The Concept of Absolute Melody in Ferruccio Busoni's Mature Style

Colin Davis, Sam Houston State University

Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) is perhaps best known as a virtuoso pianist and the author of one of the most influential treatises on modern music, Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (1907). Though less well known as a composer, the highly personal language Busoni developed in his mature works (ca. 1908-1924), a mixture of tonal, extended-tonal, and posttonal techniques, reflects the variety of practices progressive-minded early 20th-century composers engaged in during the transition from traditional tonality to post-tonal languages. One facet of his mature style was a renewed interest in polyphonic textures as a means of harmonic experimentation. He viewed a modern approach to polyphony as a way of breaking apart the unity of melody and harmony characteristic of previous eras and, by extension, asserting an "absolute melody," which contains its own inherent harmony, as an independent element within a musical setting. This presentation addresses the aesthetic concept of absolute melody as realized in passages from his mature works. The analyses attempt to unravel the complexity of the surface level through reduction and include modified Schenkerian notation, or linear analysis, in order to illustrate Busoni's projection of thematic material as an independent musical element both at the surface level and at deeper structural levels.