Ferruccio Busoni: A Musical Ishmael

by Della Couling

The first full length biography of Busoni since Edward Dent's in 1933, this work contains a significant amount of material unavailable to Dent, and is not written under the restrictions imposed on Dent by Busoni's widow or the demands of others still living at the time. Drawing largely on Busoni's own letters to his parents, his wife, and his many friends, and much material published since his death on Busoni himself and on others with whom he came in contact. Couling offers a truer picture of the very complex genius, a Faustian figure torn between his allegiances to Germany and to Italy, between the demands (and attractions) of a life as a celebrity virtuoso pianist and those of a composer, between the family man and the restless seeker after solitude and contemplation.

Busoni was a forerunner in his ideas on what music was, is, and could be, which drew the fire of conservatives during his lifetime. His ideas on musical notation, the division of the scale, and opera were well ahead of his time, but in many cases are common practice today. Only recently has the veil of shadow been lifted from his work and ideas. Della Couling shines a deserving light on Busoni's life, ideas, and profound influence on contemporary musicology.

424 pages, Hardcover

First published December 10, 2004

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've always been a big fan of Busoni. His gigantic, crazy piano concerto is one of the best pieces of music I've ever heard and he always seemed like an interesting guy: an Italian who eschewed associations with Italian music and spent much of his life wandering around pre-World War I Europe dazzling people with his sweet keyboard skills and writing pretty awesome music. Given the time period and the figure he cut in the music world back in the day, you'd think a biography of the guy would be a lot more engaging but, sadly, it isn't. I can't tell if it's the over-reliance of the author on Busoni's correspondence (used now for the first time) or just the fact that for all his compositional and pianistic grandstanding, Busoni actually wasn't that interesting. I find the latter notion hard to believe, but I'd be hard-pressed to make an argument against it from this book.
Much of the book is dull, plodding meanderings through his letters and daily play-by-plays of very uninteresting things. Much weight here is given to his family life, much more so than his composing and we don't get much sense of it, despite the book's pretensions that it would show his works in a new light. I, for one, wanted more on the nitty-gritty of his own output and his own thoughts, not repetitive quotes about his dog.