Ferruccio Busoni as Architect of Sound

Ferruccio Busoni was an innovator who wrote pieces where sound radiates from different directions, created montage formal structures, and freely used all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale without avoiding consonances. He also applied his understanding of tangible architectural spaces, buildings, and floor plans to his music, reconciling the spatial and temporal divide. This book explores how Busoni's spatialized architectural music left a lasting imprint on future generations of musicians and early film pioneers.

Format: Hardback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 04 May 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Ferruccio Busoni, the architect of sound, presents the composer as an innovator driven by a blend of past musical traditions and a contemporary fascination with experimentalism. In the twentieth century, Busoni crafted compositions that emanated from diverse directions, employed montage formal structures, and freely explored all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale, without shying away from consonances. This book unveils how he also applied his knowledge of tangible architectural spaces, buildings, and floor plans to his music, reconciling the spatial and temporal divide in a unique interdisciplinary approach. His groundbreaking innovation sparked and inspired new trends in pitch organization, the spatialization of sound, and the expansion of formal structures.

Beyond the confines of compositional innovation, Busoni engaged in a rich exchange of ideas with contemporary architects and artists. Through a comprehensive analysis of Busoni's compositional activities, musicologist Erinn E. Knyt brings Busoni's music into dialogue with more recent accounts of modernism in music that transcend elitist esotericism and notions of rupture with the past. Additionally, she facilitates a discourse between Busoni and other twentieth-century artists, exploring how Busoni's spatialized architectural music left a lasting imprint on future generations of musicians and early film pioneers.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197625491