Busoni
Busoni—prophet. Where Bauer is a priest, Hofmann a wonder-child, Bachaus a poet, Ganz an efficient, Paderewski a magician, and Samaroff a failure—Busoni is a prophet. His voice arrests the senses, throws a silence over them. At first, the world is obscured; later the last trace of it is gone. The song of the prophet vibrates through new spaces. Listening ones follow without restraint, so great is the magnetic pull of it; they follow, enchanted, through new spaces to new and miraculous realms of life, where music is more real than ivory or pine.
With one paragraph’s deference to the clay-members, let them be informed that Ferruccio Busoni is a composer and concert-pianist, almost fifty years old, who began his study and piano-practice at a most tender age, and who is now considered to be something of an artist—that is, when he isn’t off pursuing some new notion about quarter-tones, or his one hundred and thirteen new scales for the pianoforte. He has these aberrations. But then, musicians are crazy anyway. At a recent concert with the Chicago Symphony Mr. Busoni played one concerto by Saint-Saëns and another one which he himself composed. Incidentally, Mr. Busoni’s composition was based on North America. It is the least bit regrettable that we are so busy and hurried that Mr. Busoni could introduce us, through a work of art, to the country we hurry over. He played these works on an inferior piano and did several questionable things in his playing, such as let his wrist sag, etc. His personal friends insist that he hates to play the piano. Let the clay-members join the blessed minority in silent thanksgiving that he has hated it hard enough to have scornfully brushed aside the limitations of wood and wire, that his hatred is greater than a world of near-love.
On his recent appearance here, at the very start, Busoni passed above the norm of virtuosity in piano-manipulation, and the tonal explorations began. It was quite bewildering. The mob thought it was fine. The authorities had to admit that it was good. Young ladies considered it divine. Professional musicians—always self-appointed and astute critics—were prevented from indulging in their customary snap-judgments while the artist played, and were held, opinionless, to the music. The listeners who possessed not only sensitive ears but also receptive minds and fluent imaginations were swung clear of earth, were lifted into a region where no dead wall separated them from the strong voice of the prophet. He was saying tremendous things. He forced upon smaller minds the rush, the splendor, the glittering plunge of tones, such as they had never dreamed of before. He gave them the dream. And this was what the yet smaller and the very smallest minds, down between the dead walls, admired, but sanctioned grudgingly, as brilliant style. There were noisy hands and exclamations, as at a cock-fight. But the blessed minority heard and recognized the piano-playing of today, tomorrow, and the future. The instrument had at last shaken off the curse of apartment houses, and had come into its own.
Wilhelm Bachaus sings the fancies of a dreamy young poet; Paderewski thrills his audience whether he smiles or sulks at the keyboard; Bauer intones the affirmation of a lovely faith in tonal beauty; Godowsky presents necklaces of perfectly carven gems to the subtly responsive ones; these men and a few others justify their own uses of the pianoforte. They are strongly individual, and are not to be balanced, one against another. Ferruccio Busoni, however, would cast a shadow if he traveled earthward from his altitudes. He is solitary and unique. Others work up through human difficulties in order to perfect their means of expressing tonal ideals. Busoni takes their goal as a fresh starting-point, and tonal ideals become a further means, to voice the surge of strength which he essentially is, to express the resistless, flashing drive of the universe. His flying clusters of notes are the tail of a comet, of some swift participator in cosmic rhythms. The swirl of his music-fire is a glorious something for which the pianoforte must providentially have been created—a genuine offering to the vigilant keepers of Beauty.
Herman Schuchert.