The Bach-Busoni Editions are a series of publications by the Italian pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni containing primarily piano transcriptions of keyboard music by Johann Sebastian Bach. They also include performance suggestions, practice exercises, musical analysis, an essay on the art of transcribing Bach's organ music for piano, an analysis of the fugue from Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' sonata, and other related material. The later editions also include free adaptations and original compositions by Busoni which are based on the music of Bach. Busoni issued his Bach editions over a nearly 30-year span in two collections: the 25-volume Busoni Ausgabe and the Bach-Busoni Collected Edition, which was first issued in 6 volumes in 1916, and subsequently in 7 volumes in 1920. A small collection of selected excerpts with transcriptions of organ and violin music was also published separately in 1916 as Sechs Tonstücke.
Busoni and Bach
In 1870 Busoni began learning to play the piano while the family was living in Paris, shortly before his fourth birthday. His mother, Anna Weiß-Busoni, a well-regarded professional pianist, was his teacher. Not long afterward, the family returned to Trieste, and his father, Ferdinando, a professional clarinetist, went on tour. Early in 1873, upon returning to Trieste, his father took charge of Ferruccio's musical education, including instruction in composition as well as piano. "I have to thank my father for the good fortune that he kept me strictly to the study of Bach in my childhood," Busoni wrote in the epilogue to the Collected Edition,
and that in a country in which the master was rated little higher than a Carl Czerny. My father was a simple virtuoso on the clarinet, who liked to play fantasias on Il Trovatore and the Carnival of Venice; he was a man of incomplete musical education, an Italian and a cultivator of the bel canto. How did such a man in his ambition for his son's career come to hit upon the very thing that was right? I can only compare it to a mysterious revelation. In this way he educated me to be a "German" musician and showed me the path that I never entirely deserted, though at the same time I never cast off the Latin qualities given me by nature.
In May 1888, Busoni and his pupil Frau Kathi Petri, Egon Petri's mother, attended a performance of the Prelude and Fugue in D major at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. She said to him, "You ought to arrange that for pianoforte." A week later he played it for her. He had not even written it down yet, but it was the first of his great transcriptions of Bach organ works, and he dedicated it to Kathi Petri. According to Busoni's biographer Edward J. Dent: "This was not merely the beginning of the transcriptions, what was of far deeper import, it was the beginning of that style of pianoforte touch and technique which was entirely the creation of Ferruccio Busoni." By September Busoni had taken a position as piano teacher at the Musikinstitut in Helsinki. In a letter to Henri and Kathi Petri, Busoni wrote "I spoke with my 'superior', Director Wegelius, about methods of tuition. I asked if I should adhere to a programme, a specific method or any particular educational materials. - 'Actually we have no such things but, well - - one could perhaps take the Inventions of Bach as a starting point." In fact, it was with an instructive edition of Bach's Two- and Three-part Inventions, finished in Moscow in 1891 and dedicated to the Helsinki Musikinstitut, that Busoni began his lifelong pursuit of publishing and performing the keyboard works of Bach.
''Bearbeitung'' vs. ''Übertragung''
Within the context of his Bach Editions, Busoni made an interesting distinction between the German terms Bearbeitung and Übertragung. Since Bearbeitung is the more general term, it was also sometimes used instead of Übertragung. He most often used the term Bearbeitung for transcriptions of music originally written for an instrument in which the tone is produced by plucking or striking a string, e.g., harpsichord, clavichord, or lute. With such instruments the tone is loudest initially and then dies away rapidly. This property has an effect on the manner of composition for these instruments. Since a piano produces tones in an analogous manner, by the striking of the string with a felt-covered hammer, the adaptation of music written for such instruments to piano often requires very little, if any, alteration. The term Übertragung was usually reserved for the transcription of music written for instruments which produce continuous tones, for example, the organ or violin. Pieces written for these instruments can require more alterations to preserve the original intent or spirit of the music. The piano, when compared to the harpsichord, clavichord, or lute, presented technical changes which allowed tones to be played more loudly and be sustained for a longer time. The damper pedal, which enables other strings in the instrument to vibrate in sympathy with the played string, provided the possibility of further augmentation and enrichment of the sound. Thus the piano represented an instrument on which it was possible to play transcriptions of such Tonstücke more effectively.
The organ, because of the full tone and sometimes massive sound, as in, for example, Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and, in addition, the use of the feet with the pedalboard, presents a particular challenge in piano transcription. Busoni wrote a 36-page essay "On the Transcription of Bach's Organ Works for the Pianoforte" which appeared as the First Appendix to Volume I of the Klavierwerke, originally published in 1894. Topics covered include doublings: simple doubling of the pedal-part, simple doubling of the manual-parts, doubling in the octave of all pedal- and manual-parts, tripling in octaves; registration; additions, omissions, liberties; use of the piano-pedals: the damper-pedal, the soft pedal, the sustaining-pedal; interpretation ; and supplementary: arrangements for two pianos and free adaptations. Busoni asserts at the outset that he "regards the interpretation of Bach's organ pieces on the pianoforte as essential to a complete study of Bach." A typical Busoni remark appears as a footnote: "Musical commoners still delight in decrying modern virtuosi as spoilers of the classics; and yet Liszt and his pupils have done things for spreading a general understanding for Bach and Beethoven beside which all theoretico-practical pedantry seems bungling, and all brow-puckering cogitations of stiffly solemn professors unfruitful."
The Tausig transcription of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor is well known and sometimes still performed, but the Busoni version over time has proved more popular. According to Hugo Leichtentritt, Busoni's "building of the climaxes is more monumental, in simple lines, more thoughtful and much more effective than Tausig's somewhat arbitrary rise and fall...." Moreover, Busoni carefully avoids arpeggios, a technique used on piano, but not on organ. As the composer and musicologist Larry Sitsky says, "his whole method of doubling, registration, pedal, and pianistic distribution is superior to Tausig's."
Detailed listing of the Bach-Busoni editions
Busoni-Ausgabe (''Klavierwerke'') in 25 volumes (BA)
Sechs Tonstücke
•Note: Selected transcriptions of organ and violin works.
Bach-Busoni Collected Edition
BB6: in 6 volumes (1916)
BB7: in 7 volumes (1920)
''Klavierübung:'' Volume 8 (1925)
Although it is not concerned specifically with the music of Bach, the second collected edition of Busoni's Klavierübung was published by Breitkopf & Härtel posthumously as volume 8 of this series.
Reprints by other publishers
The music of the Bach-Busoni editions is now in the public domain and has been selectively reissued by other publishers:
Masters Music editions
The following items have been published by Masters Music Publications:
