As Greg Forterhas observed, there was a ‘‘yearning for ‘feminine’ aspects of the self thatthe modern gender binary disparaged.’’43

Discourse about gender roles pervaded nearly every discipline inGermany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including

40 The Nocturne in E-Flat Major, op. 9, no. 2, appears in many arrangements, includ-ing several for trumpet and cornet. Nocturno [op. 9, no. 2] by Chopin and Spring Song[op. 62, no. 6 from Lieder ohne Worte] by Mendelssohn, arr. Louis-Philippe Laurendeau(New York: Carl Fischer, n.d.). Louis Philippe Laurendeau (1861–1916) was a contempo-rary of Busoni. Thanks to Jerry McBride for his assistance in locating these arrangements.

41 Busoni, ‘‘Chopin: Eine Ansicht.’’42 On the link between misogyny and modernism, see Marianne Dekoven, ‘‘Mod-

ernism and Gender,’’ in The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, ed. Michael Levenson, 2nded. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 212–31; Rita Felski, The Gender ofModernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); and Agatha Schwartz, ed.,Gender and Modernity in Central Europe: The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Its Legacy (Ottawa:University of Ottawa Press, 2011).

43 Greg Forter, Gender, Race, and Mourning in American Modernism (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2011), 9.


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science, philosophy, literature, and music.44 A voracious reader, Busonimust have had wide exposure to the topic. Across the disciplines, womenwere frequently labeled as inadequate intellectually. Their role in life wasjustified by men, who made them complete as they fulfilled their role aspassive progenitor. Theodor von Bischoff’s studies of the shape and sizeof women’s skulls reinforced the perception that they were feeble-minded and unfit for professional or public life.45 Arthur Schopenhauer,whose works were well known to Busoni, similarly concluded that, owingto their physique, women were not meant for intellectual work, butrather for bearing and raising children:

One need only look at a woman’s shape to discover that she is notintended for either too much mental or too much physical work. Shepays the debt of life not by what she does but by what she suffers—by thepains of childbearing, care for the child, and by subjection to man, towhom she should be a patient and cheerful companion.46

Notwithstanding the widespread disparagement of women’s intellec-tual capacities, there was also growing interest in the possibility that allhumans possessed a complex of masculine and feminine characteris-tics—and it is here that we can posit a link to Busoni. One of the mostextensive discussions of the topic appears in Otto Weininger’s influentialtreatise on sex and character.47 Although he maintains a critical attitudetoward women and ethnic minorities, Weininger idealizes androgyny: hepaints a chimerical and hermaphroditic image of humans, claiming thateveryone possesses varying degrees of masculine and feminine traits.48

According to Weininger all humans vacillate between the two, but insome people, vacillations are irregular and substantial:

44 On cultural perceptions of the masculine and the feminine, see Kallberg, Chopin atthe Boundaries; and Chris Weedon, Gender, Feminism, and Fiction in Germany, 1840–1914:Gender, Sexuality, and Culture, vol. 5, ed. William J. Spurlin (New York: Peter Lang, 2006).I am indebted to Kallberg for his suggestion to investigate the hermaphrodite and itspotential importance for Busoni’s views.

45 Theodor Bischoff, Das Studium und die Ausubung der Medicin durch Frauen (Munich:T. Riede, 1872).

46 Arthur Schopenhauer, Pererga und Paralipomena, Essays of Schopenhauer, trans. Mrs.Rudolf Dircks (London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., n.d.), 64. Auction records at thetime of Busoni’s death indicate that he owned a copy of Pererga und Paralipomena.

47 Otto Weininger, Sex and Character: An Investigation of Fundamental Principles, trans.Ladislaus Lob, ed. Daniel Steuer with Laura Marcus (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 2005, orig. pub. 1880–1903).

48 ‘‘There are no living beings that can bluntly be described as being unisexual and ofone definite sex. Rather, reality fluctuates between two points at neither of which anempirical individual can be encountered, but between which every individual has its placesomewhere.’’ Ibid., 15.

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All human beings oscillate between the Man and the Woman in them. Theseoscillations may be abnormally large in one person and almost imper-ceptibly small in another, but they always exist, and if they are substantialenough, they also reveal themselves through the changing physicalappearance of the individuals concerned.49

When masculine and feminine are united, the deficiencies of the womanare overcome by a hermaphroditic whole:

The Woman Question will persist as long as there are two sexes and willnot fall silent until the question of humanity does. This is what Christmeant when, according to the testimony of Clemens, the father of theChurch, he told Salome, without cheerfully glossing over sexuality as St.Paul and Luther did after him, that death would hold sway as long aswoman brought forth and that the truth would not be seen before thetwo were made into a single one, and male and female had becomea third, but neither Man nor Woman.50

Descriptions of the inadequacy of the feminine and the need forcompleteness provided through a union with the male permeated Ger-man thought at the time. In a musical context one can point to RichardWagner, for whom feminine emotional music united with masculine andintellectual poetry through poietic intent, giving birth to the essentiallyandrogynous music drama.51 Both sexes are originally incomplete, butthe feminine is less than half; the offspring, the music drama, is ‘‘whole’’by inference, since it partakes of the best attributes of both parents andbrings them into a perfect synthesis.52 Although Busoni was moving inanti-Wagnerian directions in 1908, he was well versed in Wagner’s theo-ries and writings. He must at least have thought about these writingswhen composing his thoughts about Chopin and gender.

Busoni also knew the writings of Adolf Weissmann, who published aninfluential biography of Chopin in 1912 that swarms with descriptions ofthe composer as sentimental and feminine. In a chapter titled ‘‘The Psy-chology of the Musician,’’ terms such as ‘‘lyricism’’ and ‘‘suppleness’’ pre-dominate.53 By the 1920s Weissmann pushed the boundaries even furtherin his descriptions of Chopin as a racially exotic hermaphrodite:54

49 Ibid., 48.50 Ibid., 310–11.51 Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Lincoln: University

of Nebraska Press, 1995). On Wagner’s aesthetics see Thomas S. Grey, Wagner’s MusicalProse: Texts and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

52 Ibid., 146.53 Adolf Weissmann, Chopin (Berlin: Schuster and Loeffler, 1912), 88.54 Femininity and racial otherness were often considered as similarly deficient in

German culture in the nineteenth century.


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Through strong racial feeling, Chopin’s emotional, hermaphroditenature had discovered new shades of sound, a new language of the soul,and a smoothly gliding technique, accentually weak, which was to serveDebussy for the expression of his moods, both as man and pianist.55

Descriptions of the hermaphroditic Chopin became relatively commonin the early decades of the twentieth century, with the feminine sideviewed increasingly as negative or at least incomplete. James Hunekerclaimed that all artists appropriately had hermaphroditic tendencies.Chopin was problematic in that the feminine side predominated:

All artists are androgynous; in Chopin the feminine often prevails, but itmust be noted that this quality is a distinguishing sign of masculine lyricgenius, for when he unbends, coquets, and makes graceful confessionsor whimpers in lyric loveliness at fate, then his mother’s sex peeps out,a picture of the capricious, beautiful, tyrannical Polish woman. Whenhe stiffens his soul, when Russia gets into his nostrils, then the smokeand flame of his Polonaises, the tantalizing despair of his Mazurkas aretestimony to the strong man-soul in rebellion. But it is often a psychicalmasquerade. The sag of melancholy is soon felt, and the old Chopin,the subjective Chopin, wails afresh in melodic moodiness.56

The feminine was associated with the decadent ornamentation, freeforms, and sentimentality of late romanticism, even as the hermaphro-dite was a symbol of wholeness and an emblem of perfection for moder-nists, such as Huneker, Weininger, and Weissmann. Even ArnoldSchoenberg argued for continuity between the ‘‘feminine’’ heart andthe ‘‘masculine’’ brain during the creative process; his model was Hon-ore de Balzac, who had created the androgynous character Seraphıta andstated that ‘‘the heart must be within the domain of the head.’’57

Busoni, too, idealized hermaphroditism, considering it to unite thebest of both genders into a richer whole:

I should have been born a hermaphrodite, in the sense of that heroic-fantastic being in Voltaire’s ‘‘La Pucelle’’; a man by day and a woman bynight, and both with equal impetus. . . . I am indeed something of thesort, except that this other side of me is not accredited.58

55 Adolf Weissmann, The Problems of Modern Music, trans. M.M. Bozarth (London: J.M.Dent and Sons, 1925), 161.

56 James Huneker, Chopin: The Man and His Music (New York: Scribner, 1900), 126.57 Arnold Schoenberg, ‘‘Heart and Brain in Music,’’ in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of

Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975),75. Richard Taruskin has also demonstrated a connection between Schoenberg’s ideali-zation of androgyny and the erasing of distinctions between keys. Richard Taruskin, ‘‘ThePoietic Fallacy,’’ The Musical Times 145 (2004): 7–34, at 28.

58 Busoni, letter of 10 February 1922 to Egon Petri, in Ferruccio Busoni: Selected Letters,trans. and ed. Antony Beaumont (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), 349.

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Busoni’s praise of the ‘‘masculine’’ woman Joan of Arc as portrayed byVoltaire in La Pucelle is seemingly contradictory, given Busoni’s dislike ofbold, independent women.59 He was evidently drawn to the idea of add-ing feminine grace and poetry to his own masculine intellectuality.

Throughout his life Busoni was faced with the task of reconcilingand discovering personal and artistic wholeness. Of mixed Italian andGerman heritage, he struggled to reconcile Latin and Teutonic tenden-cies. As a professional, he had to find a balance between interpreting andcomposing. And as an artist, he grappled with finding a balance betweenthe subjective and the objective, the ‘‘feminine’’ and the ‘‘masculine,’’the romantic and the modern. He tried to forge a new interpretive paththat blended these binaries while always leaning toward the objective andthe ‘‘masculine’’ for fear of coming across as too effeminate. He cau-tioned, for instance, against the then standard practice among harpsi-chordists of rolling the final chord in Bach’s first two-voice invention, soas to avoid ‘‘effeminizing’’ the music:

The incomprehensible Arpeggiando sign, which one finds before thischord in many editions, is contrary to the manly style of the piece, andmay be classed in Bach’s phraseology as ‘‘styleless.’’ Against such effemi-nacies in this and in analogous cases the student is especially warned.60

Yet the steps Busoni took to avoid seeming effeminate were most obviouswith respect to Chopin’s ‘‘hermaphroditic’’ music, in which the ‘‘femi-nine’’ had the upper hand.

Busoni’s Chopin Interpretations

Chopin’s music featured prominently in Busoni’s concert programsthroughout his career; his idiosyncratic, ‘‘masculinized’’ interpretationscan be read as responding to the ideals of his age and his personal views

59 Busoni’s reference to the hermaphrodite refers to a literary depiction of Joan ofArc. Busoni must have been thinking about the following passage, which he nearly quotedin his letter:

Conceal’d beneath a cap and petticoatFor my part, I in truth should more delight,In one as gentle as a Lamb at night,Whose tenderness and love I could rely on:Joan was an Amazon, bold as a Lion!

Voltaire, La Pucelle; or, the Maid of Orleans: A Poem in XXI cantos, trans. CatherineMaria Bury Charleville (n.p., 1796), 15–16.

60 Johann Sebastian Bach, Two and Three Part Inventions for the Pianoforte With Referenceto the Execution and the Composition Analyzed and Revised by Ferruccio B. Busoni, trans. LouisElson (New York: Associated Music Publishers, Inc., n.d.), 3n4.


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about Chopin. Busoni first performed Chopin in concert at the age of13;61 his early performances featured the Etude in F Minor, op. 10, no. 9,the Waltz in A Minor, op. 34, no. 2, the Tarantella in A-Flat Major, op. 43,and the Ballade in A-Flat Major, op. 47. He had mastered all of the etudesby 1885; by the late 1880s all the etudes and preludes had become staplesof his repertoire.62

Although extant acoustic recordings and piano rolls cannot be takenas entirely accurate representations of Busoni’s Chopin interpretations,they nonetheless provide a record of his interpretive style and concertprogramming.63 On the sole surviving acoustic recording by Busoni, fiveof nine pieces are by Chopin (table 1).64 The Chopin pieces preservedon rolls include two ballades, the complete preludes, several etudes, anda nocturne. These recordings reveal Busoni’s aversion to a light, senti-mental, and ‘‘effeminate’’ style of playing; instead he took a more

61 Dent, Ferruccio Busoni, 322.62 ‘‘The scoring of my opera has been interrupted once again, instead I have to toil

away at the Chopin Etudes, which I believed myself to have mastered 25 years ago, yet alwayshave to conquer anew.’’ Busoni, letter of 17 September 1910 to Hans Huber, in FeruccioBusoni: Selected Letters, 113.

63 For a rollography and discography see Marc-Andre Roberge, Ferruccio Busoni: A Bio-bibliography (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991). The acoustic recordings are problematicbecause, as Busoni reported in his letters, the recording sessions with Columbia Records inNovember 1919 and February 1922 were less than satisfactory. He felt hampered by sick-ness, lack of preparation, the time constraints of the recording medium, and a deficientpiano: ‘‘The conditions are most unfavorable. The room, the piano, the chair not inviting.I have to start like a race horse and to the end before four minutes have elapsed. I have tomanage the touch and the pedal differently from how I do it usually. . . . What in heavens [sic]name, can be the result of it? Not my own playing, take it for granted!’’ Busoni, letter of 1February 1922 to Mr. Tillet, quoted in Jonathan Summers, liner notes to Busoni and HisLegacy: Piano Recordings by Busoni, Ley, Petri, http://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/busoni-and-his-legacy/ (accessed 27 November 2016). It is questionable, given these conditions, whetherany recording could adequately capture Busoni’s interpretations. Busoni was apparentlymore comfortable with and better known for performing large-scale masterpieces, such asBeethoven’s monumental late sonatas; he felt less at ease with the miniatures he was forced torecord for Columbia Records, and indeed rejected all the takes from a 1919 session. The discswere subsequently destroyed by fire and lost forever. Christopher Dyment, ‘‘FerruccioBusoni: His Phonograph Recordings,’’ Journal of the Association for Recorded Sound 10(1979): 185–87. The acoustic recordings from 1922 are generally not considered represen-tative of his interpretive abilities; the originals were destroyed in the same fire. DaniellRevenaugh, a pupil of Egon Petri, claims that Petri described the acoustic recording of Liszt’s13th Hungarian Rhapsody as one of the few recorded pieces that fairly accurately representsBusoni’s interpretive approach. Daniell Revenaugh, personal interview, 7 January 2008.Revenaugh studied with Petri and rescued a large collection of Busoni manuscripts fromPoland after World War II. These items are now in his private possession in Berkeley, CA.

64 Busoni, letter of 7 July 1920 to the Columbia Gramophone Company,’’ reproducedin Antonio Latanza, Ferruccio Busoni: Realta e utopia strumentale, ed. Antonio Pellicani (n.p.,2001), 124. The letter reads: ‘‘In consideration of your granting me permission to makepianola rolls for the Aeolian Company, I herewith agree to re-record the twelve selectionswithin a period of Nine months from date. Ferruccio Busoni.’’ Comparisons of identicalpiano rolls reproduced by different technicians reveal significant variations of tempi, ped-aling, and dynamic levels.

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http://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/busoni-and-his-legacy/

http://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/busoni-and-his-legacy/

intellectual approach, enriched and strengthened the textures, andmonumentalized the small salon forms. His interpretations are arguablymore ‘‘masculine’’ than those of his contemporaries, though not devoidof ‘‘feminine’’ feeling and expressivity.

Busoni monumentalized small forms by grouping pieces into setsand adding measures to reinforce structure and form. Rather than treatChopin’s preludes as fragmentary and poetic miniatures, as was typical inhis day, Busoni made them more substantial by adding uncalled-forrepetitions, repeating pieces in their entirety (e.g., Prelude 7), or repeat-ing all but the coda (e.g., Preludes 1, 3, and 22). He thus made a point ofrepeating the essential structure of the prelude. In both the Columbiaacoustic recording and the piano-roll recordings of the Prelude inA Major, op. 28, no. 7, for instance, Busoni’s wholesale repetition of theprelude adds gravity to the piece, making it seem less fragmentary—especially in conjunction with a substantial concluding ritard.65 In thePrelude in G Major, op. 28, no. 3, he extended the coda by two measures,the introduction by one.66 Similarly, in his acoustic recording of theEtude in G-Flat Major, op. 10, no. 5, he added an additional measureof broken B � octaves, ostensibly to better delineate the opening phrase,and in the conclusion repeated material to lengthen the coda.67

Busoni further grouped the preludes or etudes together, playingthem as cycles, avoiding breaks between numbers to create a senseof continuous drama and large-scale structure.68 He performed the

TABLE 1.Surviving Acoustic Recordings by Busoni (1922)

J.S. Bach, Prelude and Fugue in C Major (WTC I)Bach ‘‘Nun freut euch lieben Christen gmein,’’ BWV 734, transcription

for piano by BusoniLudwig van Beethoven, Ecossaisen, WoO 83, arranged by BusoniFrederic Chopin, Prelude in A Major, op. 28, no. 7Chopin, Etude in G-Flat Major, op. 10, no. 5 (recorded twice)Chopin, Nocturne in F-Sharp Major, op. 15, no. 2Chopin, Etude in E Minor, op. 25, no. 5Franz Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody no. 13 in A Minor

65 Busoni, piano, Rosamund Ley, piano, and Egon Petri, piano, Busoni and His Legacy,2011, CD, Arbiter 134; and Busoni, piano, Ferruccio Busoni Concert, 1966, LP, Everest X-906.

66 Busoni, piano, Ferruccio Busoni Plays Bach-Busoni & Chopin, 1997, CD, Nimbus Re-cords 8810.

67 Busoni, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) and His Pupils.68 Busoni was possibly also the first to perform the complete Chopin etudes. He

performed the opus 25 cycle in Berlin in 1896 and the opus 10 cycle in Berlin in 1902.


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complete preludes and etudes together in a single concert as early as 5March 1889, while teaching at the Helsinki Music Institute. He is the firstpianist to have played all the preludes and both sets of etudes in oneconcert.69 Moreover, Busoni was the first pianist to consistently programcomplete cycles in his recitals. According to Daniell Revenaugh, Busonioften performed the preludes without a break between pieces; he seemsto have viewed the miniatures as contributing to a larger structure.70

Revenaugh’s recollections are supported by a concert review in the Berli-ner Allgemeine Zeitung from 1914 that describes the preludes as beingplayed in an unbroken series.71 Busoni performed the preludes in thisfashion throughout his career, including during his famous Zurich re-citals, each devoted to the works of a different composer: Bach, Beetho-ven, Liszt, and Chopin. The all-Chopin recital took place on 13 April1916: Busoni played a program consisting of the complete opus 25etudes, the Ballade in F Minor, op. 52, the Scherzo in C-Sharp Minor,op. 39, the complete preludes, op. 28, and the Polonaise in A-Flat Major,op. 53.72

Already in 1884 Busoni had attempted to monumentalize the Pre-lude in C Minor, op. 28, no. 20 by composing a set of variations toaccompany it. His Variationen und Fuge in freier Form uber Chopins Pralu-dium in C moll (Op. 28, Nr. 20) fur Pianoforte zu zwei Handen, BV 213, quotesthe rather funereal prelude before launching into a series of eighteenvirtuosic variations. It concludes with a bravura fugue (table 2). Featur-ing double parallel thirds and sixths, rapid scalar passages, large blockchords, martellato rhythms, and even a chromatic fantasia, Busoni’s var-iations display little of Chopin’s funereal pathos. They more closelyresemble mini-etudes that build dramatically to a brilliant and virtuosicclimax (ex. 1).73

69 Roberto Wis, ‘‘Ferruccio Busoni and Finland,’’ Acta Musicologica 49 (1977): 250–69,at 267.

70 Daniell Revenaugh, personal interview, 17 February 2008.71 ‘‘Aus den Konzertsalen: Busonis zweiter Konzertabend,’’ Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung,

4 March 1914.72 Busoni, Zurich Concert Programs, 23 March, 6 April, 13 April, and 27 April 1916.

Each concert was devoted to a different composer (Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt).Copies of the concert programs are located in the Busoni Nachlass at the StaatsbibliothekBerlin.

73 For the sake of providing measure numbers in ex. 1, I have treated severalunmeasured, cadenza-like passages from earlier in the work as one measure each. Busoni,Variationen und Fuge in freier Form uber Chopins Praludium in C moll (Op. 28 Nr. 20), BV 213(Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1885). Composed in 1884, the piece was dedicated to CarlReinecke, with whom Busoni was studying at the time. In a revised version, Busoni consid-erably shortened the work, with only ten variations and a new fugal ending. Busoni, ZehnVariationen uber ein Praludium von Chopin (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1922). A slightlyvaried version, also from 1922, appears in vol. 5 of Busoni’s Klavierubung. In 1881 Busoni

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Busoni also used tempo to ‘‘masculinize’’ Chopin’s music. In theEtude in E Minor, op. 25, no. 5, for instance, he changes tempos tomatch textural and structural changes. Choosing a surprisingly slow andponderous tempo in the opening, broken chordal section (the piece ismarked scherzando), Busoni accelerates in the more lyrical piu lento, withits continuous triplets. He slows considerably at the end of the firstsection, where wide leaps emphasize the conclusion.74

More generally, Busoni took an intellectual interpretive approach.This can be observed in a detached rather than legato touch, an emphasison inner lines, a privileging of select musical ideas and their development,crisp articulations, and an attention to form. Concert reviews across theglobe consistently describe Busoni’s interpretations as intellectual: dry and

TABLE 2.Busoni’s Variations on Chopin’s Prelude in C Minor, op. 28,

no. 20 (1885 version)1

Theme—Chopin’s Prelude in C Minor*Var. I. Grave, lugubre*Var. II. Piu mosso, scherzoso*Var. III. Calmo e legatoVar. IV. Deciso e marcatoVar. V. Semplice, moderatoVar. VI. SostenutoVar. VII. Piu mosso, molto energico e marcatoVar. VIII. L’istesso tempo, leggiero e staccatoVar. IX. Quasi Fantasia—Lento*Var. X. Allegro*Var. XI. Vivace, ben ritmatoVar. XII. Piu calmo, semplice, con eleganzaVar. XIII. Vivace, con fuocoVar. XIV. Andante con motoVar. XV. Moderato, scherzosoVar. XVI. Allegro con fuoco*Var. XVII. Andantino, dolce ed espressivoVar. XVIII. Energico ed appassionatoFuga*

1Asterisks indicate sections reused in the 1922 version.

-composed his own set of 24 preludes; these were modeled after Chopin’s and were in-tended to be performed as a set. Busoni, 24 Preludes, op. 37 (Milan: Lucca, 1881).

74 Busoni, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) and His Pupils.


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example 1. Busoni, Variationen und Fuge in freier Form uber Fr. Chopins Cmoll Praludium (Op. 28, Nr. 20), BV 213, conclusion

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restrained, planned rather than spontaneous, and sophisticated ratherthan poetic. In a 1910 review, for instance, we read: ‘‘Mr. Busoni was notat all times successful in recreating the spirit of the music. He did play withunswerving intellectuality, well-guarded restraint, and unflagging domina-tion of mind.’’75 Another review from the same year emphasizes Busoni’sability, in the preludes, to plot out dynamics to create a grand architecturalshape: ‘‘Everything was chiseled out dynamically with unerring insight andintelligence. It must be said, however, that of spontaneity of expressionone failed to observe even a suggestion and of sophistications a greatmany, particularly where a simple melody was to be proclaimed, as in theprelude in A-Flat Major, no. 1, which Busoni phrased so unnaturally, thathe created the effect of eccentricity.’’76 To these and other reviewers, anintellectual approach did not seem appropriate to Chopin’s music, espe-cially the ballades, which struck some as lacking in humanness and warmthunder Busoni’s fingers. One reviewer even described his interpretations ofthe first and fourth ballades as ‘‘laboured and coldly analytical.’’77

A striking example of this intellectual approach can be heard inBusoni’s acoustic recording of the Nocturne in F-Sharp Major, op. 15,

example 1. (Continued)

75 ‘‘Recital by Busoni: Noted Pianist Plays Chopin’s 24 Preludes and Sonatas byBeethoven,’’ Boston Daily Globe, 10 March 1910. Also mentioned is Katharine Goodson(1872–1951), an English pianist who studied with Theodor Leschetizky.

76 ‘‘Paderewski’s Wreath for His Famous Rival, Busoni: Great Polish Virtuoso PaysTribute to Brother Artists,’’ New York Press, 10 February 1910, 5.

77 A. K., ‘‘Music in London: Mr. Busoni’s Recital,’’ Manchester Guardian, 16 March1912.


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no. 2.78 Aside from unusual omissions of notes in measures 11–13,Busoni’s rendition is remarkable for its detached tone and ploddingtempo. The right hand, characterized by a dry and crisply articulatedmelody from which Busoni has carefully selected notes to bring out,features rapidly executed runs without sentimental lingering. IndeedBusoni’s tendency is to rush through ornaments. The left hand, ratherthan serve as mere accompaniment, is a structural anchor, emphasizingcertain notes. For all of this, Busoni’s interpretation displays thoughtfuland expressive phrasing. By contrast, Ignacy Paderewski’s recording of thesame nocturne features a predominantly legato touch. While keepinga regular pulse in the left hand, Paderewski lingers on ornamental pas-sages and ends of phrases to create a sense of lyricism and sentimentality.79

Alfred Cortot’s rendition is like an aria, featuring a long soprano legatoline plus accompaniment—and although the contrasting doppio movimentosection is rich and impassioned, the overall affect is one of delicacy.80

Busoni’s interpretations were also more powerful than was commonat the time. His interpretation of the Polonaise in A-Flat Major, op. 53,for instance, was reportedly surprisingly bold, even for one of Chopin’smost dramatic works:

On being recalled, Busoni played Chopin’s grand polonaise in A-Flatmajor with such power and originality that the effect was almost star-tling. [ . . . ] Busoni played the rolling octaves in the bass with a vigor likethat of a battle charge. He brought the passage to a climax of unusualsonority.81

A similarly heroic interpretive style was observed in the Sonata in B-FlatMinor, op. 35, especially in the trio of the funeral march:

He [Busoni] made all of the Chopin Sonata in B-Flat Minor heroic—thefuneral march a martial threnody, though it compelled him to do obvi-ous violence to the trio, which apparently nothing but violence can savefrom mushiness. The final presto was strongly individual—chilly andghastly—dank but not misty.82

Busoni was by no means the only pianist to tinker with Chopin’s scores. Itwas common for nineteenth-century performers to participate in thecompositions they played, altering the musical texts. This tradition ofimprovising or composing slight variants goes back to Chopin himself,

78 Busoni, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) And His Pupils.79 Paderewski, piano, Legendary Performers: Paderewski, 1992, CD, BMG Classics 09026-

60923-2.80 Cortot, piano, Chopin: Oeuvres pour Piano, 2002, 6CD, EMI Classics 767359 2.81 ‘‘Music and the Drama,’’ Chicago Record Herald, 23 January 1904.82 ‘‘Mr. Busoni’s Second Recital,’’ New York Daily Tribune, 26 February 1904, 9.

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who frequently altered his own pieces and encouraged his students to doso.83 In this spirit, Leopold Godowsky created his own edition of theChopin etudes; he was known to rewrite certain figurations to bring outinner voices that interested him and to make the music more difficult.84

Pachmann ornamented the Nocturne in D-Flat Major, op. 27, no. 2 inperformance, and added a scale in the right hand during the ‘‘MinuteWaltz’’ in D-Flat Major, op. 64, no. 1.85 Even Anton Rubinstein was notabove such changes. A notorious example, related by Hamilton, wasRubinstein’s treatment of the slow movement of the Sonata in B-FlatMinor, op. 35:86

Rubinstein’s widely copied fondness for varying the dynamics at therepeat of Chopin’s Funeral March turned the whole movement intoa processional that gradually approached in crescendo for the firstsection, stood at the graveside for the trio (sometimes played with copi-ous asynchronization of hands), then marched away into the distance.The impression was fostered by beginning the repeat after the triofortissimo, then introducing a gradual diminuendo—totally at variance,naturally, with Chopin’s dynamic markings. For good measure, certainnotes in the bass at the beginning of the repeat of the march weresometimes played an octave lower, for an appropriately doom-ladensonority.87

Indeed in this period it was more common than not to add to Chopin’sscores. Yet for some, including Harold C. Schonberg, Busoni’s quirkyalterations topped everyone else’s:

Of all the romantic pianists, Paderewski not excepted, Busoni was themost eccentric and even bizarre, judging by today’s accepted standards.His rhythms could be wayward, his interpretations personal to the pointof arbitrariness, his apparent disdain for the printed note in a class ofhis own. [ . . . ] Time and time again Busoni sets himself above thecomposer.88

Busoni did far more than alter pitches: he reacted against the delicacy ofChopin’s music and the French interpretive tradition, imposing his own

83 Chopin’s minor pitch alterations have led to numerous published variants. On hispractice of encouraging variation see Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: Pianist and Teacher:As Seen by His Pupils, trans. Naomi Shohet with Krysia Osostowicz and Roy Howat (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

84 Hamilton, After the Golden Age, 218.85 Mark Mitchell, Vladimir de Pachmann: A Piano Virtuoso’s Life and Art (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 2002), 10.86 Rachmaninoff later adopted a similar approach.87 Hamilton, After the Golden Age, 219.88 Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists from Mozart to the Present (New York: Simon

and Schuster, 1987), 368.


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ideals on the music. His vigorous and intellectual approach, whichextended to other composers, including Bach, reflected his personalfears about effeminacy. Yet his approach was the most shocking in rela-tion to Chopin’s music because it was seen by many critics as untrue tothe music and the character of the composer.

Concert Programming

Although certain aspects of Busoni’s eccentric Chopin interpretationsmight never be widely accepted or revered by any but aficionados, hisidiosyncratic, ‘‘masculine’’ approach was undeniably influential, as washis monumentalizing of Chopin’s small forms. Indeed Busoni’s practiceset a pattern for future interpretation and programming. Although it isstandard today to perform complete cycles of miniatures, Busoni was oneof the first to do so. And he was the first to play both sets of etudes andthe preludes together in one concert. Busoni also pioneered the practiceof recording the complete prelude cycle in 1915, when making pianorolls for the Duo-Art label. (Earlier recordings by Hofmann [1903], Pa-derewski [1905/1911], and Pachmann [1907] featured only single num-bers.)89 After Busoni, Cortot was the next to record the completepreludes, in 1926. Many followed in their footsteps, especially in the1940s and 1950s, with the emergence of the long-playing record, includ-ing Claudio Arrau and Arthur Rubinstein.

Before Busoni the Chopin preludes had been treated as fragmentsand performed individually as preludes to more substantial works, or insmall groups of preludes, linked together with the other works throughthe use of improvised interludes. Kallberg’s description of Chopin’s timelargely applies to Busoni’s generation as well:

89 Hofmann recorded the Polonaise in A Major, op. 40, no. 1 for Gramophone andTypewriter in 1903. Pachmann’s first recording session in London for Gramophone andTypewriter in 1907 featured Chopin’s Etude op. 25, no. 9; the waltzes op. 64, nos. 1–2; anabridged version of the Barcarolle; the Nocturne op. 37, no. 2; Preludes op. 28, nos. 22–23;the Mazurka op. 50, no. 2; and Joachim Raff’s La Fileuse. Mitchell, Vladimir de Pachmann,195. His piano rolls likewise feature individual numbers. Paderewski made the first acousticrecordings in 1911. His first roll recording of 1905 featured the Waltz in A-Flat Major, op.42; Polonaise in A Major, op. 40, no. 1; and Etude in G-Flat Major, op. 25, no. 9. In the 1920shis duo-art rolls include two Ballades: G minor, op. 23 and A Flat Major, op. 47; Scherzo inC-Sharp Minor, op. 39; two Mazurkas: A Minor, op. 17, no. 4 and B-Flat minor, op. 24, no. 4;and two Nocturnes, op. 48: C Minor and F-Sharp Minor. Cortot recorded several pieceswith Victor Records in 1919: Berceuse in D-Flat Major, op. 57; Tarantella in A-Flat Major,op. 43; Funeral march from the Sonata in B-Flat Minor; Etude in G-Flat Major, op. 10, no. 5;and the finale to both sonatas (B-Flat Minor, op. 35 and B Minor, op. 58). Jan Popis, Chopin:The Fascinating Beginnings of Chopin’s Discography, trans. Philip Stoeckle, http://www.chopin.pl/records.en.html#6 (accessed 20 February 2013).

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http://www.chopin.pl/records.en.html#6

The preludes known to Chopin’s contemporaries . . . functioned in justthe way their title would suggest: as brief, often improvisatory introduc-tions to other, larger works. At the most utilitarian level, these piecesallowed the performer to test the feel of the keyboard before launchinginto a longer work and gave the listener a chance gradually to settle intothe musical experience.90

Busoni sometimes followed Chopin in performing these works as sepa-rate miniatures designed to introduce longer compositions,91 as in hisColumbia recording, where he used the Prelude in A Major, op. 28, no. 7as a ‘‘prelude’’ to the Etude in G-Flat Major, op. 10, no. 5, connecting thetwo with a brief improvised interlude.92

The first pianist to perform the complete set of preludes was prob-ably Annette Essipova (1851–1914), who reportedly did so as early as1876.93 She also performed all twenty-seven etudes in recital sometimebefore 1900. In his mammoth, seven-concert series of 1885, Anton Ru-binstein performed all four ballades and eleven etudes on the sixth andseventh concerts, respectively.94 In 1900 Huneker claimed that theRussian-born pianist Arthur Friedheim had also been known to playthrough all of the preludes in one sitting.95 And Pachmann performedetudes and preludes (plus some mazurkas) in a concert at MendelssohnHall in New York on 1 March 1900.96

Busoni was thus not alone in monumentalizing Chopin. He was,however, the first to consistently program complete cycles of Chopin’smusic. Pianists such as Pachmann and Friedheim more often playedindividual Chopin numbers or smaller sets. On 17 December 1910, forinstance, Friedheim performed a Liszt and Chopin program featuringa set of twelve Chopin preludes.97 His Carnegie Hall Recital of 31 March

90 Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries, 147.91 Ibid., 150–51.92 It is not clear that Busoni always played the pieces in order.93 ‘‘Alfred Cortot Plays.’’94 Rubinstein played a series of six historical concerts in 1885 covering the history of

keyboard music from the virginalists to contemporary Russian composers. For his Chopinprogram see Philip S. Taylor, Anton Rubinstein: A Life in Music (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 2007), 270–71. Some have asserted that Rubinstein was the first to performthe complete preludes.

95 Friedheim studied with Liszt. ‘‘Yet notwithstanding the fleeting, evanescent moodsof the Preludes, there is designedly a certain unity of feeling and contrasted tonalities, allbeing grouped in approved Bach-ian manner. This may be demonstrated by playing themthrough at a sitting, which Arthur Friedheim, the Russian virtuoso, did in a concert withexcellent effect.’’ Huneker, Chopin, 213.

96 ‘‘Pachmann’s Chopin Concert,’’ New York Times, 2 March 1900, 7.97 ‘‘Mr. Friedheim’s Recital: A Noted Liszt Player Gives a Programme of Liszt and

Chopin,’’ New York Times, 18 December 1910; Arthur Friedheim, Life and Liszt: The Re-collections of a Concert Pianist, ed. Theodore L. Bullock (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co.,1961), 311.


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1912 featured three etudes.98 Pachmann’s all-Chopin recital at the YaleSchool of Music on 20 November 1925 contained only individual num-bers and smaller sets.99 When Anton Rubinstein performed an all-Chopin recital as part of his American farewell in New York in 1873,he included only five preludes, three ballades, and seven etudes.100

Busoni’s bold interpretive choices and monumental programmingmade his Chopin interpretations stand out. Reviews tell us that evenwhen Essipova played ‘‘man-sized’’ cycles, she did so with lyricism. WhenPachmann played the Chopin cycles, he often did so with delicacy anda pearly touch. Friedheim was a poet at the piano, Rubinstein an artist ofgreat subjectivity and passion. Busoni, by contrast, played with intellec-tuality, making ‘‘clever’’ improvements to Chopin’s ‘‘feminine forms.’’The remnants of the sentimental style in his playing, rubato and singinglines, were relegated to a place of lesser importance, such that in Buso-ni’s Chopin, there is an androgynous union wherein the masculine gainsthe upper hand.

Few outside the Russian tradition featured complete Chopin cycles.When Cortot performed the complete cycle of preludes in New York in1918, the concert was considered unusual and not entirely successful:

The playing of the Preludes of Chopin, the two dozen in Opus 28, wasa hazardous undertaking for an artist whose method is so Gallic, soacademic. Of the Polish composer’s spirit there was little trace; thatevanescent, above all kaleidoscopic coloring, and tenderness, and emo-tional richness. With the more Parisian salon numbers he was success-ful. [ . . . ] Few pianists in the past, comparatively speaking, havepresented these preludes at a sitting.101

Yet by the 1930s it had become commonplace for serious pianists toperform Chopin’s music in cycles.

Busoni’s more vigorous, ‘‘objective’’ approach also helped pave the wayfor modern interpretive styles, as excessive rubato and thin, delicate, andquiet touches came to be seen as ideals of a bygone age. Eduoard Riesler,one of the last members of the French jeu perle school, has been described ashaving ‘‘an inimitable soft touch. . . . He has discovered those last delicatenuances, which lie precisely between tone and silence. His tones seem notto begin and not to cease; they are woven out of ethereal gossamer.’’102

98 Friedheim, Life and Liszt, 315.99 ‘‘From the Archives: Vladimir de Pachmann’s All-Chopin Recital at the Yale School

of Music,’’ http://music.yale.edu/news/?p¼1511 (accessed 17 February 2013).100 Mitchell, Vladimir de Pachmann, 214.101 ‘‘Alfred Cortot Plays.’’102 E.E. Kellett and E.W. Naylor, A History of Pianoforte and Pianoforte Players, trans.

Oscar Bie (New York: Da Capo Press, 1966), 301–2.

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http://music.yale.edu/news/?p=1511

It was Anton Rubinstein, Busoni, and their pupils who helped usher ina new generation of Chopin interpretation ‘‘transposed to the key of man-liness.’’103 Rubinstein was the father of the Russian school and the teacherof Essipova and Friedheim, who passed the tradition on to their own pupils.Although Busoni did not create a unified school, his piano proteges, mostnotably Petri, followed in his footsteps and taught a prodigious number ofstudents, including John Ogdon and Earl Wild.104 As described in an obit-uary in The Musical Times, Petri’s approach was similar to Busoni’s—objec-tive and monumental:

Chopin the miniaturist was not for either of them [Petri or Busoni],rather the bigger Chopin of the F-Minor Fantasy and the C-Sharp MinorScherzo. Indeed, neither Busoni nor Petri could be described as verypoetic pianists. Petri’s approach was characterized by a complete avoid-ance of sentimentality, which tended to make people think him coldand detached. This was not true, however.105

Chopin’s music simultaneously attracted and repelled Busoni. It wasan expected staple of the piano repertoire, and yet Busoni preferred themusic of Bach, Mozart, and Liszt. Some of the criticisms of his interpreta-tions undoubtedly stemmed from an awareness that Busoni was not atone with the music. He struggled to find wholeness in a music charac-terized by unsettling harmonic shifts, juxtapositions of ideas, aphoristicwriting, and seemingly unexplained formal twists. Moreover, thefeminine-gendered descriptors that Chopin reveled in—and capitalizedon—were threatening. His own manliness was at stake. To perform themusic thus posed dilemmas for him as a person and as an artist.

His solution was to help forge a style so distinctive that it has beencalled ‘‘Busoni’s style.’’106 This descriptor is indeed appropriate, forBusoni’s interpretations were hardly ‘‘Chopinesque.’’ In repackagingand reinterpreting Chopin, Busoni helped usher in a new paradigm ofconcert programming as well as an ‘‘objective,’’ modernist approach thatwould become commonplace after his death.

103 This phrase appears to have been coined by Huneker to refer to performances byRubinstein and Liszt. Nowhere does he mention Busoni.

104 Petri studied piano with Teresa Carreno beginning in 1889 and with Busonibeginning in 1901 (during the second Weimar master class); it was because of Busoni, withwhom he would have a long-lasting relationship, that he decided to focus exclusively onpiano performance. In Zurich during World War I, Petri and Busoni made a completeedition of Bach’s keyboard works. In the 1920s Petri often performed in Busoni’s master-classes in Berlin; indeed he remained Busoni’s pupil until Busoni’s death in 1924, andoften introduced his works to the public in piano recitals. Petri later lived in Poland andAmerica, where he taught a prodigious number of students, including Earl Wild, LarrySitsky, Gunnar Johansen, John Ogdon, Daniell Revenaugh, and Julian White.

105 ‘‘Egon Petri: Obituary,’’ The Musical Times 103, no. 1433 (July 1962): 489.106 Hamilton, After the Golden Age, 101.


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Appendix. German Transcription and English Translation of Busoni’sEssay ‘‘Chopin: Eine Ansicht uber ihn’’

Obwohl der Ruf gehen soll, dass ich von allen Komponisten, Bach und Lisztbevorzuge, so ist es wahr, dass Mozart und Beethoven mir naher stehen.1 BeiMozart spricht die Leichtigkeit und der Formensinn zu jenem Teil meinesBlutes, der lateinischen Flusses ist; bei Beethoven nehmen mich die Freiheitseines Geistes2 und seine psychologische Ader gefangen. Diese Beiden sind dieMeister, die ich zu Hause aufschlage, wenn ich mich erquicken will. Anders3

steht es um mein Verhaltnis zu Chopin. Trotzdem mein pianistischer Beruf michstets in engen Kontakt mit ihm bringen musste, und sein Werk, an Umfang,schnell und leicht zu ubersehen ist, so ist meine Kenntnis4 Chopins wenigervollstandig als jene Liszts und Beethovens.5 Er hat mich angezogen und abges-tossen, immer, und meiner zeitweiligen Liebe zu ihm fehlte es an Respekt, mei-ner Bewunderung mangelte die Liebe. Die Grunde sind mir jetzt klar geworden.Er imponiert mir weder als Meister noch als Mann. (Ich sage absichtlich ‘‘alsMann’’ und nicht ‘‘als Mensch,’’ denn ich fuhle etwas geschlechtlich Unvoll-kommnes an ihm.) Wurdige Manner konnen ihn nicht ernst nehmen: erwurde, vor einen Napoleon oder Goethe gestellt, eine geringe Figur abgegebenhaben, wogegen ein Beethoven und selbst der heitere Jungling Mozart jenenGrossen Achtung abgezwungen hatten. — Dass er mir als Meister nicht impo-niert liegt an seinem schlechten Handwerk. Er kann weniger, als alle seinesRanges und es findet sich kaum in seinen Werken etwas, das man einem Schulerals gutes Vorbild zitieren konnte. Er hat keine Menschlichkeit in sich, dieser kleineEgoist, und nichts von uberlegenem Humor. Er nimmt sein offenbar muhsames6

Kunstgefuge tragisch ernst. Aber er ist eine originelle Personlichkeit, ein Unikum,ein Kuriosum, ein ‘‘interessanter Fall’’7 und diesem Punkte verdankt8 er seineStellung und Wirkung. Merkwurdig, wie er auf Frauen wirkt; dass diese oft das‘‘Halbe’’ so unwiderstehlich anzieht: Hat doch Chopin selbst etwas Frauenhaftes insich. (So z.B. dass er unausstehlich langweilig wird, sobald er beginnt, ernst zureden.) Wenn wir Chopin auf die ‘‘Halbheit’’ hin analysieren, so werden wir ihnerkennen.

1 The translation is mine and was professionally edited by the University of Massa-chusetts Amherst Translation Center. Busoni struggled with the first sentence. The hand-written manuscript contains numerous corrections and word substitutions. Perhaps becauseof Busoni’s Italian linguistic roots, the very first clause contains several crossed-out words.The result is unidiomatic and almost incomprehensible; it should actually read somethinglike: ‘‘Obwohl ich angeblich in dem Ruf stehen soll, dass.’’

2 The handwritten manuscript (henceforth ‘‘Ms.’’) has the non-specific article ‘‘des’’instead of the possessive adjective ‘‘seines.’’

3 In the typewritten version (henceforth ‘‘Typed’’) the middle ‘‘e’’ is crossed out(‘‘Andres’’).

4 Typed: ‘‘Kenntnis’’ is misspelled as ‘‘Kentnis.’’5 The typewritten version frequently (but inconsistently) inserts apostrophes with

possessive nouns. In this sentence, for instance, one finds ‘‘Liszt’s’’ and ‘‘Beethovens.’’6 Typed: the adjective ending is illegible.7 Typed: the second quotation mark is missing.8 Typed: erroneously renders ‘‘verdankt’’ in the past tense by adding ‘‘-e.’’

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Er hat Anlaufe zu grossen Momenten—aber sie bleiben nur in kleinem Rah-men. Ich denke hier hauptsachlich an die Preludien.9 Je langer seine Stucke,desto unbedeutender. Fast mochte ich sagen: er hat zuweilen grosse Ideen, aberer macht keine zur Tat. — Er ist mehr Dichter, als Komponist. Man kann eingrosser Dichter sein, ohne eine Zeile zu schreiben. Zum Komponisten gehort das‘‘Bilden,’’ Das vermag Chopin nie. — Sahen wir die ‘‘Halbheit’’ in der Grosse, sotreffen wir sie wieder in Chopins Dramatik. Wohl zieht er das Schwert, rollt mitden Augen, ruft ‘‘Wag’ es Einer!’’ aber es meldet sich kein Gegner. Wir ertragenihn noch leichter, wenn er nach solchen Aufregungen sich mit Eleganz zu einerDame wendet, als wenn er weiter den Unversohnlichen spielt. Das Versohnendefur uns ist, dass er fast immer aufrichtig ist. Er glaubt an seine edlen Entrustun-gen und regt sich im Ernste auf.

(Ein drastisches Exempel seiner Halbheit, ist die Polonaise in Fis moll mit derMazurka. Da lasst der Dichter zur Befreiung Polens Kanonen auffahren, wahrendder Mann—etwas blass und gedruckt—aber mit Grazie Mazurka tanzt.)

Abgesehen vom Schwanken zwischen Mannlichen und Weiblichen,10 so fin-den wir noch11 ein Schillern zwischen polnisch und italienisch, zwischen Salo-nanmuth12 und Schulmeisterei, zwischen dem vollstandigen sich Gehen-lassenin Formen und Empfindungen seiner Zeit und einem zuweilen genialen Aufbau-men gegen das Konventionelle.13 Aber wo seine Halbheit am meisten peinlichist, wo sie einen verdriessen kann, ist’s in seinem Klaviersatz.14

Ist er ‘‘pianistisch’’ oder nicht? ‘‘Klingt’’ er? Geht er hervor aus dem Instru-ment, aus den Fingern, oder aus Chopins Musik? Das erste mochte ich fast glattleugnen. Das zweite und dritte gebe ich seufzend zu und leider in dem Sinne,dass die Finger oft der Musik im Wege sind, und die Musik den Fingern. —Aber vom Instrumente15 weiss Chopin wenig. Wie konnte er sonst seine bestenmelodischen Eingebungen der denkbar schlechtesten Lage des Klaviereszuerteilen?

Wie konnte er rechte und linke Hand so voneinander scheiden, dass manstets auf die eine oder auf die andere hort, aber niemals die beiden als Ganzes?Was weiss Chopin von Tiefe und Hohe? Hohe ist ihm die Verlangerung einesLaufes und Tiefe die Verstarkung eines Basses. (Man sehe neben ihm denKlavierkomponisten Beethoven. Und davon auch nur die Variationen aus demOpus 111.) Man betrachte die unbeholfenen Figurationen der linken Hand, dieum jeden Preis mit dem Motiv der rechten kombinieren und der Unspielbarkeitzum Trotz durch alle Tonarten geschleift werden, trockenen harmonischenSequenzen zu Liebe. Hier und in allen seinen Durchfuhrungen ist die Musikden Fingern im Wege und das Unerfreulichste was ich kenne.

9 Typed: ‘‘Praeludien.’’10 Both versions give incorrect dative plural endings on ‘‘Mannlich-’’ and ‘‘Weiblich-.’’11 Typed: originally ‘‘auch’’; crossed out and replaced with ‘‘noch.’’12 Ms.: uses the older ‘‘th’’ spelling for the suffix (i.e., Salonanmuth instead of

salonanmut).13 Ms.: ‘‘Conventionelle.’’14 Ms.: ‘‘Claviersatz.’’15 Ms.: ‘‘Instrument.’’


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Von seinen Werken16 fallen alle zehn Jahre einige ab. Am langsten wird sichdie bedeutsame Serie der Etuden halten und neben ihr die ‘‘schopferischeste’’17

der ‘‘Preludes.’’ Die Konzerte lehnt mein Gefuhl ab. Walzer und Mazurkas habeich nur von Anderen spielen gehort, es hat mich nie gezwungen, sie selbst zu‘‘studieren.’’ Die beiden Sonaten sind entschieden einzige Typen der Epochegewesen. Sie sind der respectable18 Versuch, in der Zeit des SalonpianistentumsErnstes und Monumentales—mit vollstandigem Ubergehen Beethovens—aufzustellen. Die erste von ihnen ist dichterisch schon. Die zweite zeigt die be-sprochenen Mangel in starkerem Masse und ist auch weniger eigenartig. Dasnoble Brigantentum des letzen Satzes steckt ganz im Geiste der vierziger Jahre.Der erste Satz portraitiert den blassen, leise-damonischen,19 schwarmerischen20

und vollendet angezogenen Roman-Jungling Balzac’s.Diesen Sonaten stehen bekanntlich in der allgemeinen Wertschatzung die

vier Balladen an der Seite. Sie erzahlen alle die nahmliche21 Geschichte, sindsamtliche22 verkappte ‘‘Valses’’ und wimmeln von ‘‘Halbheiten’’ aller angefuhr-ter Kategorien. Sie sind halb-mannlich, halb-dramatisch und halb-pianistisch.Doch wirken auch hier dichterische Schonheiten, das geniale Aufbaumen unddas ‘‘Personliche’’ Chopins.23

‘‘Aber die Nocturnes, die Nocturnes! Hier ist Chopin, Hier24 Anfang undEnde!’’

Zuerst frage ich: welche? Meinen Sie jenes Es-dur-Stuck, das man auf demCornet-a-Pistons25 in offentlichen Sonntag-Nachmittag-Garten blast? —

Ich denke an drei oder vier, die nichts Halbes haben und—zugestanden—den ‘‘ganzen’’ Chopin darstellen. Sie umfassen nicht mehr als etwa eine Viertel-Stunde Musik, aber eine Viertel-Stunde, die man nicht vergisst.

Ferruccio BusoniVerona, 11 Settbre26 1908

Chopin:An Insight Into Him

Although I have a reputation for preferring Bach and Liszt above all composers,the truth is that Mozart and Beethoven are closer to me. In the case of Mozart thelightness and the sense of form speak to the part of my blood that is Latin; in thecase of Beethoven I am captive to the freedom of his spirit and to his psycholog-ical disposition. Both of these are the masters whose works I open when I want to

16 Typed: omits the proper (dative) ‘‘-n.’’17 Typed: omits the ‘‘-e’’ of the (superlative) suffix.18 Typed: ‘‘respektable.’’19 Typed: ‘‘demonischen.’’20 Typed: ‘‘schwermerisch.’’21 Typed: incorrectly adds an ‘‘h’’ to the stem vowel.22 Ms.: ‘‘sammtliche.’’23 This paragraph seems to have been an afterthought. In the ms. it appears at the

bottom of the page.24 Ms.: ‘‘hier.’’25 Both versions drop the final ‘‘-s-’’ of ‘‘pistons.’’26 Ms.: uses the lowercase ‘‘ii.’’ Both versions abbreviate ‘‘Settembre.’’

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refresh myself. My relationship to Chopin is different. Despite the fact that mypianistic vocation required constant close contact with him and his work, theextent of which can be quickly and easily perused, my knowledge of Chopin isless complete than that of Liszt and Beethoven. He has attracted and repelled mealways, and my occasional love for him was lacking in respect; my admirationlacked love. The reasons have now become clear to me. He impresses me neitheras a master nor as a man. (I say intentionally ‘‘as a man’’ and not ‘‘as a humanbeing’’ because I feel something sexually incomplete in him.) Respected peoplecannot take him seriously; if juxtaposed with a Napoleon or a Goethe, he would cuta minor figure, whereas a Beethoven and even the cheerful young Mozart himselfwould have garnered respect from those great figures. The fact that he does notimpress me as a master is due to his bad craftsmanship. What he can do is less thanall those of his rank, and there is hardly anything in his works that one could cite asa good model for a pupil. He has no humanity in himself, this small egoist, andnothing of surpassing humor. He takes his clearly arduous act of composing withtragic seriousness. However, he is an original personality, a rare and one-of-a-kindcharacter, a curiosity, an ‘‘interesting case,’’ and to this fact he owes his positionand effectiveness. Curious is his effect on women; they are often irresistibly at-tracted to the ‘‘half.’’ Chopin, after all, has something of the womanly in himself.(So that, for example, he becomes unbearably boring as soon as he begins to speakearnestly.) If we analyze the ‘‘halfness’’ in Chopin, then we will understand him.

He has made attempts at great moments—but these only occur in small forms.I am thinking here especially of the preludes. The longer his pieces, the moreinsignificant they are. I would almost like to say: he sometimes has great ideas,but he can’t bring them to fruition.—He is more poet than composer. One canbe a great poet without writing a line. A composer must form ‘‘shapes’’; Chopinnever achieves that. If we saw ‘‘halfness’’ in his greatness, so we again meet it inChopin’s ‘‘dramatic art.’’ To be sure, he draws the sword, rolls his eyes, [and]cries, ‘‘I dare you!,’’ but no opponent rises to the challenge. We tolerate him evenless easily, when after such excitement he elegantly transforms into a lady, as if hewere continuing to play the irreconcilable one. The reconciling factor for us isthat he is almost always sincere. He believes in his noble indignations and getsupset in earnestness.

(A drastic example of his halfness is the Polonaise in F-Sharp Minor with theMazurka. There the poet calls out cannons to celebrate Polish liberation, whilethe man—somewhat pale and depressed—nevertheless dances mazurkas withgrace. Even his style is mired in halfness.)

Aside from the wavering between the masculine and the feminine, we still finda shimmering between Polish and Italian, between salon grace and schoolmasterli-ness, between completely letting go within the forms and sentiments of his timeand an occasional genial rebellion against the conventional. However, where hishalfness is most awkward, and where it can be irritating, is in his piano texture.

Is it ‘‘pianistic’’ or not? Does it ‘‘resound?’’ Does it ‘‘lie well?’’ Does it emergefrom the instrument, from the fingers, or from Chopin’s music? The first I mightalmost like to deny outright. The second and third I concede reluctantly andregrettably in the sense that the fingers are often in the way of the music, the


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music in the way of the fingers. — But about the instrument itself Chopin knowslittle. How else could he give his best melodic inspirations the worst conceivablepositions on the piano?

How could he divide the right and left hands from one another in such a waythat one constantly hears one or the other, but never both together as a whole?What does Chopin know of depth and height? Height is to him the lengthening ofa motion, depth the strengthening of a bass line. (One should view him beside thepiano-composer Beethoven, and of that composer’s output only the variationsfrom Opus 111.) One need only observe Chopin’s awkward figurations of the lefthand, which at any price combine with motifs in the right hand, and which, theirunplayability notwithstanding, are dragged through all keys for the sake of dryharmonic sequences. Here and in all his development sections the music is in theway of the fingers and thus evokes the most unpleasant effects I know.

Several of his works fall out of favor every ten years. Among the longest lastingwill be the significant series of etudes and next to it the ‘‘most creative’’ of the‘‘preludes.’’ My feeling rejects the concertos. Having only heard others play thewaltzes and mazurkas, I have never felt compelled to ‘‘study’’ them myself. Bothof the sonatas have been decisively singular exemplars of their epoch. They area respectable attempt, in the era of the salon pianism, to establish somethingserious and monumental—while completely disregarding Beethoven. The first ofthem is poetically beautiful. The second shows the discussed shortcoming ingreater measure and is also less unique. The noble brigandage of the last move-ment resides entirely in the spirit of the 1840s. The first movement portrays thepale, faintly demonic, enraptured, and impeccably attired youth in Balzac’snovels.’’

As is generally well known, these sonatas stand beside the four ballades ingeneral estimation. They all tell the same story: all are ‘‘Valses’’ in disguise andswarm with the ‘‘halfnesses’’ of all aforementioned categories. They are half-manly, half-dramatic, and half-pianistic. But even here poetic beauty, the genialrebelliousness, and the personal aspect of Chopin are effective.

‘‘But the nocturnes, the nocturnes! Here is Chopin, here beginning and end!’’First off I ask: Which ones? Do you mean that E-Flat Major piece that is

trumpeted on the cornet-a-pistons in public gardens on Sunday afternoons?I’m thinking of three or four that have nothing of halfness and—admittedly—

represent the ‘‘entire’’ Chopin. They don’t encompass more than about a quarter-hour of music, but a quarter-hour that one doesn’t forget.

Ferruccio Busoni.Verona, 11 September 1908

ABSTRACT

Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) championed Frederic Chopin’smusic. Yet his performances often elicited responses of shock oramusement because they rebelled against the prevalent sentimental styleof interpretation associated with an ‘‘effeminate’’ Chopin. Even someof his staunchest admirers had trouble appreciating his unprompted

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repeats of measures or structural wholes in the preludes or etudes, hisregistral alterations, and his overly intellectualized approach. Alsounusual was his choice to program the preludes as a complete cycle.

Scholars have documented Busoni’s interpretive eccentricities, butthe rationale behind them and their significance for the evolution ofChopin interpretation in the twentieth century remains largely unex-plored. Through analyses of recordings, concert programs, recitalreviews, and Busoni’s little-known and unpublished essay from 1908titled ‘‘Chopin: Eine Ansicht uber ihn,’’ I connect Busoni’s unconven-tional Chopin interpretations to an idiosyncratic perception of Chopin’scharacter. In the nineteenth century Chopin and his music were com-monly viewed as effeminate, androgynous, childish, sickly, and ‘‘ethni-cally other.’’ Busoni’s essay indicates that he, too, considered Chopin’smusic ‘‘poetic,’’ ‘‘feminine,’’ and ‘‘emotive.’’ But this was problematic forBusoni, who was obsessed with ‘‘manliness’’ in an age in which genderroles were gradually changing. He discovered ‘‘half-manly’’ and ‘‘half-dramatic’’ elements in the music and in Chopin’s character—that is,a heroic, monumental side. In striving to portray the ‘‘whole’’ of Chopinand his music while distancing himself from the gendered ‘‘halfness’’ ofearlier writings, Busoni became a pioneer of bolder Chopin interpreta-tion and of monumentalist programming. His portrait of Chopin revealshow cultural ideas inform the evolution of performers’ interpretations.

Keywords: concert programming, Ferruccio Busoni, Frederic Chopin,musical interpretation, gender


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Documents

Ferruccio Busoni and the ‘‘Halfness’’ of Frédéric Chopin · Ferruccio Busoni and the ‘‘Halfness’’ of Frédéric Chopin ERINN E. KNYT F erruccio Busoni (1866–1924)