Ferruccio Busoni

Arts & Photography

Beaumont, Antony

Music

Columbia University Press

This is the first major study of the music of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924). Of Italian parentage, Busoni was the most renowned virtuoso pianist of his time, a fact which has served to obscure his significance as a composer. In this book, conceived as a companion to Edward J. Dent's classic biography, Antony Beaumont reveals the hidden logic of Busoni's enigmatic creative achievement and examines the vital role he played int he evolution of twentieth century music.

Busoni the Composer

Indiana University Press

The original manuscript of these diaries, which present an eye-witness record of historical events in the worlds of art and music at the turn of the century, lay unread in the library of an American university until Antony Beaumont read it in search of the truth about Mahler-Werfel and Zemlinsky. But he found more: an account, in intimate detail, of the four years during which Mahler-Werfel grew from adolescence into womanhood. Opening with her first, heady affair with Klimt, the diaries break off shortly before her marriage to Mahler. They portray the vitality of everyday life, descriptions of significant artistic events, and insights into the behavioural patterns and linguistic conventions of the Vienna of 1900.

Alma Mahler-Werfel: the Diaries 1898-1902

Biographies & Memoirs

Faber and Faber

Born in 1879 in Vienna, Alma Mahler-Werfel was the daughter of the popular landscape painter, Emil J. Schindler. Her stepfather, Carl Moll, was instrumental in forming the Secession movement and she became the pupil, friend and lover of many famous men, including Alexander Zemlinsky, Gustav Klimt and Max Burckhard. In 1902 she married Gustav Mahler. After his death she married Walter Gropius, had a liaison with Oskar Kokoschka, and later married Franz Werfel. As a young girl she began writing a diary. This selection from four years of that diary gives a breathtaking (and breathless) account of cultural life in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century. With their mixture of beady-eyed observation and impassioned confession, the pages of Alma Mahler-Werfel's diary make for gripping reading.

Alma Mahler-Werfel: Diaries 1898-1902

Antony Beaumont

Following his English edition of Alma Mahler-Werfel's Diaries 1898-1902, Antony Beaumont presents both the first comprehensive biography of the composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942) and a critical assessment of his works.
"Zemlinsky―all hail to you!" wrote the young Alma. "All hail to you and your art." When she first met him, Zemlinsky was the most promising Viennese composer of his generation. In 1901, when Alma abruptly ended their passionate love affair in order to marry Gustav Mahler, the crisis served to transform Zemlinsky's talent into mastery. Only long after his death, however, did his music begin to receive its due. Zemlinsky was central to the musical life of Vienna and Central Europe, and this brilliant biography illuminates a social and cultural milieu that disappeared forever with the triumph of Hitler's Reich.
Beaumont details the composer's early years as a protégé of Brahms and Mahler, his complex friendship with his brother-in-law Arnold Schoenberg, the influence of his teaching on the boy-prodigy Erich Korngold, his kindly and helpful attitude toward the hypersensitive Anton Webern, and his heartfelt friendship with Alban Berg. Zemlinsky was one of the leading conductors of the interwar period, considered by both Schoenberg and Stravinsky the finest they had ever heard. Beaumont charts Zemlinsky's career from Vienna to Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Prague, providing insight into his Catholic-Sephardic background and investigating his keen interest in esoteric aspects of music, including color symbolism and numerology. The author's analyses of Zemlinsky's major scores are accessible and fully contextualized.

Zemlinsky

Humor & Entertainment

Cornell University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Beaumont, Antony. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Beaumont, Antony