Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer (April 1, 1866 – July 27 1924)

 Music is born free and to win freedom is its destiny.

Busoni’s major contribution to the development of New Music was his 1907 essay “Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunstt” (Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music) claiming the traditional instruments to be tired and expressing his believe in an abstract sound without obstacles and the limitlessness of sound and therefore calling for a new beginning.

… it floats on air! It touches not the earth with its feet. It knows no law of gravitation. It is well-nigh incorporeal. Its material is transparent. It is sonorous air it is almost Nature herself. It is free. But freedom is something that mankind have never wholly comprehended, never realized to the full. They can neither recognize it nor acknowledge it.

Busoni’s ideas were a source of inspiration for the Futurist Luigi Russolo as well as for Edgard Varèse, with all three demanding for the expansion of musical language through the introduction of non-pitched sounds or noises, new scales that lay outside traditional ones and new compositional forms and techniques. Or as Busoni put it:

“The function of the creative artist consists in making laws, not in following laws already made. He who follows such laws, ceases to be a creator.”

 It would take another 50 years or so before Busoni’s ideas started to get applied by more than just a handful of adventurous composers.  One of the contributing factors might be the situation the world found itself in from the start of WWI to the end of WWII, which prevented a natural and healthy flow of ideas between composers in different countries or even continents. Another one would obviously be technical developments, especially the application of electronic equipment for the use of new music.