Erinn Knyt shows how Busoni's abiding fascination with architecture as a medium and a metaphor illuminates his ambivalent relation to early musical modernism on multiple levels: from his allegiance to Bach and Mozart, the famous Bach transcriptions, the massive yet florid op. 39 Piano Concerto or the polystylistic labyrinth of Doktor Faust, and a high-modernist legacy from Edgard Var`ese and Stefan Wolpe to Xenakis and Morton Feldman. Connections with Jugendstil architect Henry Van de Velde and the Bauhaus school inform a conception of music as spatialized sound placing Busoni's commitments to old and new music, his own works, and his mentorship of diverse modernist talents in a striking new light. Knyt is unsurpassed as guide to all aspects of Busoni's multi-faceted career.
Erinn E. Knyt is Professor of Music History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Ferruccio Busoni and His Legacy, which was awarded an AMS 75 Pays Endowment Book Subvention Grant, and in 2018, she received an AMS Teaching Award for her article "Teaching Music History Pedagogy to Graduate Students." Knyt specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth- century music, aesthetics, music history pedagogy, Bach Reception, and performance studies.