Ferruccio Busoni (1866 – 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, teacher of piano and composition, writer on musical questions, and conductor.

Dante Michelangelo Benvenuto Ferruccio Busoni was born in Empoli in Tuscany, the only child of two professional musicians: his Italian/German mother a pianist, his Italian father a clarinetist. They were often touring during his childhood, and he was brought up in Trieste for the most part.

Busoni was a child prodigy. He made his public debut on the piano with his parents, at the age of seven. A couple of years later he played some of his own compositions in Vienna where he heard Franz Liszt play, and met Liszt, Johannes Brahms and Anton Rubinstein.

Busoni had a brief period of study in Graz with Wilhelm Mayer (who used the pseudonum of W. A. Rémy and also taught Felix Weingartner) and was also helped by Wilhelm Kienzl, who enabled him to conduct a performance of his own composition 'Stabat Mater' when he was twelve years old, before leaving for Leipzig in 1886. He subsequently held several teaching posts, the first in 1888 at Helsinki, where he met his wife, Gerda Sjöstrand, the daughter of Swedish sculptor Carl Eneas Sjöstrand, and began a lifelong friendship with Sibelius. In 1890 he won the Anton Rubinstein Competition with his Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 31a. He taught in Moscow in 1890, and in the United States from 1891 to 1894 where he also toured as a virtuoso pianist.