Busoni, Ferruccio (EN)

Busoni Ferruccio Benvenuto, *1 April 1866 Empoli (near Florence), †27 July 1924 Berlin, Italian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher. He was raised in a musical atmosphere; his father, Ferdinando Busoni, was a clarinettist, and his mother, Anna Weiss (of German origin, originally from Trieste), was a concert pianist. In 1871–78, he lived with his family in Trieste; it was here that his musical talent became apparent very early. He gave his first public piano concert at the age of 7; he performed in Vienna in 1876, receiving a favourable reception from music critics (Hanslick). He took his initial composition lessons from J.E. Habert, and in 1876–77, he also took advice from C. Goldmark on composition. He moved with his family to Graz in 1878, where he studied composition systematically with W. Mayer. During this time, he became familiar with the music of the great classics (Bach, Mozart) and the romantics, and composed his first pieces: Concerto for Piano and String Quartet Op. 17, Stabat Mater, 6-voice Mass a cappella, Cinque pezzi for piano, and String Quintet (1881). In 1882, he began his world career as a pianist with a historic series of concerts in Bologna, after which the local Accademia Filarmonica awarded him a diploma in composition and the title of academician. In 1883, he met Anton Rubinstein and Brahms in Vienna. The year 1885 was associated with the beginning of work on the opera Sigune oder das stille Dorf (libretto by F. Schanz), later abandoned. In 1886, Busoni settled temporarily in Leipzig; here, he came into contact with Riemann, Delius, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Mahler, among others. In 1888, he took up the piano chair at the Helsinki Conservatory, where he befriended Sibelius, exerting a significant influence on his musical views. In 1890, after winning a prize at the A. Rubinstein Composition Competition for Konzertstück Op. 31a, he taught piano at the Moscow Conservatory. During this time, he married Gerda Sjöstrand, the daughter of a famous Swedish sculptor. In 1891–94, he lived in the USA; he gave many concerts and also taught piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

In the next period of 1894–1913, by working in Berlin, he gained exceptional recognition in the world of music. He was active as an outstanding teacher and a creator of a pianist school; he led master classes, e.g. in Weimar, Vienna and Basel. During his tours, he gave entire concert cycles, such as the unforgettable cycle illustrating the development of the piano concerto from J.S. Bach. During this time, he wrote, among others, the Violin Concerto Op. 35a, and the monumental, 5-movement Piano Concerto Op. XXXIX with a final chorus, a work that was intended to be an equivalent of a Gothic cathedral. The decisive year turned out to be 1907, when his Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, dedicated to R.M. Rilke, was published, as well as a collection of seven Elegies for piano, which supposedly may have inspired Rilke during the period of writing the Duino Elegies. Busoni’s already crystallised musical personality found expression, among others, in the orchestral version of the originally composed for solo piano Berceuse élégiaque (1909) and Nocturne symphonique Op. 43 (1912) and in Fantasia contrappuntistica (1910) and Sonatina seconda (1912). In 1902–09, Busoni performed as a conductor with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, leading twelve concerts of contemporary music, including many first performances. In 1911, he gave a major series of concerts on the 100^th anniversary of Liszt’s birth. He also performed many times in Poland before World War I. In 1913, after a long series of concerts in Italy, he briefly took over as director of the Liceo Musicale in Bologna. However, as a composer, he failed to play a significant role in the musical life of his homeland, which was not yet prepared to accept his ideas.

In 1914, he left Berlin due to the outbreak of World War I, and after a short stay in America, he settled in Switzerland, where he lived near James Joyce, with whom, during their walks together, he was to discuss the concept of eternal return, important for the opera Doktor Faust, which was being composed at the time, and for the Irish writer’s novel Ulysses, which was being written at the same time. This period proved to be very creative: in 1917, he staged two operas in Zurich, L’Arlecchino and Turandot, it was here that he wrote Rondo arlecchinesco Op. 46, Indianisches Tagebuch Op. 47, Piano Sonatinas No. 3–5, and it was here that in 1915, he began composing the aforementioned masterpiece of his life, the opera Doktor Faust. In 1920, he returned to Berlin to take up a master class in composition at the local Akademie der Künste. Towards the end of his life, he published a collection of his musical writings under the telling title On the Unity of Music (1922), published two symphonic studies from Doktor Faust (Sarabande and Cortège), the orchestral Tanzwalzer Op. 53, Klavierübung and Toccata for piano. He was not allowed to complete the opera Doktor Faust – the task of completing the key scene with Helen of Troy and the final scene was undertaken in 1925 by Busoni’s outstanding student Ph. Jarnach and, although the work in this version still functions on opera stages, the second version of the composition, prepared in 1982 by the musicologist and conductor A. Beaumont and recorded under the direction of K. Nagano (1999), is much closer to Busoni’s intentions. Beaumont’s version uses the full text of the libretto (Jarnach made abbreviations that blurred the overall message) and, thanks to the faithful implementation of the precise instructions left by Busoni in the musical sketches (individual fragments were to be “palimpsests” based on self-quotations from earlier works), the sequence of scenes forms the figure of a large circle, growing into a metaphor for Nietzsche’s idea of ​​eternal return (the clarity of this idea was seriously blurred in Jarnach’s version). Busoni received decorations of international importance: the French Order of the Legion of Honor, an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich (1920) and the title of Commendatore della Corona d’Italia (1922). His pianist students included, among others, G. Beklemishev, A. Brailowsky, M. Münz, L. Closson, P. Grainger, L. Kestenberg, D. Mitropoulos, E. Petri (the main successor of Busoni’s piano school), L. Sirota, E. Steuermann, J. Turczyński, I. Friedmann, and M. von Zadora. Among his student-composers, the most notable were Ph. Jarnach, L. Grünberg, O. Luening, W. Vogel, K. Weill, L. Balmer, N. Nabokov and E. Varėse. At one time, he was also a mentor to A. Schönberg and B. Bartók and tried to support them in their efforts to achieve greater fame. Since 1949, the F. Busoni International Piano Competition has been held annually in Bolzano.

Busoni was one of the greatest pianists in the history of music; of his contemporaries, only J. Hofmann, I. Paderewski and E. d’Albert were compared to him. In his repertoire, the most important pieces were those by Bach and Liszt – one could speak of a new era of interpretation – as well as Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin. He had a legendary musical technique, and the inner power emanating from his playing was transmitted to the largest audiences. He achieved the beauty of his sound, especially through a varied range of tone colours, shades of pianissimo, incomparable non-legato and staccato playing, pearly passages, and polyphonic playing. In accordance with his own aesthetics, he was ready to sacrifice the dead letter of the musical text and make certain changes to it in order to better express the truth of musical thought. His interpretations were sometimes seen as cold, as an advantage of intellect over feeling; in fact, Busoni’s playing was already characterised by a departure from the late Romantic ideal with its tendency to blur the structural moments towards pathetic expression, sometimes sentimentalism.

Busoni was a child prodigy, precocious and exceptionally talented, not only in terms of composition and piano playing but also in literature and the visual arts. One of the first surviving compositional attempts – the Piano and String Quartet Concerto Op. 17 – is already evidence of the intellectually developed approach of a boy of only 12 years. Although the piece still bears strong influences of the classical style, it also amazes with its specific, palimpsest-like construction of musical material, which would later fully manifest itself only in his mature works. The slow movement of the Concerto Op. 17 is a kind of parallel reinterpretation of the mournful rhythmic motif from the second movement of Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony and the chromatic motif of hell from the last scene of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Busoni took full artistic responsibility for his compositions only with the Violin Sonata No. 2 (1898), being very critical of his youthful works (with the exception of the 24 Preludes Op. 37, and Le quattro stagioni for male choir accompanied by orchestra Op. 40). Sonata No. 2 in E minor is another example of Busoni’s musical “palimpsest.” The three-part composition, with a transcription of Bach’s chorale “Wie wohl ist mir, o Freund der Seelen,” symbolically placed in the arithmetical centre of the cycle, which is the theme of the final cycle of variations, is at the same time a formal and dramatic reinterpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E major Op. 109. This work, in recent decades increasingly restored to concert and recording circulation by the most outstanding artists (e.g. G. Kremer and M. Argerich, L. Kavakos and D. Trifonov), is sometimes beginning to be placed on an equal footing with J. Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor and C. Franck’s Violin Sonata in A major.

But truly original works were created later; the breakthrough came with the Elegies for piano (1907), which was followed by outstanding works, including Sonatina seconda, Berceuse élégiaque, Nocturne symphonique, Fantasia contrappuntistica, Toccata, songs to words by Goethe and operas. Busoni’s compositional language is now enriched with means that constitute an innovation in 20^th-century music. Here we should mention, above all, consistent linear polyphony, fourth chords, parallel chords, non-functional combining and superimposing of chords, static understanding of dissonances (emancipation of dissonance), new scales (including the whole-tone scale), polytonality, the tonal centre technique, extended tonality, overcoming the metric scheme (barless music), attempts to move away from thematic composition, searching for a balance between form and expression, aiming to “melt form into expression,” as Busoni said when speaking about the symphonic version of Berceuse élégiaque. Berceuse élégiaque, one of the earliest achievements of atonal music and premiered in New York at the last concert conducted by G. Mahler before his death (21.02.1911), was a work discussed within the circle of the Second Viennese School and became the catalyst for A. Schoenberg’s creation of the concept of Klangfarbenmelodie.

Operas are also of great importance in Busoni’s work – a denial of both neo-romantic post-Wagnerian and veristic aesthetics. Busoni saw opera as a kind of magic mirror or a game based on a chosen convention, either supernatural and fantastic (as in Die Brautwahl and Turandot), or referring to the old opera-concert, commedia dell’arte and musical melodrama (as in Arlecchino). But it was Doktor Faust, with its libretto that was a mixture of various dramatic and poetic works from the more or less distant past (including Marlowe, Lessing, Goethe, Strindberg) and his own ideas, that became Busoni’s true musical mission, an “absolute” opera in its departure from the superficiality of stage experience, in its spirituality, and also in its – theoretically postulated in the second edition of Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1917) – structure containing purely musical genres and forms, such as symphony, cycle of variations, suite of dances or instrumental interludes (sarabande). Busoni denied music the right to illustrate events taking place on stage (for this very reason, K. Weill was delighted with the scene of Faust’s pact with Mephistopheles), assigning it the role of a much broader “musical perspective” that went beyond the stage. At the same time, he proclaimed the postulate of prohibiting the viewer from empathizing with the viewed work, the necessity of constantly “waking up” the viewer from “lethargy.” To this end, he created librettos that presented known stories only in fragments that were loosely connected and forced the viewer to think, and he achieved the effect of destroying the stage illusion, among other things, through the “marionetisation” of the singers’ stage acting, which anticipated Brecht’s Verfremdungssefekt (Brecht personally met Busoni in the last months of his life). The concept of an opera based on means typical of absolute music, implemented more or less consistently already in Die Brautwahl (1911), was a precursor phenomenon to a number of the most progressive phenomena of the twentieth-century opera theatre, namely A. Berg (Wozzeck from 1925), P. Hindemith (Cardillac from 1926), and even B.A. Zimmermann (Soldiers from 1960), who was a student of Ph. Jarnach.

Busoni’s aesthetic thought, despite its fragmentary nature, modelled on the writings of his beloved F. Nietzsche, had an even greater overall influence than his compositions; this applies, above all, to the doctrine of “young (new) classicism,” the first formulation of classicism in the 20^th-century music. Rejecting academism in all its forms, and opposing routine in art, Busoni was, at the same time, opposed to destroying tradition in the name of novelty and seeking originality for its own sake. He opposed them with the artist’s striving for perfection. Avoid craftsmanship, he told composers, let everything be essential. He believed that a work becomes modern thanks to its transitory features, and that it is protected from old-fashionedness by unchangeable features. He placed the difference between what is already known and what is not yet known before distinguishing between the old and the new. The essence of progress in music, in his view, consisted in its constant enrichment, not in the constant change of means. Therefore, Busoni linked the development of music with the idea of ​​fulfilment, which is the composer’s goal, with the idea of ​​the finality of art. “Young Classicism” in its radical postulate of the spirituality and absoluteness of music was related to the philosophy of art of W. Kandinsky. On the other hand, it understood the essence of the creative process as mediation between the historicity and the presence of music, introducing the idea of ​​neoclassicism to the 20^th century. In the version proposed by Busoni, this classicism was an attempt to regain the serenitas of music, and more broadly, an attempt to synthesise the northern elements of German music with the Mediterranean, Italian ones, i.e. with the joy of art, simplicity, grace and beauty of purely musical form.

In Busoni’s oeuvre, transcriptions and arrangements of works by other composers and his own occupy an important place. Busoni understood transcription very broadly since even the notation of a piece was, for him, a transcription of an abstract musical idea, which in turn was in line with his Platonic idea of ​​music, existing also beyond the time of its resounding. In Busoni’s case, arrangements and transcriptions create a wide range of various degrees of interpretation, from those aimed at adapting someone else’s idea to the personality of the performer to completely new and original works, such as Fantasia contrappuntistica. In these last forms, we can perhaps see best how Busoni understood overcoming the historical distance from the classics.

In Busoni’s doctrine, music was a unity, regardless of the time of its creation and regardless of its genres and types. Busoni’s writings contain many theoretical visions, but only some of them were reflected in his compositions. The most important here are attempts to form new musical scales. Busoni included 113 heptatonic scales within the octave in his considerations and anticipated further possibilities resulting from their transposition and the creation of modal hybrids and, thus, indicated a huge area of ​​synthetic scales. These scales were introduced later by composers of our century, some of them also appear next to the whole-tone scale in Busoni’s works from the last period of his work. Busoni saw the possibilities of creating ⅓- and ⅙-tone equal temperament, i.e. 18- and 36-degree scales; this was followed by later attempts by A. Hába (1927) and H. Partch (1949). He also proposed a new type of strictly enharmonic musical notation on four 5-line systems, reproducing the layout of a piano keyboard (1910). He predicted the introduction of new electronic musical instruments, strongly influencing, among others, the imagination and work of O. Luening. Busoni’s position in the history of 20^th-century music remains not fully explained. Busoni’s musical poetics, which can be read from his writings and works, contain the basic problems of contemporary musical culture: the attitude to musical tradition, classicism and innovation in art. Since his music probably lacked a clear final synthesis, Busoni was unable to impose his artistic attitude on the entire European musical consciousness. However, one can find numerous affinities connecting him with such composers as Casella, Malipiero and Dallapiccola, Reger, Jarnach and Hindemith, Emmanuel and Rogowski. Since the last two decades of the 20^th century, there has been a clearly lively interest in his piano Elegies and Sonatinas, Violin Sonata No. 2, all four operas, Piano Concerto and symphonic studies. Interestingly, we also find sporadic affinities with Busoni’s music in such composers as W. Rihm (chamber opera Faust und Yorick from 1976 dedicated to Busoni’s memory), J. Adams (author of the transcription of Berceuse élégiaque from 1989) or T. Adès, who even recorded the Italian composer’s Sonatina ad usum infantis on his debut solo album (2000). Busoni, as a composer resonating with outstanding achievements from the past (Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Verdi), and at the same time as one of the first artists to pave the way for atonal, neoclassical and sometimes even postmodern music (palimpsest constructions), seems to deserve the title of an independent composer.

Literature:

Documentation — Ferruccio Busoni Werkverzeichnis (until 1922), in: F. Busoni Von der Einheit der Musik, Berlin 1922; Ferruccio Busoni Werkoerzeichnis, Leipzig 1924; W. Altmann Versuch einer Bibliographie über Busoni, in: Von neuer Musik, Cologne 1925; A. Bonaccorsi Bibliografia delle opere musicali e letterarie di Ferruccio Busoni, «Miscellanea storica della Valdelsa» XXXVIII, Castelfiorentino 1930; E.J. Dent Catalogue of the Work of Ferruccio Busoni and Ferruccio Busonis Pianoforte Repertory, in: Ferruccio Busoni, London 1933; J. Herrmann Werkverzeichnis, in: F. Busoni Wesen und Einheit der Musik, Berlin 1956; J. Kindermann Thematisch-chronologisches Verzeichnis der Werke von Ferruccio Busoni, Regensburg. Ferrucio Busoni Briefe an seine Frau, ed. F. Schnapp, Zurich 1935, Italian ed. Lettere alla moglie, transl. L. Dallapiccola, Milan 1955; Fünfundzwanzig Busoni-Briefe, ed. G. Selden-Goth, Vienna 1937; Ferruccio Busoni Briefe an Hans Huber, ed. E. Refardt, «127. Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeinen Musikgesellschaft in Zürich», Zurich 1939; A. Della Corte Lettere di Busoni a Serato, in: Arrigo Serato, violinista, “Quaderni dell’Accademia Chigiana” 1950 no. 12; Briefe Busonis an Edith Andreae, ed. A. Briner, «160. Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeinen Musikgesellschaft in Zürich», Zurich 1976. G. Busoni Erinnerungen an Ferruccio Busoni, ed. F. Schnapp, Berlin 1958, Italian ed. Il mio incontro con Busoni, “Musica d’Oggi” I, 1960; M. Barinowa Wospominanija o J. Hofmannie i F. Busonim, Moscow 1964; Ferruccio Busoni. Selected Letters, from various languages transl. by A. Beaumont, London 1987; Der Briefwechsel zwischen Ferruccio Busoni und Otto Klemperer 1909–1924, ed. A. Beaumont, “Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft. Neue Folge” 1988/89 no. 8/9; Der Briefwechsel zwischen Ferruccio Busoni und Volkmar Andreae 1907–1923 “Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeinen Musikgesellschaft Zürich” no. 178, Zurich 1994; F. Busoni Zum Theaterbau. Ein unveröffentliches Manuskript aus dem Nachlass Ferruccio Busoni’s “Musica” 1995 no. 6.

Special issues — “Il Pianoforte” 15 June 1921; “Musikblätter des Anbruch” III, 1921 book 1–2; “Rassegna Musicale” I, 1940; “L’Approdo Musicale” 1966 no. 22; Il flusso del tempo. Scritti su Ferruccio Busoni ed. S. Sablich, R. Dalmonte, Milan 1985.

Monographs and studies — H. Leichtentritt Ferrucio Busoni, Leipzig 1916; H. Pfitzner Futuristengefahr. Bei Gelegenheit von Busonis Ästhetik, Leipzig 1917; G. Selden-Goth Ferruccio Busoni Versuch eines Porträts, Vienna 1922, Italian ed. Ferruccio Busoni Un profilo, Florence 1964; E.J. Dent Ferruccio Busoni ad Empoli, Empoli 1928; H. Jelmoli Ferruccio Busonis Zürcherjahre, «117. Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeinen Musikgesellschaft in Zürich», Zurich 1929; S.E Nadel Ferruccio Busoni, Leipzig 1931; E.J. Dent Ferruccio Busoni. A Biography, London 1933, 2^nd ed. Oxford 1966; P. Coigner Ferruccio Busoni. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Operndichtung (dissertation), Vienna 1933; A. Santelli Busoni, Rome 1939; G. Guerrini, P. Fragapane Il „Dottor Faust” di Ferruccio Busoni, Florence 1942; G. Guerrini Ferruccio Busoni, la vita, la figura, l’opera, Florence 1944; R. Giazotto Busoni, la vita nell’opera, Milan 1947; E. Debusmann Ferruccio Busoni, Wiesbaden 1949; E. Hilmar Eine stilkritische Untersuchung der Werke Ferruccio Busonis aus den Jahren 1880–1890 (dissertation), Graz 1963; G. Kogan Ferruccio Busoni, Moscow 1964; K. Schmitt Busoni als Pädagoge und Interpret, dargestellt an seinen Bearbeitungen der Klavienuerke J.S. Bachs (dissertation), Saarbrücken 1965; R. Vlad Ferruccio Busoni, in: La Musica, ed. G.M. Gatti and A. Basso, part 1: Enciclopedia storica, Turin 1966; H. Krellmann Studien zu den Bearbeitungen Ferruccio Busonis, Regensburg 1966; H.H. Stuckenschmidt Ferrucio Busoni Zeittafel eines Europäers, Zurich 1967, English ed. London 1970; H. Meyer Die Klaviermusik Ferruccio Busonis, Wolfenbüttel 1969; U. Prinz Ferruccio Busoni als Klavierkomponist (dissertation), Heidelberg 1969 (complete chronological list of piano works by Busoni); K. Rabiger Ferruccio Busoni: Doktor Faust. Dramaturgie einer Faustoper. Versuch einer Bestimmung ihrer szenischen Struktur, Berlin 1971; H. Kosnick Busoni Gestaltung durch Gestalt, Regensburg 1971; S. Sablich Busoni, Turin 1982; P.M. Op De Coul Doktor Faust. Opera van Ferruccio Busoni, Groningen 1983; A. Beaumont Busoni the Composer, London 1985; A. Riethmüller Ferruccio Busonis Poetik, Mainz 988; S. Kämmerer Illusionismus und AntiIllusionismus im Musikteheater. Eine Untersuchung zur szenischmusikalischen Dramaturgie in Bühnenkompositionen von R. Wagner, A. Schönberg, F. Busoni, I. Strawinsky, P. Hindemith und K. Weill, Anif/Salzburg 1990; C. Feldhege Ferruccio Busoni als Librettist, Anif/Salzburg 1996; T. Levitz Teaching New Classicality. Ferruccio Busoni’s Master Class in Composition, Frankfurt am Main 1996; D. Couling Ferruccio Busoni. A Musical Ishmael, Lanham (Maryland) 2005; M. Gmys Poetyka teatru operowego Ferruccia Busoniego, Poznań 2005; E. Knyt Ferruccio Busoni and His Legacy, Indiana 2017; E. Knyt Ferruccio Busoni as Architect of Sound, Oxford 2023.

A. Simon Ferruccio Busoni, Notizen, Berlin 1922; J. Wassermann Lebensdienst, vol. 1, Berlin 1928; Z. Jachimecki, Od pierwszej do ostatniej muzyki do Fausta, Kraków 1932; S. Zweig Begegnungen mit Menschen, Büchern und Städten, Vienna 1937, Frankfurt am Main 2^nd ed. 1955; R. Vlad Destino di Busoni, “La Rassegna Muicale Italiana” XXIII, 1953, also in: R. Vlad Moderniità e tradizione nella musica contemporanea, Turin 1955, English transl. Busoni’s Destiny, “The Score” 1952 no. 7; Musicisti toscanini, ed. A. Damerini and F. Schlitzer, Siena 1955; P. Rattalino Scritti giovanili di Ferruccio Busoni, “Musica d’Oggi” 1959 no. 3, 4; J.C. Waterhouse Busoni — Visionary or Pasticheur?, “Proceedings of the Royal Music Association” XCII, 1965/66; U. Duse Note sul pensiero estetico di Ferruccio Busoni, “Quaderni dell’Accademia Chigiana” XXIII, new series vol. 3, Siena 1966, reprint in: Musica e cultura, Padua 1967; W. Vogel Impressions of Ferruccio Busoni, “Perspectives of New Music” VI, 1967/68 no. 2; R. Heinz Ferruccio Busonis musikalischer Futurismus, in: Geschichte und Zukunft, commemorative book of A. Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1967; J.E. Kindermann Zur Kontroverse Busoni — Pfitzner, in: commemorative book of W. Wiora, Kassel 1967; H. Oesch Wladimir Vogel, Berno 1967; L. Sitsky Ferruccio Busoni’s Attempt at an Organic Notation for Pianoforte, “The Music Review” XXIX, 1968 no. 1; L. Sitsky The Six Sonatinas for Piano of Ferruccio Busoni, “Studies in Music” II, 1968 (Nedlands, Australia); R.M. Mason Enumeration of Synthetic Musical Scales by Matrix Algebra and a Catalogue of Busoni’s Scales, “Journal of Music Theory” XIV, 1970 no. 1; K. Weill Busoni und die Neue Musik; Busonis „Faust” und die Erneuerung der Opernform, in: Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. D. Drew, Frankfurt am Main 1975; J. Theurich Der Briefwechsel zwischen A. Schönberg und F. Busoni, in: Arnold Schönberg 1874–1951, «Arbeitshefte» (Sektion Musik der Akademie der Künste der DDR) book 24, 1976; L. Pestalozza Busoni e Brecht?, in: Il flusso del tempo. Scritti su Ferruccio Busoni, ed. S. Sablich, R. Dalmonte, Milan 1985; E. Tarasti Ferruccio Busoni o dell’ambiguità strutturale. Aspetti mitici e strutturali di „Doktor Faust” in: Il flusso del tempo. Scritti su Ferruccio Busoni, ed. S. Sablich, R. Dalmonte, Milan 1985; A. Beaumont Busoni’s „Doktor Faust”. A Reconstruction and its Problems, “The Musical Times” 1986 no. 4; C. Floros Die Angst von der Tiefe, in: Musik als Botschaft, Wiesbaden 1989; A. Beaumont Sibelius and Busoni, “Proceedings from the First International Jean Sibelius Conference”, Helsinki 1995; M. Gmys Teatr operowy w teoretycznym ujęciu Ferruccia Busoniego, “Muzyka” 2004 no. 1; M. Gmys Arlecchino als Diktator. Bemerkungen über einen Einakter von Ferruccio Busoni, in: Das (Musik-) Theater in Exil und Diktatur. Vorträge und Gespräche des Salzburger Symposions 2003, ed. P. Csobádi et al., Anif/Salzburg 2005; E. Knyt Ferruccio Busoni and the Absolute in Music: Form, Nature and Idee, “Journal of the Royal Musical Association” 2012, no. 1.