Busoni’s Liquid Architecture

Abstract Chapter 4 documents the role Busoni’s architectural conceptions played in his reworking of the music of other composers. He arranged other composers’ pieces into monumental and multi-dimensional montages or sound structures, reshaping them through his idiosyncratic use of color, terraced phrasing, and formal restructuring. In annotated comments for his editions and to his students, he mentioned how architecture inspired his alterations, especially regarding how he modified formal structures. Busoni became known as a sound sculptor, creating monumental-sized sound structures to better fit the architectural spaces of the large and reverberant concert halls built during his lifetime. It is in these reworked sound structures, some created in real time, and some tied to Busoni’s responses to physical buildings and acoustics, that music, space, and time converged to create liquid architecture.