Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio (Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto) Busoni (April 1, 1866 – July 27, 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.

Biography[link]

Ferruccio Busoni was born in Empoli in Tuscany in Italy, the only child of two professional musicians. His father, Ferdinando, was a clarinetist and man-about-town. Though his mother, Anna, had a German surname (Weiss) she was an Italian from Trieste, and a pianist. They were often touring during his childhood, and he was brought up in Trieste for the most part.

Busoni was a child prodigy. He made his public debut on the piano with his parents, at the age of seven. A couple of years later he played some of his own compositions in Vienna where he heard Franz Liszt play, and met Liszt, Johannes Brahms and Anton Rubinstein.

Busoni had a brief period of study in Graz with Wilhelm Mayer (who used the pseudonym of W. A. Rémy and also taught Felix Weingartner) and was also helped by Wilhelm Kienzl, who enabled him to conduct a performance of his own composition 'Stabat Mater' when he was twelve years old, before leaving for Leipzig in 1886 where he studied with Carl Reinecke (a former pupil of Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann). He subsequently held several teaching posts, the first in 1888 at Helsinki, where he met his wife, Gerda Sjöstrand, the daughter of Swedish sculptor Carl Eneas Sjöstrand, and began a lifelong friendship with Jean Sibelius. In 1890 he won the Anton Rubinstein Competition with his Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 31a. He taught in Moscow in 1890, and in the United States from 1891 to 1894 where he also toured as a virtuoso pianist.

Commemorative plate in Berlin

In 1894 he settled in Berlin, giving a series of concerts there both as pianist and conductor. He particularly promoted contemporary music. He also continued to teach in a number of masterclasses at Weimar, Vienna and Basel; among his pupils were Egon Petri and Stanley Gardner. His piano playing and philosophy of music influenced Claudio Arrau and Alfred Brendel.

In 1907, he penned his Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, lamenting the traditional music "lawgivers", and predicting a future music that included the division of the octave into more than the traditional 12 degrees. His philosophy that "Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny," greatly influenced his students Percy Grainger and Edgard Varèse, both of whom played significant roles in the 20th century opening of music to all sound.

Portrait of Ferruccio Busoni, 1916
by Umberto Boccioni
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome

During World War I, Busoni lived first in Bologna, where he directed the conservatory, and later in Zürich. He refused to perform in any countries that were involved in the war. He returned to Berlin in 1920 where he gave master classes in composition. He had several composition pupils who went on to become famous, including Kurt Weill, Edgard Varèse, Friedrich Löwe, Aurelio Giorni and Stefan Wolpe.

Other notable Busoni pupils included Egon Petri, Alexander Brailowsky, Natalie Curtis, Maud Allan (the famous dancer), Michael von Zadora, Louis Gruenberg, Dimitris Mitropoulos, Beryl Rubinstein, Edward Steuermann, Dimitri Tiomkin, Rudolf Ganz, Augusta Cottlow, Leo Kestenberg, Gregor Beklemischeff, Leo Sirota, Edward Weiss, Theophil Demetriescu, Theodor Szàntò, Gino Tagliapietra, Gottfried Galston, Otto Luening, Gisella Selden-Goth, Philipp Jarnach, Vladimir Vogel, Guido Guerrini, Woldemar Freeman, and Robert Blum.

Busoni died in Berlin from a kidney disease. He was interred in the Städtischen Friedhof III, Berlin-Schöneberg, Stubenrauchstraße 43-45. He left a few recordings of his playing as well as a number of piano rolls. He was an atheist.^[1]

His compositions were largely neglected for many years after his death, but he was remembered as a great virtuoso and arranger of Bach for the piano. Around the 1980s there was a revival of interest in his work.

He is commemorated by a plaque at the site of his last residence in Berlin-Schöneberg, Viktoria-Luise-Platz 11, and by the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition.

Music[link]

Ferruccio Busoni.

Most of Busoni's works are for the piano. Busoni's music is typically contrapuntally complex, with several melodic lines unwinding at once. Although his music is never entirely atonal in the Schoenbergian sense, his mature works, beginning with the Elegies, are often in indeterminate key. He was in contact with Schoenberg, and made a 'concert interpretation' of the latter's 'atonal' Piano Piece, Op. 11, No. 2 (BV B 97), in 1909. In the program notes for the premiere of his own Sonatina seconda of 1912, Busoni calls the work senza tonalità (without tonality). Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Liszt were key influences, though late in his career much of his music has a neo-classical bent, and includes melodies resembling Mozart's.

Some idea of Busoni's mature attitude to composition can be gained from his 1907 manifesto, Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, a publication somewhat controversial in its time. As well as discussing then little-explored areas such as electronic music and microtonal music (both techniques he never employed), he asserted that music should distill the essence of music of the past to make something new.

Many of Busoni's works are based on music of the past, especially on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (see below). The first version of Busoni's largest and best known solo piano work, Fantasia Contrappuntistica, was published in 1910. About half an hour in length, it is essentially an extended fantasy on the final incomplete fugue from Bach's The Art of Fugue. It uses several melodic figures found in Bach's work, most notably the BACH motif (B flat, A, C, B natural). Busoni revised the work a number of times and arranged it for two pianos. Versions have also been made for organ and for orchestra.

The tomb in Berlin

Busoni used elements of other composers' works. The fourth movement of An die Jugend (1909), for instance, uses two of Niccolò Paganini's Caprices for solo violin (numbers 11 and 15), while the 1920 piece Piano Sonatina No. 6 (Fantasia da camera super Carmen) is based on themes from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen.

Busoni also drew inspiration from non-European sources, including Indian Fantasy for piano and orchestra. It was composed in 1913 and is based on North American indigenous tribal melodies drawn from the studies of this native music by ethnomusicologist, Natalie Curtis Burlin.

Busoni was a virtuoso pianist, and his works for piano are difficult to perform. His Piano Concerto, Op. 39 (1904) is one of the largest such works ever written. Performances generally last over seventy minutes, requiring great stamina from the soloist. The concerto is written for a large orchestra with a male voice choir that is hidden from the audience's view in the last movement. British pianist John Ogdon, one of the champions of the work, called it "the longest and grandest piano concerto of all."^[2] (However, it was not the first piano concerto to include a chorus, as is often assumed; Daniel Steibelt wrote a similar work in 1820.)

Busoni's Turandot Suite (1905), probably his most popular orchestral work, was expanded into his opera Turandot in 1917, and Busoni completed two other operas, Die Brautwahl (1911) and Arlecchino (1917). He began serious work on his best known opera, Doktor Faust, in 1916, leaving it incomplete at his death. It was then finished by his student Philipp Jarnach, who worked with Busoni's sketches as he knew of them, but in the 1980s Antony Beaumont, the author of an important Busoni biography, created an expanded and improved completion by drawing on material that Jarnach did not have access to.

Aesthetics[link]

Busoni's music can be considered in the context of his three major aesthetic beliefs: essence, oneness and junge Klassizität (literally 'young classicism'). The essence of music suggests that music is free from any prescriptive labels; in other words, it is absolute. For example, Busoni asked us to question just what it was in a piece of instrumental church music, that was inherently 'church'. The oneness of music proposes that music is free from prescriptive devices, and that there are endless possibilities of composition. Finally, in his words, junge Klassizität (often mistaken for neo-classicism) included 'the mastery, the sifting and the turning to account of all the gains of previous experiments and their inclusion in strong and beautiful forms' (Busoni, 'Letter to Paul Bekker', 1920).

His music falls in that most fractious of periods, the fin de siècle, where chromatic elements became part of the structure of the music, rather than being decoration. By studying Busoni's aesthetic beliefs we can suggest that his music is metatonal - given that he sought to include the old with the new to create limitless compositions. This is not to suggest (as Pfitzner did, when he attacked The Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music by Busoni) that his music is without form, nor is it without any sense of tonality (a common mistake when one finds oneself between Classical and Serial music). This grey area of music history is more engaging because the traditional forms and pitch structures have taken a side road, a road that did not ultimately lead to serialism.

In order to understand Busoni's compositions one should take only what is given in the music, and interpret them through his aesthetic beliefs (though this is no easy task, and the everpresent binarism between what a composer says and what a composer does should be kept in mind). Busoni can be recognised as a man with a variety of musical abilities. He wrote compositions and libretti, performed as a concert pianist, transcribed pieces by other composers (such as Bach, Mozart and Liszt), taught master classes, and produced aesthetic writings. It is to this end that Busoni considered music a fusion of disciplines, or to use his words 'to recognise the whole phenomenon of music as 'oneness'. (Busoni, 'The Essence of Oneness of Music', 1921).

For more information on this see: Paul Fleet, Ferruccio Busoni: A Phenomenological Approach to his Music and Aesthetics (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009).

Editions and transcriptions[link]

Busoni edited and transcribed works by other composers, in particular those of Bach, Liszt, and Mozart.

The best known of these is his edition of the solo keyboard works of Bach, which he edited with the assistance of his students Egon Petri and Bruno Mugellini. He adds tempo markings, articulation and phrase markings, dynamics and metronome markings to the original Bach, as well as extensive performance suggestions. In the Goldberg Variations (BV B 35), for example, he suggests cutting eight of the variations for a "concert performance", as well as substantially rewriting many sections. The edition of the Goldberg Variations remains controversial, but has recently been reprinted. Its world premiere recording was by Sara Davis Buechner (aka David Buechner).

He created many other piano transcriptions of Bach works, including Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BV B 29, no. 2) (originally for organ) and Chaconne (BV B 24) from the Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004. Busoni became so well known as a transcriber of Bach's pieces, that the name "Bach-Busoni" was sometimes mistaken for his surname, and on one occasion his wife was introduced to someone as "Mrs. Bach-Busoni".^[3]

He edited three volumes of the 34-volume Franz Liszt Stiftung edition of Liszt's works, including most of the etudes. The Liszt edition was a scholarly endeavor and was faithful to the originals, but Busoni also prepared more freely adapted versions intended for concert performance, including transcriptions of the Paganini-Liszt etudes. The most famous of these is La Campanella (BV B 68), which has been championed by pianists such as Ignaz Friedman and Josef Lhévinne, and more recently by John Ogdon. Another famous transcription is his piano arrangement of Franz Liszt's organ work Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam" (BV B 59).

On a smaller scale, Busoni edited works by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Schoenberg and Schumann.

In the last seven years of his life Busoni worked sporadically on the Klavierübung, a compilation of exercises, transcriptions, and original compositions of his own, with which he hoped to pass on his accumulated knowledge of keyboard technique. It was issued in five parts between 1918 and 1922, and a second edition was published posthumously in 1925.

He had definite views on some composers. Franz Schubert he considered "a gifted amateur". He felt Beethoven did not have the technique to express his emotions. He ridiculed Robert Schumann's Carnaval. But he considered Felix Mendelssohn "a master of undisputed greatness" and "an heir of Mozart". He was planning to play some of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words in a series of recitals in London in the year of his death.^[4]

Recordings by Busoni[link]

Audio recordings[link]

His recorded output on gramophone record was very limited, and unfortunately many of the original recordings were destroyed when the Columbia factory burnt down. The following pieces (recorded for Columbia) survive from February 1922:

• Bach: Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C major (Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1)
• Bach-Busoni: Organ Chorale Prelude "Nun freut euch, lieben Christen"
• Beethoven-Busoni: Ecossaises
• Chopin: Étude in G-flat major, Op. 10, No. 5,
• Chopin: Étude in E minor, Op. 25, No. 5
• Chopin: Nocturne in F-sharp major, Op. 15, No. 2
• Chopin: Prelude in A major, Op.28 No.7
• Chopin: Prelude in A major, Op.28 No.7, and Étude, Op. 10, No. 5 (connected by an improvisatory passage)
• Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 (abbreviated to fit it on two sides of a 78 record)
• Liszt: La Campanella^{[citation needed]}

Busoni also mentions recording the Gounod-Liszt Faust Waltz in a letter to his wife in 1919. However, this recording was never released. Originally, he had recorded a considerable number of other pieces, including Liszt's Sonata in B minor^{[citation needed]} and Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata.^{[citation needed]} Unfortunately for posterity, Busoni never recorded his original works. Kaikhosru Sorabji, a fervent admirer, found the records to be the best piano recordings ever made, when they were first released.

Piano rolls[link]

Busoni made a considerable number of piano rolls, and a small number of these have been re-recorded onto vinyl record or CD. The value of these recordings in ascertaining Busoni's performance style is a matter of some dispute. Many of his colleagues and students expressed disappointment with the recordings and felt they did not truly represent Busoni's pianism. His student Egon Petri was horrified by the piano roll recordings when they first appeared on LP and said that it was a travesty of Busoni's playing. Similarly, Petri's student Gunnar Johansen who had heard Busoni play on several occasions, remarked, "Of Busoni's piano rolls and recordings, only Feux follets (Liszt's 5th Transcendental Etude) is really something unique. The rest is curiously unconvincing. The recordings, especially of Chopin, are a plain misalliance".

In 1950 Columbia Records released five individual long playing records entitled Great Masters of the Keyboard. They were designated Volume I, II, III, IV, and V. The records were sourced from piano rolls made by The Welte Company of Germany. Volume II (ML 4292) featured Busoni on side one. He plays three pieces: 1) Paganini-Liszt: La Campanella (Etude No. 3); 2) Chopin: Prelude No. 15 in D-flat Major, Op. 28 ("Raindrop"); 3) Beethoven-Liszt: Fantasia on "Ruins of Athens". The liner notes refer to Busoni as "One of the towering pianists of all time."

Media[link]

All the media files below are transcriptions of works by Johann Sebastian Bach.

	Awake, the Voice Commands Transcribed for piano from the Schübler Chorales, BWV 645, performed by Martha Goldstein Lord God, Heaven's Gate Unlocked Transcribed for piano. Performed by Martha Goldstein Nun freut euch, liebe Christen Transcribed for piano. Performed by Debbie Hu Nun komm der Heiden Heiland Transcribed for piano. Performed by Neal O'Doan
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

See also[link]

• Fantasy on Themes from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni
• Neue Berliner Musikzeitung
• Friedrich Hieronymus Truhn

References[link]

1. ^ Sergio Sablich, Rossana Dalmonte, Ferruccio Busoni e la Germania degli anni Venti, Assessorato alla Cultura del Trentino-Alto Adige, Bolzano, 1986, p. 211.
2. ^ Ates Orga, Volume 72 of Philips' Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century series (set I on John Ogdon)
3. ^ Telegraph
4. ^ Andrew Porter, Liner notes to the Walter Gieseking recording of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words, Angel 35428

Further reading[link]

• Antony Beaumont. Busoni the Composer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
• Della Couling. Ferruccio Busoni: "A Musical Ishmael". Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2005.
• Judith Crispin. The esoteric musical tradition of Ferruccio Busoni and its reinvigoration in the music of Larry Sitsky : the operas Doktor Faust and The Golem / with a preface by Larry Sitsky Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, N.Y. : 2007
• Edward J. Dent. Ferruccio Busoni: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933.
• Jürgen Kindermann. Thematisch-chronologisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Ferruccio B. Busoni. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1980.
• Marc-André Roberge. Ferruccio Busoni: A Bio-Bibliography. New York, Westport, Conn., London: Greenwood Press, 1991.
• Larry Sitsky. Busoni and the Piano: The Works, the Writings, and the Recordings. New York, Westport, Conn., London: Greenwood Press, 1986, 409 pp. Second edition published by Pendragon Press as no. 3 of its Distinguished Reprints series (2009), 414 pp.
• The Piano Quarterly Issue No. 108 (Winter 1979-80) has Busoni as the feature composer. Interviews with Gunnar Johansen and Guido Agosti.

External links[link]

• Ferruccio Busoni website featuring pre-WWII materials
• The Infography about Ferruccio Busoni
• List of Works From klassika.info (German)
• Ferruccio Busoni in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• Works by Ferruccio Busoni at Project Gutenberg
• An English translation of Sketch Of A New Esthetic Of Music from 1911 at archive.org

Music scores[link]

• Free scores by Ferruccio Busoni at the International Music Score Library Project
• 4 Poesie liriche Op.40 for chorus Score from Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection

Recordings and MIDI files[link]

• Recording of Busoni's transcription of Bach's Chaconne in D minor by Boris Giltburg in MP3 format
• Ferruccio Busoni String Quartet Nos.1 and 2, with short biography & soundbites
• Kunst der Fuge: Ferruccio Busoni - MIDI files
• Piano Rolls (The Reproducing Piano Roll Foundation)

Don Juan in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, a painting by Max Slevogt

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2011)

Don Juan (Spanish, or "Don Giovanni" in Italian) is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630. Evidence suggests it is the first written version of the Don Juan legend. Among the best known works about this character today are Molière's play Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665), Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1821), José de Espronceda's poem El estudiante de Salamanca (1840) and José Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio (1844). Along with Zorrilla's work (still performed every year on November 2nd throughout the Spanish-speaking world), arguably the best known version is Don Giovanni, an opera composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, first performed in Prague in 1787 (with Giacomo Casanova probably in the audience) and itself the source of inspiration for works by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Alexander Pushkin, Søren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Camus.

Don Juan is used synonymously for "womanizer", especially in Spanish slang, and the term Don Juanism is sometimes used as a synonym for satyriasis.

Don Juan legend[link]

Although the various iterations of the Don Juan myth show some variation, the basic storyline remains the same. Starting with Tirso's work, Don Juan is portrayed as a wealthy, seductive libertine who devotes his life to seducing women, taking great pride in his ability to seduce women of all ages and stations in life. His life is also punctuated with violence and gambling, and in many interpretations (Tirso, Espronceda, Zorrilla), he kills Don Gonzalo, the father of a girl he has seduced, Doña Ines. This leads to the famous last supper scene, whereby Don Juan invites the dead father to dinner. The ending depends on which version of the legend one is reading. Tirso's original play was meant as religious parable against Don Juan's sinful ways, and ends with his death, having been denied salvation by God. Other authors and playwrights would interpret the ending in their own fashion. Espronceda's Don Felix walks into hell and to his death of his own volition, whereas Zorrilla's Don Juan asks for, and receives, a divine pardon. The figure of Don Juan has inspired many modern interpretations.

Pronunciation[link]

In Castilian Spanish, Don Juan is pronounced [doŋˈxwan]. The usual English pronunciation is /ˌdɒnˈwɑːn/, with two syllables and a silent "J". However, in Byron's epic poem it rhymes with ruin and true one, indicating that it was intended to have the trisyllabic spelling pronunciation /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/. This would have been characteristic of his English literary predecessors who often deliberately imposed partisan English pronunciations on Spanish names, such as Don Quixote /ˌdɒnˈkwɪksət/.

Chronology of works derived from the story of Don Juan[link]

This section may contain excessive, poor or irrelevant examples. You can improve the article by adding more descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for further suggestions. (May 2010)

Seventeenth century[link]

• 1630: Tirso de Molina's play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
• 1643: Paolo Zehentner's play Promontorium Malae Spei
• 1650: Giacinto Andrea Cicognini's play Il convitato di pietra
• 1658: Dorimon (Nicolas Drouin's) Le festin de pierre, ou le fils criminel
• 1659: Jean Deschamps, Sieur de Villiers's play Le Festin de Pierre ou le Fils criminel
• 1665: Molière's comedy Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre
• 1669: Rosimon's Festin de pierre, ou l’athée foudroyé
• 1676: Thomas Shadwell's play The Libertine
• 17th century: L'ateista fulminato, Italian play by unknown author

Eighteenth century[link]

• 1714?: Antonio de Zamora's play No hay plazo que no se cumpla ni deuda que no se pague o convidado de piedra^[1]
• 1730: Antonio Denzio's opera La pravità castigata, with music mainly by Antonio Caldara
• 1736: Carlo Goldoni's play Don Giovanni Tenorio ossia Il dissoluto
• 1761: Christoph Willibald Gluck's and Gasparo Angiolini's ballet Don Juan
• 1776: Vincenzo Righini's opera Il convitato di pietra
• 1787: Giovanni Bertati's opera Don Giovanni, music by Giuseppe Gazzaniga
• 1787: Lorenzo da Ponte's opera Don Giovanni, music by Mozart

Nineteenth century[link]

• 1813: E.T.A. Hoffmann's novella Don Juan (later collected in Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier)
• 1821: Byron's epic poem Don Juan
• 1829: Christian Dietrich Grabbe's play Don Juan und Faust
• 1830: Pushkin's play Каменный гость (Kamenny Gost', The Stone Guest) set as an opera in 1872
• 1831: Alexandre Dumas' play Don Juan de Maraña
• 1831: Balzac's short story L'Élixir de longue vie (The Elixir of Life)
• 1834: Prosper Mérimée's novella Les âmes du Purgatoire
• 1840: José de Espronceda's El estudiante de Salamanca
• 1841: Franz Liszt's Réminiscences de Don Juan on themes from the Mozart opera
• 1843: Søren Kierkegaard's Either/or in which he discusses Mozart's musical interpretation of Don Giovanni, and includes another text which develops a similar character called Johannes ("Diary of a seducer").
• 1844: Nikolaus Lenau's play Don Juan
• 1844: José Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio
• 1857: Charles Baudelaire's poem Don Juan aux enfers (Don Juan in Hell) in Les Fleurs du Mal
• 1862: Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's verse drama Don Juan
• 1872: Alexander Dargomyzhsky's opera The Stone Guest after Puskin
• 1874: Guerra Junqueiro's poem A morte de D. João
• 1878: The Finding of Don Juan by Haidee, painting by Ford Madox Brown
• 1883: Paul Heyse's "Don Juans Ende"
• 1888: Richard Strauss' symphonic poem Don Juan
• 1889: Vernon Lee's short story 'The Virgin of the Seven Daggers', in which Don Juan raises a Moorish princess from the grave in order to seduce her

Twentieth century[link]

• 1903: George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman; the third act's dream sequence is often played by itself as Don Juan in Hell
• 1902–1905: Ramón del Valle-Inclán's Las sonatas
• 1906 : Ruperto Chapí's opera Margarita la tornera, based on José Zorrilla's dramatic poem. This features a seducer of women known as Don Juan Alarcon.
• 1907: Guillaume Apollinaire's novel Les exploits d'un jeune Don Juan
• 1910: Gaston Leroux's novel Phantom of the Opera, which includes an opera called Don Juan Triumphant.
• 1910–1912: Aleksandr Blok's The Commander's Footsteps (Шаги командора).
• 1912: Lesya Ukrainka's Stone Host (Кам'яний господар), a dramatic poem.
• 1913: Jacinto Grau's play Don Juan de Carillana; also, the play El burlador que no se burla (1927) and the essay Don Juan en el tiempo y en el espacio (1954)
• 1921: Edmond Rostand's play La dernière nuit de Don Juan
• 1922: Azorín's Don Juan
• 1926: Ramón Pérez de Ayala's novel and play Tigre Juan
• 1926: Don Juan, starring John Barrymore, silent film with Vitaphone soundtrack.
•  ?: Serafín and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero's play Don Juan
• 1928: Don Juan in der Mädchenschule, directed by Reinhold Schünzel, starring Ernst Behmer, Adolphe Engers and Carl Geppert
• 1932: short story Don Juan's Confession in Karel Čapek's Apocryphal Tales (Kniha apokryfů)^[2]
• 1934: Miguel de Unamuno's Don Juan
• 1934: The Private Life of Don Juan, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.'s last film
• 1934–1949: André Obey: Don Juan
• 1936: Ödön von Horváth's Don Juan kommt aus dem Krieg (Don Juan comes back from the war)
• 1938: Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel "After the Death of Don Juan"
• 1940: Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Albert Camus. Published by Librarire Gallimard (1942) and by Alfred A. Knopf (1955, 1983) and First Vintage International Editions (1991) in English as The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays. In Camus' anti-suicide treatise, Don Juan is one of three 'Absurd Men', 'heroes' who overcome life with their attitude.
• 1942: Paul Goodman's novel Don Juan or, The Continuum of the Libido, edited by Taylor Stoehr, 1979.
• 1942: Franz Zeise's novel Don Juan Tenorio
• 1944: Josef Toman Don Juan
• 1946: Suzanne Lilar, play "Le Burlador", an original reinterpretation of the myth of Don Juan from the female perspective that revealed a profound capacity for psychological analysis.
• 1949: Adventures of Don Juan, film starring Errol Flynn
• 1950: Don Juan, film directed by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia
• 1952: "A Story of Don Juan", a short ghost story by V.S. Pritchett
• 1953: Max Frisch's Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie; also Nachträgliches zu Don Juan
• 1954: Ronald Frederick Duncan's play Don Juan
• 1955: Ingmar Bergman's play Don Juan
• 1955: Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo as Don Juan in several episodes (Season 4, Episode #6, #9, #10, #17, #21) of I Love Lucy, the television series.
• 1956: Buddy Holly's song Modern Don Juan
• 1957: Georges Bataille's novel "Blue of Noon", an adaptation of the Don Juan story set in 1930s fascist Europe
• 1958: Henry de Montherlant's play Don Juan
• 1959: Roger Vailland's play Monsieur Jean
• 1960: Ingmar Bergman film Djävulens öga(The Devil's Eye)
• 1963: Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's novel Don Juan
• 1967: In the Star Trek Episode from the first season Shore_Leave_(Star_Trek) Yeoman Tonia Barrows is accosted by Don Juan.
• 1969: Jan Švankmajer's Don Šajn (Don Juan); a short retelling of the Don Juan legend featuring live-action, stop-motion animation, and marionettes.
• 1969/1970: Donna Juanita, a song performed by Swedish artist Monica Zetterlund, part of the revue and TV-show "Spader, Madame!" by comedians Hasseåtage, based on a musical piece by Franz Schubert (Sixth Symphony, Second Movement) - the theme of the lyrics is to show the gender inequality in the fact that Don Juan's philandering behaviour would never have been accepted in a woman
• 1970: The Stoned Guest, a half-act opera by P. D. Q. Bach
• 1973: Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme..., a film starring Brigitte Bardot
• 1974: Derek Walcott's play, The Joker of Seville
• 1975: Lars Gyllensten's novel I skuggan av Don Juan (In the shadow of Don Juan)
• 1980: New York City no-wave artists Mars and DNA recorded a collaborative opera based on Don Giovanni entitled John Gavanti
• 1983: Carlos Morton's play, Johnny Tenorio
• 1987: In the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom Of the Opera, the Phantom both writes and stars in a fictional opera named Don Juan Triumphant.
• 1987: Post-minimalist composer Elodie Lauten wrote an opera based on a feminist variation of the legend entitled "The Death of Don Juan"
• 1988: The Pet Shop Boys song "Don Juan", which used the story as a metaphor for the seduction of the Balkans by Nazism during the 1930s
• 1991: Georges Pichard's Exploits d'un Don Juan, comic from Apollinaire's novel
• 1995: Don Juan DeMarco, film starring Johnny Depp in the role of Don Juan, and also starring Marlon Brando
• 1997: David Ives' comedy Don Juan in Chicago

Twenty-first century[link]

• 2003: Félix Gray's musical comedy Don Juan
• 2004: Peter Handke's novel Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst) ("Don Juan (Told by Himself)")
• 2005: José Saramago's play Don Giovanni ou O Dissoluto Absolvido (Don Giovanni or The Dissolute Acquitted).
• 2005: Jim Jarmusch's film Broken Flowers.
• 2006: Don Juan in Soho, a play by Patrick Marber
• 2009: Kasper Bech Holten's film Juan

Both the Flynn and Fairbanks versions turn Don Juan into a likeable rogue, rather than the heartless seducer that he is usually presented as being. The Flynn movie even has him successfully foiling a treasonous plot in the Spanish royal court. Shaw's play turns him into a philosophical character who enjoys contemplating the purpose of life.

References[link]

1. ^ http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Zamora
2. ^ Apocryphal Tales, Karel Čapek.

Further reading[link]

• Macchia, Giovanni (1995) [1991] (in Italian). Vita avventure e morte di Don Giovanni. Milano: Adelphi. ISBN 88-459-0826-7. 
• Said Armesto, Víctor (1968) [1946] (in Spanish). La leyenda de Don Juan. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. 
• Guillaume Apollinaire: Don Juan (1914).
• Michel de Ghelderode: Don Juan (1928).

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Don Juan

• Don Juan Archiv Wien (in German)
• Text of Molière's Dom Juan' (in French)
• Encyclopædia Britannica article about Don Juan
• Armand E. Singer: A Bibliography of the Don Juan Theme 1954-2003
• "Juan!...Juaaan!!!" Sample of an alternative Don Juan story
• "Flowers of Evil", Charles Baudelaire

Adolf Busch, his wife and daughter, with Arturo Toscanini (in hat)

Adolf Georg Wilhelm Busch (August 8, 1891 – June 9, 1952) was a German-born violinist and composer.

Busch was born in Siegen in Westphalia. He studied at the Cologne Conservatory with Willy Hess and Bram Eldering. His composition teacher was Fritz Steinbach but he also learned much from his future father-in-law Hugo Grüters in Bonn.

In 1912, Busch founded the Vienna Konzertverein Quartet, consisting of the principals from the Konzertverein orchestra, which made its debut at the 1913 Salzburg Festival. After World War I, he founded the Busch Quartet, which from the 1920–21 season included Gösta Andreasson, violin, Karl Doktor, viola, and Paul Grümmer, cello. The quartet was in existence with varying personnel until 1951.

The additional member of the circle was Rudolf Serkin, who became Busch's duo partner at 18 and eventually married Busch's daughter, Irene. The Busch Quartet and Serkin became the nucleus of the Busch Chamber Players, a forerunner of modern chamber orchestras.

In 1927, with the rise of Adolf Hitler, Busch decided he could not in good conscience stay in Germany, so he emigrated to Basel, Switzerland. (Busch was not Jewish and was popular in Germany, but firmly opposed Nazism from the beginning.) On 1 April 1933 he repudiated Germany altogether and in 1938 he boycotted Italy. On the outbreak of World War II, Busch emigrated from Basel to the United States, where he eventually settled in Vermont. There, he was one of the founders with Rudolf Serkin of the Marlboro Music School and Festival.

The Busch Quartet was particularly admired for its interpretations of Brahms, Schubert, and above all Beethoven. It made a series of recordings in the 1930s that included many of these composers' works for string quartet. In 1941, it set down three Beethoven quartets that it had not previously recorded, including Opus 130. The Busch Quartet never recorded the Grosse Fuge, Opus 133; an arrangement was recorded by the Busch Chamber Players, with Busch leading from the first violin desk.

Busch was a great soloist, as well as a chamber musician, and live recordings exist of him playing the Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorák and Busoni Concertos, as well as the Brahms Double Concerto. In the studio he recorded concertos by Bach and Mozart, as well as the Brandenburg Concertos by Bach and the Concerti grossi, op.6, by Handel. He had a highly individual tone and great technique. Among his students were Stefi Geyer, Erica Morini and Yehudi Menuhin.

As a composer, Busch was influenced by Max Reger. He was among the first to compose a Concerto for Orchestra, in 1929. A number of his compositions have been recorded, including the Violin Concerto (A minor, opus 20, published 1922)^[1], String Sextet (G major, opus 40), Quintet for Saxophone and String Quartet, and several large scale works for Organ. Regarding the latter, Busch once remarked that if he could come back after his death he would like to return as an organist.

He was the son of the luthier Wilhelm Busch; brother of the conductor Fritz Busch, the cellist Hermann Busch, the pianist Heinrich Busch and the actor Willi Busch, and grandfather of the pianist Peter Serkin. An exhaustive two-volume biography of Busch by Tully Potter was published in 2010 by Toccata Press ^[2]

References[link]

External links[link]

• www.angel.org/busch/background.htm
• Free scores by Adolf Busch at the International Music Score Library Project

Bruno Walter (September 15, 1876 – February 17, 1962) was a German-born conductor. Born in Berlin, he lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939. Though he was born Bruno Schlesinger, he began using Walter as his surname in 1896, and officially changed his surname to Walter upon becoming a naturalised Austrian in 1911. Walter was active as a composer for many years, but his works have not entered the repertoire.

Biography[link]

The young Bruno Walter

Bruno Walter, 1912

Early life[link]

Born near Alexanderplatz in Berlin to a middle-class Jewish family as Bruno Schlesinger, he began his musical education at the Stern Conservatory at the age of eight, making his first public appearance as a pianist when he was nine. However, following visits to one of Hans von Bülow's concerts in 1889 and to Bayreuth in 1891, he changed his mind and decided upon a conducting career. He made his conducting début at the Cologne Opera with Albert Lortzing's Der Waffenschmied in 1894. Later that year he left for the Hamburg Opera to work as a chorus director. There he first met and worked with Gustav Mahler, whom he idolized and with whose music he later became strongly identified.^[1]

Conducting[link]

In 1896, Schlesinger took a conducting position at the opera house in Breslau – a job found for him by Mahler. The conductor recorded that the director of this theater, Theodor Löwe, required that before taking up this position he change his name of Schlesinger, which literally means Silesian, "because of its frequent occurrence in the capital of Silesia",^[2] although other sources attribute the change to a desire to make his name sound less Jewish.^[3] In 1897, he took an opera-conducting position at Pressburg, and in 1898 he took one at the Riga Opera, Latvia. Then Walter returned in 1900 to Berlin, where he assumed the post of Royal Prussian Conductor at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, succeeding Franz Schalk; his colleagues there included Richard Strauss and Karl Muck. While in Berlin he also conducted the premiere of Der arme Heinrich by Hans Pfitzner, who became a lifelong friend.

In 1901, Walter accepted Mahler's invitation to be his assistant at the Court Opera in Vienna. Walter led Verdi's Aida at his debut. In the following years Walter's conducting reputation soared as he was invited to conduct across Europe – in Prague, in London where in 1910 he conducted Tristan und Isolde and Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers at Covent Garden, and in Rome. A few months after Mahler's death in 1911, Walter led the first performance of Das Lied von der Erde in Munich, as well as Mahler's Symphony No. 9 in Vienna the next year.

Munich[link]

Although Walter became an Austrian citizen in 1911, he left Vienna to become the Royal Bavarian Music Director in Munich in 1913. In January of the following year Walter conducted his first concert in Moscow. During the First World War he remained actively involved in conducting, giving premieres to Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates as well as Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina. In 1920 he conducted the premiere of Walter Braunfels' Die Vögel.

In Munich, Walter was good friends with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII).^[4]

United States[link]

Walter ended his Munich appointment in 1922 and left for New York in 1923, working with the New York Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall; he later conducted in Detroit, Minnesota and Boston.

Berlin[link]

Back in Europe Walter was re-engaged for several appointments, including Berlin in 1925 as musical director at the Städtische Opera, Charlottenburg, and in Leipzig in 1929. He made his debut at La Scala in 1926. In London, Walter was chief conductor of the German seasons at Covent Garden from 1924 to 1931.

In his speeches in the late 1920s, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler complained bitterly about the presence of Jewish conductors at the Berlin opera, and mentioned Walter a number of times, adding to Walter's name the phrase, "alias Schlesinger."^[5] In 1933, when the Nazis took power, they undertook a systematic process of barring Jews from artistic life.

While rehearsing Mahler's ninth symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic, Nazis entered the theater to take Walter. The orchestra hurried the maestro out the back door. He left for Austria and did not see his family for five years. Later, when listening to a playback of a Columbia recording of the first movement of the ninth symphony, principal players of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra were ushered out of the booth as Walter began to weep. After the door was closed, the musicians were told, "Gentlemen, you must excuse him. This was the place in the symphony when the Nazis entered the hall. He was smuggled out the back door and didn't see his family for five years."[told by James Decker, principal horn of the Columbia Symphony and witness to the event]

Austria became his main center of activity for the next several years, although he was also a frequent guest conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1934 to 1939, and made guest appearances such as in annual concerts with the [[]] from 1932 to 1936. At the time of the Anschluss in 1938, Walter was at a recording session in Paris; France offered Walter citizenship, which he accepted. (His elder daughter Lotte was in Vienna at the time, and was arrested by the Nazis; Walter was able to use his influence to free her. He also used his influence to find safe quarters for his brother and sister in Scandinavia during the war.)

Walter's daughter Marguerite was murdered on August 21 of 1939 in Berlin by her husband, who then killed himself; his motive was jealousy over her growing relationship with the Italian basso Ezio Pinza. Walter's wife fell into a permanent depression, and Walter blamed himself for the tragedy, as his daughter had met Pinza only because Walter had made special efforts to hire him to sing the role of Don Giovanni.

Return to the United States[link]

On November 1, 1939, he set sail for the United States, which became his permanent home. He settled in Beverly Hills, California, where his many expatriate neighbors included the German writer Thomas Mann.

While Walter had many influences within music, in his Of Music and Making (1957) he notes a profound influence from the philosopher Rudolf Steiner. He notes, "In old age I have had the good fortune to be initiated into the world of anthroposophy and during the past few years to make a profound study of the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Here we see alive and in operation that deliverance of which Friedrich Hölderlin speaks; its blessing has flowed over me, and so this book is the confession of belief in anthroposophy. There is no part of my inward life that has not had new light shed upon it, or been stimulated, by the lofty teachings of Rudolf Steiner ... I am profoundly grateful for having been so boundlessly enriched ... It is glorious to become a learner again at my time of life. I have a sense of the rejuvenation of my whole being which gives strength and renewal to my musicianship, even to my music-making."

During his years in the United States, Walter worked with many famous American orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic (where he was musical adviser from 1947 to 1949, but declined an offer to be music director), and the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1946 onwards, he made numerous trips back to Europe, becoming an important musical figure in the early years of the Edinburgh Festival and in Salzburg, Vienna and Munich. His late life was marked by stereo recordings with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble of professional musicians assembled by Columbia Records for recordings. He made his last live concert appearance on December 4, 1960 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and pianist Van Cliburn. His last recording was a series of Mozart overtures with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra at the end of March in 1961. Although raised a Jew, near the end of his life Walter converted to Catholicism.^[6]

Death[link]

Bruno Walter died of a heart attack in his Beverly Hills home in 1962.

Work[link]

Recordings[link]

Caricature of Walter conducting

Walter's work was documented on hundreds of recordings made between 1900 (when he was 24) and 1961. Most listeners became familiar with him through the stereo recordings made in his last few years, when his health was declining. But many critics agree that these recordings do not fully convey what Walter's art must have sounded like in its prime. For one thing, the late recordings sometimes have a geniality that contrasts with the more mercurial, intense, and energetic performances Walter recorded in earlier decades. For another, the late recordings focus mostly on music from Mozart through Mahler, but in Walter's youth he often conducted what was then newer music (including Mahler).

Walter worked closely with Mahler as an assistant and protege. Mahler did not live to perform his Das Lied von der Erde or Symphony No. 9, but his widow, Alma Mahler, asked Walter to premiere both. Walter led the first performance of Das Lied in 1911 in Munich and of the Ninth in 1912 in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic. Decades later, Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic (with Mahler's brother-in-law Arnold Rose still the concertmaster) made the first recordings of Das Lied von der Erde in 1936 and of the Ninth Symphony in 1938. Both were recorded live in concert, the latter only two months before the Nazi Anschluss drove Walter (and Rose) into exile.

These recordings are of special interest for the performance practices of the orchestra and also for intensity of expression. Walter was to re-record both works successfully in later decades. His famous Decca Das Lied von der Erde with Kathleen Ferrier, Julius Patzak, and the Vienna Philharmonic was made in May, 1952, and he recorded it again in studio with the New York Philharmonic in 1960. He conducted the New York Philharmonic in the 1957 stereo recording of the second symphony. He recorded the Ninth in stereo in 1961. These recordings, as well as his other American recordings, were released initially by Columbia Records and later on CD by Sony.

Since Mahler himself never conducted the Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, Walter's performances cannot be taken as documentations of Mahler's interpretations. But in the light of Walter's personal connection with the composer, and his having given the original performances, they have another kind of primary authenticity. In his other (greatly esteemed) recordings of Mahler – various songs and the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth symphonies – there is the great added interest that he had heard Mahler's own performances of most of them.

Walter made many highly acclaimed recordings of other great Germanic composers, such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss Jr., and Anton Bruckner, as well as of Bach, Wagner, Schumann, Dvorak, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, and others. Walter was a leading conductor of opera, particularly known for his Mozart, and recordings of some from the Metropolitan Opera and the Salzburg Festival are now available on CD. So are performances of Wagner, Verdi, and Beethoven's Fidelio. Also of great interest are recordings from the 1950s of his rehearsals of Mozart, Mahler, and Brahms, which give insight into his musical priorities and into the warm and non-tyrannical manner (as contrasted with some of his colleagues) with which he related to orchestras.

Compositions[link]

Walter composed actively until at least 1910. As detailed in the biography by Erik Ryding and Rebecca Pechefsky (referenced below) his compositions include:

• Symphony No. 1 in D minor (composed circa 1907; premiered in Vienna, 1909; recorded by CPO #777 163-2, 2008)
• Symphony No. 2 in E (composed circa 1910)
• Symphonic Fantasia (composed 1904; premiered by Richard Strauss in 1904)
• String Quartet in D major (1903; premiered in Vienna by the Rose Quartet)
• Piano Quintet (premiered in 1905 in Vienna by the Rose Quartet)
• Piano Trio (premiered in 1906 in Vienna by Walter and members of the Rose Quartet)
• Sonata for Violin and Piano in A (circa 1908; premiered by Walter and Rose in Vienna in February 1909; recorded VAI vaia #1155, 1997)
• Incidental music for "King Oedipus" (1910. The production was an adaptation of the Sophocles play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was directed by Max Reinhardt, and premiered in September, 1910 in Munich, followed by performances in Berlin, Cologne, and Vienna.
• Numerous songs
• Choral Works

Written works[link]

• Gustav Mahler's III. Symphonie. In: Der Merker 1 (1909), 9–11
• Mahlers Weg: ein Erinnerungsblatt. In: Der Merker 3 (1912), 166–171
• Über Ethel Smyth: ein Brief von Bruno Walter. In: Der Merker 3 (1912), 897–898
• Kunst und Öffentlichkeit. In: Süddeutsche Monatshefte (Oktober 1916), 95–110
• Beethovens Missa solemnis. In: Münchner Neueste Nachrichten (30. Oct. 1920), Beethoven suppl., 3–5
• Von den moralischen Kräften der Musik. Vienna 1935
• Gustav Mahler. Wien 1936
• Bruckner and Mahler. In: Chord and Discord 2/2 (1940), 3–12
• Thema und Variationen - Erinnerungen und Gedanken. Stockholm 1947
• Von der Musik und vom Musizieren. Frankfurt 1957
• Mein Weg zur Anthroposophie. In: Das Goetheanum 52 (1961), 418–21
• Briefe 1894–1962. Hg. L.W. Lindt, Frankfurt a.M. 1969

Notable recordings[link]

• 1935: Richard Wagner, Die Walküre (Act I), with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, feat. soloists Lotte Lehmann, Lauritz Melchior, Emanuel List, et al. (EMI Great Recordings of the Century, Naxos Historical)
• 1938: Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 9, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. (Dutton, EMI Great Artists of the Century, Naxos Historical)
• 1941: Ludwig van Beethoven, Fidelio, with the Metropolitan Opera, feat. soloists Kirsten Flagstad, Alexander Kipnis, Herbert Janssen, et al. (Naxos Historical)
• 1952: Gustav Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, feat. soloists Kathleen Ferrier and Julius Patzak. (Decca Legends, Naxos Historical)
• 1956: The Birth of a Performance: Walter's rehearsals and finished performance of Mozart's "Linz" Symphony, with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. A then-rare instance of rehearsals of a performance being issued on a commercial recording. (Sony Masterworks)
• 1958–1961: Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 4 and Symphony No. 6, with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. (Sony Bruno Walter Edition)
• 1960: Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 2 and Symphony No. 3, with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. (Sony Bruno Walter Edition)

Source: Grove Music Online

References[link]

• Holden, Raymond (2005). The Virtuoso Conductors: The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09326-1. 
• Ryding, Erik; Pechefsky, Rebecca (2001). Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08713-0. 
• Walter, Bruno (1946). Theme and Variations: An Autobiography. New York: A.A. Knopf. OCLC 564814. 
• Walter, Bruno (1961). Of Music and Music-Making. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. OCLC 394450. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bruno Walter

• The Bruno Walter Foundation
• Bruno Walter at Allmusic
• Bruno Walter in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• The Bruno Walter Papers in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
• Bruno Walters Heritage at Vienna Music University
• Page with an mp3 file: Bruno Walter conducts Gustav Mahler (1. Symphony, Trio of 2d Movement)
• Bruno Walter biography at Sony Classical
• Conducting the London Philharmonic