Ritratto di Busoni «dal vivo»

nei ricordi di Otto Luening

Tratto da The Odyssey of an American Composer,
New York 1980, pp. 167 ss.

The Neue Züricher Zeitung announced the first performances of Ferruccio Busoni's «Arlecchino» and «Turandot», both with his own libretti in German. «Turandot» was specially adapted for the Zurich Opera from incidental music for Gozzi's play. Busoni was conducting the performances, and I got a ticket and read the libretti. They had unique qualities — unrealistic, but with a theatrically effective tone. Their witty comments and brevity reminded me of Commedia dell'Arte and at times of Mozart's «Zauberflöte» and «Entführung aus dem Serail».
At the performances dialogue, recitative, and set pieces al-ternated with lively contrast and projected Busoni's thought. The orchestration was clear, the vocal lines expressive, and the stage sets alluring. I came under Busoni's spell. Even though the acting, singing, and dancing were somewhat heavy and the performance lacked virtuosity, I was amazed, after having heard heavy German music for almost five years, to discover an art lucid and transparent, melodious and rhythmically clear, yet not superficial; dramatically effective but brief in time, never turgid, and often profound.
Busoni's ability to compose in various styles without losing his identity was impressive. The Mozartian ending of «Arlecchino», the minuet in «Turandot», taken from one of his sonatinas, and his parody of an Italian operatic quartet all showed me a musical and dramatic mastery I had not yet experienced, but one that made a lasting impression on me.
Busoni
conducted in an unobtrusive manner, bringing out the expressive contents of the score without military precision — due possibly to his lack of experience as a theater conductor.

A description of Busoni’s piano playing must begin with the statement that technically he could play anything at any speed. His control of dynamics was complete and ranged from a whispering and haunting pianissimo to a fortissimo that rivaled the power of an orchestra. His pedaling was unique and set him apart from any other pianist I have ever heard. He sometimes used two or three pedals at the same time, setting sonority patterns that were somewhat veiled but within which he played with great, bell-like clarity. At times, he would raise or lower a pedal with great rapidity, even on a single note or chord, creating myriad tone colors and strange vibrations. His touch and attacks were always related to the pedaling he was using so that he could transform the piano sounds at will from a vaguely harpsichordlike resonance to a modern resonating box on which he could simulate singing and orchestral instruments. His method of performance and his programs would today put him at the peak of contemporary piano wizards.
His finger technique, too, was impeccable; his fast octaves and thirds sounded like single-note passages and he never missed even the greatest leaps. With all its virtuosity, his playing often seemed to be based on a memory of song and dance. The songlike approach led him to passages that sounded like folk songs or simulated operatic arias and recitatives. His dance world included rhythmic projections of gavottes, sarabandes, minuets, waltzes, and freer and ever more imaginative dances. The mazurkas, tarantellas and other dance-oriented pieces were at times unmetrical, but so rhythmic in their phrasing that they projected a floating, unearthly quality. The songs became disembodied, like the memory of a song.
Busoni avoided strict metrical playing in all performances; he was interested in projecting the form of each piece so that it could be remembered. This concept resulted in rubato playing based on the phrase relationships within each piece. Because these varied in each work, his style of interpretation also varied from work to work and in different performances of the same piece. His sense of phrase affected his tempi, so he never played a piece fast just to dazzle listeners with his virtuosity. His technical equipment was so secure that he was not afraid to play a really slow tempo when he thought it was called for.
He fascinated me with his strong projection of particular ideas in each work he played. He was sometimes called a romantic because he often found new relationships in familiar works that others had missed. He proclaimed that this same freedom of expression was known to Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn; that neither Bach nor Handel avoided free interpretations of their own works or those by others; that an improvisational approach to music-making was practiced by the baroque composers; and that «C. P. E. Bach's Versuch uber die wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen», or «Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments», was the standard work in Bach's time that formulated this stylistic practice.
His performance of the
Chopin Ballades, which I heard in 1917, went beyond brilliant piano playing. Sometimes he made the instrument sound like an Aeolian harp as described by the poets, or like sound floating from a box of electric resonators with apparently no relationship to a hammered-string sound. Under his hands the piano became both a picture projector and a storyteller, and in the Ballades Busoni became a bard. (When I heard him play these, I knew nothing about the influence of Heine and Mickiewicz on Chopin, but from Busoni's performances I received distinct poetic impressions as moving as those evoked by the original poems, which I read many years later.) Busoni's Chopin playing was unsentimental. It projected the musical forms with a firmness and balance that I have never heard other pianists achieve with the same clarity. In the performance of his own transcription for modern concert piano of J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, he stressed the melodic lines and individualized the contrapuntal voice leadings while still bringing to the harmonies their individual colors. He brought to life the deep spirit of this music in such a way that it awoke in many listeners at one and the same time a vision of the past and of music of the future. This he accomplished with what seemed to be great ease.
His
Liszt performances, too, were unique. In works such as Annees de pelerinage the pictorial images animated Busoni, as did the poetic images in other Liszt works, like the «Dante Fantasia Quasi Sonata», other «Transcendental Etudes», and the drama in the «Don Juan Fantasy». When playing Liszt, Busoni used a pianistic palette so delicate in its tone colors that the shimmering relationships became unique sound forms. Schoenberg's term «klangfarben Melodie» is a fitting description in an interpretative sense.
Within the framework that Liszt had established for works like the «Mazeppa Etude» and the «Don Juan Fantasy», Busoni made the piano take on the quality of a symphony orchestra. Difficult passages in octaves, double sixths, double thirds, and chromatic runs were part of the overall form. He gave to Liszt a prophetic quality that transcended the virtuoso brilliance the works always contained. Liszt wrote about his Vision from Venice to Lambert Massart: «Don't try to know. Your lot is not to know. Don't try to do. Your lot is not to do. Don't try to enjoy. Your lot is renunciation.» Busoni's performances were in that vein.
On stage Busoni looked tall, elegant, and relaxed. He had a noble profile, a full head of hair, and a graceful stride. As he walked onto the stage in deep concentration, the audience gave him an enthusiastic welcome. When he heard the applause he seemed rather surprised to see them all there. He bowed first to the house in general, then greeted his friends with a personal and most elegant wave of the hand — a greeting that was sometimes directed to beautiful ladies who had attracted his attention.
When he played he was completely absorbed and seemed in a trance. At the end of each group he responded to the enormous applause graciously and with hand waves to his friends. The enthusiasm was often so great that the audience would not quiet down until he was again at the keyboard. He gave generous encores, even after long and difficult programs. The final applause continued until the lights were turned out.
To prepare himself for these concerts, Busoni played the pieces through once at a moderate tempo, mezzo forte. This was all he needed to refresh his memory, for he had total recall.
In 1919, when I played flute and percussion in the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Busoni gave a series of five popular concerts entitled
The Development of the Pianoforte Concerto. He played one concerto each of J. S. Bach, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Weber, Brahms, Anton Rubinstein, and Saint-Saens, as well as two each by Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt, and Busoni's Concerto for Piano, Orchestra and Male Chorus. It was a wonderful opportunity to see and hear what he and Andreae emphasized in the various works as we rehearsed them.
Busoni spent quite a bit of time in the tuning room where he conversed with my brilliant French flute teacher, Jean Nada. I was quite happy to listen while my teacher and other colleagues discussed music and other subjects with him. During the concerto series, it was my special duty to bring Busoni a half-bottle of champagne before he played. He always received me in great style, drank a glass to my health, and asked me how I was getting on with my composing. The champagne helped Busoni to work himself to a high tension before concerts; Andreae claimed that Busoni's pulse rate was sometimes as high as one hundred and fifty when he played.
In the concerti he treated the piano solo as an integral part of a musical event that needed to be molded differently from either a solo performance or a straight orchestral performance. He knew the orchestra both as a pianist and as a conductor of contemporary and classical works. He completely integrated his piano sound with the orchestral sound and made the piano into a new section of the orchestra. At moments it was indeed the concertizing section of the orchestra; at other moments it blended with the different sections of the orchestra to carry forward the main musical ideas. Busoni envisioned the orchestra and the piano soloist separated into sound sections or ranges independent of one another, but used in an infinite variety of combinations and timbre variations.
In the concerti, the timbre of Busoni's solo playing combined with the orchestra sound so that the players established new balances.
Dr. Andreae and the orchestra had to adjust to Busoni's elastic and at times almost improvisational style. The fifteen concerti were stylistic challenges for any conductor and orchestra. Many of them were not often played and five were completely new to the Tonhalle Orchestra.
We were not a virtuoso group, but the players were very good — a few were brilliant — and led by Andreae, the orchestra was impressive. As the title of the series suggested, Busoni had arranged the programs so that the stylistic transformations and changes in the concerto form itself were made clear.
Dr. Andreae began rehearsals with the orchestra alone. If we knew a work, Busoni would immediately begin playing and we would shape the work together as we progressed. When works were new to us, Andreae spoke about them briefly and Busoni played passages to illustrate. When Andreae mentioned that Hummel had studied with Mozart, Busoni explained that Hummel's highly decorated and harmonically colorful piano writing had influenced Chopin and even Liszt, and was different from that of Mozart and Beethoven. When we had difficulty matching Busoni's rubati, he would repeat passages with infinite patience until we felt completely free.
Mozart's D Minor Concerto became an inspired performance as Busoni made it into a drama in the concert hall — an opera without scenery, singers, or libretto, but with all the psychological tensions present in «Don Giovanni». The performance had Geist, élan vital — the inner life, positive and idealized, needed to project Mozart's real message. In Beethoven s E-flat Major Concerto (Emperor) we sensed in the first movement a hero striding into areas of conflict; in the second movement, a transcendent contemplative, imaginative world, a spiritual bridge to the exuberant, dancelike, vigorous, joyous, almost muscular activity that the last movement expresses. Busoni gave to the Liszt E-flat Major Concerto a vigor, a triumphant forward movement, and a playfill imaginative quality that pushed it far beyond the tinsel of its triangle solo. In the A Major Concerto he emphasized a lyric quality, so that in spite of the work's brilliance it made a far more human communication than when played with machinelike glitter and brilliance by many of Busoni's contemporaries.
He played the
Brahms D Minor Concerto with great firmness and a splendid sense of its symphonic qualities. He performed with a sense of structure that deviated from the current Brahms style, which included a number of exaggerated soft spots in every interpretation.
The final work in the series was
Busoni's Concerto for Piano, Orchestra and Male Chorus. This work, lasting an hour, is neither a symphony with an obbligato piano part nor a piano solo with orchestral accompaniment. It represents Busoni's belief that the solo instrument in a concerto should be part of the symphony orchestra. The composer's performance was a completely new musical experience for me, for the work, combining elements from the nineteenth-century symphony and concerto, was a new musical form. The work seemed to end the nineteenth-century era and suggested a twentieth-century aesthetic. In it German expressivity and complexity contrasted with Italian clarity and brilliance style contrasts that demanded monumental dimensions. The fifth movement is a setting of a poem by Öhlenschlaeger, an affirmation of the eternal power of Allah, that Busoni had translated from the Danish.

Busoni's Compositions were known only to a small group of admirers. Many of his later works in particular were puzzling to the usual audiences, and he rarely played them. I remember Busoni playing his powerful «Fantasia Contrappuntistica»; and I thougllt the «Carmen Fantasy» was contrapuntally more sophisticated and tighter in folm tllan Liszt's opera paraphrases.
Since I knew relatively few of his works, and those had showed me new musical possibilities, I turned to his
Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, published in 1916 in German. (It was first published in English in 1907.) In the book Busoni wrote that music was born free and was being choked by routine. He wroteof new scale structures, harmonies, notation, microtones, and even about electronic mnsic, whicll he said could be made «plastic» througll ear training and experimentation. Reading his book in 1917, I saw Busoni as a daring pioneer who had opened new doors for a new generation of musicians. When I read an open letter in the Frankfurter Zeitung called «Futurist Danger», in which Busoni was attacked by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, Busoni became even more of a hero to me.
Although Busoni had taught in Helsinki, Moscow, Vienna, at the New England Conservatory of Music, and at the conservatory in Bologna, he was not a pedagogue in the usual sense of the word. His reactions and suggestions to students were those of a practioner and a philosopher of the arts; he was an animator and a mentor, but never a drillmaster.
Busoni spoke Italian and German fluently and wrote eloquent prose and poetry in both languages. He had a good knowledge of French, English, and Spanish. He had published essays, articles, and opera libretti. He was sensitive to the other arts. He sometimes spoke of the spiritual values of the arts and the priestlike function of the true artist. Most people who knew him considered him the greatest genius of the time and a true Renaissance man. His enemies called him everything bad: a nineteenth-century-hangover artist, too intellectual to be good as a musician; a fantasist, a futurist, and an antitraditionalist who spoiled music by his arrangements and editions.

Busoni's relationship to people he was coaching was mostly respectful, but he was demanding and acted as though they understood everything he was talking about. If they didn't, they would be quiet, disappear, practice, read, or study until they felt more or less at ease with him. He expected students to know the important areas of old music and the standard repertory, but wanted them to be alert to contemporary trends. He expected composers to master the theory of music through self-study. This centered for him around contrapuntal techniques. He did contrapuntal exercises every day and greatly influenced all the younger composers because he was an exemplary model of the great artist at work. Every morning he worked on his opera, «Doktor Faust» (his major opus in Zurich), yet he had energy left to lead other lives as performer, teacher, and social being.
He assigned major works to his piano students and expected them to be perfected and memorized before he heard them. Then he made interpretative suggestions and spoke of technical problems in detail. He used aphorisms and slogans to get his points across; these were passed around town and literally became commandments among his followers. One was, «When you have solved a problem you have established the basis for the next one»&Mac251;; a difficult slogan to understand was «Never look back», for he was very well aware of the past and on another occasion said, «The old and the new are the same.» He was demanding; when
Otto Strauss explained his absence from a lesson by pleading illness Busoni remarked: «Illness is a sign of a lack of talent.» His student [Francesco] Ticciati once played a Liszt etude for him, and Busoni went to the piano and said, «I think, Ticciati, this would be better» — and played the passage in a spectacular way. Ticciati responded, «Oh Maestro, how did you do that?» Busoni shrugged his shoulders. «One must practice.» The most devastating crack was delivered along with a pat on the back, to a student who had just finished playing his own composition: «One knows what one means, doesn't one?»
When Richard Strauss conducted at the Tonhalle,
Busoni and Strauss and friends met at the Bahnhof Enge restaurant after the concert for the usual refreshments, which meant champagne and pheasant. I was one of the younger generation allowed to listen to the great men talk. In this period there was a great «back to Mozart» movement led by composers as diverse as Strauss, Weingartner, Busoni, and Wolf-Ferrari.
On one evening, Strauss asserted that opera had moved as far as it could along the lines of post-Wagnerian orchestral sizes and libretto lengths. We needed to reduce the means, he said, to get back to the Mozartian orchestra, to use only moderately large casts. Instead of overdeveloped, pseudosymphonic passages, we should restore the set pieces — arias, duets, trios, ensembles — and the recitatives to their rightful places in opera in order to bring clarity to the musical and dramatic ideas. He spoke of Mozartian melodic writing and finished by saying, «Yes, we must go back to Mozart.»
His remarks were followed by a resounding silence.
Eventually Busoni said drily, «It took you a long time to discover this, Dr. Strauss.»
The two men were not on speaking terms for five years.

After I had worked with
Jarnach for about a year, he said to me, «I think it is time for you to meet Busoni. He has heard about you and is interested in you, and would like to meet you in his home.»
I was astonished by this invitation. I told Jarnach I was doubtful about some of the time-wasting hangers-on around Busoni.
Jarnach explained that Busoni called such people «Hamlet types» and didn't have the heart to turn them away, so he sometimes spent much time and took great pains to help them. I was afraid Busoni's personality would be to me like a flame to a moth, but Jarnach reassured me: «If he likes you he will invite you for black coffee, and if you bring scores, he might look at them and even give you some tips and suggestions — although these can be on quite a grand scale.»
It all sounded glamorous to me.
A few weeks later, we walked to Busoni's apartment at eightthirty in the evening.
Frau Busoni, a very beautiful woman, was extremely friendly and warm-hearted in her greeting as she answered the doorbell. In the music room Busoni was sitting behind his desk, smoking a cigar and drinking brandy.
He rose as Jarnach brought me forward, and bowed, saying, «I've heard about you; I've heard a great many things about you; and I have heard a great many fine things [viel schönes] about you. Will you have a cigar?» He handed me the box. «Some cognac?» he asked, leading me to a comfortable chair.
It was a princely reception. His manner was dignified, respectful, and warm. I settled down with the brandy and the cigar while Jarnach and Busoni proceeded to converse about recent musical events.
They discussed our orchestra concerts and Busoni asked me, «What are you doing in music besides composing?»
I explained that I played in the orchestra because I thought this was a good way to get an introduction to music.
«Oh, yes,» he said, «one gets to know music from the inside. Do you play the piano?»
I replied that I played badly, but Jarnach piped up, «No, he plays quite well.»
Busoni remarked that piano was a very practical instrument and to keep it up. We talked about other instruments, and I mentioned that I had learned percussion because I wanted to know something about rhythm instruments. He discussed these in detail and suggested using percussion sparingly.
I told him I was studying flute with Nada. We had some exchanges about French and German schools of flute playing. Busoni had reservations about both. The French was too superficial; the German was too rough technically, but he did admire Nada's impeccable style. After telling me again that he had heard quite a lot about my compositions from Andreae and others (my First Violin Sonata and two songs had been performed publicly and received good reviews), he said that he was most anxious to become acquainted with some of my music and asked if I would be kind enough to bring him some scores.
After the strange life as a student in Munich, it was a thrilling experience to have men like Andreae, Jarnach, and now the legendary Ferruccio Busoni treat me like a man, a professional, a fellow artist. This was what I wanted to be and what I felt I had accomplished at the age of eighteen, but to have it recognized on such an intimate social occasion surprised and gratified me.
After further conversation, we tried to leave, but Busoni wanted to know about my American background and about America in general. He said he had been in the United States several times and hadn't liked it. He hinted that at the New England Conservatory of Music he was put on a twenty-minute-lesson schedule and that it seemed like a factory. He also told, with much relish and, finally, raucous laughter, of a rehearsal of Beethoven's
Emperor Concerto with Mahler and the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra had stopped and he and Mahler were discussing some matters of balance and tempo. A lady board member watched the discussion and, noting that the orchestra was not playing, got up angrily, saying, «This will never do,» and left to report this work stoppage to the management and the board of directors. This led to Mahler's dispute with the Philharmonic and his subsequent resignation.
Busoni also complained that while he was giving a concert on a tour out West, a slide projector flashed on a screen the various sections of the sonata he was playing — introduction, bridge, first subject, transition, second subject, in the dominant or related key, etc. He insisted that the following Texas story was true: While playing, he happened to glance up and see a sign hanging high on the stage behind the piano. It said, «Don't shoot the pianist (non sparare al pianista); he's doing his best.»
In Chicago he had met and admired
Bernhard Ziehn, the theorist, whose ideas completely changed Busoni's concept of composing techniques; Wilhelm Middelschulte, the organist, a great contrapuntist; and the conductor Frederick Stock, who also won his admiration. One of his Boston students, Natalie Curtis, was among the first to collect Native American music. Busoni was interested in this music and in Indian culture in general. He had used material she had collected for his «Indian Fantasy» for piano and orchestra and his «Indian Diary» for piano solo. But for Busoni, as for most European artists, the United States was the place to find money, efficiency, and bad taste. (I have never known any of them to refuse the money.)
It was time to leave.
At the door he said, «I shall expect to receive some scores from you, and perhaps you will have a cup of coffee with me some afternoon.»
I was now on my best and most elegant behavior, said it would be an honor, thanked him for his hopsitality, bowed in an artistic manner, and left with Jarnach.
On my way home I thought about
Busoni's aesthetic, which he had related indirectly by talking of other composers. He had been enthusastic about the transparent and transcendental or floating quality in Mozart's music and commented that Andreae's interpretation of the Haffner Symphony was too heavy-handed and too Beethovenian. He then proceeded, again indirectly, to point out that Beethoven had held back the progress of musical composition by overemphasizing the heroic and the forceful. He admitted the greatness of the last sonatas, particularly the «Hammerklavier» Sonata, the G Major and Emperor concerti, and the Eroica Symphony. But he stated that Beethoven's followers had taken over the turgidity and heaviness of his works and that in doing so they had completely forgotten the superior musical virtues of lightness, transparency, and what I can only translate as a floating kind of transcendentalism that brought one into touch with a supernatural dimension, expressed fully in such works as Mozart's «Zauberflöte», «Don Giovanni», and his G-and C-minor piano concerti. Jarnach defended the very power of Beethoven that Busoni was trying to decry. As the conversation went on they made allusions to Wagner, who served as a horrible example of nineteenth-century composing; to Berlioz, the real pathbreaker and to Strauss, admired by Busoni for his intelligence but criticized for his overcomposing and his bombast.
Inspired by my visit with Busoni, I put
my First Sonata for Violin and Piano and my Sextet into what I thought was good shape. Jarnach and Andreae had no further comments about the two pieces. I had even attracted a group of young students and disciples who called me Maestro and worked as my copyists. I was so busy playing in the opera and symphony orchestra that I decided to attend black-coffee sessions at Busoni's only when I had scores and could hope for direct or indirect comment. I took him the violin sonata and sextet a few weeks later. Frau Busoni received me. I heard some mumbling and grumbling from inside the apartment, and after about five minutes she returned to tell me that her husband was unfortunately busy, but would I care to leave the scores so he could study them at his leisure? After the regal reception of the first evening, I found this chilling, but dutifully left the scores and went on my way.
When examining new works, Jarnach told me, Busoni preferred to read scores and not play them on the piano. He was a magnificent score player, but he felt that the piano detracted from a proper study of works that were for voice or other instruments. He had an uncanny way of sizing up works by paging through them and seemingly absorbing the musical content at a glance. He kept my two works for three weeks. Jarnach told me Busoni spent two full working days studying them. Busoni always sent handwritten letters or notes to people by messenger. He had no phone and said that he had probably not used a telephone more than twice in his lifetime.
A letter arrived by messenger, saying that he would be very happy to have my Sextet read through in his apartment, if he and I could find the musicians.
Jarnach reported to me that Busoni felt the editing was imprecise and that Busoni had some doubts about me if I thought so little of my ideas as to present them in such a casual way. This made quite an impact. Here I was, the great young genius and professional man-about-town, being told by a very great artist that my casual attitude about my own work raised some doubts in his mind about my dedication to music and my talent as a composer!
I refrained from advertising this experience, and Jarnach was discreet, but I began working with great care and cleaned up both the violin sonata and the sextet. (There is an ending to the Sextet story, which I learned only in 1965 or 1966.
Edward Weiss, a piano student of Busoni's in Zurich from 1917 to 1920, told me that Busoni was constantly talking about my Sextet and had remarked on several occasions that it was one of the finest works by a member of the younger generation of composers.) I did not try to arrange a reading at Busoni's apartment, but after I left Zurich one of my students, Hans Zimmerman, later director of the Zurich Opera, conducted the Sextet in a concert. Busoni and Jarnach attended and were pleased with the work.
Busoni was constantly working on various kinds of contrapuntal studies. He believed that within our twelve-tone system any harmony could be explained logically. But he also believed that the individuality of the composer and his real personality were expressed through the melodic-rhythmic line and, of course, in combinations of two or more of these lines that brought the contrapuntal principle into play. Jarnach showed me a three-part contrapuntal exercise to which Busoni had said a fourth voice could not be added. We worked at the example for some hours but it was not possible to get another satisfactory voice to fit into the style he had established.
Busoni insisted that everything must be imagined so strongly that testing at the instrument would be quite unnecessary. This presupposed, of course, knowing the possibilities and characteristics of the instruments very thoroughly. He also believed that one should invent original musical materials for each particular instrument, although this did not really match his theories about musical transcription. He professed that every composition was merely a transcription or a rearrangement of known sounds. His many transcriptions included rearrangements for piano of other composers' symphonic, operatic, and organ works.
He expected us to be familiar with different styles of music, and in his larger works like «Doktor Faust», the early piano concerto with male chorus, the Second Violin Sonata, and even «Arlecchino», he used various styles as a part of his overall form. This multistylistic composing caused consternation and aroused comment from the purists. He was a very individualistic composer who wanted this same kind of search for the «real self» to be lived by his students. He did not try to organize us into a school. Although accused by conservative German composers of being a futurist, he was actually trying to bridge the gap between the old and the new by accepting traditions but transforming them into music for the future. He also tried to blend the cultural characteristics of the Germans and the Italians — "the north and the south,» as he expressed it.
I played in
the first performance of his Concertino for Clarinet and Small Orchestra, which Edmund Allegra played in 1919 under Andreae's direction. It was graceful and witty, with a melodious slow movement. In this work, as in his «Arlecchino» and «Turandot», Busoni demonstrated what he called the «young classical» movement. This was the term he used whenever anybody turned out a good piece. Young classical movement meant «conclusion as perfection and conclusion after the organic development of the original idea.» The Concertino had a decidedly Mozartian lift about it without being imitative. It influenced me to write clearly heard music. With all of the Mahler-Bruckner repertory we were playing in the Tonhalle, there was a purity about Busoni's work that made a deep impression on me.
Another event that had strong impact and considerable influence on my attitude about composing was the first performance of his
Sarabande and Cortège, «reduced models» for his opera «Doktor Faust». I played celesta, other percussion, and third flute and piccolo in these pieces and was impressed by the great nobility of the «Sarabande», a quality hard to find in most of the contemporary music of those years. The «Cortege» was a fantastic processional that projected images from a dreamlike world. Busoni's music often had this power to transport one into a strangely beautiful but sometimes very fantastic world, a world of visions and transcendental experiences. Busoni conducted a rehearsal of these two pieces, and although his baton technique was in no way routine in the orchestra players' sense of the word, he animated the orchestra — mostly by eye contact — to do some extremely imaginative and expressive playing with intellectual force behind it.
The first performance of the Sarabande and the Cortege was on Busoni's birthday, April 1, 1919, and after the performance friends were
invited to Dr. Andreae's villa for supper and music. Andreae invited a few of the younger musicians, including me. After supper Andreae suggested to Busoni and the concertmaster, Willem de Boer, that they play the maestro's «Second Violin Sonata». This curious but beautiful work showed Busoni's mixture of styles to its best advantage and was given a magnificent performance. The work conveyed a moving kind of spirituality because of the selectivity Busoni had shown in forming the basic materials.
Busoni followed this piece with the
Liszt-Busoni Mephisto Waltz. I sat on a small platform right next to the keyboard, so I had a chance to observe him as well as to listen. The spirit of the piece was one of real Mephistophelian abandon, but it was a kind of enjoyable abandon that evoked beautiful pictures of wine, women, and the sounds of dance music on some hell-raising occasion. It was the epitome of all the wild parties that had ever existed.
One sensed an enormous tension between Busoni's consciousness and his subconscious drives and insights in this music. I was again astounded by Busoni's technical security. He played octaves so fast that his hands were a blur.

The effect of Busoni's musical personality on my own composing was strong. I worked for nine months on my next work, my First String Quartet with clarinet obbligato in the last movement. I composed much more slowly and carefully than I had in the past. My writing became much more contrapuntal and was tonal and polytonal at different times. Each of the string parts had a melodic life that was quite independent of the others, but I had also worked out a type of motivated development that gave to the harmonies a contrapuntal touch, even when the harmonies were only accompanying chords. I was much more preoccupied with what the work was expressing, with the musical style and idea and the expressive content, than in earlier works. I let this ripen as I myself became more introspective and found wider horizons than I had imagined existed. Above all, the overall form or gestalt of the entire quartet concerned me and was slowly revealed to me. The work was in three movements and was forty-five minutes long.
I showed the work in progress to Jarnach, who was most encouraging. When I finished the quartet, Jarnach suggested that I take it to Busoni for examination and criticism. I didn't like the idea of hanging around at Busoni's door with my quartet in hand, but I was anxious for him to read it so I left it with him.
A few weeks later, I heard from Jarnach that Busoni was extremely interested in my work and had spent a week studying it. He told Jarnach he was quite surprised at the amount of inventiveness it revealed and the care with which it had been worked out. The second movement contained a passage which I had composed when I was fourteen years old, a free use of a primitive type of twelve-tone writing. In the last movement there were several clearly defined polytonal and fugal passages. Busoni was delighted with the solution of the formal problems, and he made a speech to Jarnach, saying that he had to confess that he recognized qualities in this work that he had not fully recognized in my other two compositions. He thought the clarinet solo at the end was inspired Busoni made these comments on various occasions around town and they were of enormous help in establishing me further in the artistic circles of Zurich. I became again the fairhaired young composing genius.
My contact with Busoni continued rather casually in cafes and restaurantS Before I left for the United States in 1920, 1 made a farewell call on him, which went something like this:
«I have come, Maestro, to say goodbye.,
«What are your plans for the future?,
«I am going back to America.,
Busoni looked positively shocked and unbelieving. «America?, he said in a questioning tone of voice.
I said, «Yes, to the United States.,
He asked, after a pause, «Aren't you afraid?, And then relighting his cigar, he mumbled, «Too bad. You have real talent.»
I said I thought I should return to my native country.
Busoni settled back and gathered his thoughts as he poured out brandy. «One city is quite musical, and that is Chicago.
Frederick Stock and Wilhelm Middelschulte, the organist, and many former pupils of Bernhard Ziehn live there, and you may use my name in introducing yourself.»
He continued to point out the folly of my decision to go to the United States and spoke quite favorably about my musical career possibilities in Europe. I countered by pointing out that for an American to make a career in Switzerland or Europe might prove to be difficult. But he wouldn't accept my argument. He just shook his head and said that it made him sad to see such a promising young fellow leaving Europe to walk into a torture chamber. (In Chicago I soon learned what he meant.)

Neither Busoni nor Jarnach forgot
my First String Quartet. When they moved to Berlin in 1921, it was recommended for a performance by the Roth Quartet at the Melos Society, which in 1924 gave four concerts with the International Society for Contemporary Music. The four concerts included songs by Anton Webern; the String Trio by Zoltan Kodaly; the String Quartet, Opus 7, by Arnold Schoenberg; and Three Pieces for String Quartet by Igor Stravinsky. The series received international press coverage; this did me a great deal of good in Chicago, where I was then playing flute in a movie orchestra.
The reviews in Europe were quite good, and some critics pointed out that I was trying to combine modern dissonant music with a more simple and straightforward kind of writing. This was true enough and it still holds in my recent compositions. I always saw the simpler and more direct statements as a foil or contrast for the more complicated musical communications, and I considered these stylistic extremes as great contrasts but not incompatible. Five months after the premiere of my work, Busoni died on July 27, 1924.
One of the reasons of his own phenomenal accomplishments was that he had perfect recall. He once said that his heaviest burden was that he could never forget anything. If he were active today he would still be, as he was then, the towering virtuoso and fantastic musician of the contemporary scene. As a composer, he is only now coming into his own. Much of the composing by process, which has become so fashionable today, was anathema to him. Many of our contemporary improvements on older civilizations would not have appealed to him. He hated war, brutality, and violence, and seemed to reach a realm of pure spirit at far removed from his raucous and sometimes sharp and comments about human pretentiousness.
All in all, he was the rare geniuses that humankind produces.