Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-8zxtt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T10:16:29.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Between Composition and Transcription: Ferruccio Busoni and Music Notation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2014

ERINN KNYT
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) summarized his main criticism of traditional music notation – that it was lifeless and outdated.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

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Transcription , March 2014 , pp. 37 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bent, Ian, et al. ‘Notation’. Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/20114> accessed 25 April 2013.+accessed+25+April+2013.>Google Scholar
Beaumont, Antony. Busoni the Composer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Busoni, Ferruccio. Versuch einer organischen Klavier-Noten Schrift praktisch erprobt an Joh. Seb. Bachs Chromatischer Phantasie in D moll. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1910.Google Scholar
Busoni, Ferruccio. Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music [1907], trans. Dr Baker, Theodore. New York: G. Schirmer, 1911.Google Scholar
Busoni, Ferruccio. Selected Letters, ed. and trans. Beaumont, Antony. London: Faber and Faber, 1987.Google Scholar
Carr, Maureen A.Multiple Masks: Neoclassicism in Stravinsky's Works on Greek Subjects. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Dahlhaus, Carl. Esthetics of Music, trans. Austin, William W.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Dent, Edward. Ferruccio Busoni: A Biography. London: Eulenberg Books, 1974 [1933].Google Scholar
Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gustafson, Roger. ‘Joseph Matthias Hauer’. Tempo 130 (Sept. 1979).Google Scholar
Hall, Patricia and Sallis, Friedemann. A Handbook to Twentieth-Century Musical Sketches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Halm, August. ‘Über Ferruccio Busoni's Bach Ausgabe’. Melos 2 (1921).Google Scholar
Hamilton, Kenneth. After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Ingarden, Roman. The Musical Work and the Problem of its Identity, trans. Czerniawski, Adam, ed. Harrell, Jean G.. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knyt, Erinn. ‘How I Compose: Ferruccio Busoni's Views about Invention, Quotation, and the Compositional Process’. Journal of Musicology 27: 2 (Spring 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kogan, Grigory. Busoni as Pianist, trans. Belsky, Svetlana. New York: University of Rochester Press, 2010.Google Scholar
McKay, John Robert. ‘Notational Practices in Selected Piano Works of the Twentieth Century’. D.M.A. Thesis: University of Rochester, 1977.Google Scholar
Monod, Edwin. ‘Une nouvelle notation musicale’. La Vie musicale: 19 (15 July 1910).Google Scholar
Rastall, Richard. The Notation of Western Music: An Introduction. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Read, Gardner. Source Book of Proposed Music Notation Reforms, Music Reference Collection. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Riemann, Hugo. ‘Die zwölfstufige Notenschrift’. Musikalischen Wochenblatt XIII, 52: 617–19.Google Scholar
Römer-Neubner, Meta. Quadratnoten: Ein neues vereinfachtes Notensystem ohne schlüssel, ohne pausen- und versetzungs-zeichen mit nur 12 verschiedenen, periodisch wiederkehrenden notenbildern. Kornstadt: Hungary, Wilhelm Himeasch, 1902.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, , Letter of July 3, 1910 to Busoni, in Beaumont, Selected Letters, trans. and ed. Beaumont, Antony. London: Faber and Faber, 1987, 405.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, . ‘On Notation’ [June 26, 1923] in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Stein, Leonard, trans. Black, Leo. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, . ‘Pictorial Notation’ [Nov. 10, 1923]. in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Stein, Leonard. Trans. Black, Leo. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, Arnold. ‘A New Twelve-Tone Notation’ [November 1924]. In Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Stein, Leonard, trans. Black, Leo. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Schoenberg, . ‘Revolution – Evolution, Notation (Accidentals)’ [18 Jan. 1931], in Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Stein, Leonard. Trans. Black, Leo. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Seedorf, Thomas. ‘Topografia del pianoforte: Concezioni di una nuova notazione pianistica da Busoni a Cornelis Pot’. Ferruccio Busoni e il pianoforte del Novecento: Convegno Internazionale di Study Centro Studi Musicali Ferruccio Busoni, Convento degli Agostiniani, Empoli, 12–14 Nov. 1999. Lucca: Lim, 2001.Google Scholar
Sitsky, Larry. ‘Ferruccio Busoni's Attempt at an Organic Notation for the Pianoforte and a Practical Application of It’. The Music Review 29: 1 (Feb. 1968), 27–33.Google Scholar
Sitsky, Larry. Busoni and the Piano: The Works, the Writings, and the Recordings. Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance, Number 7. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Stuckenschmidt, H. H.Ferruccio Busoni: Chronicle of a European, trans. Morris, Sandra. London: Caldar and Boyars, 1967.Google Scholar
Talbot, Michael, ed. The Musical Work: Reality or Invention? Liverpool Music Symposium. Liverpool University Press, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werbeck, Walter. ‘Strauss's Compositional Process’, trans. Thym, Jürgen, in The Cambridge Companion to Richard Strauss, ed. Youmans, Charles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 22–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
What is Klavarskribo? Holland: The Klavarskribo Institute, n.d. [c. 1947].Google Scholar
Zychowicz, James L.Mahler's Fourth Symphony. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.Google Scholar