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The peculiarly personal, mystical vision of Busoni is best seen in the first, sixth, and seventh Elegies. Elegy No. 6 is really an operatic fantasia in miniature; there is a strong Lisztian flavor in the runs, chords, and tremolos that permeate Busoni's treatment of his own melodic line, though, as with the other Elegies, the dynamics are held back, and various harmonic audacities are apparent. Quite often the runs surrounding a melody and its harmonization seem deliberately to avoid the repetition of the same notes, creating a chromatically saturated effect; the motive from Brautwahl is in itself highly chromatic and unstable, and the result is a shimmering, otherworldly character. Schönberg was much attracted to the seventh Elegy in its orchestral guise and arranged it for small chamber ensemble. [Sitsky, 64] |
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