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Jerome Robbins (1918–1998), known as the first important American-born ballet choreographer, set over sixty ballets and numerous pieces for Broadway during his lifetime. His success can be attributed not only to his assimilation of different choreographic styles, but also to his attentiveness to the music. He was equally adept at setting a wide variety of musical styles, ranging from Frédéric Chopin (viz., The Concert 1956), Leonard Bernstein (viz., West Side Story 1957), and J. S. Bach (viz., The Goldberg Variations 1971) to Alban Berg (viz., In Memory Of … 1985). If he excelled at realistic character portrayals in some settings, in others he created abstract visual realizations of the music. Although Robbins choreographed many musical styles throughout his career, he developed a special affinity for the music of Bach at the end of his life. It is notable that his final three new choreographies were all based on the music of Bach: A Suite of Dances (1994); Two& Three-Part Inventions (1994); and Brandenburg (1997). Moreover, Bach's music was the last that he heard before he died; the soft strains of a recording of Bach's French Suites reportedly filled the air as Robbins lay dying at his house on 81st Street in New York in 1998. Based on recordings, letters, essays, and other choreographic sketches, some unpublished, this essay examines Robbins's littlediscussed late Bach settings in relation to concepts of Late Style. While Robbins's settings of three final pieces by Bach might not be summative—that is, they might not be as epic, lengthy, and encyclopedic as his The Goldberg Variations from 1971—they can be seen as synthesizing a lifetime of choreographic styles, including ballet, modern dance, theater, and folk. Since they were all abstract realizations of Bach's music through movement, as opposed to narrative settings, Bach's music seems directly to have inspired Robbins's contrapuntal choreography. In turning to Bach for his final creative projects, Robbins was thus participating in certain ways of thinking about art that Edward Said has claimed can be associated with artistic Late Style, including counterpoint and fragmentation. In addition, aspects of the rhythmic energy and stylistic pluralism so central to Bach's music became muses for Robbins's multi-stylistic choreographies late in life, even as he displayed both nostalgia for the past and a newfound interest in youth and youthfulness. In drawing connections among the last works of Robbins, the music of Bach, and theories of Late Style, this essay provides one of the first explorations of concepts of Late Style in relation to choreography, an art form in which the aging body and the artistic work are closely linked. In addition, it contributes new knowledge not only about the late choreographies of Robbins, but also about movement responses to Bach's music, and ways in which Bach reception has intersected with characteristics of Late Style.

On Mar 10-11, 2017, Symphony Hall in Boston MA resounded with the strains of Ferruccio Busoni's approximately seventy-minute-long Piano Concerto in C Major, BV 247 (1901-4), which the Boston Symphony Orchestra was performing for the first time. Conductor Sakari Oramo and pianist Kirill Gerstein performed impressively, and critics provided largely positive reviews of the piece. The belatedness of this performance of Busoni's piano concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra is striking, given Busoni's close connection with that institution. It was Karl Muck, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1912 to 1918, who directed the concerto's premiere in 1904 in Berlin Germany. Busoni (1866-1924) also appeared as soloist thirty-six times between 1891 and 1911, more than with any other major US orchestra during his lifetime. In addition, the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed more of his compositions during his lifetime than any other orchestral institution in the US.

When Franz Liszt died, the world lost an innovative composer, mentor, and pianist. Although his influence did not die with him, few of his successors can claim to have walked in his footsteps – to have lived and taught in the same rooms – and to have shared many of his ideals. Ferruccio Busoni did just that when the Grand Duke Carl Alexander invited him to hold piano master classes in Weimar in 1900 and 1901, just as he had invited Liszt to do nearly two decades earlier (1881–1885). This article shows how Liszt's activities in Weimar as Pedagogue and as Kapellmeister (1848–1861) became models for Busoni as he sought to position himself as a prominent ‘musical polymath’ at the turn of the century. Yet Busoni not only emulated Liszt, he also promoted him in an age when the older composer was considered of only tangential importance. By producing authoritative editions of Liszt's music, and perhaps more significantly, by emulating Liszt's activities as a transcriber and composer, Busoni enhanced piano sonority while extending Liszt's ideas about the future of music. In that way, he shared attitudes associated with the Zukunftsmusik movement, and his outlook was rooted in Liszt's compositions, as opposed to Richard Wagner's. At the same time, he helped foster a lineage of young musicians who patterned their careers and music after Liszt. Drawing on surviving memoirs, letters, scores, essays and concert programmes, this article thus explores Liszt's impact on Busoni and his mentees. It reveals a musician not only emulating Liszt, but also expanding upon his ideas and promoting them to others.

Ferruccio Busoni had aspired to become a leading figure of Italian music since at least 1908. His acceptance of the directorship of the Liceo Musicale di Bologna in 1913 represents his most visible attempt to realize his nationalistic aims. He desired to help re-establish Italy as a leading musical country in terms of orchestral concert life, composition, music scholarship, music education, and performance venues. Yet he made only a few steps forward before his vision had to be put on hold due to bureaucratic red tape, budget constraints, long-standing traditions, and changes in government. Moreover, the First World War, which was fuelled by nationalist agendas, also contributed to Busoni’s eventual renunciation of nationalistic artistic goals. This article shows that there is a direct connection between Busoni’s experiences in Bologna in conjunction with the outbreak of the First World War and his adoption of a transnational aesthetic as exemplified in the composition of Arlecchino.

Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) championed Frédéric Chopin’s music. Yet his performances often elicited responses of shock or amusement because they rebelled against the prevalent sentimental style of interpretation associated with an “effeminate” Chopin. Even some of his staunchest admirers had trouble appreciating his unprompted repeats of measures or structural wholes in the preludes or etudes, his registral alterations, and his overly intellectualized approach. Also unusual was his choice to program the preludes as a complete cycle. Scholars have documented Busoni’s interpretive eccentricities, but the rationale behind them and their significance for the evolution of Chopin interpretation in the twentieth century remains largely unexplored. Through analyses of recordings, concert programs, recital reviews, and Busoni’s little-known and unpublished essay from 1908 titled “Chopin: Eine Ansicht über ihn,” I connect Busoni’s unconventional Chopin interpretations to an idiosyncratic perception of Chopin’s character. In the nineteenth century Chopin and his music were commonly viewed as effeminate, androgynous, childish, sickly, and “ethnically other.” Busoni’s essay indicates that he, too, considered Chopin’s music “poetic,” “feminine,” and “emotive.” But this was problematic for Busoni, who was obsessed with “manliness” in an age in which gender roles were gradually changing. He discovered “half-manly” and “half-dramatic” elements in the music and in Chopin’s character—that is, a heroic, monumental side. In striving to portray the “whole” of Chopin and his music while distancing himself from the gendered “halfness” of earlier writings, Busoni became a pioneer of bolder Chopin interpretation and of monumentalist programming. His portrait of Chopin reveals how cultural ideas inform the evolution of performers’ interpretations.

While scholars typically consult Tovey's published writings and recordings to study his engagement with the composer's music, Phillips chose instead to look at handwritten annotations in Tovey's personal copy of the Bach-Gesellschaft Edition; these include his pencilled completion of the Art of Fugue and his continuo realization for the Mass in B minor. In ‘Spätstil, que me veux-tu?’ Marshall's main argument was that Bach's late period was focused on preserving his legacy for future generations. [...]his late style can be viewed as primarily generative. The final paper session built upon many of the themes addressed in the keynote event, with speakers Ernest May (University of Massachusetts Amherst) and Richard Kramer (Graduate Center of the City University of New York) together with moderator Andrew Talle (Northwestern University).