Ferruccio Busoni was a highly acclaimed Italian-German composer, pianist and pedagogue. Born into a musical family, he was a child progeny, who gave his first public recital at the age of seven and started composing soon after. It is believed that out of his 303 original compositions, over 200 were produced before he was twenty. Initially trained by his father, he later studied with Wilhelm Mayer in Graz, completing his formal training by fifteen. In the same year, he was accepted as a member of the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna, thus becoming the youngest person to receive the honor since Mozart. At the age of twenty, he went to Leipzig, where he undertook a profound study of Bach’s music, shortly beginning his career as a music teacher in Helsinki, later teaching at Moscow, Boston, Weimar, Vienna, Basel, and Bologna, eventually settling down in Berlin. A philosopher of music, his mission was to formulate a universe of related arts and to express classical ideals in modern forms.
