SECHS ETUDEN FÜR PIANOFORTE, op. 16, KiV 203 ETUDE EN FORME DE VARIATIONS IN CIS-MOLL FÜR PIANOFORTE, op. 17, KiV 206 Both of these opus numbers are dedicated to Brahms. Predictably, these are probably the most Germanic pieces that Busoni ever wrote, together with the Variationen und Fuge in frier Form uber Fr. Chopins c-moll Praludium, from the same time. The modelling is on Brahms's keyboard textures, particularly in Op. 17, which seems to me to be a slightly earlier piece. Of the Op. 16 "Etudes", the first two are pure Brahms. No. 3 has an ending more typical of later Busoni in that it dies away on a furtive chromatic rumble, but the rest of the piece is again Brahms. No. 4 has some rather sinister left-hand scales, rising and falling, and is generally a little more individual, particularly when we realize that these scales, with their insistence on quasi-oriental augmented seconds, are a foreshadowing of Busoni's systematic investigations into unusual scale formations in the Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music more than 20 years later. No. 5 is a fugue modelled on the one from the Brahms-Handel Variations; and, finally, No. 6, though textually owing much to Brahms, indulges in some interesting rhythmic instabilities: in one passage, for example, the sequence of bars, within two lines, includes 3/2, 4/4, 5/4, 3/2, 5/4, 4/4. Busoni evidently set out to write 24 etudes, one in each key, in the same sequence of tonalities as the Preludes: these first six Etudes are in just this sequence: C major, a minor, G major, e minor, D major, b minor. Three more etudes exist in manuscript form, probably meant to be part of the complete set, since the dates of composition fall into the same time span [SITSKY, p. 49]