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Berceuse élégiaque, Op. 42
Ferruccio Busoni
F
erruccio Busoni was the very model of a
cosmopolitan composer. His father, a
professional clarinetist, was of Corsican
stock; his mother, a pianist, was German on
her father’s side and Italian on her mother’s.
Ferruccio spent several of his early years in
the melting pot of Trieste with his mother
and his German grandfather, while his father
earned his musical living elsewhere.
A product of the Vienna Conservatory,
Busoni was one of the premier pianists of
his time, acclaimed for a monumental virtuoso style marked by incisive attacks and
magnificent sonority. He tended to downplay his activities as a pianist, preferring to
think of himself as a composer first and
foremost. He composed the Berceuse elégiaque (Elegiac Lullaby) in London over the
course of just a few days, on the heels of his
mother’s death, which had occurred on October 3, 1909. Busoni adored his mother,
notwithstanding some friction involving his
marriage. (The composer was devoted to his
wife, and his mother apparently harbored
some jealousy.)
The Berceuse élégiaque is in no way
maudlin, but rather reflects the rarefied aesthetic and emotional world Busoni had come
to inhabit. He was explicit about the inspiration of this composition, even to the extent
of affixing the subtitle “Des Mannes Wiegenlied am Sarge seiner Mutter” (“The Man’s
Lullaby at his Mother’s Coffin”). What’s
more, he introduced the piece by way of a
quatrain of poetry he had written:
The child’s cradle rocks,
The hazard of his fate reels;
Life’s path fades,
Fades away into the eternal distance.
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The general sound, mysterious and disembodied, is produced with utmost delicacy
by a modest chamber orchestra in which
strings are muted and celeste, harp, and the
final whisper of a gong add unearthly color to
the languorously sustained lines of the other
instruments. When Busoni came to transform
this piece into a version for piano solo he underscored its haziness by instructing the pianist to depress both pedals unceasingly
throughout the movement’s middle section.
This will strike many listeners as the work of a
composer who was well acquainted with the
music of Debussy, although in an article in the
periodical Pan, Busoni argued (quite defensively) that his music, and the Berceuse élégiaque
in particular, was profoundly un-Debussyian:
With this piece … I succeeded for the first
time in hitting upon my own sound idiom
and in dissolving the form into the feeling.
This made it all the more surprising to me
to read of my work being taken for the art
IN SHORT
Born: April 1, 1866, in Empoli, near Florence,
Italy
Died: July 27, 1924, in berlin, germany
Work composed: October 1909, dedicated
“In memoriam Anna busoni, n. Weiss,
m. 3.Oct.MCMIX”
World premiere: February 21, 1911, by the
New York philharmonic, gustav Mahler,
conductor
Most recent New York Philharmonic
performance: March 6, 1993, Oliver Knussen,
conductor
Estimated duration: ca. 8 minutes
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of the Frenchman Debussy. I want to correct this error firmly. Debussy’s art propels
his personal and clearly defined feeling
out of his own nature, into the outer world.
I endeavor to draw upon the Infinite which
surrounds mankind and to give it back in
created form. … Debussy’s music interprets the most varied feelings and situations with similar sounding formulas; for
every subject I have endeavored to find different and suitable sounds. Debussy’s tone
pictures are parallel and homophonic; I
wish mine to be polyphonic and “multiversal.” In Debussy’s music we find the
chord of the dominant ninth as a harmonic foundation and the whole tone as a
melodic principle, without their merging
together. I try to avoid every system,
and to turn harmony and melody into indissoluble unity. He separates consonance
and dissonance; I teach the denial of
this difference. I “try,” I “want,” I “have
endeavored” — not that I have ever done it
wholly or comprehensively, for I feel I am
making a beginning whereas Debussy has
reached an end.
The piece also bears kinship to the emerging vocabulary of Korngold and Schreker; in
short, it is very much a composition of its
time. Schoenberg himself was deeply impressed by this work, and after hearing it in
Berlin in 1912 wrote to Busoni that it “really
moved me.” In his private diary, moreover,
Schoenberg confessed:
Until now I had not liked Busoni’s works.
But yesterday I liked the “Berceuse.”
Downright moving piece. Deeply felt. I
have been most unjust to him. Yet another!
Instrumentation: three flutes, oboe, two
clarinets and bass clarinet, four horns, gong,
celeste, harp, and strings.
A Poignant Philharmonic Premiere
busoni took great pains perfecting the details of the scoring of his Berceuse élégiaque and did not
release the piece for publication, or for an official premiere, until after he experienced it in orchestral run-throughs in London and berlin. The official premiere took place in New York City, on
February 21, 1911 — a historically charged entry in the archives of the New York philharmonic. It
figured on an “Italianate” program by the philharmonic at Carnegie Hall that also included
giuseppe Martucci’s piano Concerto No. 2, an overture by Leone Sinigaglia, an intermezzo by
Marco bossi, and Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony.
The conductor was gustav Mahler, then in his second season as the orchestra’s Music Director, and he was not in good
health. Suffering from throat trouble, he persevered to the end
of the concert despite a severe headache. A second performance of the same program went on as scheduled three days
later, with the orchestra’s concertmaster, Theodore Spiering,
deputizing for Mahler, as he would for the remainder of the season; busoni, however, consented to conduct his piece (though
not the other works) in this follow-up concert. Diagnosed with
bacterial endocarditis, a heart ailment that in the pre-antibiotic era was understood to be fatal, Mahler returned to Vienna,
where he died on May 18. The concert of February 21, at which
busoni’s haunting Berceuse élégiaque received its premiere,
was the last time Mahler would ever conduct anywhere.
Mahler, sailing for Europe in April 1911
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