ELEGIA N. 7
BERCEUSE ELEGIAQUE

A comparison of the Berceuse élégiaque with its pianistic partner, the Berceuse (Elegy No. 7), reveals that Busoni did not simply orchestrate the piano work. The orchestral version is longer (118 bars compared to 81), because the quite magical changes of color that Busoni achieved with his chamber orchestra cannot be matched by the piano. More significant, however, is the reworking of the middle, bitonal section. In the orchestral version, pairs of keys appear next to each other, arranged in such a fashion that the tritone is often predominating, and the third made ambiguous, thus creating an a-tonal effect: F major/a flat minor, E flat major/f sharp minor, C major/e flat minor, D major/f minor, and so on. In the piano version, this section is marked "sempre i due Pedali tenuti", and the chords are thus effectively blurred into a resultant cluster: quite an extraordinary sound. The progression of bass pedals and harmonies is altered as well. In brief, the orchestral version is more chromatic in this respect, but gravitates safely back to its original F at the end. The piano version tends to maintain its long F pedals in a much more stable manner throughout: how much more unsettling, then, is the end, where, totally unexpectedly, the piece comes to an uneasy rest on a C bass, with the seventh sounding above it. The orchestral version contains some ideas that are pianistically impossible, such as the superimposition of

over

however, Busoni makes up for this in many fine points of detail in the piano score as well as by his familiar technique of semitone side slips to accentuate an already unstable harmony.
Apart from many such minute differences (although not minute in their totality), the piano sound seems to achieve more closely and successfully that remoteness that Busoni was striving for against a beautiful crystallinity of orchestral sound-with some affinity to Anton Webern - which nevertheless retains some remnants of a romantic lushness about it. The Berceuse achieves effects that lead Busoni quite naturally to his next orchestral work, the Nocturne Symphonique op. 43. In these Elegies, in the sonatinas 1910 and Seconda, Busoni is very close to the Second Viennese School and its directions; and his best works between the Elegies and his death must be added to that fascinating list of pioneering compositions before the advent of strict 12-tone dogma. As such, the Elegies are studies in expression rather than form, a comment applicable to many of Busoni's later piano works. [Sitsky, 64-65]