I am completing the Ferruccio Busoni catalogue to include on my website and I am having difficulty with the opus numbers.
Busoni, who had started numbering his compositions from a young age, later realized that the assigned numbers were not correct and began changing them several times, creating, in my opinion, a great mess.
There are repeated numbers, numbers followed by the letter 'a', and gaps in the numbering.
Does anyone know where I can find a key to understanding this mess?
The only indication I have found is an explanatory note written by Busoni himself and reported by Sergio Sablich on page 142 of his volume "Busoni", but it is not sufficiently exhaustive.
He thought, then, to systematize the numbering of his works and with the Zwei altdeutsche Lieder op. 18 (Two Songs on Old German Texts) for voice and piano published by the publisher Kistner in Leipzig, he undertook to fill the missing numbers in his catalogue, achieving this goal in 1890 with the I Sonata op. 29 for violin and piano. Reconsidering the works of his "infantile" period, and particularly those marked with numbers from 30 to 40, Busoni realized the qualitative gap that the evolution of his art had created between these later works and the music composed and published later, but which, for the reasons stated above, bore opus numbers from twenty to thirty. Not wanting the "infantile" music to appear as if following the more mature ones, Busoni thought to remedy this possible inconvenience by writing a new series of works distinct from number thirty and those following it, but with the addition of an "a". Only the youthful compositions titled respectively 24 Préludes op. 37 for piano (1879-1881) and Le Quattro Stagioni op. 40, four lyrical poems by Dall'Ongaro for male voices and orchestra (1882) were considered by Busoni to be «of sufficient value» as not to require a replacement. For opus 39 (the Piano, Orchestra and Chorus Concerto), Busoni used Roman numerals instead of Arabic. From opus 41 (the "Turandot" Suite) onwards, the numbering could then proceed regularly. The confusion of this multiple numbering was, however, significantly increased by the fact that, for reasons unknown through what kind of error, the number 25 appears alongside two works, precisely alongside the Gavotta for piano of 1878 and alongside the Symphonic Suite of 1888 (dedicated to Hans Richter) [18]. Likewise, the number 38 recurs twice in the catalogue: the first time it distinguishes the Lied der Klage (Song of Lament) on words by O. von Kapff (written in 1878 and published the following year in Vienna) and a second time it designates the Lustspielouverture (Comedy Overture) for orchestra, composed in 1897 and revised in 1904. In this second case, the fact that instead of opus number 38a only 38 was used must be attributed to an oversight or a mere clerical error. In any case, the mess of these numberings was such that Busoni preferred to publish the Elegies for piano and much of his subsequent compositions without opus numbers. From the Berceuse élégiaque (1910) onwards, to which he gave opus number 42, he returned however to sporadically number certain pieces while leaving others without opus numbers, according to a criterion that escapes us, but which certainly should not be related to the importance Busoni must have attributed to the works in question, since not only that very singular masterpiece that is the Fantasia contrappuntistica and the most precious Sonatinas for piano were published without opus numbers, but also the four theatrical works to which Busoni undoubtedly attributed a capital importance within the overall framework of his creativity.
Roman Vlad's text reports Busoni's writing in the third person, which I found in Sergio Sablich's book.
Have you noticed that Vlad also uses the term 'pasticcio'?
When putting composers' catalogues on the site, I normally also create a page with only the compositions that have an opus number to facilitate searching for the visitor.
In this case, I think it is better to omit this page because it would only create confusion for those reading it.
Thank you for your interest.
I will give news about the catalogue when I put it on the site.
