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Between Composition and Transcription: Ferruccio Busoni and Music Notation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2014

ERINN KNYT
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Abstract

‘The new art of music is derived from the old signs – and these now stand for the musical art itself.’1 With this statement, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) summarized his main criticism of traditional music notation – that it was lifeless and outdated. Based on an analysis of Busoni's organic method of keyboard notation (1909), an examination of composition sketches and performance scores, and an investigation of his writings about notation in aesthetic texts – in particular the Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1907) – this article shows how Busoni's multifaceted views about notation forged a middle ground between the work as text and the work as performance in an age enthralled to the idea of Werktreue. In addition, it traces the continuing influence of Busoni's ideas about notation on Arnold Schoenberg and other contemporaneous theorists and composers.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Transcription , March 2014 , pp. 37 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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