Turandot Suite
Encyclopedia
The Turandot Suite, Op. 41 (BV 248) is an orchestral work by Ferruccio Busoni
written in 1904-5, based on Carlo Gozzi
's play Turandot. The music – in one form or another – occupied Busoni at various times between the years 1904-1917. Busoni arranged the suite from incidental music which he was composing to accompany a production of Gozzi's play. The suite was first performed in October 1905, while the play with his incidental music was not produced until 1911. In August 1916 Busoni had finished composing the one-act opera Arlecchino
, but it needed a companion work to provide a full evening's entertainment. He suddenly decided to transform the Turandot music into a two-act opera with spoken dialog. The two works were premiered together as a double-bill in May 1917.
The titles of the eight movements as published in 1906 are:
In 1911 Busoni composed Verzweiflung und Ergebung ("Despair and Resignation", BV 248a) as an additional movement to be played between nos. VII and VIII. Even later, after completing the opera Turandot in 1917, he replaced the Funeral March of No. VIII with Altoums Warnung ("Altoum's Warning", BV 248b). The musicologist and Busoni scholar Antony Beaumont
has stated that the final version of the suite, including both of these later additions, is the "definitive" version.
s (3rd doubling piccolo
), 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn), 3 clarinet
s (3rd doubling bass clarinet
), 3 bassoon
s (3rd doubling contrabassoon
); 4 horn
s, 4 trumpet
s, 3 trombone
s, 1 tuba
; timpani
, percussion (glockenspiel
, triangle
, tambourine
, covered drum, bass drum
, tam-tam); 2 harp
s; chorus
: female (unison
) ad lib.
; strings
. BV 248a and b instrumentation: as for BV 248 except without chorus.
has suggested that Busoni's decision to compose incidental music for Carlo Gozzi
's play may have been prompted by the impending centennial (in 1906) of the playwright's death. Gozzi's Turandot, which first appeared in 1762, is the most well-known of his ten fiabe (fairy tales) written between 1761 and 1765. The action takes place outside a city gate of Peking
and inside the Emperor's palace. Turandot, is a proud, cruel Chinese princess who refuses to marry any suitors unless they can answer three impossible riddles. When they fail, she has them executed. But Calaf, Prince of Astrakhan
, manages to woo her ("Turandot or death!"), answers the riddles, and wins her hand in marriage. The play was originally written to be performed in the small theatre of San Samuele in Venice, and was deliberately written in the commedia dell'arte
style as a reaction to the more modern, realistic plays of his rival Goldoni
.
Busoni was very fond of fantastical and magical tales: his immediately preceding work was the Piano Concerto Op. 39
BV 247, which included music from an unfinished adaptation of Oehlenschlager's Aladdin.
for Gozzi's Chinese fable as early as 1904, but did not apply himself exclusively to the task until the summer of 1905, when he remained alone in Berlin, while his wife Gerda and the children were away in Godinne, Belgium. During this period of concentrated work, from June to the middle of August, he went more or less chronologically through the play, composing music for those places where Gozzi explicitly called for it and also wherever his theatrical instincts suggested it could enhance the drama.
The theme
s and melodies
Busoni chose for the Turandot music were based solely on orient
al motifs
of Chinese, but also Persian, Turkish, and Indian origin. He used as his source a book by the distinguished music critic and historian August Ambros, who had championed Busoni as a child prodigy. Beaumont shows how almost all the thematic material in the Turandot music is drawn from Volume I of Ambros' Geschichte der Musik.
In all, there are 34 manuscript sheets of sketches and orchestrations for the Turandot music in the Busoni Archive. He sketched out thirteen numbers
for the play and orchestrated them almost immediately. Realising that a production of the play with his music was going to be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to mount, he also arranged the music into a concert suite
of eight movement
s, the Turandot Suite. Some of the music in the manuscripts is also designed for melodrama
s to be used with the play: each of the three riddles is preceded by enigmatic brass
chord
s; initially Kalaf's replies were meant to be sung, although Busoni eventually dropped this idea.
In a letter to his mother dated 21 August 1905, Busoni wrote:
about a concert he was to conduct in Amsterdam which was to include not only the Piano Concerto with Petri as soloist, but also a performance of the Turandot Suite:
In the event, the first performance of the completed Turandot Suite took place at the Beethovensaal, Berlin on 21 October 1905, with Busoni conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
. The concert also included the German premiere of Berlioz' Les nuits d'été.
Busoni also conducted the Suite in Berlin on 13th Jan 1921, at one of a series of concerts of his own music organised by the musical periodical Der Anbruch.
about a production. Reinhardt accepted, and a performance was scheduled for 1907. Busoni also tried to get a production started in London, but was initially unsuccessful. He wrote to Egon Petri about these results on 6 October 1906: "The Deutsches Theater [Reinhardt's theater] wants to perform Turandot in the spring. An attempt at this Chinoiserie in London has been abortive. The abortion of my heavy load."
As is often the case in such a complex undertaking, the German production encountered various delays and difficulties. Busoni refused to allow changes to the score: the required 60-piece orchestra, unusually large for a play, inflated the prospective budget enormously and immediately became a major problem. Furthermore, Reinhardt's career had soared from 1905 onwards, and he was creating, lighting and acting in new productions in two theatres at an astounding rate. He was an incredibly busy man, and everything would have to be completely ready for a speedy production.
Another significant problem was the lack of a suitable German version of Gozzi's Italian play. The dynamic young writer Karl Vollmöller
who was to do the translation was also extremely busy on other less literary projects. From February to April 1908 he was attached as a reporter to the Zust automobile race team in the 1908 New York-Paris Great Race, from New York through Siberia and Russia, Poland, Germany and France to Paris. His race reports were published in the NY Times, which gave front-page coverage to the event. He had also been jointly developing an aeroplane with his brother Hans from late 1904 onwards, and in 1910 Vollmöller flew their No.4 prototype a record 150 km non-stop from Canstatt (now Stuttgart
) to Lake Constance. He did eventually make an adapted translation of Turandot in 1911, which he dedicated to Busoni.
The artist Emil Orlik
who had been working with Reinhardt since 1905, was to design the sets and costumes. He had recently returned from a two-year journey to the Far East and was considered the leading German expert on chinoiserie. In the end Orlik was unable to participate in the production, and the sets and costumes were done by Ernst Stern. Orlík did, however, provide the cover for Breitkopf & Härtel
's 1906 score of the Turandot Suite (see above).
In addition to these obstacles, Busoni himself had been undergoing a personal change. In 1906 he focused much of his attention on what was to become a highly influential essay: the Outline of a New Aesthetic of Music (completed in November 1906 and published in 1907). And from September to December 1907 he was composing the Elegies
, BV 252, which marked a major turning-point in his musical development. From February 1906 to October 1911 he composed his first opera, Die Brautwahl
("The Bridal Quest", BV 258), an enormously lengthy and ambitious "musical-fantastic comedy" based on a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann. The music of the opera is an eclectic mix, with quotations from other composers, such as Rossini and Mozart, and others more obscure. Its composition spans the years when Busoni's style was evolving rapidly, and the music of the opera incorporates it all.
Although Busoni had refused to cut the score of his music for Turandot or reduce the size of the orchestra, he did agree to a Reinhardt request for more music. In 1911 he composed Verzweiflung und Ergebung ("Despair and Resignation", BV 248a) to be played between acts IV and V; he also added it between nos. 7 and 8 of the already lengthy Turandot Suite. His compositional growth during the intervening years is revealed in the new piece: Antony Beaumont
describes the opening half as "one of the finest passages in all of the Turandot music."
Vollmöller's Turandot with Busoni's music was finally first performed at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, on 27 October 1911, with a very expensive orchestra conducted by Oskar Fried. Reinhardt was a hugely innovative director with the Deutsches Theater at his disposal, and Turandot was given plenty of publicity. An entire issue of the house magazine, (Blätter des Deutschen Theaters) was given over to the production. There were contributions from Busoni, Orlik, and Stefan Zweig
among others.
Theatrical reviews of the production were mixed, one (justifiable) criticism being that the music from a 60-piece orchestra did not so much highlight as paint over the action. The music was thought not to be in the service of the play, but at times in service of itself (like Beethoven's Egmont
or Mendelssohn
's Midsummer Night's Dream).
A brief second-hand account of Reinhardt's production appears in a letter from Puccini of 18 March 1920 to his librettist Simoni:
. It had its premiere in London on 23 December 1911 and the following year the play was made into a film with a script by Vollmuller and Reinhardt as second director. The Miracle was shown all over Europe.
The English theatre director Sir George Alexander was a man similar to Reinhardt. He was an equally active actor-manager who ran the St James' Theatre, London and played hundreds of roles in his career. Alexander was at the first performance of Turandot in Berlin, acquired the rights to Turandot and brought Reinhardt's entire production to London in 1913. Jethro Bithell made an authorised English translation of the Gozzi-Vollmöller play.
Turandot (with Stern's scenery and costumes, and Fried conducting) opened on 8 January 1913 at the St James's Theatre
, London. However, Busoni had not been to any rehearsals, and when he attended the first performance he was appalled. Johan Wijsman (the dedicatee of the Berceuse
, BV 252), had made an unauthorised reduced version of Busoni's score for a 20-piece theater orchestra. The producer had inserted music by other composers alongside Busoni's own, and the orchestra was out of tune. Busoni left in a rage after the second act and went to listen to Saint-Saëns' symphonic poem
Le Rouet d'Omphale at another concert.
Carter, who had also seen the Berlin production, was very complimentary about the music. "quote"
He also commented that the inferior lighting arrangements in the St. James' Theatre affected the production most. ref Carter book
After a fortnight Busoni had calmed down: in a letter to H.W. Draber, 21 Jan 1913, he wrote:
In a letter on the same day in 1913 to his wife Gerda, Busoni said he had considered going to court over the affair, but realised the season would have been over before the case was finished. He also wonders what Gerda thinks about an opera in Italian based on Gozzi's play.
Turandot Suite, BV 248 (1905)
Verzweiflung und Ergebung, BV 248a (1911)
Altoums Warnung, BV 248b (1917)
.
BV 248 original title: Orchesteruite aus der Musik zu Gozzi's Märchendrama Turandot [Suite from the Music to Gozzi's Fairy Tale Drama Turandot] (Beaumont, 1985, p. 76)
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
written in 1904-5, based on Carlo Gozzi
Carlo Gozzi
Carlo, Count Gozzi was an Italian playwright.Born in Venice, he came from an old Venetian family from the Republic of Ragusa...
's play Turandot. The music – in one form or another – occupied Busoni at various times between the years 1904-1917. Busoni arranged the suite from incidental music which he was composing to accompany a production of Gozzi's play. The suite was first performed in October 1905, while the play with his incidental music was not produced until 1911. In August 1916 Busoni had finished composing the one-act opera Arlecchino
Arlecchino (opera)
Arlecchino, oder Die Fenster is a one-act opera with spoken dialog by Ferruccio Busoni, with a libretto in German written by the composer in 1913. He completed the music for the opera while living in Zurich in 1916...
, but it needed a companion work to provide a full evening's entertainment. He suddenly decided to transform the Turandot music into a two-act opera with spoken dialog. The two works were premiered together as a double-bill in May 1917.
Original titles of the suite and its movements
The original German title [with its English translation] is:- Orchestersuite aus der Musik zu Gozzis Märchendrama "Turandot"
- [Orchestral Suite from the Music to Gozzi's Fairy Tale Drama "Turandot"]
The titles of the eight movements as published in 1906 are:
- I. Die Hinrichtung, das Stadttor, der Abschied aus der Musik zum ersten Akt.
- [The Execution, the City Gate and the Departure from the music for the first act.]
- II. Truffaldino. (Introduzione e marcia grotesca.)
[ Truffaldino. (Introduction and Grotesque March.)]
- III. Altoum. Marsch.
- [Altoum's March]
- IV. "Turandot" Marsch.
- [Turandot's March.]
- V. Das Frauengemach. Einleitung zum III. Akt.
[ ZenanaZenanaZenana , refers to the part of a house belonging to a Muslim family in the Middle East and South Asia reserved for the women of the household. The Zenana are the inner apartments of a house in which the women of the family live...
. Introduction to the third act.]
- VI. Tanz und Gesang.
- [Dance and Song.]
- VII. "Nächtlicher Walzer" aus der Musik zum vierten Akt.
- [Night Waltz from the music for the fourth act.]
- VIII. "In modo di Marcia funebre" e "Finale alla Turca" aus der Musik zum fünften Akt.
- ["In the Manner of a Funeral March" and "Turkish Finale" from the music for the fifith act.]
In 1911 Busoni composed Verzweiflung und Ergebung ("Despair and Resignation", BV 248a) as an additional movement to be played between nos. VII and VIII. Even later, after completing the opera Turandot in 1917, he replaced the Funeral March of No. VIII with Altoums Warnung ("Altoum's Warning", BV 248b). The musicologist and Busoni scholar Antony Beaumont
Antony Beaumont
Antony Beaumont is an English and German musicologist, writer, conductor and violinist. As a conductor, he has specialized in German music from the first half of the 20th century, including works by Zemlinsky, Weill, and Gurlitt...
has stated that the final version of the suite, including both of these later additions, is the "definitive" version.
Instrumentation
3 fluteFlute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
s (3rd doubling piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
), 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn), 3 clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
s (3rd doubling bass clarinet
Bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
), 3 bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
s (3rd doubling contrabassoon
Contrabassoon
The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...
); 4 horn
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
s, 4 trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
s, 3 trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
s, 1 tuba
Tuba
The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
; timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...
, percussion (glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
, triangle
Triangle
A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or vertices and three sides or edges which are line segments. A triangle with vertices A, B, and C is denoted ....
, tambourine
Tambourine
The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....
, covered drum, bass drum
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
, tam-tam); 2 harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
s; chorus
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
: female (unison
Unison
In music, the word unison can be applied in more than one way. In general terms, it may refer to two notes sounding the same pitch, often but not always at the same time; or to the same musical voice being sounded by several voices or instruments together, either at the same pitch or at a distance...
) ad lib.
Ad libitum
Ad libitum is Latin for "at one's pleasure"; it is often shortened to "ad lib" or "ad-lib"...
; strings
String section
The string section is the largest body of the standard orchestra and consists of bowed string instruments of the violin family.It normally comprises five sections: the first violins, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, and the double basses...
. BV 248a and b instrumentation: as for BV 248 except without chorus.
Choice of Gozzi's Turandot
Antony BeaumontAntony Beaumont
Antony Beaumont is an English and German musicologist, writer, conductor and violinist. As a conductor, he has specialized in German music from the first half of the 20th century, including works by Zemlinsky, Weill, and Gurlitt...
has suggested that Busoni's decision to compose incidental music for Carlo Gozzi
Carlo Gozzi
Carlo, Count Gozzi was an Italian playwright.Born in Venice, he came from an old Venetian family from the Republic of Ragusa...
's play may have been prompted by the impending centennial (in 1906) of the playwright's death. Gozzi's Turandot, which first appeared in 1762, is the most well-known of his ten fiabe (fairy tales) written between 1761 and 1765. The action takes place outside a city gate of Peking
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
and inside the Emperor's palace. Turandot, is a proud, cruel Chinese princess who refuses to marry any suitors unless they can answer three impossible riddles. When they fail, she has them executed. But Calaf, Prince of Astrakhan
Astrakhan
Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:...
, manages to woo her ("Turandot or death!"), answers the riddles, and wins her hand in marriage. The play was originally written to be performed in the small theatre of San Samuele in Venice, and was deliberately written in the commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
style as a reaction to the more modern, realistic plays of his rival Goldoni
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...
.
Busoni was very fond of fantastical and magical tales: his immediately preceding work was the Piano Concerto Op. 39
Piano Concerto (Busoni)
The Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 39 , by Ferruccio Busoni, is one of the largest works ever written in this particular genre. The concerto is in five movements, the last of which also utilizes a male chorus singing words from the final scene of the verse drama Aladdin by Adam Oehlenschläger.The...
BV 247, which included music from an unfinished adaptation of Oehlenschlager's Aladdin.
Composition of the Turandot music
Busoni prepared some sketches of incidental musicIncidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
for Gozzi's Chinese fable as early as 1904, but did not apply himself exclusively to the task until the summer of 1905, when he remained alone in Berlin, while his wife Gerda and the children were away in Godinne, Belgium. During this period of concentrated work, from June to the middle of August, he went more or less chronologically through the play, composing music for those places where Gozzi explicitly called for it and also wherever his theatrical instincts suggested it could enhance the drama.
The theme
Theme (music)
In music, a theme is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based.-Characteristics:A theme may be perceivable as a complete musical expression in itself, separate from the work in which it is found . In contrast to an idea or motif, a theme is...
s and melodies
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
Busoni chose for the Turandot music were based solely on orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...
al motifs
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
of Chinese, but also Persian, Turkish, and Indian origin. He used as his source a book by the distinguished music critic and historian August Ambros, who had championed Busoni as a child prodigy. Beaumont shows how almost all the thematic material in the Turandot music is drawn from Volume I of Ambros' Geschichte der Musik.
In all, there are 34 manuscript sheets of sketches and orchestrations for the Turandot music in the Busoni Archive. He sketched out thirteen numbers
Number (music)
A number in music is a self-contained piece that is combined with other such pieces in a performance. In a concert of popular music, for example, the individual songs or pieces performed are often referred to as "numbers." The term is applied also to sections of large vocal works when the...
for the play and orchestrated them almost immediately. Realising that a production of the play with his music was going to be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to mount, he also arranged the music into a concert suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
of eight movement
Movement (music)
A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...
s, the Turandot Suite. Some of the music in the manuscripts is also designed for melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
s to be used with the play: each of the three riddles is preceded by enigmatic brass
Brass instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...
chord
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
s; initially Kalaf's replies were meant to be sung, although Busoni eventually dropped this idea.
In a letter to his mother dated 21 August 1905, Busoni wrote:
I have remained in Berlin all the time and have, as always, been very busy. On this occasion with a new score which I completed the day before yesterday. Babbo [Daddy] will be pleased to hear that I have made a new attempt at a theatre work, but in an unconventional way; not with an opera but with descriptive music for a spoken drama.
The play I have chosen for this purpose is an old dramatized fairy tale, a tragicomedy by our own Carlo Gozzi. Nothing would be more natural than to attempt to put on a play by an Italian writer which has by now become a classic (and yet, because it has been forgotten, remains a novelty), but unfortunately the state of affairs in our country gives no cause for hope.
For the production one would require not only an élite theatrical company but also great opulence and excellent taste in the design of costumes and scenery and, furthermore, a first rate orchestra. Gozzi is the author of fairy tales which mamma's grandmother used to tell her. L'amore delle tre melarance [The Love of Three Oranges], L'augellin Belverde [The Green Bird] and others were greatly in vogue in rococo times, but then they vanished without trace. I have chosen the tale of the cruel, seductive Chinese princess (or Persian, who knows) Turandot, who demands of her suitors the solutions of three riddles, at the risk of their losing their heads if they fail. As well as the heroic and oriental characters, the old Venetion masks also appear in comic roles: PantalonePantalonePantalone, or Pantalone del bisognosi, Italian for 'Pantalone of the needy', is one of the most important principal characters found in commedia del arte...
, BrighellaBrighellaBrighella is a comic, masked character from the Commedia dell'arte. His early costume consisted of loosely-fitting, white smock and pants with green trim and was often equipped with a battachio or slapstick, or else with a wooden sword. Later he took to wearing a sort of livery with a matching cape...
and Truffaldino.
The task absorbed me completely for two and a half months, during which I was unable to concentrate on anything else. Now it is finished and I must attend to other interests and endeavours.
Performance history of the suite
Before he had even finished composing the Turandot music, Busoni was arranging for a concert performance of the suite. On 10 July 1905 he wrote to Egon PetriEgon Petri
Egon Petri was a classical pianist.-Biography:Petri's family was Dutch and he was born a Dutch citizen, but he was born in Hanover in Germany and was brought up in Dresden. His father was a professional violinist who taught his son that instrument. Petri played in the Dresden Court Orchestra and...
about a concert he was to conduct in Amsterdam which was to include not only the Piano Concerto with Petri as soloist, but also a performance of the Turandot Suite:
MengelbergWillem MengelbergJoseph Willem Mengelberg was a Dutch conductor, famous for his performances of Mahler and Strauss with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.- Biography :...
has been here [Berlin] and a plan has been drawn up for me to conduct my 'Concerto' (everyone stubbornly retains the final o) in Amsterdam, and for you to play it. I had been engaged as piano-player for the concert – when M. suddenly received an invitation to America.
The programme would be
1) Concerto
Interval
2)[ LisztLisztLiszt is a Hungarian surname. Notable persons with that surname include:* Franz Liszt , Hungarian composer and pianist* Adam Liszt , father of Franz Liszt* Anna Liszt , mother of Franz Liszt...
's] Concerto pathétique for 2 pianos
(you and I)
3) Suite from the music to 'Turandot'
This twice on succeeding days, probably at the end of October.
Before I finalize, scribble your assent.
The financial outlook is poor – they only want to pay for a head-waiter – who is then supposed to tip the kitchen boy out of his own pocket.
Should the idea appeal to you, I can offer you one third, which amounts to 200 fl.
In the event, the first performance of the completed Turandot Suite took place at the Beethovensaal, Berlin on 21 October 1905, with Busoni conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
The Berlin Philharmonic, German: , formerly Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester , is an orchestra based in Berlin, Germany. In 2006, a group of ten European media outlets voted the Berlin Philharmonic number three on a list of "top ten European Orchestras", after the Vienna Philharmonic and the...
. The concert also included the German premiere of Berlioz' Les nuits d'été.
Busoni also conducted the Suite in Berlin on 13th Jan 1921, at one of a series of concerts of his own music organised by the musical periodical Der Anbruch.
Turandot as incidental music
Berlin production
Busoni was keen to have the incidental music performed along with Gozzi's play as he had originally conceived, and by early October 1906 at the latest had approached the actor-director Max ReinhardtMax Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
about a production. Reinhardt accepted, and a performance was scheduled for 1907. Busoni also tried to get a production started in London, but was initially unsuccessful. He wrote to Egon Petri about these results on 6 October 1906: "The Deutsches Theater [Reinhardt's theater] wants to perform Turandot in the spring. An attempt at this Chinoiserie in London has been abortive. The abortion of my heavy load."
As is often the case in such a complex undertaking, the German production encountered various delays and difficulties. Busoni refused to allow changes to the score: the required 60-piece orchestra, unusually large for a play, inflated the prospective budget enormously and immediately became a major problem. Furthermore, Reinhardt's career had soared from 1905 onwards, and he was creating, lighting and acting in new productions in two theatres at an astounding rate. He was an incredibly busy man, and everything would have to be completely ready for a speedy production.
Another significant problem was the lack of a suitable German version of Gozzi's Italian play. The dynamic young writer Karl Vollmöller
Karl Vollmöller
Karl Gustav Vollmöller, usually written Vollmoeller was a German playwright and screenwriter.He is most famous for two works, the screenplay for the celebrated 1930 German film Der Blaue Engel , which made a star of Marlene Dietrich, and the elaborate religious spectacle-pantomime Das Mirakel ,...
who was to do the translation was also extremely busy on other less literary projects. From February to April 1908 he was attached as a reporter to the Zust automobile race team in the 1908 New York-Paris Great Race, from New York through Siberia and Russia, Poland, Germany and France to Paris. His race reports were published in the NY Times, which gave front-page coverage to the event. He had also been jointly developing an aeroplane with his brother Hans from late 1904 onwards, and in 1910 Vollmöller flew their No.4 prototype a record 150 km non-stop from Canstatt (now Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
) to Lake Constance. He did eventually make an adapted translation of Turandot in 1911, which he dedicated to Busoni.
The artist Emil Orlik
Emil Orlík
Emil Orlik was born in Prague, which was at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and lived and worked in Prague, Austria and Germany...
who had been working with Reinhardt since 1905, was to design the sets and costumes. He had recently returned from a two-year journey to the Far East and was considered the leading German expert on chinoiserie. In the end Orlik was unable to participate in the production, and the sets and costumes were done by Ernst Stern. Orlík did, however, provide the cover for Breitkopf & Härtel
Breitkopf & Härtel
Breitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf . The catalogue currently contains over 1000 composers, 8000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on music. The name "Härtel" was added when Gottfried...
's 1906 score of the Turandot Suite (see above).
In addition to these obstacles, Busoni himself had been undergoing a personal change. In 1906 he focused much of his attention on what was to become a highly influential essay: the Outline of a New Aesthetic of Music (completed in November 1906 and published in 1907). And from September to December 1907 he was composing the Elegies
Elegies (Busoni)
Elegies by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni is a set of solo piano pieces which can be played as a cycle or separately. Initially published in 1908 with six pieces, it was subsequently expanded to seven by the addition of the Berceuse...
, BV 252, which marked a major turning-point in his musical development. From February 1906 to October 1911 he composed his first opera, Die Brautwahl
Die Brautwahl
Die Brautwahl is a "comic-fantastic" opera in three acts and an epilogue by Ferruccio Busoni. The German libretto, by Busoni himself, is based on a short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Busoni began work on this, his first completed opera, in 1905.Die Brautwahl was first performed at the Stadttheater,...
("The Bridal Quest", BV 258), an enormously lengthy and ambitious "musical-fantastic comedy" based on a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann. The music of the opera is an eclectic mix, with quotations from other composers, such as Rossini and Mozart, and others more obscure. Its composition spans the years when Busoni's style was evolving rapidly, and the music of the opera incorporates it all.
Although Busoni had refused to cut the score of his music for Turandot or reduce the size of the orchestra, he did agree to a Reinhardt request for more music. In 1911 he composed Verzweiflung und Ergebung ("Despair and Resignation", BV 248a) to be played between acts IV and V; he also added it between nos. 7 and 8 of the already lengthy Turandot Suite. His compositional growth during the intervening years is revealed in the new piece: Antony Beaumont
Antony Beaumont
Antony Beaumont is an English and German musicologist, writer, conductor and violinist. As a conductor, he has specialized in German music from the first half of the 20th century, including works by Zemlinsky, Weill, and Gurlitt...
describes the opening half as "one of the finest passages in all of the Turandot music."
Vollmöller's Turandot with Busoni's music was finally first performed at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, on 27 October 1911, with a very expensive orchestra conducted by Oskar Fried. Reinhardt was a hugely innovative director with the Deutsches Theater at his disposal, and Turandot was given plenty of publicity. An entire issue of the house magazine, (Blätter des Deutschen Theaters) was given over to the production. There were contributions from Busoni, Orlik, and Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
among others.
Theatrical reviews of the production were mixed, one (justifiable) criticism being that the music from a 60-piece orchestra did not so much highlight as paint over the action. The music was thought not to be in the service of the play, but at times in service of itself (like Beethoven's Egmont
Egmont (Beethoven)
Egmont, Op. 84, by Ludwig van Beethoven, is a set of incidental music pieces for the 1787 play of the same name by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It consists of an overture followed by a sequence of nine additional pieces for soprano, male narrator and full symphony orchestra...
or Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
's Midsummer Night's Dream).
A brief second-hand account of Reinhardt's production appears in a letter from Puccini of 18 March 1920 to his librettist Simoni:
Yesterday I talked to a foreign lady who told me about a production of this work in Germany with a mise-en-scene by Max Reinhardt, executed in a very curious and novel way [...] In Reinhardt's production Turandot was a tiny woman, surrounded by tall men, specifically chosen for their height; huge chairs, huge furnishings, and this viper of a woman with the strange heart of an hysteric.
London production
Vollmöller and Reinhardt's next venture together was the hugely successful production of Vollmöller's religious mime play The MiracleThe Miracle (play)
The Miracle was a 1911 play written by Karl Vollmöller and directed by Max Reinhardt, from which three movie versions were later adapted. The play first appeared as a spectacle-pantomime in Germany in 1911....
. It had its premiere in London on 23 December 1911 and the following year the play was made into a film with a script by Vollmuller and Reinhardt as second director. The Miracle was shown all over Europe.
The English theatre director Sir George Alexander was a man similar to Reinhardt. He was an equally active actor-manager who ran the St James' Theatre, London and played hundreds of roles in his career. Alexander was at the first performance of Turandot in Berlin, acquired the rights to Turandot and brought Reinhardt's entire production to London in 1913. Jethro Bithell made an authorised English translation of the Gozzi-Vollmöller play.
Turandot (with Stern's scenery and costumes, and Fried conducting) opened on 8 January 1913 at the St James's Theatre
St James's Theatre
The St James's Theatre was a 1,200-seat theatre located in King Street, at Duke Street, St James's, London. The elaborate theatre was designed with a neo-classical exterior and a Louis XIV style interior by Samuel Beazley and built by the partnership of Peto & Grissell for the tenor and theatre...
, London. However, Busoni had not been to any rehearsals, and when he attended the first performance he was appalled. Johan Wijsman (the dedicatee of the Berceuse
Elegies (Busoni)
Elegies by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni is a set of solo piano pieces which can be played as a cycle or separately. Initially published in 1908 with six pieces, it was subsequently expanded to seven by the addition of the Berceuse...
, BV 252), had made an unauthorised reduced version of Busoni's score for a 20-piece theater orchestra. The producer had inserted music by other composers alongside Busoni's own, and the orchestra was out of tune. Busoni left in a rage after the second act and went to listen to Saint-Saëns' symphonic poem
Symphonic poem
A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...
Le Rouet d'Omphale at another concert.
Carter, who had also seen the Berlin production, was very complimentary about the music. "quote"
He also commented that the inferior lighting arrangements in the St. James' Theatre affected the production most. ref Carter book
After a fortnight Busoni had calmed down: in a letter to H.W. Draber, 21 Jan 1913, he wrote:
St. Saëns (and Rimsky K.) also contributed to the Turandot music (because mine was insufficient) - which was played in Varieté style by a 20-piece orchestra. The success was great!! The newspapers are captivated. Fascinating! How should one defend oneself?
In a letter on the same day in 1913 to his wife Gerda, Busoni said he had considered going to court over the affair, but realised the season would have been over before the case was finished. He also wonders what Gerda thinks about an opera in Italian based on Gozzi's play.
Recordings
Note: Select the catalog number link for additional recording details.Turandot Suite, BV 248 (1905)
Cincinnati Symphony OrchestraCincinnati Symphony OrchestraAs the fifth oldest orchestra in the United States, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has a legacy of fine music making as reflected in its performances in historic Music Hall, recordings, and international tours...
; Michael GielenMichael Gielen-Professional career:Gielen was born in Dresden, Germany, to opera director Josef Gielen. Through his mother, Rose, he is the nephew of Eduard Steuermann and Salka Steuermann Viertel. He began his career as a pianist in Buenos Aires, where he studied with Erwin Leuchter and gave an early...
, conductor; MMG MCD 10019; (1911 version with BV248a between nos. 7 & 8).
Hong Kong Philharmonic; Samuel WongSamuel WongSamuel Wong is a Hong Kong-born Canadian conductor and ophthalmologist .Trained at Harvard and Columbia, Dr. Wong is an eye surgeon practicing in Manhattan, Brooklyn and upstate New York....
, conductor; Naxos 8.555373; (1905 version).
Philharmonic Orchestra of La ScalaLa ScalaLa Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
; Riccardo MutiRiccardo MutiRiccardo Muti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian conductor and music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.-Childhood and education:...
, conductor; Sony Classical SK 53280; (1905 version; nos. 4 & 6 omitted).
Royal Philharmonic OrchestraRoyal Philharmonic OrchestraThe Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It tours widely, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's national orchestra"...
; Jascha HorensteinJascha HorensteinJascha Horenstein was an American conductor.Horenstein was born in Kiev, Russian Empire , into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother came from an Austrian rabbinical family and his father was Russian....
, conductor; Rococo RR 2036; (Nos. 4, 6, BV 248b, & 8b; LPLP albumThe LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
not generally available as of 28 September 2009).
Verzweiflung und Ergebung, BV 248a (1911)
Cincinnati Symphony OrchestraCincinnati Symphony OrchestraAs the fifth oldest orchestra in the United States, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has a legacy of fine music making as reflected in its performances in historic Music Hall, recordings, and international tours...
; Michael GielenMichael Gielen-Professional career:Gielen was born in Dresden, Germany, to opera director Josef Gielen. Through his mother, Rose, he is the nephew of Eduard Steuermann and Salka Steuermann Viertel. He began his career as a pianist in Buenos Aires, where he studied with Erwin Leuchter and gave an early...
, conductor; MMG MCD 10019; (included as part of the entire suite).
Berlin Radio Symphony OrchestraDeutsches Symphonie-Orchester BerlinThe Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin is an orchestra based in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1946 by American occupation forces as the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester . It was also known as the American Sector Symphony Orchestra...
; Gerd AlbrechtGerd AlbrechtGerd Albrecht is a German conductor. He was a first-prize winner at the International Conductors Competition in Besançon at age 22. His first post was as a repetiteur at the Stuttgart State Opera. Later, he became Senior Kapellmeister at the Mainz Municipal Theatre, and Generalmusikdirektor in...
, conductor; Capriccio 10 479.
Altoums Warnung, BV 248b (1917)
Royal Philharmonic OrchestraRoyal Philharmonic OrchestraThe Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It tours widely, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's national orchestra"...
; Jascha HorensteinJascha HorensteinJascha Horenstein was an American conductor.Horenstein was born in Kiev, Russian Empire , into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother came from an Austrian rabbinical family and his father was Russian....
, conductor; Rococo RR 2036; (see also above; LP not generally available as of 28 September 2009).
Downloadable scores
Scores are available for download from the International Music Score Library ProjectInternational Music Score Library Project
The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...
.
Manuscript and publication details
- Note: This section needs additional work.
BV 248 original title: Orchesteruite aus der Musik zu Gozzi's Märchendrama Turandot [Suite from the Music to Gozzi's Fairy Tale Drama Turandot] (Beaumont, 1985, p. 76)
- pub. B&HBreitkopf & HärtelBreitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf . The catalogue currently contains over 1000 composers, 8000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on music. The name "Härtel" was added when Gottfried...
, 1906 PB 1976
Sources
Ambros, August Wilhelm (1862). Geschichte der Musik, Vol. 1. Breslau: F.E.C. Leuckhart. Google Books: Full Preview. Accessed 24 September 2009.
Ashbrook, William; Powers, Harold (1991). Puccini's Turandot: The End of the Great Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691027129.
Beaumont, AntonyAntony BeaumontAntony Beaumont is an English and German musicologist, writer, conductor and violinist. As a conductor, he has specialized in German music from the first half of the 20th century, including works by Zemlinsky, Weill, and Gurlitt...
(1985). Busoni the Composer. London: Faber and FaberFaber and FaberFaber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
. ISBN 0571131492.
Beaumont, AntonyAntony BeaumontAntony Beaumont is an English and German musicologist, writer, conductor and violinist. As a conductor, he has specialized in German music from the first half of the 20th century, including works by Zemlinsky, Weill, and Gurlitt...
, ed. (1987). Busoni: Selected Letters. New York: Columbia University PressColumbia University PressColumbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...
. ISBN 0231064608.
Betteridge, Harold T. (1958). The New Cassell's German Dictionary. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co.
Busoni, Ferruccio (1906). Orchestersuite aus der Musik zu Gozzi's Märchendrama "Turandot". Study Score, cat. no. Part.-Biibl. 3837 (reissue of the original 1906 score). Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & HärtelBreitkopf & HärtelBreitkopf & Härtel is the world's oldest music publishing house. The firm was founded in 1719 in Leipzig by Bernhard Christoph Breitkopf . The catalogue currently contains over 1000 composers, 8000 works and 15,000 music editions or books on music. The name "Härtel" was added when Gottfried...
. See this work page of the International Music Score Library ProjectInternational Music Score Library ProjectThe International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...
. Accessed 28 September 2009.
Carter, Huntly (1914). The Theatre of Max Reinhardt. New York: Mitchell Kennerley. Archive.org OCR text. Accessed 24 September 2009.
Couling, Della (2005). Ferruccio Busoni: A musical Ishmael. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-5142-3.
Dent, Edward J.Edward Joseph DentEdward Joseph Dent, generally known by his initials as E. J. Dent was a British writer on music....
(1933). Ferruccio Busoni: A Biography. London: Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
. (Reprint: London: Ernst EulenbergErnst Eulenburg (musical editions)Ernst Eulenburg the music publisher was established by Ernst Eulenburg in Leipzig in 1874. The firm started by publishing a series of studies by a Dresden piano teacher, and then expanded into light music and works for men's chorus, at first all non-copyright works.-Origins of the miniature...
, 1974. ISBN 0903873028.)
Kindermann, Jürgen (1980). Thematisch-chronologisches Verzeichnis der Werke von Ferruccio B. Busoni. Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, vol. 19. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag. ISBN 3764920335.
Ley, Rosamond, translator (1938). Ferruccio Busoni: Letters to His Wife. London: Edward Arnold & Co.
Vollmöller, KarlKarl VollmöllerKarl Gustav Vollmöller, usually written Vollmoeller was a German playwright and screenwriter.He is most famous for two works, the screenplay for the celebrated 1930 German film Der Blaue Engel , which made a star of Marlene Dietrich, and the elaborate religious spectacle-pantomime Das Mirakel ,...
(1911). Turandot chinesisches Märchenspiel von Carlo Gozzi; Deutsch von Karl Vollmoeller. Berlin: S. Fischer.
Vollmöller, Karl (1913). Turandot, Princess of China. A Chinoiserie in Three Acts. Authorized English version by Jethro Bithell. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Project Gutenberg. Accessed 15 September 2009.