Ferruccio Busoni’s Sonatina super Carmen is one of a cycle of six sonatinas, each with a different thematic reference – here to Bizet’s opera Carmen. Having seen a performance of Carmen in Paris, Busoni was thrilled. He noted his idea for a fantasia in the essay “Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Liszt’s Don Juan Fantasy”. Using Liszt’s fantasia on Mozart’s Don Giovanni as a model, he wrote down a possible selection of themes for a Carmen fantasia: the scene in the marketplace from Act IV, the Habanera and the finale from the bullring. In the Sonatina super Carmen, he also used the motif of destiny and, of course, the main theme of Carmen. However, the music of the Sonatina super Carmen is not entirely cheerful and light-hearted; the end, in particular, seems rather somber.
Busoni dedicated this work to his friend and hotelier Leonhard Tauber in 1920. He had been staying at his hotel in Paris when he composed the Sonatina super Carmen.