It was towards the end of 1906 that Busoni was informally approached with a view to his conducting a Meisterklasse for the pianoforte at the Vienna Conservatoire. In itself the idea of the class was attractive to him after his experience of Weimar, but Vienna was a place in which he had known too many disappointments. He he independent of the Director's authority and free to choose his own pupils and teach them as he pleased. He further demanded a reasonable amount of leave to go away on concert tours, especially as he had some expectation of being engaged for a tour in America.
Busoni's terms may well have seemed impossible to persons living under the ordinary routine of a school of music, but from his own point of view the acceptance of the post, even on his own conditions, was a considerable sacrifice. Thanks no doubt to Bösendorfer's influence and the tact and genuine friendliness of Dr. Botstiber, the secretary of the Conservatoire, Busoni's conditions were accepted, and he agreed in February 1907 to undertake the class for one year at any rate. [...]
In September he went to Vienna to examine pupils for his Meisterklasse. It was a depressing business; they were mostly girls, and as indifferent in talent as they were in looks. From Vienna he went to London, having to play at the Cardiff Festival and at other places in England. At Manchester he visited Egon Petri and his wife. Their house was always 'an oasis in the desert' fqr him, but in spite of all their kindness he never could adapt himself to what he called the Cottage-Stimmung - the domesticity o f a small suburban house. Even travelling was a relief from that. It was not luxury that he demanded, but the sense of contact with the swarming life and activity of a big town. In October he was back at Vienna and starting his class.
'You can safely look about for a nice flat in Berlin for next autumn,' he wrote to Gerda; 'I will bet my head against a hair of yours that not much result will come out of the K. and K. [Imperial and Royal] city. My father knew a mysterious man in Italy (I forget his name) who had invented a secret process by which corpses could be preserved for centuries (so he maintained) exactly as they were in life, with the colour of the skin and lips and with perfect flexibility of all muscles and joints. I rather think the K. and K. city is a corpse of this sort.'
The class was on a level with that at Moscow; there was only one man with whom he could discuss pictures, books, or anything of human interest. Fingering, pedal, rhythm, piano andforte - that was all he could teach them; for the psychology and aesthetics of music they had no understanding. 'I have noticed that very sensitive young men are not much good at the pianoforte. People with aesthetic sensibility bring refinement into the profession, but they cannot reduce the instrument to obedience.'
A characteristic sentence from one of Kalbeck's criticisms annoyed him and set him thinking. 'Liszt's Triumph of Tasso was a defeat for the composer but a victory for our orchestra.'
'I begin to realize', wrote Busoni, 'that the ruin of the Viennese, as regards their attitude to art, comes from newspaper criticism (Feuilletons). This systematic daily reading (for half a century) of causeries on art, witty and superficial, short, and all turning on an obvious catchword, has destroyed for the Viennese their own power of seeing and hearing, comparing and thinking with any seriousness. These little Viennese have something Parisian in their thirst for enjoyment and their 'superiority', and in their chase after sensations they are often badly taken in, like the Parisians.'
It was a long time before his Viennese pupils began to have any idea of the standards that he set before them, but the class gradually improved. The men at any rate showed intelligence, and by way of inspiring them with something of the spirit of Weimar, he would invite them to supper and try to gain closer intellectual contact with them. By the end of November things were going better. Friedmann, one of the men, had given him an English mezzotint; that pleased him enormously, not merely because he loved prints but because it indicated an aesthetic sense in his pupil. It is evident from the letters that Busoni was giving them all much longer and more careful lessons than he was paid to do; for a fortnight he taught the class for four hours every day. [...]
Trouble beganin February. On the 10th Dr. Botstiber received a letter from Busoni's secretary in Berlin saying that he had been obliged to cancel his second recital owing to illness. Although still unwell, he was to start that day for Switzerland to play at concerts; further engagements had to be fulfilled in Paris and London. He admitted that this postponement of his classes in Vienna was irregular, but pleaded previous contracts. He hoped to return to Vienna by April 21 and would then be willing to devote the whole of May, June, and July to the Meisterklasse.
The Directorate of the Conservatoire replied on the 14th that they had already had cause to complain of Busoni for irregularity in his hours of teaching and that they now considered their contract with him to be terminated on the ground of non-fulfilment on his part. They did not wait for a further reply from him, but allowed statements to appear in the Viennese Press to the effect that he had been dismissed for neglecting his duties. It was further stated that Godowsky had been appointed to take the class over. From Vienna the news spread at once to Berlin, where the Borsen-Courier applied to Busoni himself for information and published on February 25 a letter from him, in which he maintained that there was no breach of contract. It had been understood from the beginning that this first Meisterklasse was merely a trial year, and that he was to have freedom to go away on concert tours. He had undertaken to give 280 hours' teaching and was prepared to make up the full number in the later months.
He had as a matter of fact been teaching every day for a fortnight and then taking a fortnight away. Before his last departure at the end of January the Directorate had expressed their satisfaction to him and the hope that he would continue the class the following year. Illness had prevented him from giving the next fortnight's teaching, and after that he had to start for Switzerland. Meanwhile the Director sent for the pupils to ask who could play a concerto at a concert on March 20 to represent the class. It was not the Director's business to interfere with the class in this manner; Busoni alone had the right to decide who might play at a concert. Indeed the first instinct of the class was to remain loyal to Busoni and refuse to answer the Director's question; but the chance of a public appearance was too much for one of the young ladies. She timidly offered a concerto of Beethoven; another young lady promptly countered with a concerto of Liszt, and after that there was nothing to be done but for all the pupils to say what they could play. Busoni was informed of all this by one of the men, and was naturally much annoyed at the Director's action.
He wrote in the same sense to Dr. Botstiber, who all along had been ready to take Busoni's point of view and replied in a tactful and conciliatory spirit. Meanwhile the pupils, who after all were the most important people concerned, although it naturally never occurred to the Directorate of the Conservatoire to consult them, took matters into their own hands. Several of them wrote to Busoni, expressing their distress, which was in some cases serious, since most of them had come from other countries to join the class at considerable financial sacrifice.
An American girl, Georgine Nelson, summoned a meeting of the class at her lodgings, and it was unanimously agreed that if Busoni were not reinstated by the Directorate, the whole class would follow him to Berlin. Georgine Nelson was not a girl to be frightened of the Director and went to see him herself, and present what was called a 'petition' from the class. It was more like an ultimatum. Her letters to Busoni in London gave an amusing account of the affair.
«We are fighting nobly. 'Busoni expects every man to do his duty!' I went to Director Bopp and the Secretary, Dr. Botstiber, and 'demanded their intentions'. They were quite meek, when I told them that we should all leave unless they arranged the affair, and said they hoped very much that it could be done, if you would 'entgegenkommen' by returning before April. You must come back to us as we should die of grief, otherwise! On Wednesday I am going to play the Chopin F moll Concerto for Director Bopp. You should see him accompany! He is so big and fat, and looks like an inflated balloon when he sits at the piano, from the back view! He's quite nice, though: he has behaved quite decently about this stupid affair.»
Miss Nelson's letter is dated March 2; she appears to have interviewed the Director on February 27. On March 3 Busoni wrote in strong terms from London to the Directorate, protesting against their unjust action and undertaking to come to Vienna on March I 4 for a week, and after that to devote himself exclusively to the school from April 21 onwards. The Directorate replied by telegram that they could not alter their decision. The telegram was published in the papers. The pupils then sent a statement to the Neue Freie Presse (March 11) announcing their intention of following Busoni to Berlin. Busoni replied at once with a letter to the same paper saying that he would meet his pupils at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna on March 15, and that he intended to continue the class from April 21 to July 15, independently of the Conservatoire, but in Vienna, in order to prevent the students from having to incur any additional expense.
A postscript to the letter threw a little more light on the whole affair. It had been alleged that Busoni had treated the Director with discourtesy at a Board Meeting. Busoni told the plain story of the matter. He had been summoned to the Board of Professors to discuss the question of whether listeners should be admitted to the Meisterklasse, as they were at Weimar. The Directorate was against their admission, Busoni for it. He addressed the meeting and gained his point; the admission of listeners was agreed to by a majority. The meeting then proceeded to discuss matters which did not concern Busoni, but the chairman politely asked him to stay, and out of politeness he did so. But the discourse of the President (Hofrat Adolf Koch von Langentreu) was somewhat long, and as it continued 'with the even monotony of a distant Gregorian plainsong', Busoni's attention wandered. He noticed a portrait of Beethoven on the wall, life-size, and hitherto unknown to him; without thinking, he rose from his seat and went to inspect the portrait more closely. The President took this amiss, and made some pointed remark to Busoni; he apologized and took his departure.
It must have been a very human scene. From Busoni's own letters it is clear enough that he did not take much trouble to be friendly with the Conservatoire people; it was natural too that they should feel a certain resentment against him as a teacher from outside who refused to submit to their authority, although they themselves had appointed him. The episode of the Board Meeting was simply the last straw.
Busoni returned to Vienna in April, as he had promised, and took up his quarters in the Palais Todesco-Oppenheimer, placed at his disposal by his old friend Baroness Jella Oppenheimer, daughter of the Baroness Todesco who had befriended him in boyhood. There were twentyfive pupils and about a dozen listeners; lessons were given regularly twice a week. This, at any rate, was what he told Bösendorfer when the class came to an end; from his letters it is clear that he often taught for four hours a day. Teaching the class was in fact the one thing that made life in Vienna endurable; he hated the place.
«O this city! If I did not know that Beethoven had done great work here, I should think that nothing could ever be done here. But perhaps the composing-element in the ait of Vienna has been used up or diluted, to judge by the descending scale of BEETHOVEN, BRAHMS, hugo wolf. Vienna is medieval and provincial at the same time. Events are manufactured here, as they were at Weimar. When boredom has gone on too long, a procession is arranged, or a monument unveiled.' (He gave his wife a comic description of the unveiling of the Brahms monument in the rain.)»
One evening in June Baroness Oppenheimer invited all the pupils to the house. Like her mother and her aunts, she was a grande dame of the old school, with a dignity and reserve which Busoni occasionally found a little frightening, but she had inherited all the large-hearted generosity of the Gomperz family. In the midst of that Vienna which Busoni hated so bitterly she was the one surviving link with that other Vienna which had enchanted him as a child. And Melanie (now Frau Dr. Prelinger) was there that evening too - Melanie, who had been a friendly sister to him in his adolescence and still gave him a sister's comradeship and affection. He played to them for two hours and knew that he was at his best. It was a typical Busoni programme - «Bach's Chaconne» and two «Choralvorspiele» arranged by himself, «All'Italia» and «Turandots Frauengemach» from his own new «Elegies», and the twelve «Etudes d'exécution transcendante» of Liszt.
In the middle of July the class came to an end and Busoni returned to Berlin.
DENT, pp. 157-166