Composed in 1909 as a memorial to his recently deceased father, Ferruccio Busoni's piano work Fantasia After J.S. Bach is an unusually but understandably emotional piece from one of the pioneers of musical modernism. As Busoni wrote to his mother, "The piece dedicated to the memory of Babbo is written from the heart and all those who have heard it were moved to tears, without knowing of its intimate destination."

Known for his transcriptions of the works of Bach, the music to which "Babbo" first introduced young Ferrucio, Busoni composed the Fantasia as a Nachdichtung—a work falling somewhere between a transcription and an original composition. In doing so, an expressive synergy emerges between the elegant contours of the borrowed material, the allusive meanings conveyed by the texts associated with the chorale melodies on which the Bach works were based, and Busoni's own original material. The Fantasia contains new and borrowed material in roughly equal measure. It begins with a murmuring prelude in F minor, which gradually gathers energy and rises toward A flat major. A bell-like theme, which biographer Antony Beaumont has identified in a number of Busoni's works as a kind of death motive, introduces the first full Bach excerpt, a setting of "Christ, du bist der helle Tag" (BWV 766). Busoni describes this passage as "stuttering and interrupted by sighs, in the language of a soul begging for consolation." The subsequent section takes a sunnier turn, with a fugal rendering of "Gottes Sohn is kommen" (BWV 708). As the counterpoint reaches its climax, there is a sudden shift to minor and a return of the more mournful music from BWV 766; this, in turn, is overtaken by original material, leading to a shift to A flat major and the appearance of the third Bach excerpt, "Lob se idem allmächtigen Gott" (BWV 602). Finally, the mournful material returns, enshrouded in tintinnabulating bell textures, at which point, in the margin of the score, Busoni provides the bittersweet annotation riconciliato. And later, as the last arpeggios and a final death motive draw the piece to its close, Pax ei (eternal peace). Sadly, soon after the premiere of the Fantasia After J.S. Bach, Busoni was compelled to compose another work in memoriam, the Berceuse élégiaque. Busoni dedicated the latter piece to his mother, who died shortly after hearing the Fantasia written for her husband.

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