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Title: Franz Liszt

Author: James Huneker

Release date: May 21, 2012 [eBook #39754]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Albert László, Henry Flower and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
        by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANZ LISZT ***




Produced by Albert László, Henry Flower and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)









Transcriber's Note

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_, bold text by =equal signs=, and
gesperrt text by ~tildes~.




FRANZ LISZT




[Illustration: The Youthful Liszt]




    FRANZ LISZT

    BY
    JAMES HUNEKER

    _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

    NEW YORK

    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

    1911




    COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

    PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1911

[Illustration]




    TO
    HENRY T. FINCK


    "Génie oblige."--F. LISZT




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                            PAGE

    I.     LISZT: THE REAL AND LEGENDARY                  1

    II.    ASPECTS OF HIS ART AND CHARACTER              34

    III.   THE B-MINOR SONATA AND OTHER PIANO PIECES     59

    IV.    AT ROME, WEIMAR, BUDAPEST                     78

    V.     AS COMPOSER                                  103

    VI.    MIRRORED BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES               201

    VII.   IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF LISZT                    327

    VIII.  LISZT PUPILS AND LISZTIANA                   353

    IX.    MODERN PIANOFORTE VIRTUOSI                   418

           INSTEAD OF A PREFACE                         439

           INDEX                                        443




ILLUSTRATIONS


    The Youthful Liszt                               _Frontispiece_

                                                        FACING PAGE

    Liszt's Birthplace, Raiding                                   8

    Adam Liszt--Liszt's father                                   12

    Anna Liszt--Liszt's mother                                   12

    Daniel Liszt--Son of Liszt                                   16

    Blandine Ollivier--Daughter of Liszt                         16

    Cosima von Bülow--Daughter of Liszt                          20

    Liszt, about 1850                                            36

    Liszt at the piano                                           40

    The Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein                               50

    A Matinée at Liszt's                                         66

    Countess Marie d'Agoult                                      80

    Liszt in his atelier at Weimar                              100

    Pauline Apel--Liszt's Housekeeper at Weimar                 328

    Liszt and His Scholars, 1884                                358

    Liszt's Hand                                                404

    Last Picture of Liszt, 1886, Aged Seventy-five Years        416

    The Final Liszt Circle at Weimar--Liszt at the Upper Window 436




I

LISZT: THE REAL AND LEGENDARY


I

Franz Liszt remarked to a disciple of his: "Once Liszt helped Wagner,
but who now will help Liszt?" This was said in 1874, when Liszt was well
advanced in years, when his fame as piano virtuoso and his name as
composer were wellnigh eclipsed by the growing glory of Wagner--truly a
glory he had helped to create. In youth, an Orpheus pursued by the
musical Maenads of Europe, in old age Liszt was a Merlin dealing in
white magic, still followed by the Viviens. The story of his career
is as romantic as any by Balzac. And the end of it all--after a
half century and more of fire and flowers, of proud, brilliant
music-making--was tragical. A gentle King Lear (without the consolation
of a Cordelia), following with resignation the conquering chariot of a
man, his daughter's husband, who owed him so much, and, despite
criticism, bravely acknowledged his debt, thus faithful to the end (he
once declared that by Wagner he would stand or fall), Franz Liszt died a
quarter of a century ago at Bayreuth, not as Liszt the Conqueror, but a
world-weary pilgrim, petted and flattered when young, neglected as the
star of Wagner arose on the horizon. If only Liszt could have
experienced the success of poverty as did Wagner. But the usual
malevolent fairy of the fable endowed him with all the gifts but
poverty, and that capricious old Pantaloon, the Time-Spirit, had his
joke in the lonesome latter years. As regards his place in the musical
pantheon, this erst-while comet is now a fixed star, and his feet set
upon the white throne. There is no longer a Liszt case; his music has
fallen into critical perspective; but there is still a Liszt case,
psychologically speaking. Whether he was an archangel of light, a
Bernini of tones, or, as Jean-Christophe describes him, "The noble
priest, the circus-rider, neo-classical and vagabond, a mixture in equal
doses of real and false nobility," is a question that will be answered
according to one's temperament. That he was the captain of the new
German music, a pianist without equal, a conductor of distinction, one
who had helped to make the orchestra and its leaders what they are
to-day; that he was a writer, a reformer of church music, a man of the
noblest impulses and ideals, generous, selfless, and an artist to his
fingertips--these are the commonplaces of musical history. As a
personality he was an apparition; only Paganini had so electrified
Europe. A _charmeur_, his love adventures border on the legendary;
indeed, are largely legend. As amorous as a guitar, if we are to
believe the romancers, the real Liszt was a man of intellect, a deeply
religious soul; in middle years contemplative, even ascetic. His
youthful extravagances, inseparable from his gipsy-like genius, and
without a father to guide him, were remembered in Germany long after
he had left the concert-platform. His successes, artistic and
social--especially the predilection for him of princesses and noble
dames--raised about his ears a nest of pernicious scandal-hornets. Had
he not run away with Countess D'Agoult, the wife of a nobleman! Had he
not openly lived with a married princess at Weimar, and under the
patronage of the Grand Duke and Duchess and the Grand Duchess Maria
Pawlowna, sister of the Czar of all the Russias! Besides, he was a Roman
Catholic, and that didn't please such prim persons as Mendelssohn and
Hiller, not to mention his own fellow-countryman, Joseph Joachim.
Germany set the fashion in abusing Liszt. He had too much success for
one man, and as a composer he must be made an example of; the services
he rendered in defending the music of the insurgent Wagner was but
another black mark against his character. And when Wagner did at last
succeed, Liszt's share in the triumph was speedily forgotten. The truth
is, he paid the penalty for being a cosmopolitan. He was the first
cosmopolitan in music. In Germany he was abused as a Magyar, in Hungary
for his Teutonic tendencies--he never learned his mother tongue--in
Paris for not being French born; here one recalls the Stendhal case.

But he introduced into the musty academic atmosphere of musical Europe a
strong, fresh breeze from the Hungarian _puzta_; this wandering
piano-player of Hungarian-Austrian blood, a genuine cosmopolite, taught
music a new charm, the charm of the unexpected, the improvised. The
freedom of Beethoven in his later works, and of Chopin in all his music,
became the principal factor in the style of Liszt. Music must have the
shape of an improvisation. In the Hungarian rhapsodies, the majority of
which begin in a mosque, and end in a tavern, are the extremes of his
system. His orchestral and vocal works, the two symphonies, the masses
and oratorios and symphonic poems, are full of dignity, poetic feeling,
religious spirit, and a largeness of accent and manner though too often
lacking in architectonic; yet the gipsy glance and gipsy voice lurk
behind many a pious or pompous bar. Apart from his invention of a new
form--or, rather, the condensation and revisal of an old one, the
symphonic poem--Liszt's greatest contribution to art is the wild,
truant, rhapsodic, extempore element he infused into modern music;
nature in her most reckless, untrammelled moods he interpreted with
fidelity. But the drummers in the line of moral gasolene who controlled
criticism in Germany refused to see Liszt except as an ex-piano virtuoso
with the morals of a fly and a perverter of art. Even the piquant
triangle in his piano-concerto was suspected as possibly suggesting the
usual situation of French comedy.

The Liszt-Wagner question no longer presents any difficulties to the
fair-minded. It is a simple one; men still living know that Wagner, to
reach his musical apogee, to reach his public, had to lean heavily on
the musical genius and individual inspiration of Liszt. The later Wagner
would not have existed--as we now know him--without first traversing the
garden of Liszt. This is not a theory but a fact. Beethoven, as Philip
Hale has pointed out, is the last of the very great composers; there is
nothing new since Beethoven, though plenty of persuasive personalities,
much delving in mole-runs, many "new paths," leading nowhere, and much
self-advertising. With its big drum and cymbals, its mouthing or melting
phrases, its startling situations, its scarlet waistcoats, its hair-oil
and harlots, its treacle and thunder, the Romantic movement swept over
the map of Europe, irresistible, contemptuous to its adversaries, and
boasting a wonderful array of names. Schumann and Chopin, Berlioz and
Liszt, Wagner--in a class by himself--are a few that may be cited; not
to mention Victor Hugo, Delacroix, Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Stendhal.
Georg Brandes assigns to Liszt a prominent place among the Romantics.
But Beethoven still stood, stands to-day, four square to the universe.
Wagner construed Beethoven to suit his own grammar. Why, for example,
Berlioz should have been puzzled (or have pretended to) over the first
page of the Tristan and Isolde prelude is itself puzzling; the Frenchman
was a deeply versed Beethoven student. If he had looked at the first
page of the piano sonata in C minor--the Pathetic, so-called--the enigma
of the Wagnerian phraseology would have been solved; there, in a few
lines, is the kernel of this music-drama. This only proves Wagner's
Shakesperian faculty of assimilation and his extraordinary gift in
developing an idea (consider what he made of the theme of Chopin's C
minor study, the Revolutionary, which he boldly annexed for the opening
measures of the prelude to Act II of Tristan and Isolde); he borrowed
his ideas whenever and wherever he saw fit. His indebtedness to Liszt
was great, but equally so to Weber, Marschner, and Beethoven; his
indebtedness to Berlioz ended with the externals of orchestration. Both
Liszt and Wagner learned from Berlioz in this respect. Nevertheless, how
useless to compare Liszt to Berlioz or Berlioz to Wagner. As well
compare a ruby to an opal, an emerald to a ruby. Each of these three
composers has his individual excellences. The music of all three suffers
from an excess of profile. We call Liszt and Wagner the leaders of the
moderns, but their aims and methods were radically different. Wagner
asserted the supremacy of the drama over tone, and then, inconsistently,
set himself down to write the most emotionally eloquent music that was
ever conceived; Liszt always harped on the dramatic, on the poetic, and
seldom employed words, believing that the function of instrumental music
is to convey in an ideal manner a poetic impression. In this he was the
most thorough-going of poetic composers, as much so in the orchestral
domain as was Chopin in his pianoforte compositions. Since Wagner's
music-plays are no longer a novelty "the long submerged trail of Liszt
is making its appearance," as Ernest Newman happily states the case. But
to be truthful, the music of both Liszt and Wagner is already a little
old-fashioned. The music-drama is not precisely in a rosy condition
to-day. Opera is the weakest of forms at best, the human voice
inevitably limits the art, and we are beginning to wonder what all the
Wagnerian menagerie, the birds, dragons, dogs, snakes, swans, toads,
dwarfs, giants, horses, and monsters generally, have to do with music.
The music of the future is already the music of the past. The Wagner
poems are uncouth, cumbersome machines. We long for a breath of
humanity, and it is difficult to find it outside of Tristan and Isolde
or Die Meistersinger. Alas! for the enduring quality of operatic music.
Nothing stales like theatre music. The rainbow vision of a synthesis of
the Seven Arts has faded forever. In the not far distant future Wagner
will gain, rather than lose, by being played in the concert-room; that,
at least, would dodge the ominously barren stretches of the Ring, and
the early operas. The Button-Moulder awaits at the cross-roads of time
all operatic music, even as he waited for Peer Gynt. And the New
Zealander is already alive, though young, who will visit Europe to
attend the last piano-recital: that species of entertainment invented by
Liszt, and by him described in a letter to the Princess Belgiojoso as
colloquies of music and ennui. He was the first pianist to show his
profile on the concert stage, his famous _profil d'ivoire_; before Liszt
pianists either faced the audience or sat with their back to the public.

The Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein--one naturally drops into the Almanac de
Gotha when writing of the friends of Liszt--averred that Liszt had
launched his musical spear further into the future than Wagner. She was
a lady of firm opinions, who admired Berlioz as much as she loathed
Wagner. But could she have foreseen that Richard Strauss, Parsifal-like,
had caught the whizzing lance of the Klingsor of Weimar, what would she
have said? Put the riddle to contemporary critics of Richard II--who
has, at least, thrown off the influence of Liszt and Wagner, although he
too frequently takes snap-shots at the sublime in his scores. Otherwise,
you can no more keep Liszt's name out of the music of to-day than could
good Mr. Dick the head of King Charles from the pages of his memorial.

His musical imagination was versatile, his impressionability so lively
that he translated into tone his voyages, pictures, poems--Dante,
Goethe, Heine, Lamartine, Obermann, (Senancour), even Sainte-Beuve (Les
Consolations,) legends, and the cypress-haunted fountains of the Villa
d' Este (Tivoli); not to mention canvases by Raphael, Mickelangelo, and
the uninspired frescoes of Kaulbach. All was grist that came to his
musical mill.

In a moment of self-forgetfulness, Wagner praised the music of Liszt in
superlative terms. No need of quotation; the correspondence, a classic,
is open to all. That the symphonic poem was secretly antipathetic to
Wagner is the bald truth. After all his rhapsodic utterances concerning
the symphonies and poems of Liszt--from which he borrowed many a
sparkling jewel to adorn some corner in his giant frescoes--he said in
1877, "In instrumental music I am a _réactionnaire_, a conservative. I
dislike everything that requires verbal explanations beyond the actual
sounds." And he, the most copious of commentators concerning his own
music, in which almost every other bar is labelled with a leading
motive! To this Liszt wittily answered--in an unpublished letter
(1878)--that leading motives are comfortable inventions, as a composer
does not have to search for a new melody. But what boots leading
motives--as old as the hills and Johann Sebastian Bach--or symphonic
poems nowadays? There is no Wagner, there is no Liszt question. After
the unbinding of the classic forms the turbulent torrent is become the
new danger. Who shall dam its speed! Brahms or Reger? The formal
formlessness of the new school has placed Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner on
the shelf, almost as remotely as are Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. The
symphonic poem is now a monster of appalling lengths, thereby, as Mr.
Krehbiel suggests, defeating its chiefest reason for existence, its
brevity. The foam and fireworks of the impressionistic school, Debussy,
Dukas, and Ravel, and the rest, are enjoyable; the piano music of
Debussy has the iridescence of a spider's web touched by the fire of the
setting sun; his orchestra is a jewelled conflagration. But he stems
like the others, the Russians included, from Liszt. Charpentier and his
followers are Wagner _à la coule_. Where it will all end no man dare
predict. But Mr. Newman is right in the matter of programme-music. It
has come to stay, modified as it may be in the future. Too many bricks
and mortar, the lust of the ear as well as of the eye, glutted by the
materialistic machinery of the Wagner music-drama, have driven the
lovers of music-for-music's-sake back to Beethoven; or, in extreme
cases, to novel forms wherein vigourous affirmations are dreaded as
much as an eight-bar melody; for those meticulous temperaments that
recoil from clangourous chord, there are the misty tonalities of
Debussy or the verse of Paul Verlaine. However, the aquarelles
and pastels and landscapes of Debussy or Ravel were invented by
_Urvater_ Liszt--caricatured by Wagner in the person of Wotan; all the
impressionistic school may be traced to him as its fountain-head. Think
of the little sceneries scattered through his piano music, particularly
in his Years of Pilgrimage; or of the storm and stress of the
Dante Sonata. The romanticism of Liszt was, like so many of his
contemporaries, a state of soul, a condition of exalted or morbid
sensibility. But it could not be said of him as it could of all the Men
of Fine Shades--Chateaubriand, Heine, Stendhal, Benjamin Constant,
Sainte-Beuve--that they were only men of feeling in their art, and
decidedly the reverse in their conduct. Liszt was a pattern of chivalry,
and if he seems at times as indulging too much in the Grand Manner set
it down to his surroundings, to his temperament. The idols of his
younger years were Bonaparte and Byron, Goethe and Chateaubriand, while
in the background hovered the prime corrupter of the nineteenth century
and the father of Romanticism, J. J. Rousseau.


II

[Illustration: Liszt's Birthplace, Raiding]

The year 1811 was the year of the great comet. Its wine is said to have
been of a richness; some well-known men were born, beginning with
Thackeray and John Bright; Napoleon's son, the unhappy Duc de
Reichstadt, first saw the light that year, as did Jules Dupré, Théophile
Gautier, and Franz Liszt. There will be no disputes concerning the date
of his birth, October 22d, as was the case with Chopin. His ancestors,
according to a lengthy family register, were originally noble; but the
father of Franz, Adam Liszt, was a manager of the Esterhazy estates in
Hungary at the time his only son and child was born. He was very
musical, knew Joseph Haydn, and was an admirer of Hummel, his music and
playing. The mother's maiden name was Anna Lager (or Laager), a native
of lower Austria, with German blood in her veins. The mixed blood of her
son might prove a source of interest to Havelock Ellis in his studies of
heredity and genius. If Liszt was French in the early years of his
manhood, he was decidedly German the latter half of his life. The Magyar
only came out on the keyboard, and in his compositions. She was of a
happy and extremely vivacious nature, cheerful in her old age, and
contented to educate her three grandchildren later in life. The name
Liszt would be meal or flour in English; so that Frank Flour might have
been his unromantic cognomen; a difference from Liszt Ferencz,
with its accompanying battle-cry of _Eljen!_ In his son Adam Liszt
hoped to realise his own frustrated musical dreams. A prodigy of
a prodigious sort, the comet and the talent of Franz were mixed up by the
superstitious. Some gipsy predicted that the lad would return to his
native village rich, honoured, and in a glass house (coach). This he
did. In Oedenburg, during the summer of 1903, I visited at an hour or
so distant, the town of Eisenstadt and the village of Raiding (or
Reiding). In the latter is the house where Liszt was born. The place,
which can hardly have changed much since the boyhood of Liszt, is called
Dobrjan in Hungarian. I confess I was not impressed, and was glad to get
back to Oedenburg and civilisation. In this latter spot there is a
striking statue of the composer.

[Illustration: Anna Liszt

Liszt's Mother]

It is a thrice-told tale that several estimable Hungarian magnates
raised a purse for the boy, sent him with his father to Vienna, where he
studied the piano with the pedagogue Carl Czerny, that indefatigable
fabricator of finger-studies, and in theory with Salieri. He was
kissed by the aged Beethoven on the forehead--Wotan saluting young
Siegfried--though Schindler, _ami de_ Beethoven, as he dubbed himself,
denied this significant historical fact. But later Schindler pitched
into Liszt for his Beethoven interpretations, hotly swearing that they
were the epitome of unmusical taste. The old order changeth, though not
old prejudices. Liszt waxed in size, technique, wisdom. Soon he was
given up as hopelessly in advance of his teachers. Wherever he appeared
they hailed him as a second Hummel, a second Beethoven. And he
improvised. That settled his fate. He would surely become a composer. He
went to Paris, was known as _le petit Litz_, and received everywhere. He
became the rage, though he was refused admission to the Conservatoire,
probably because he displayed too much talent for a boy. He composed an
opera, Don Sancho, the score of which has luckily disappeared. Then an
event big with consequences was experienced by the youth--he lost his
father in 1827. (His mother survived her husband until 1866.) He gave up
concert performances as too precarious, and manfully began teaching in
Paris. The revolution started his pulse to beating, and he composed a
revolutionary symphony. He became a lover of humanity, a socialist, a
follower of Saint-Simon, even of the impossible Père Prosper Enfantin.
His friend and adviser was Lamenais, whose Paroles d'un Croyant had
estranged him from Rome. A wonderful, unhappy man. Liszt read poetry and
philosophy, absorbed all the fashionable frenzied formulas and
associated with the Romanticists. He met Chopin, and they became as twin
brethren. François Mignet, author of A History of the French Revolution,
said to the Princess Cristina Belgiojoso of Liszt: "In the brain of this
young man reigns great confusion." No wonder. He was playing the piano,
composing, teaching, studying the philosophers, and mingling with
enthusiastic idealists who burnt their straw before they moulded their
bricks. As Francis Hackett wrote of the late Lord Acton, Liszt suffered
from "intellectual log-jam." But the current of events soon released
him.

[Illustration: Adam Liszt

Liszt's Father]

He met the Countess d'Agoult in the brilliant whirl of his artistic
success. She was beautiful, accomplished, though her contemporaries
declare she was not of a truthful nature. She was born Marie Sophie de
Flavigny, at Frankfort-on-Main in 1805. Her father was the Vicomte de
Flavigny, who had married the daughter of Simon Moritz Bethmann, a rich
banker, originally from Amsterdam and a reformed Hebrew. She had
literary ability, was proud of having once seen Goethe, and in 1827 she
married Comte Charles d'Agoult. But social sedition was in the air. The
misunderstood woman--no new thing--was the fashion. George Sand was
changing her lovers with every new book she wrote, and Madame, the
Countess d'Agoult--to whom Chopin dedicated his first group of
Etudes--began to write, began to yearn for fame and adventures. Liszt
appeared. He seems to have been the pursued. Anyhow, they eloped. In
honour he couldn't desert the woman, and they made Geneva their
temporary home. She had in her own right 20,000 francs a year income; it
cost Liszt exactly 300,000 francs annually to keep up an establishment
such as the lady had been accustomed to--he earned this, a tidy amount,
for those days, by playing the piano all over Europe. Madame d'Agoult
bore him three children: Blandine, Cosima, and Daniel. The first named
married Emile Ollivier, Napoleon's war minister--still living at the
present writing--in 1857. She died in 1862. Cosima married Hans von
Bülow, her father's favourite pupil, in 1857; later she went off with
Richard Wagner, married him, to her father's despair--principally
because she had renounced her religion in so doing--and to-day is
Wagner's widow. Daniel Liszt, his father's hope, died December, 1859, at
the age of twenty. Liszt had legitimatised the birth of his children,
had educated them, had dowered his daughters, and they proved all three
a source of sorrow.

[Illustration: Blandine Ollivier

Daughter of Liszt]

He quarrelled with the D'Agoult and they parted bad friends. Under the
pen name of Daniel Stern she attacked Liszt in her souvenirs and novels.
He forgave her. They met in Paris once, in the year 1860. He gently told
her that the title of the souvenirs should have been "Poses et
Mensonges." She wept. Tragic comedians, both. They were bored with one
another; their union recalls the profound reflection of Flaubert, that
Emma Bovary found in adultery all the platitudes of marriage. Perhaps
other ladies had supervened. Like Byron, Liszt was the sentimental hero
of the day, a Chateaubriand René of the keyboard. Balzac put him in a
book, so did George Sand. All the painters and sculptors, Delaroche and
Ary Scheffer among others made his portrait. Nevertheless, his head was
not turned, and when, after an exile of a few years, Thalberg had
conquered Paris in his absence, he returned and engaged in an ivory
duel, at the end worsting his rival. Thalberg was the first pianist in
Europe, contended every one. And the Belgiojoso calmly remarked that
Liszt was the only one. After witnessing the Paderewski worship of
yesterday nothing related of Liszt should surprise us.

[Illustration: Daniel Liszt

Son of Liszt]

In the meantime, Paganini, had set his brain seething. Chopin, Paganini
and Berlioz were the predominating artistic influences in his life; from
the first he appreciated the exotic, learned the resources of the
instrument, and the value of national folk-song flavour; from the second
he gained the inspiration for his transcendental technique; from the
third, orchestral colour and the "new paths" were indicated to his
ambitious spirit. He never tired, he always said there would be plenty
of time to loaf in eternity. His pictures were everywhere, he became a
kind of Flying Hungarian to the sentimental Sentas of those times. He
told Judith Gautier that the women loved themselves in him. Modest man!
What charm was in his playing an army of auditors have told us. Heine
called Thalberg a king, Liszt a prophet, Chopin a poet, Herz an
advocate, Kalkbrenner a minstrel, Madame Pleyel a Sibyl, and Doehler--a
pianist. Scudo wrote that Thalberg's scales were like pearls on velvet,
the scales of Liszt the same, but the velvet was hot! Louis Ehlert, no
mean observer, said he possessed a quality that neither Tausig nor any
virtuoso before or succeeding him ever boasted--the nearest approach,
perhaps, was Rubinstein--namely: a spontaneous control of passion that
approximated in its power to nature ... and an incommensurable nature
was his. He was one among a dozen artists who made Europe interesting
during the past century. Slim, handsome in youth, brown of hair and
blue-eyed, with the years he grew none the less picturesque; his mane
was white, his eyes became blue-gray, his pleasant baritone voice a
brumming bass. There is a portrait in the National Gallery by Lorenzo
Lotto, of Prothonotary Giuliano, that suggests him, and in the
Burne-Jones picture, Merlin and Vivien, there is certainly a transcript
of his features. A statue by Foyatier in the Louvre, of Spartacus,
is really the head of the pianist. As Abbé he was none the less
fascinating; for his admirers he wore his _soutane_ with a difference.

Useless to relate the Thousand-and-One Nights of music, triumphs, and
intrigues in his life. When the Countess d'Agoult returned to her family
a council, presided over by her husband's brother, exonerated the
pianist, and his behaviour was pronounced to be that of a gentleman!
Surely the Comic Muse must have chuckled at this. Like Wagner, Franz
Liszt was a Tragic Comedian of prime order. He knew to the full the
value of his electric personality. Sincere in art, he could play the
grand seignior, the actor, the priest, and diplomat at will. Pose he had
to, else abandon the profession of piano virtuoso. But he bitterly
objected to playing the rôle of a performing poodle, and once publicly
insulted the Czar, who dared to talk while the greatest pianist in the
world played. He finally grew tired of Paris, of public life. He had
been loved by such various types of women as George Sand--re-christened
by Baudelaire as the Prudhomme of immorality; delightful epigram!--by
Marie Du Plessis, the Lady of the Camellias, and by that astounding
adventuress, Lola Montez. How many others only a Leporello catalogue
would show.

His third artistic period began in 1847, his sojourn at Weimar. It was
the most attractive and fruitful of all. From 1848 to 1861 the musical
centre of Germany was this little town immortalised by Goethe. There the
world flocked to hear the first performance of Lohengrin, and other
Wagner operas. A circle consisting of Raff, Von Bülow, Tausig,
Cornelius, Joseph Joachim, Schumann, Robert Franz, Litolff, Dionys
Pruckner, William Mason, Lassen, with Berlioz and Rubinstein and Brahms
(in 1854) and Remenyi as occasional visitors, to mention a tithe of
famous names, surrounded Liszt. His elective affinity--in Goethe's
phrase--was the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, who with her child had
deserted the usual brutal and indifferent husband--in fashionable
romances. Her influence upon Liszt's character has been disputed, but
unwarrantably. She occasionally forced him to do the wrong thing, as in
the case of the ending of the Dante symphony; _vide_, the new Wagner
Autobiography. Together they wrote his chief literary works, the study
of Chopin--the princess supplying the feverish local colour, and the
book on Hungarian gipsy music, which contains a veiled attack on the
Jews, for which Liszt was blamed. The Sayn-Wittgenstein was an intense,
narrow nature--she has been called a "slightly vulgar aristocrat," and
one of her peculiarities was seeing in almost every one of artistic or
intellectual prominence Hebraic traits or lineaments. Years before the
Geyer and the Leipsic _Judengasse_ story came out she unhesitatingly
pronounced Richard Wagner of Semitic origin; she also had her doubts
about Berlioz and others. The Lisztian theory of gipsy music consists,
as Dannreuther says, in the merit of a laboured attempt to prove the
existence of something like a gipsy epic in terms of music, the fact
being that Hungarian gipsies merely play Hungarian popular tunes in a
fantastic and exciting manner, but have no music that can properly be
called their own. Liszt was a facile, picturesque writer and did more
with his pen for Wagner than Wagner's own turbid writings. But a great
writer he was not--many-sided as he was. It was unkind, however, on the
part of Wagner to say to a friend that Cosima had more brains than her
father. If she has, Bayreuth since her husband's death hasn't proved it.
Wagner, when he uttered this, was probably in the ferment of a new
passion, having quite recovered from his supposedly eternal love for
Mathilde Wesendonck.

[Illustration: Cosima von Bülow

Daughter of Liszt]

A masterful woman the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, though far from
beautiful, she so controlled and ordered Liszt's life that he quite shed
his bohemian skin, composed much, and as Kapellmeister produced many
novelties of the new school. They lived on a hill in a house called the
Altenburg, not a very princely abode, and there Liszt accomplished the
major portion of his works for orchestra, his masses and piano
concertos. There, too, Richard Wagner, a revolutionist, wanted by the
Dresden police, came in 1849--from May 19th to 24th--disguised, carrying
a forged passport, poor, miserable. Liszt secured him lodgings, and gave
him a banquet at the Altenburg attended by Tausig, Von Bülow, Gille,
Draeseke, Gottschalg, and others, nineteen in all. Wagner behaved badly,
insulted his host and guests. He was left in solitude until Liszt
insisted on his apologising for his rude manners--which he did with a
bad grace. John F. Runciman has said that Liszt ought to have done even
more for Wagner than he did--or words to that effect; just so, and there
is no doubt that the noble man has put the world in his debt by piloting
the music-dramatist into safe harbour; but while ingratitude is no crime
according to Nietzsche (who, quite illogically, reproached Wagner for
_his_ ingratitude) there seems a limit to amiability, and in Liszt's
case his amiability amounted to weakness. He could never say "No" to
Wagner (nor to a pretty woman). He understood and forgave the Mime
nature in Wagner for the sake of his Siegfried side. There was no Mime
in Liszt, nothing small nor hateful, although he could at times play the
benevolent, ironic Mephisto. And in his art he mirrored the quality to
perfection--the Mephistopheles of his Faust Symphony.

Intrigues pursued him in his capacity as court musical director. The
Princess Maria-Pawlowna died June, 1859; the following October Princess
Marie, daughter of Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, married the Prince
Hohenlohe, and Liszt, after the opera by Peter Cornelius was hissed,
resigned his post. He remembered Goethe and his resignation, caused by a
trained dog, at the same theatre. But he didn't leave Weimar until
August 17, 1861, joining the princess at Rome. The scandal of the
attempted marriage there is told in another chapter. Again the eyes of
the world were riveted upon Liszt. His very warts became notorious. Some
say that Cardinal Antonelli, instigated by Polish relatives of the
princess, upset the affair when the pair were literally on the eve of
approaching the altar; some believe that the wily Liszt had set in
motion the machinery; but the truth is that at the advice of the
Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe, his closest friend, the marriage scheme was
dropped. When the husband of the princess died there was no further talk
of matrimony. Instead, Liszt took minor orders, concentrated his
attention on church music, and henceforth spent his year between Rome,
Weimar, and Budapest. He hoped for a position at the Papal court
analogous to the one he had held at Weimar; but the appointment of
music-director at St. Peter's was never made. To Weimar he had returned
(1869) at the cordial invitation of the archduke, who allotted to his
use a little house in the park, the _Hofgärtnerei_. There every summer
he received pupils from all parts of the world, gratuitously advising
them, helping them from his impoverished purse, and, incidentally, being
admired by a new generation of musical enthusiasts, particularly those
of the feminine gender. There were lots of scandals, and the worthy
burghers of the town shook their heads at the goings-on of the
_Lisztianer_. The old man fell under many influences, some of them
sinister. He seldom saw Richard or Cosima Wagner, though he attended the
opening of Bayreuth in 1876. On that occasion Wagner publicly paid a
magnificent tribute to the genius and noble friendship of Liszt. It
atoned for a wilderness of previous neglect and ingratitude.

With Wagner's death in 1883 his hold on mundane matters began to relax.
He taught, he travelled, he never failed to pay the princess an annual
visit at Rome. She had immured herself, behind curtained windows and to
the light of waxen tapers led the life of a mystic, also smoked the
blackest of cigars. She became a theologian in petticoats and wrote
numerous inutile books about pin-points in matters ecclesiastical. No
doubt she still loved Liszt, for she set a spy on him at Weimar and thus
kept herself informed as to how much cognac he daily consumed, how many
pretty girls had asked for a lock of his silvery hair, also the name of
the latest aspirant to his affections.

What a brilliant coterie of budding artists surrounded him: D'Albert,
Urspruch, Geza Zichy, Friedheim, Joseffy, Rosenthal, Reisenauer, Grieg,
Edward MacDowell, Burmeister, Stavenhagen, Sofie Menter, Toni Raab,
Nikisch, Weingartner, Siloti, Laura Kahrer, Sauer, Adele Aus der Ohe,
Moszkowski, Scharwenka, Pachmann, Saint-Saëns, Rubinstein--the latter
not as pupil--Borodin, Van der Stucken, and other distinguished names in
the annals of compositions and piano playing. Liszt's health broke down,
but he persisted in visiting London in the early summer of 1886, where
he was received as a demi-god by Queen Victoria and the musical world;
he had been earlier in Paris where a mass of his was sung with success.
His money affairs were in a tangle; once in receipt of an income that
had enabled him to throw money away to any whining humbug, he complained
at the last that he had no home of his own, no income--he had not been
too shrewd in his dealings with music publishers--and very little cash
for travelling expenses. The princess needed her own rents, and Liszt
was never a charity pensioner. During the Altenburg years, the
_Glanzzeit_ at Weimar, her income had sufficed for both, as Liszt was
earning no money from concert-tours. But at the end, despite his devoted
disciples, he was the very picture of a deserted, desolate old hero. And
he had given away fortunes, had played fortunes at benefit-concerts
into the coffers of cities overtaken by fire or flood. Surely, the
seamy side of success. "_Wer aber wird nun Liszt helfen?_" This half
humorous, half pathetic cry of his had its tragic significance.

Liszt last touched the keyboard July 19, 1886, at Colpach, Luxemburg,
the castle of Munkaçzy, the Hungarian painter. Feeble as he must have
been there was a supernatural aureole about his music that caused his
hearers to weep. (Fancy the pianoforte inciting to tears!) He played his
favourite Liebestraum, the Chant Polonais from the "Glanes de Woronice"
(the Polish estate of the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein) and the sixteenth
of his Soirées de Vienne. He went on to Bayreuth, in company with a
persistent young Parisian lady--the paramount passion not quite
extinguished--attended a performance of Tristan and Isolde, through
which he slept from absolute exhaustion; though he did not fail to
acknowledge in company with Cosima Wagner the applause at the end. He
went at once to bed never to leave it alive. He died of lung trouble on
the night of July 31st or the early hour of August 1, 1886, and his last
word is said to have been "Tristan." He was buried, in haste--that he
might not interfere with the current Wagner festival--and, no doubt, is
mourned at leisure. His princess survived him a year; this sounds more
romantic than it is. [Madame d'Agoult had died in 1876.] A new terror
was added to death by the ugly tomb of the dead man, designed by his
grandson, Siegfried Wagner; said to be a composer as well as an amateur
architect. Victories usually resemble each other; it is defeat alone
that wears an individual physiognomy. Liszt, with all his optimism, did
not hesitate to speak of his career as a failure. But what a magnificent
failure! "To die and to die young--what happiness," was a favourite
phrase of his.


III

"While remaining itself obscure," wrote George Moore of L'Education
Sentimentale, by Flaubert, "this novel has given birth to a numerous
literature. The Rougon-Macquart series is nothing but L'Education
Sentimentale re-written into twenty volumes by a prodigious
journalist--twenty huge balloons which bob about the streets, sometimes
getting clear of the housetops. Maupassant cut it into numberless
walking-sticks; Goncourt took the descriptive passages and turned them
into Passy rhapsodies. The book has been a treasure cavern known to
forty thieves, whence all have found riches and fame. The original
spirit has proved too strong for general consumption, but, watered and
prepared, it has had the largest sale ever known."

This particular passage is suited to the case of Liszt. Despite his
obligations to Beethoven, Chopin and Berlioz--as, indeed, Flaubert owed
something to Chateaubriand, Bossuet, and Balzac--he invented a new form,
the symphonic poem, invented a musical phrase, novel in shape and gait,
perfected the leading motive, employed poetic ideas instead of the
antique and academic cut and dried square-toed themes--and was
ruthlessly plundered almost before the ink was dry on his manuscript,
and without due acknowledgment of the original source. So it came
to pass that the music of the future, lock, stock, and barrel,
first manufactured by Liszt, travelled into the porches of the
public ears from the scores of Wagner, Raff, Cornelius, Saint-Saëns,
Tschaikowsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Borodin, and minor Russian composers
and a half-hundred besides of the new men, beginning with the name of
Richard Strauss--that most extraordinary personality of latter-day
music. And Liszt sat in Weimar and smiled and waited and waited and
smiled; and if he has achieved paradise by this time he is still
smiling and waiting. He often boasted that storms were his _métier_,
meaning their tonal reproduction in orchestral form or on the
keyboard--but I suspect that patience was his cardinal virtue.

Henry James once wrote of the human soul and it made me think of Liszt:
"A romantic, moonlighted landscape, with woods and mountains and dim
distances, visited by strange winds and murmurs." Liszt's music often
evokes the golden opium-haunted prose of De Quincy; it is at once
sensual and rhetorical. It also has its sonorous platitudes, unheavenly
lengths, and barbaric yawps.

Despite his marked leaning toward the classic (Raphael, Correggio,
Mickelangelo, and those frigid, colourless Germans, Kaulbach, Cornelius,
Schadow, not to mention the sweetly romantic Ary Scheffer and the
sentimental Delaroche), by temperament Liszt was a lover of the
grotesque, the baroque, the eccentric, even the morbid. He often
declared that it was his pet ambition to give a piano recital in the
_Salon Carré_ of the Louvre, where, surrounded by the canvases of Da
Vinci, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Veronese, and
others of the immortal choir, he might make music never to be forgotten.
In reality, he would have played with more effect if the pictures had
been painted by Salvator Rosa, El Greco, Hell-Fire Breughel, Callot,
Orcagna (the Dance of Death at Pisa), Matthew Grünwald; or among the
moderns, Gustave Doré, the macabre Wiertz of Brussels, Edward Munch,
Matisse or Picasso. Ugliness mingled with voluptuousness, piety doubted
by devilry, the quaint and the horrible, the satanic and the angelic,
these states of soul (and body) appealed to Liszt quite as much as they
did to Berlioz. They are all the apex of delirious romanticism;--now as
dead as the classicism that preceded and produced it--of the seeking
after recondite sensations and expressing them by means of the eloquent,
versatile orchestral apparatus. Think what rôles Death and Lust play in
the over-strained art of the Romantics (the "hairy romantic" as
Thackeray called Berlioz, and no doubt Liszt, for he met him in
London); what bombast, what sonorous pomp and pageantry, what sighing
sensuousness, what brilliant martial spirit--they are all to be found in
Liszt. In musical irony he never had but one match, Chopin--until
Richard Strauss; Berlioz was also an adept in this disquieting mood.
Liszt makes a direct appeal to the nerves, he has the trick of getting
atmosphere with a few bars; and even if his great solo sonata has been
called "The Invitation to Hissing and Stamping" (thus named by
Gumprecht, a blind critic of Berlin, about 1854) the work itself is a
mine of musical treasures, and a most dramatic sonata--that is if one
accepts Liszt's definition of the form. Here we recall Cabaner's
music--as reported by Mr. Moore--"the music that might be considered by
Wagner as a little too advanced, but which Liszt would not fail to
understand."

Liszt's music is virile and homophonic, despite its chromatic
complexities. Instead of lacking in thematic invention he was, perhaps,
a trifle too facile, too Italianate; he shook too many melodies from
his sleeve to be always fresh; in a word, he composed too much.
Architecturally his work recalls at times the fantastic Kremlin, or the
Taj Mahal, or--as in the Graner Mass--a strange perversion of the
gothic. Liszt was less the master-builder than the painter; color, not
form, was his stronger side. And like Chateaubriand his music is an
interminglement of religious with moods of sensuality. An authority has
written that his essays in counterpoint are perhaps more successful than
those of Berlioz, though his fugue subjects are equally artificial; and
he fails to make the most of them (but couldn't the same be said of
Beethoven, or of the contrapuntal Reger?). Both the French and Hungarian
masters seem to have concocted rather than have composed their fugues.
All of which is the eternal rule of thumb over again. The age of the
fugue, like the age of manufactured miracles, is forever past. If you
don't care for the fugal passages and part-writing in the Graner Mass or
in the organ music, then there is nothing more to be said. Charles Lamb
inveighed against concertos and instrumental music because, as he wrote,
"words are something; but to gaze on empty frames, and to be forced to
make the pictures for yourself ... to invent extempore tragedies is to
answer the vague gestures of an inexplicable rambling mime." This
unimaginative condition is the precise one from which suffered so many
early and too many later critics of Liszt's original music. If you are
not in the mood poetical, whether lyric, heroic, or epic, then go to
some other composer. And I protest against the parenthetical position
allotted him by musical commentators, mostly of the Bayreuth brood. The
Wagner family saw to it that the mighty Richard should be furnished with
an appropriate artistic pedigree; Beethoven and Gluck were called his
precursors. Liszt is not a transitional composer, except that all great
composers are a link in the unending chain. But, though he helped Wagner
to his later ideas and style, he had nothing whatever to do with the
Wagnerian music-drama or the Wagnerian attitude toward art. Berlioz,
Liszt, and Wagner are all three as different in conception and texture
as Handel and Haydn and Mozart; yet many say Handel and Haydn, or, worse
still, Mozart and Beethoven. Absurd and unjust bracketings by the
fat-minded unmusical.

In musicianship Liszt had no contemporary who could pretend to tie his
shoe-strings, with the possible exception of Felix Mendelssohn. And in
one particular he ranks next to Bach and Beethoven--in rhythmic
invention; after Bach and Beethoven, Liszt stands nearest as regards the
variety of his rhythms. His Eastern blood--the Magyar came from
Asia--may account for this rhythmic versatility. It is a point not to be
overlooked in future estimates of the composer.

How then account for the rather indifferent fashion with which the Liszt
compositions are received by the musical public, not only here, but in
Europe? This year (1911) the festivals in honor of the Master's
Centenary may revive interest in his music and, perhaps, open the ears
of the present generation to the fact that Strauss, Debussy and others
are not as original as they sound. But I fear that Liszt, like any other
dead composer--save the few giants, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven--will be
played as a matter of course, sometimes from piety, sometimes because
certain dates bob up on the calendar. His piano music, the most grateful
ever written, will die hard, yet die it will.

Musicians should never forget Liszt, who, as was the case with Henry
Irving and the English speaking actors, was the first to give musicians
a social standing and prestige; before his time a pianist, violinist,
organist, singer, was hardly superior to a lackey. Liszt was the
aristocrat of his art; his essential nobility of soul, coupled with his
flaming genius, made him that. And he came from a cottage that seemed
like a peasant's. A point for your anarch in art.

Whatever the fluctuations of the chameleon of the Seven Arts, the best
music will be always beautiful; beautiful with the old or the new
beauty. Ugliness for the sheer sake of ugliness never endures; but one
must be able to define modern beauty, else find oneself in the
predicament of those deaf ones who could not or would not hear the
beauty of Wagner; or those blind ones who would not or could not see the
characteristic truth and beauty in the pictures of Edouard Manet. The
sting and glamour of the Liszt orchestral music has compelling quality.
Probably one of the most eloquent tributes paid to music is the
following, and by a critic of pictorial art, Mr. D. S. MacColl, now
keeper of the Wallace Collection in London. He wrote:

"An art that came out of the old world two centuries ago with a few
chants, love-songs, and dances, that a century ago was still tied to the
words of a mass or an opera, or threading little dance movements
together in a 'suite,' became, in the last century, this extraordinary
debauch, in which the man who has never seen a battle, loved a woman, or
worshipped a god may not only ideally but through the response of his
nerves and pulses to immediate rhythmical attack, enjoy the ghosts of
struggle, rapture and exaltation with a volume and intricacy, an
anguish, a triumph, an irresponsibility unheard of. An amplified pattern
of action and emotion is given; each man fits to it the images he
will."




II

ASPECTS OF HIS ART AND CHARACTER


I

LISZT AND THE LADIES

The feminine friendships of Franz Liszt gained for him as much notoriety
as his music making. To the average public he was a compound of
Casanova, Byron and Goethe, and to this mixture could have been added
the name of Stendhal. Liszt's love affairs, Liszt's children, Liszt's
perilous escapes from daggers, pistols and poisons were the subjects of
conversation in Europe three-quarters of a century ago, as earlier Byron
was both hero and black-sheep in the current gossip of his time. And as
Liszt was in the public eye and ubiquitous--he travelled rapidly over
Europe in a post-chaise, often giving two concerts in one day at
different places--he became a sort of legendary figure, a musical Don
Juan. He was not unmindful of the value of advertisement, so the legend
grew with the years. That his reputation for gallantry was hugely
exaggerated it is hardly necessary to add; a man who, accomplished as
much as he, whether author, pianoforte virtuoso or composer, could have
hardly had much idle time on his hands for the devil to dip into; and
then his correspondence. He wrote or dictated literally thousands of
letters. He was an ideal letter-writer. No one went unanswered, and a
fairly good biography might be evolved from the many volumes of his
correspondence. Nevertheless he did find time for much philandering, and
for the cultivation of numerous platonic friendships. But the witty
characterisation of Madame Plater holds good of Liszt. She said one day
to Chopin: "If I were young and pretty, my little Chopin, I would take
thee for husband, Ferdinand Hiller for friend, and Liszt for lover."
This was in 1833, when Liszt was twenty-two years of age and the
witticism definitely places Liszt in the sentimental hierarchy.

La Mara, an indefatigable and enthusiastic collector of anecdotes about
unusual folk, has just published a book, Liszt und die Frauen. It deals
with twenty-six friends of Liszt and does not lean heavily on scandal as
an attractive adjunct; indeed La Mara (Marie Lipsius) sees musical life
through rose-coloured spectacles, and Liszt is one of her gods. For her
he is more sinned against than sinning, more pursued than pursuer; his
angelic wings grow in size on his shoulders while you watch. Only a few
of the ladies, titled and otherwise, mentioned in this book enjoyed the
fleeting affection of the pianist-composer. Whatever else he might have
been, Liszt was not a vulgar gallant. Over his swiftest passing
intrigues he contrived to throw an air of mystery. In sooth, he was an
idealist and romanticist. No one ever heard him boast his conquests.

Did Liszt ever love? It has been questioned by some of his biographers.
His first passion, however, seems to have been genuine, as genuine as
his love for his mother and for his children; he proved more admirable
as a father than he would have been as a husband. In 1823 as "le petit
Litz" he had set all musical Paris wondering. When his father died in
1827 he gave lessons there like any everyday pianoforte pedagogue
because he needed money for the support of his mother. Among his
aristocratic pupils was Caroline de Saint-Criq, the daughter of the
Minister of Commerce, Count de Saint-Criq. It must have been truly a
love in the clouds. Caroline was motherless. She was, as Liszt later
declared, "a woman ideally good." Her father did not enjoy the prospect
of a son-in-law who gave music lessons, and the intimacy suddenly
snapped. But Liszt never forgot her; she became his mystic Beatrice, for
her and to her he composed and dedicated a song; and even meeting her at
Pau in 1844, just sixteen years after their rupture, did not create the
disenchantment usual in such cases. Berlioz, too, sought an early love
when old, and in his eyes she was as she always had been; Stendhal burst
into tears on seeing again Angela Pietagrua after eleven years
absence. Verily art is a sentimental antiseptic.

[Illustration: Liszt, about 1850]

Caroline de Saint-Criq had married like the dutiful daughter she was,
and Liszt's heart by 1844 was not only battle-scarred but a cemetery of
memories. She died in 1874. They had corresponded for years, and at the
moment of their youthful parting, caused by a cruel and extremely
sensible father, they made a promise to recall each other's names at the
hour of the daily angelus. Liszt averred that he kept his promise. The
name of the lyric he wrote for her is: "Je voudrais m'évanouir comme la
pourpre du soir" ("Ich möchte hingehn wie das Abendrot").

Before the affair began with the Countess d'Agoult, afterward the mother
of his three children, Liszt enjoyed an interlude with the Countess
Adèle Laprunarède. It was the year of the revolution, 1830, and the
profound despondency into which he had been cast by his unhappy love for
Caroline was cured, as his mother sagely remarked, by the sound of
cannon. He became a fast friend of Countess Adèle and followed her to
her home in the Alps, there, as he jestingly said, to pursue their
studies in style in the French language. It must not be forgotten that
the Count, her husband, was their companion. But Paris wagged its myriad
tongues all the same. Liszt's affiliation with Countess Louis Plater,
born Gräfin Brzostowska, the Pani Kasztelanowa (or lady castellan in
English; no wonder he wrote such chromatic music later, these
dissonantal names must have been an inspiration) was purely platonic,
as were the majority of his friendships with the sex. But he dearly
loved a princess, and the sharp eyes of Miss Amy Fay noted that his bow
when meeting a woman of rank was a trifle too profound. (See her
admirable Music Study in Germany.) The truth is that Liszt was a
courtier. He was reared in aristocratic surroundings, and he took to
luxury as would a cat. With the cannon booming in Paris he sketched the
plan of his Revolutionary Symphony, but he continued to visit the
aristocracy. In 1831 at Stuttgart his friend Frédéric Chopin wrote a
"revolutionary" study (in C minor, opus 10) on hearing of Warsaw's
downfall. Wagner rang incendiary church bells during the revolutionary
days at Dresden in May 1849. Brave gestures, as our French friends would
put it, and none the less lasting. Liszt's symphony is lost, but its
themes may have bobbed up in his Faust and Dante symphonies. Who
remembers the Warsaw of 1831 except Chopin lovers? And the rebellious
spirit of Wagner's bell-ringing passed over into his Tetralogy. Nothing
is negligible to an artist, not even a "gesture." Naturally there is no
reference to the incident in his autobiography. If you are to take
Wagner at his word he was a mere looker-on in Dresden during what
Bakounine contemptuously called "a petty insurrection." Nietzsche was
right--great men are to be distrusted when they write of themselves.

With the Madame d'Agoult and Princess Wittgenstein episodes we are not
concerned just now. So much has been written in this two-voiced fugue in
the symphony of Liszt's life that it is difficult to disentangle the
truth from the fable. La Mara is sympathetic, though not particularly
enlightening. Of more interest, because of the comparative mystery of
the affair, is the friendship between George Sand and Liszt. Naturally
La Mara, sentimentalist that she is, denies a liaison. She errs. There
was a brief love passage. But Liszt escaped the fate of De Musset and
Chopin. Balzac speaks of the matter in his novel Béatrix, in which
George Sand is depicted as Camille Maupin, the Countess d'Agoult as
Béatrix, Gustave Planché as Claude Vignon, and Liszt as Conti.
Furthermore, the D'Agoult was jealous of Madame Sand, doubly jealous of
her as a friend of Liszt and as a writer of genius. Read the D'Agoult's
novel, written after her parting with Liszt, and see how in this Nélida
she imitates the Elle et Lui. That she hated George Sand, after a
pretended friendship, cannot be doubted; we have her own words as
witnesses. In My Literary Life, by Madame Edmond Adam (Juliette Lamber),
she said of George Sand to the author: "Her lovers are to her a piece of
chalk, with which she scratches on the black-board. When she has
finished she crushes the chalk under her foot, and there remains but the
dust, which is quickly blown away." "How is it, my esteemed and beloved
friend, you have never forgiven?" sadly asked Madame Adam. "Because the
wound has not healed yet. Conscious that I had put my whole life and
soul into my love for Liszt she tried to take him away from me."

One would suppose from the above that Liszt was faithful to Madame
d'Agoult or that George Sand had separated the runaway couple, whereas
in reality Liszt knew George Sand before he met the D'Agoult. What
Madame Sand said of Liszt as a gallant can hardly be paraphrased in
English. She was not very flattering. Perhaps George Sand was a reason
why the relations between Chopin and Liszt cooled; the latter said: "Our
lady loves had quarrelled, and as good cavaliers we were in duty bound
to side with them." Chopin said: "We are friends, we were comrades."
Liszt told Dr. Niecks: "There was a cessation of intimacy, but no
enmity. I left Paris soon after, and never saw him again." It was at the
beginning of 1840 that Liszt went to Chopin's apartment accompanied by a
companion. Chopin was absent. On his return he became furious on
learning of the visit. No wonder. Who was the lady in the case? It could
have been Marie, it might have been George Sand, and probably it was
some new fancy.

[Illustration: _After an oil painting by J. Danhauser_

        Victor Hugo  Paganini  Rossini
    Dumas  George Sand  Countess d'Agoult

Liszt at the Piano]

More adventurous were Liszt's affairs with Marguerite Gautier, the lady
of the camellias, the consumptive heroine of the Dumas play, as related
by Jules Janin, and with the more notorious Lola Montez, who had to
leave Munich to escape the wrath of the honest burghers. The king had
humoured too much the lady's extravagant habits. She fell in love with
Liszt, who had parted with his Marie in 1844, and went with him to
Constantinople. Where they separated no one knows. It was not destined
to be other than a fickle passion on both sides, not without its
romantic aspects for romantically inclined persons. Probably the closest
graze with hatred and revenge ever experienced by Liszt was the Olga
Janina episode. Polish and high born, rich, it is said, she adored
Liszt, studied with him, followed him from Weimar to Rome, from Rome
to Budapest, bored him, shocked him as an abbé and scandalised
ecclesiastical Rome by her mad behaviour; finally she attempted to stab
him, and, failing, took a dose of poison. She didn't die, but lived to
compose a malicious and clever book, Souvenirs d'une Cosaque (written at
Paris and Karentec, March to September, published by the Libraire
Internationale, 1875, now out of print), and signed "Robert Franz." Poor
old Liszt is mercilessly dissected, and his admiring circle at Weimar
slashed by a vigourous pen. In truth, despite the falsity of the
picture, Olga Janina wrote much more incisively, with more personal
colour and temperament, than did Countess d'Agoult, who also caricatured
Liszt in her Nélida (as "Guermann"), and the good Liszt wrote to his
princess: "Janina was not evil, only exalted." [I have heard it
whispered that the attempt on Liszt's life at Rome was a melodramatic
affair, concocted by his princess, who was jealous of the Janina girl,
with the aid of the pianist's valet.]

La Mara shows to us twenty-six portraits in her Liszt and the Ladies;
they include Princess Cristina Belgiojoso, Pauline Viardot-Garcia,
Caroline Unger-Sabatier, Marie Camille Pleyel, Charlotte von Hagn,
Bettina von Arnim, Marie von Mouchanoff-Kalergis, Rosalie, Countess
Sauerma, a niece of Spohr and an accomplished harp player; the Grand
Duchess of Saxony, Maria Pawlowna, and her successor, Sophie, Grand
Duchess of Weimar, both patronesses of Liszt; the Princess Wittgenstein,
Emilie Merian-Genast, Agnes Street Klindworth, Jessie Hillebrand
Laussot, Sofie Menter, the greatest of his women pupils; the Countess
Wolkenstein and Bülow, Elpis Melena, Fanny, the Princess Rospigliosi,
the Baroness Olga Meyendorff (this lady enjoyed to an extraordinary
degree the confidence of Liszt. At Weimar she was held in high esteem by
him--and hated by his pupils), and Nadine Helbig--Princess Nadine
Schahawskoy. Madame Helbig was born in 1847 and went to Rome the first
time in 1865. She became a Liszt pupil and a fervent propagandist. Her
crayon sketch drawing of the venerable master is excellent. In her
possession is a drawing by Ingres, who met Liszt in Rome, 1839, when the
pianist was twenty-eight years of age. We learn that Liszt never
attempted "poetry" with the exception of a couplet which he sent to the
egregious Bettina von Arnim. It runs thus, and it consoles us with its
crackling consonants for the discontinuance of further poetic flights on
the part of its creator:

    "Ich kraxele auf der Leiter
    Und komme doch nicht weiter."


II

A FAMOUS FRIENDSHIP

The perennial interest of the world in the friendships of famous men and
women is proved by the never-ceasing publication of books concerning
them. Of George Sand and her lovers how much has been written. George
Eliot and Lewes, Madame de Récamier and Chateaubriand, Goethe and his
affinities, Chopin and George Sand, Liszt and the Countess d'Agoult,
Wagner and Mathilde--a voluminous index might be made of the classic and
romantic _liaisons_ that have excited curiosity from the time when the
memory of man runneth not to the contrary down to yesteryear. Although
Franz Liszt, great piano virtuoso, great composer, great man, has been
dead since 1886, and the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein since 1887,
volumes are still written about their friendship. Indeed, in any
collection of letters written by Liszt, or to him, the name of the
princess is bound to appear. She was the veritable muse of the
Hungarian, and when her influence upon him as a composer is considered
it will not do to say, as many critics have said, that she was a
stumbling-block in his career. The reverse is the truth.

The most recent contributions to Liszt literature are the letters
between Franz Liszt and Carl Alexander, Archduke of Weimar; Aus der
Glanzzeit der Weimarer Altenburg, by the fecund La Mara; and Franz
Liszt, by August Göllerich, a former pupil of the master. To this we
might add the little-known bundle of letters by Adelheid von Schorn,
Franz Liszt et la Princesse de Sayn-Wittgenstein, (translated into
French), a perfect mine of gossip. Miss von Schorn remained in Weimar
after the princess left the Athens-on-the-Ilm for Rome and corresponded
with her, telling of Liszt's doings, never failing to record new
flirtations and making herself generally useful to the venerable
composer. When attacked by his last illness at Colpach, where he had
gone to visit Munkacszy, the painter, Miss von Schorn went to Bayreuth
to look after him. There, at the door of his bed-chamber, she was
refused admittance, Madame Cosima Wagner, through a servant, telling her
that the daughter and grand-daughters of Franz Liszt would care for him.
The truth is that Madame Wagner had always detested the Princess
Wittgenstein and saw in the Weimar lady one of her emissaries. Miss Von
Schorn left Bayreuth deeply aggrieved. After Liszt's death her
correspondence with the princess abruptly ceased. She tells all this in
her book. Even Liszt had shown her his door at Weimar several years
before he died. He detested gossips and geese, he often declared.

The interest displayed by the world artistic has always centred about
the episode of the projected marriage between the princess and Liszt.
A dozen versions of the interrupted ceremony have been printed.
Bayreuth, which never loved Weimar--that is, the Wagner family and the
Wittgenstein faction--has said some disagreeable things, not hesitating
to insinuate that Liszt himself was more pleased than otherwise when
Pope Pius IX forbade the nuptials. Liszt biographers side with their
idol--who once said of his former son-in-law, Hans von Bülow, that he
had no talent as a married man. He might have lived to repeat the
epigram if he had married the princess. Decidedly, Liszt was not made
for stepping in double-harness.

Liszt, the most fascinating pianist in Europe, had been the most
pursued male on the Continent, and his meeting with the Princess
Sayn-Wittgenstein at Kieff, Russia, in February, 1847, was really his
salvation. He was then about thirty-six years old, in all the glory of
his art and of his extraordinary virility. The princess, who was born in
1819, was living on her estate at Woronice, on the edge of the Russian
steppes. She was nevertheless of Polish blood, the daughter of Peter von
Iwanowski, a rich landowner, and of Pauline Podoska, an original,
eccentric, cultivated woman and a traveller. In 1836 she married the
Prince Nikolaus Sayn-Wittgenstein, a Russian millionaire and adjutant to
the Czar. It was from the first a miserable failure, this marriage. The
bride, intellectual, sensitive, full of the Polish love of art, above
all of music, could not long endure the raw dragoon, dissipated gambler
and hard liver into whose arms she had been pushed by her ambitious
father. She made a retreat to Woronice with her infant daughter and
spent laborious days and nights in the study of philosophy, the arts,
sciences, and religion. The collision of two such natures as Carolyne
and Liszt led to some magnificent romantic and emotional fireworks.

We learn in reading the newly published letters between Liszt and the
Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Weimar that the pianist had visited Weimar
for the first time in 1841. The furore he created was historic. The
reigning family--doubtless bored to death in the charming, placid little
city--welcomed Liszt as a distraction. The Archduchess Maria Pawlovna,
the sister of the Czar of Russia and mother of the later Kaiserin
Augusta, admired Liszt, and so did the Archduke Carl. He was covered
with jewels and orders. The upshot was that after a visit in 1842 Liszt
was invited to the office of General Music Director of Weimar. This
offer he accepted and in 1844 he began his duties. Carl Alexander had
married the Princess Sophie of Holland, and therefore Liszt had a strong
party in his favour at court. That he needed royal favour will be seen
when we recall that in 1850 he produced an opera by a banished
socialist, one Richard Wagner, the opera Lohengrin. He also needed court
protection when in 1848 he brought to Weimar the runaway wife of Prince
Wittgenstein. The lady placed herself under the friendly wing of
Archduchess Maria Pawlovna, who interceded in vain with the Czar in
behalf of an abused, unhappy woman. Nikolaus Wittgenstein began divorce
proceedings. His wife was ordered back to her Woronice estate by
imperial decree. She refused to go and her fortune was greatly curtailed
by confiscation. She loved Liszt. She saw that in the glitter of this
roving comet there was the stuff out of which fixed stars are fashioned,
and she lived near him at Weimar from 1848 to 1861.

This was the brilliant period of musical Weimar. The illusion that the
times of Goethe and Schiller were come again was indulged in by other
than sentimental people. Princess Carolyne held a veritable court at the
Altenburg, a large, roomy so-called palazzo on the Jena post-road, just
across the muddy creek they call the River Ilm. The present writer when
he last visited Weimar found the house very much reduced from its former
glories. It looked commonplace and hardly like the spot where Liszt
wrote his symphonic poems, planned new musical forms and the
reformation of church music; where came Berlioz, Thackeray, George
Eliot, and George Henry Lewes, not to mention a number of distinguished
poets, philosophers, dramatists, composers, and aristocratic folk.
Carolyne corresponded with all the great men of her day, beginning with
Humboldt. The idea of the Goethe Foundation was born at that time. It
was a veritable decade of golden years that Weimar lived; but there were
evidences about 1858 that Liszt's rule was weakening, and after the
performance of his pupil's opera, The Barber of Bagdad, by Peter
Cornelius, December 15, 1858, he resigned as Kapellmeister. Dinglested's
intrigues hurt his unselfish nature and a single hiss had disturbed him
into a resignation. The daughter of Princess Wittgenstein married in
1859 Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, and in 1861 the Altenburg was
closed and the princess went to Rome to see the Pope.

At the Vatican the princess was well received. She was an ardent
Catholic and was known to be an author of religious works. Pius IX bade
her arise when she fell weeping at his feet asking for justice. She
presented her case. She had been delivered into matrimony at the age of
seventeen, knowing nothing of life, of love, of her husband. Wouldn't
his Holiness dissolve the original chains so that she could marry the
man of her election? The Pope was amiable. He knew and admired Liszt. He
had the matter investigated. After all it was an enforced marriage to a
heretic, this odious Wittgenstein union; and then came the desired
permission. Carolyne, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein, born Ivanovska,
was a free woman. Delighted, she lost no time; Liszt was told to reach
Rome by the evening of October 21, 1861, the eve of his fiftieth
birthday. The ceremony was to take place at the Church of San Carlo, on
the Corso, at 6 A. M. of October 22.

What really happened the night of the 21st after Liszt arrived no one
truly knows but the principals. Lina Ramann tells her tale, La Mara
hers, Göllerich his; Eugen Segnitz in his pamphlet, Franz Liszt und Rom,
has a very conservative account; but they all concur if not in details
at least in the main fact, that powerful, unknown machinery was set in
motion at the Vatican, that the Holy Father had rescinded his permission
pending a renewed examination of the case. The blow fell at the twelfth
hour. The church was decorated and a youth asked the reason for all
the candles and bravery of the altars. He was told that Princess
Wittgenstein was to marry "her piano player" the next morning. The news
was brought by the boy to his father, M. Calm-Podoska, a cousin of
Carolyne, who, with the aid of Cardinal Catarani and the Princess
Odescalchi, begged a hearing at the Vatican. Cardinal Antonelli sent the
messenger bearing the fatal information. The princess was as one dead.
It was the end of her earthly ambitions.

How did Liszt bear the disappointment? At this juncture the fine haze of
legend intervenes. His daughter Cosima has said (in a number of the
_Bayreuther Blätter_) that he had left Weimar for Rome remarking that he
felt as if going to a funeral. Other and malicious folk have pretended
to see in the melodramatic situation the fine Hungarian hand of Liszt.
He was glad, so it was averred, to get rid of the marriage and the
princess at the same stroke of the clock. Had she not been nicknamed
"Fürstin Hinter-Liszt" because of the way she followed him from town to
town when he was giving concerts? But Antonelli was a friend of the
princess as well as an intimate of Liszt. We doubt not that Liszt came
to Rome in good faith. In common with the princess he accepted the
interruption as a sign from on high, and even when in 1864 Prince
Wittgenstein died the marriage idea was not seriously revived. Carolyne
asked Liszt to devote his genius to the Church. In 1865 he assumed minor
orders and became an abbé.

Pius IX, a lover of music, had on July 11, 1863, visited Liszt at the
Dominican cloister of Monte Mario, and to the Hungarian's accompaniment
had sung in his sweet-toned musical voice. Liszt was called his
Palestrina, but alas! in the churchly music of Liszt Rome has
never betrayed more than a passing interest; and to-day Pius X is
ultra-Gregorian. Liszt, like a musical Moses, saw the promised land but
did not enter it.

The friendship of the princess and Liszt never abated. He divided his
days between Weimar, Rome, and Budapest (from 1876 in the latter
city), and she wrote tirelessly in Rome books on theology, mysticism,
and Church history. She was a great and generally good force in the life
of Liszt, who was, she said, a lazy, careless man, though he left over
thirteen hundred compositions. Women are insatiable.

[Illustration: The Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein]


III

LATER BIOGRAPHERS

The future bibliographer of Liszt literature has a heavy task in store
for him, for books about the great Hungarian composer are multiplying
apace. Liszt the dazzling virtuoso has long been a theme with
variations, and is, we suspect, a theme nearly exhausted; but
Liszt as tone poet, Liszt as song writer, as composer for the
pianoforte, as littérateur, the man, the wickedest of Don Juans, the
ecclesiastic--these and a dozen other studies of the most protean
musician of the last century have been appearing ever since the
publication of Lina Ramann's vast and sentimental biography. Instead of
there being a lack of material for a new book there is an embarrassment,
not always of riches, from industrious pens, though few are of value.
The Liszt pupils have had their say, and their pupils are beginning to
intone the psalmody of uncritical praise. Liszt the romantic,
magnificent, magnanimous, supernal, is set to the same old harmonies,
until the reader, tired of the gabble and gush, longs for a biographer
who will riddle the various legends and once and for all prove that
Liszt was not perfection, even if he was the fascinating Admirable
Crichton of his times.

Yet, and the fact sets us wondering over the mutability of fame, the
Liszt propaganda is not flourishing. Richard Burmeister, a well known
pupil and admirer of the master in Berlin has assured us that while
Liszt is heard in all the concerts in Germany, the public is lukewarm;
Richard Strauss is more eagerly heard. Liszt's familiar remark, "I can
wait," provoked from the authority above mentioned the answer, "Perhaps
he has waited too long." We are inclined to disagree with this dictum.
Liszt once had musical and unmusical Europe at his feet. His success was
called comet-like, probably because he was born in the comet year 1811,
also because his hair was long and his technique transcendentally
brilliant. His critical compositions were received with less approval.
That such an artist of the keyboard could be also a successor to
Beethoven was an idea mocked at by the conservative Leipsic school.
Besides, he came in such a questionable guise as a _Symphoniker_. A
piano concerto with a triangle in the score (the E flat), compositions
for full orchestra which were called symphonic poems, lyrics without a
tune, that pretended to follow the curve of the words; finally church
music, solemn masses through which stalked the apparition of the haughty
Magyar chieftain, accompanied by echoes of the gipsies on the putzta
(the Graner Mass); it was too much for ears attuned to the suave,
melodious Mendelssohn. Indeed the entire Neo-German school was too
exotic for Germany. Berlioz, a half mad Frenchman; Richard Wagner, a
crazy revolutionist, a fugitive from Saxony; and the Hungarian Liszt,
half French, wholly diabolic--of such were the uncanny ingredients of
the new music. And then were there not Liszt and his Princess
Wittgenstein at Weimar, and the crew of pupils, courtiers and bohemians
who collected at the Altenburg? Decidedly these people would never do,
even though patronised by royalty. George Eliot and her man Friday,
proper British persons, were rather shocked when they visited Weimar.

Liszt survived it all and enjoyed, notwithstanding the opposition of
Ferdinand Hiller, Joseph Joachim, the Schumanns, later Brahms and
Hanslick, the pleasure of hearing his greater works played, understood,
and applauded.

Looking backward in an impartial manner it cannot be said that the Liszt
compositions have unduly suffered from the proverbial neglect of genius.
A Liszt orchestral number, if not imperative, is a matter of course at
most symphony concerts. The piano music is done to death, especially the
Hungarian Rhapsodies. Liszt has been ranged; the indebtedness of modern
music to his pioneer efforts has been duly credited. We know that the
Faust and Dante symphonies (which might have been called symphonic
poems) are forerunners not only of much of Wagner, but of the later
group from Saint-Saëns to Richard Strauss. Why, then, the inevitable
wail from the Lisztians that the Liszt music is not heard? Christus and
the other oratorios and the masses might be heard oftener, and there are
many of the sacred compositions yet unsung that would make some critics
sit up. No, we are lovers of Liszt, but the martyrdom motive has been
sounded too often. In a double sense a reaction is bound to come. The
true Liszt is to emerge from the clouds of legend, and Liszt the
composer will be definitely placed. A little disappointment will result
in both camps; the camp of the ultra-Liszt worshippers, which sets
him in line with Beethoven and above Wagner, and the camp of the
anti-Lisztians, which refuses him even the credit of having written a
bar of original music. How Wagner would have rapped the knuckles of
these latter; how he would have told them what he wrote to Liszt: "Ich
bezeichne dich als Schöpfer meiner jetzigen Stellung. Wenn ich
komponiere und instrumentiere--denke ich immer nur an dich ... deine
drei letzten Partituren sollen mich wieder zum Musiker weihen für den
Beginn meines zweiten Aktes [Siegfried], denn dies Studium einleiten
soll."

Did Wagner mean it all? At least, he couldn't deny what is simply a
matter of dates. Liszt preceded Wagner. Otherwise how explain that
yawning chasm between Lohengrin and Tristan? Liszt, an original stylist
and a profounder musical nature than Berlioz, had intervened.
Nevertheless Liszt learned much from Berlioz, and it is quite beside the
mark to question the greater creative power of Wagner over both the
Frenchman and the Hungarian. Wagner, like the Roman conquerors, annexed
many provinces and made them his own. Let us drop these futile
comparisons. Liszt was as supreme in his domain as Wagner in his; only
the German had the more popular domain. His culture was intensive, that
of Liszt extensive. The tragedy was that Liszt lived to hear himself
denounced as an imitator of Wagner; butchered to make a Bayreuth
holiday. The day after his death in 1886 the news went abroad in
Bayreuth that the "father-in-law of Wagner" had died; that his funeral
might disturb the success of the current music festival! Liszt, who had
begun his career with a kiss from Beethoven; Liszt, whose name was a
flaring meteor in the sky of music when Wagner was starving in Paris;
Liszt the path-breaker, meeting the usual fate of such a Moses, who
never conquered the soil of the promised land, the initiator, at the
last buried in foreign soil (he loathed Bayreuth and the Wagnerians) and
known as the father-in-law of the man who eloped with his daughter and
had borrowed of him everything from money to musical ideas. The gods
must dearly love their sport.

The new books devoted to Liszt, his life and his music, are by Julius
Kapp, August Göllerich (in German), Jean Chantavoine and Calvocoressi
(in French), and A. W. Gottschalg's Franz Liszt in Weimar, a diary
full of reminiscences. These works, ponderous in the case of the
Germans, represent the vanguard of the literature that is due the
anniversary year. To M. Chantavoine may be awarded the merit of the most
symmetrically told tale; however, he need not have repeated Janka Wohl's
doubtful _mot_ attributed to Liszt apropos of priestly celibacy:
"Gregory VII was a great philanthropist." This reflects on the Princess
Wittgenstein, and Liszt, most chivalric of men, would never have said
anything that might present her in the light of pursuing him with
matrimonial designs. That she did is not to be denied. Dr. Kapp is often
severe on his hero. Is any man ever a hero to his biographer? He does
not glorify his subject, and for the amiable weakness displayed by Liszt
for princesses and other noble dames Dr. Kapp is sharp. The compositions
are fairly judged, neither in the superlative key, nor condescendingly,
as being of mere historic interest. There are over thirteen hundred, of
which about four hundred are original. Liszt wrote too much, although he
was a better self-critic than was Rubinstein. New details of the quarrel
with the Schumanns are given. The gifted pair do not emerge exactly in
an agreeable light. Liszt it was who first made known the piano music of
Robert Schumann. Clara Schumann, with the true Wieck provinciality, was
jealous of Liszt's influence over Robert. Then came the disturbing
spectre of Wagner, and Schumann could not forgive Liszt for helping the
music of the future to a hearing at Weimar. The rift widened. Liszt made
a joke of it, but he was hurt by Schumann's ingratitude. Alas! he was to
be later hurt by Wagner, by Joachim, by Brahms. He dedicated his B-minor
sonata to Schumann, and Schumann dedicated to him his noble Fantaisie in
C. After Schumann's death his widow brought out an edition of this
fantaisie with the dedication omitted. The old-fashioned lady neither
forgot nor forgave.

We consider the Kapp biography solid. The best portrait of Liszt may be
found in that clever and amusing novel by Von Wolzogen, Kraftmayr. The
Göllerich book chiefly consists of a chain of anecdotes in which the
author is a prominent figure. Herr Kapp in a footnote attacks Herr
Göllerich, denying that he was much with Liszt. How these Liszt pupils
love each other! Joseffy--who was with the master two summers at Weimar,
though he never relinquished his proud title of Tausig scholar--when the
younger brilliant stars Rosenthal, first a Joseffy pupil, Sauer,
and others cynically twitted him about his admiration of Liszt's
playing--over seventy, at the time Rosenthal was with him--Joseffy
answered: "He was the unique pianist." "But you were very young when you
heard him" (1869), they retorted. "Yes, and Liszt was ten years younger
too," replied the witty Joseffy.

Göllerich relates the story of the American girl who threw stones at the
window of the Hoffgartnerei, Liszt's residence in Weimar, and when the
master appeared above called out: "I've come all the way from America to
hear you play." "Come up," said the aged magician, "I'll play for you."
He did so, much to the scandal of the Liszt pupils assembled for daily
worship. The anecdotes of Tausig and the stolen score of the Faust
symphony (Liszt generously stated that the score was overlooked), are
also set forth in the Göllerich book.

But he, the darling of the gods, fortune fairly pursuing him from cradle
to grave, nevertheless the existence of this genius was far from happy.
His closing years were melancholy. The centre of the new musical life
and beloved by all, he was a lonely, homeless, disappointed man. His
daughter Cosima, a dweller among memories only, said that the music of
her father did not exist for her; Weimar had been swallowed by Bayreuth,
and the crowning sorrow for Liszt lovers is the tomb of Liszt at
Bayreuth. It should be in his beloved Weimar. He lies in the shadow of
his dear friend Wagner, he, the "father-in-law of Wagner." Pascal was
right; no matter the comedy, the end of life is always tragic. Perhaps
if the tragedy had come to Franz Liszt earlier he might have profited by
the uses of adversity, as did Richard Wagner, and thus have achieved the
very stars.




III

THE B-MINOR SONATA AND OTHER PIANO PIECES


I

When Franz Liszt nearly three quarters of a century ago made some
suggestions to the Erard piano manufacturers on the score of increased
sonority in their instruments, he sounded the tocsin of realism. It had
been foreshadowed in Clementi's Gradus, and its intellectual resultant,
the Beethoven sonata, but the material side had been hardly realised.
Chopin, who sang the swan-song of idealism in surpassingly sweet tones,
was by nature unfitted to wrestle with the problem. The arpeggio
principle had its attractions for the gifted Pole, who used it in the
most novel combinations and dared the impossible in extended harmonies.
But the rich glow of idealism was over it all--a glow not then sicklied
by the impertinences and affectations of the Herz-Parisian school;
despite the morbidities and occasional dandyisms of Chopin's style he
was, in the main, manly and sincere. Thalberg, who pushed to its limits
scale playing and made an embroidered variant the end and not a means
of piano playing--Thalberg, aristocratic and refined, lacked dramatic
blood. With him the well-sounding took precedence of the eternal
verities of expression. Touch, tone, technique, were his trinity of
gods.

Thalberg was not the path-breaker; this was left for that dazzling
Hungarian who flashed his scimitar at the doors of Leipsic and drove
back cackling to their nests the whole brood of old women professors--a
respectable crowd, which swore by the letter of the law and sniffed at
the spirit. Poverty, chastity, and obedience were the obligatory vows
insisted upon by the pedants of Leipsic; to attain this triune
perfection one had to become poor in imagination, obedient to dull,
musty precedent, and chaste in finger exercises. What wonder, when the
dashing young fellow from Raiding shouted his uncouth challenge to ears
plugged by prejudice, a wail went forth and the beginning of the end
seemed at hand. Thalberg went under. Chopin never competed, but stood, a
slightly astonished spectator, at the edge of the fray. He saw his own
gossamer music turned into a weapon of offence; his polonaises were so
many cleaving battle-axes, and perforce he had to confess that all this
carnage of tone unnerved him. Liszt was the warrior, not he.

Schumann did all he could by word and note, and to-day, thanks to Liszt
and his followers, any other style of piano playing would seem
old-fashioned. Occasionally an idealist like the unique De Pachmann
astonishes us by his marvellous play, but he is a solitary survivor of a
once powerful school and not the representative of an existing method.
There is no gainsaying that it was a fascinating style, and modern
giants of the keyboard might often pattern with advantage after the
rococoisms of the idealists; but as a school pure and simple it is of
the past. We moderns are as eclectic as the Bolognese. We have a craze
for selection, for variety, for adaptation; hence a pianist of to-day
must include many styles in his performance, but the keynote, the
foundation, is realism, a sometimes harsh realism that drives to despair
the apostles of the beautiful in music and often forces them to
lingering retrospection. To all is not given the power to summon spirits
from the vasty deep, and thus we have viewed many times the mortifying
spectacle of a Liszt pupil staggering about under the mantle of his
master, a world too heavy for his attenuated artistic frame. With all
this the path was blazed by the Magyar and we may now explore with
impunity its once trackless region.

Modern piano playing differs from the playing of fifty years ago
principally in the character of touch attack. As we all know, the hand,
forearm and upper arm are important factors now in tone production where
formerly the fingertips were considered the prime utility. Triceps
muscles rule the big tonal effects in our times. Liszt discovered their
value. The Viennese pianos certainly influenced Mozart, Cramer and
others in their styles; just as Clementi inaugurated his reforms by
writing a series of studies and then building himself a piano to make
them possible of performance. With variety of touch--tone-colour--the
old rapid pearly passage, withal graceful school of Vienna, vanished; it
was absorbed by the new technique. Clementi, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann,
forced to the utmost the orchestral development of the piano. Power,
sonority, dynamic variety and novel manipulation of the pedals, combined
with a technique that included Bach part playing and demanded the most
sensational pyrotechnical flights over the keyboard--these were a few of
the signs of the new school. In the giddiness superinduced by indulging
in this heady new wine an artistic intoxication ensued that was for the
moment harmful to a pure interpretation of the classics, which were
mangled by the young vandals who had enlisted under Liszt's victorious
standard. Colour, only colour, all the rest is but music! was the motto
of those bold youths, who had never heard of Paul Verlaine.

But time has mellowed them, robbed their playing of its too dangerous
quality, and when the last of the Liszt pupils gives his--or her--last
recital we may wonder at the charges of exaggerated realism. Indeed,
tempered realism is now the watchword. The flamboyancy which grew out of
Tausig's attempt to let loose the Wagnerian Valkyrie on the keyboard has
been toned down into a more sober, grateful colouring. The scarlet
waistcoat of the Romantic school is outworn; the brutal brilliancies and
exaggerated orchestral effects of the realists are beginning to be
regarded with suspicion. We comprehend the possibilities of the
instrument and our own aural limitations. Wagner on the piano is absurd,
just as absurd as were Donizetti and Rossini. A Liszt operatic
transcription is as nearly obsolete as a Thalberg paraphrase. (Which
should you prefer hearing, the Norma of Thalberg or the Lucia of Liszt?
Both in their different ways are clever but--outmoded.) Bold is the man
to-day who plays either in public.

With Alkan the old virtuoso technique ends. The nuance is ruler now. The
reign of noise is past. In modern music sonority, brilliancy are
present, but the nuance is inevitable, not alone tonal but expressive
nuance. Infinite shadings are to be heard where before were only piano,
forte, and mezzo-forte. Chopin and Liszt and Tausig did much for the
nuance; Joseffy taught America the nuance, as Rubinstein revealed to us
the potency of his golden tones. "Pas la couleur, rien que la nuance,"
sang Verlaine; and without nuance the piano is a box of wood, wire and
steel, a coffin wherein is buried the soul of music.


II

"The remembrance of his playing consoles me for being no longer young."
This sentence, charmingly phrased, as it is charming in sentiment, could
have been written by no other than Camille Saint-Saëns. He refers to
Liszt, and he is perhaps better qualified to speak of Liszt than most
musicians or critics. His adoration is perfectly comprehensible; to him
Liszt is the protagonist of the school that threw off the fetters of the
classical form (only to hamper itself with the extravagances of the
romantics). They all come from Berlioz, the violent protestation of
Saint-Saëns to the contrary notwithstanding. However this much may be
urged in the favour of the Parisian composer; a great movement like the
romantic in music, painting, and literature simultaneously appeared in a
half dozen countries. It was in the air and evidently catching. Goethe
summed up the literary revolution in his accustomed Olympian manner,
saying to Eckermann: "They all come from Chateaubriand." This is sound
criticism; for in the writings of the author of Atala, and The Genius of
Christianity may be found the germ-plasm of all the later artistic
disorder; the fierce colour, bizarrerie, morbid extravagance,
introspective analysis--which in the case of Amiel touched a brooding
melancholy. Stendhal was the unwilling forerunner of the movement that
captivated the sensitive imagination of Franz Liszt, as it later
undoubtedly prompted the orphic impulses of Richard Wagner.

Saint-Saëns sets great store on Liszt's original compositions, and I am
sure when the empty operatic paraphrases and rhapsodies are forgotten
the true Liszt will shine the brighter. How tinkling are the Hungarian
rhapsodies--now become café entertainment. And how the old bones do
rattle. We smile at the generation that could adore The Battle of
Prague, the Herz Variations, the Kalkbrenner Fantasias, but the next
generation will wonder at us for having so long tolerated this drunken
gipsy, who dances to fiddle and cymbalom accompaniment. He is too loud
for polite nerves. Technically, the Liszt arrangements are brilliant and
effective for dinner music. One may show off with them, make much noise
and a reputation for virtuosity, that would be quickly shattered if a
Bach fugue were selected as a text. One Chopin Mazurka contains more
music than all of the rhapsodies, which I firmly contend are but
overdressed pretenders to Magyar blood. Liszt's pompous introductions,
spun-out scales, and transcendental technical feats are not precisely in
key with the native wood-note wild of genuine Hungarian folk-music. A
visit to Hungary will prove this statement. Gustav Mahler was right in
affirming that too much gipsy has blurred the outlines of real Magyar
music.

I need not speak of Liszt's admirable transcriptions of songs by
Schubert, Schumann, Franz, Mendelssohn, and others; they served their
purpose in making publicly known these compositions and are witnesses to
the man's geniality, cleverness and charm. I wish only to speak of the
compositions for solo piano composed by Liszt Ferencz of Raiding,
Hungaria. Many I salute with the _eljen!_ of patriotic enthusiasm, and I
particularly delight in quizzing the Liszt-rhapsody fanatic as to his
knowledge of the Etudes--those wonderful continuations of the Chopin
studies--of his acquaintance with the Années de Pèlerinage, of the Valse
Oubliée, of the Valse Impromptu, of the Sonnets after Petrarch, of the
Nocturnes, of the F-sharp Impromptu of Ab-Irato--that étude of which
most pianists never heard; of the Apparitions, the Legends, the
Ballades, the brilliant Mazurka, the Elegier, the Harmonies Péstiques et
Religieuses, or the Concerto Patetico _à la_ Burmeister, and of numerous
other pieces that contain enough music to float into glory--as Philip
Hale would say--a dozen composers in this decade of the new century. [It
was Max Bendix who so wittily characterised the A-major concerto as
"Donizetti with Orchestra." Liszt was very often Italianate.]

[Illustration: _After a lithograph by Kriehuber in the N. Y. Public
Library_

    Kriehuber  Berlioz  Czerny  Liszt  Ernst

A Matinée at Liszt's]

The eminently pianistic quality of Liszt's original music commends it to
every pianist. Joseffy once said that the B-minor sonata was one of
those compositions that plays itself, it lies so beautifully for the
hand. For me no work of Liszt with the possible exception of the
studies, is as interesting as this same fantaisie that masquerades as a
sonata in H _moll_. Agreeing with those who declare that they find few
traces of the sonata form in the structure of this composition, and also
with those critics who assert the word to be an organic amplification of
the old, obsolete form, and that Liszt has taken Beethoven's last sonata
period as a starting-point and made a plunge into futurity--agreeing
with these warring factions, thereby choking off the contingency of a
spirited argument, I repeat that I find the B minor of Liszt truly
fascinating music.

What a tremendously dramatic work it is! It stirs the blood. It is
intense. It is complex. The opening bars are truly Lisztian. The gloom,
the harmonic haze, from which emerges that bold theme in octaves (the
descending octaves Wagner recalled when he wrote his Wotan theme); the
leap from the G to the A sharp below--how Liszt has made this and the
succeeding intervals his own. Power there is, sardonic power, as in the
opening phrase of the E-flat piano concerto, so cynically mocking. How
incisively the composer traps your consciousness in the next theme of
the sonata, with its four knocking D's. What follows is like a drama
enacted in the netherworld. Is there a composer who paints the infernal,
the macabre, with more suggestive realism than Liszt? Berlioz possessed
the gift above all, except Liszt; Raff can compass the grisly, and also
Saint-Saëns; but thin sharp flames hover about the brass, wood and
shrieking strings in the Lisztian orchestra.

The chorale, usually the meat of a Liszt composition, now appears and
proclaims the religious belief of the composer in dogmatic accents, and
our convictions are swept along until after that outburst in C major,
when follows the insincerity of it in the harmonic sequences. Here it
surely is not a whole-heart belief but only a theatrical attitudinising;
after the faint return of the opening motive is heard the sigh of
sentiment, of passion, of abandonment, which engender the suspicion that
when Liszt was not kneeling before a crucifix he was to a woman. He
blends piety and passion in the most mystically amorous fashion; with
the cantando expressivo in D, begins some lovely music, secular in
spirit, mayhap intended by its creator for reredos and pyx.

But the rustle of silken attire is back of every bar; sensuous imagery,
a faint perfume of femininity lurks in each cadence and trill. Ah!
naughty Abbé have a care. After all thy tonsures and chorales, thy
credos and sackcloth, wilt thou admit the Evil One in the guise of a
melody, in whose chromatic intervals lie dimpled cheek and sunny tress!
Wilt thou allow her to make away with spiritual resolutions! Vade, retro
me Sathanas! And behold it is accomplished. The bold theme so eloquently
proclaimed at the outset is solemnly sounded with choric pomp and power.
Then the hue and cry of diminished sevenths begins, and this tonal
panorama with its swirl of intoxicating colours moves kaleidoscopically
onward. Again the devil tempts the musical St. Anthony, this time in
octaves and in A major; he momentarily succumbs, but that good old
family chorale is repeated, and even if its orthodoxy is faulty in spots
it serves its purpose; the Evil One is routed and early piety breaks
forth in an alarming fugue which, like that domestic ailment, is happily
short-winded. Another flank movement of the "ewig Weibliche," this time
in the seductive key of B major, made mock of by the strong man of music
who, in the stretta quasi presto, views his early disorder with grim and
contrapuntal glee. He shakes it from him, and in the triolen of the bass
frames it as a picture to weep or rage over.

All this leads to a prestissimo finale of startling splendour.
Nothing more exciting is there in the literature of the piano. It is
brilliantly captivating, and Liszt the Magnificent is stamped on every
bar. What gorgeous swing, and how the very bases of the earth seem to
tremble at the sledge-hammer blows from the cyclopean fist of this
musical Attila. Then follow a few bars of that Beethoven-like andante,
a moving return to the early themes, and softly the first lento
descends to the subterranean caverns whence it emerged, a Magyar Wotan
majestically vanishing into the bowels of a Gehenna; then a true Liszt
chord-sequence and a stillness in B major. The sonata in B minor
displays all of Liszt's power and weakness. It is rhapsodic, it is
too long--infernal, not "heavenly lengths"--it is full of nobility, a
drastic intellectuality, and a sonorous brilliancy. To deny it a
commanding position in the pantheon of piano music would be folly. And
interpreted by an artist versed in the Liszt traditions, such as
Arthur Friedheim, this work compasses at times the sublime.

It is not my intention to claim your attention for the remainder of the
original compositions; that were indeed a terrible strain on your
patience. In the Années de Pèlerinage, redolent of Vergilian meadows,
soft summer airs shimmering through every bar, what is more delicious
except Au Bord d'une Source? Is the latter not exquisitely idyllic?
Surely in those years of pilgrimage through Switzerland, Italy, France,
Liszt garnered much that was good and beautiful and without the taint of
the salon or concert platform. The two Polonaises recapture the heroic
and sorrowing spirit of Sarmatia. The first in E is a perennial
favourite; I always hear its martial theme as a pattern reversed of the
first theme in the A-flat Polonaise of Chopin. But the second Liszt
Polonaise in C minor is the more poetic of the pair; possibly that is
the reason why it is so seldom played.

Away from the glare of gaslight this extraordinary Hungarian aspired
after the noblest things. In the atmosphere of the salons, of the Papal
court, and concert room, Liszt was hardly so admirable a character. I
know of certain cries calling to heaven to witness that he was anointed
of the Lord (which he was not); that if he had cut and run to sanctuary
to escape two or more women we might never have heard of Liszt the Abbé.
One penalty undergone by genius is its pursuit by gibes and glossaries.
Liszt was no exception to this rule. Like Ibsen and Maeterlinck he has
had many things read into his music, mysticism not forgotten. Perhaps
the best estimate of him is the purely human one. He was made up of the
usual pleasing and unpleasing compound of faults and virtues, as is any
great man, not born of a book.

The Mephisto Valse from Lenau's Faust, in addition to its biting broad
humour and satanic suggestiveness, contains one of the most voluptuous
episodes outside of the Tristan score. That halting, languourous,
syncopated, theme in D flat is marvellously expressive, and the poco
allegretto seems to have struck the fancy of Wagner, who did not
hesitate to appropriate motives from his esteemed father-in-law when the
desire overtook him. He certainly considered Kundry Liszt-wise before
fabricating her scream in Parsifal.

Liszt's life was a sequence of triumphs, his sympathies were almost
boundless, yet he found time to work unfalteringly and despite myriad
temptations his spiritual nature was never wholly submerged. I wish,
however, that he had not invented the piano recital and the Liszt
pupil.


III

I possess, and value as a curiosity, a copy of Liszt's Etudes, Opus 1.
The edition is rare and the plates have been destroyed. Written when
Liszt was fresh from the tutelage of Carl Czerny, they show decided
traces of his schooling. They are not difficult for fingers inured to
modern methods. When I first bought them I knew not the Etudes
d'Execution Transcendentale, and when I encountered the latter I
exclaimed at the composer's cleverness. The Hungarian has taken his opus
1 and dressed it up in the most bewildering technical fashion. He gave
these studies appropriate names, and even to-day they require a
tremendous technique to do them justice. The most remarkable of the
set--the one in F minor No. 10--Liszt left nameless, and like a peak it
rears its head skyward, while about it cluster its more graceful
fellows: Ricordanza, Feux-follets, Harmonies du Soir (Chasse-neige, and
Paysage). The Mazeppa is a symphonic poem in miniature. What a superb
contribution to piano literature is Liszt's. These twelve incomparable
studies, the three effective Etudes de Concert (several quite Chopinish
in style and technique), the murmuring Waldesrauschen, the sparkling
Gnomenreigen, the stormy Ab-Irato, the poetic Au Lac de Wallenstadt and
Au Bord d'une Source, have they not all tremendously developed the
technical resources of the instrument? And to play them one must have
fingers of steel, a brain on fire, a heart bubbling with chivalric
force; what a comet-like pianist he was, this Magyar, who swept European
skies, who transformed the still small voice of Chopin into a veritable
hurricane. Nevertheless, we cannot imagine a Liszt without a Chopin
preceding him.

But, Liszt lost, the piano would lose its most dashing cavalier; while
his freedom, fantasy, and fire are admirable correctives of the
platitudes of the Hummel-Czerny-Mendelssohn school. Liszt won from his
instrument an orchestral quality. He advanced by great wing-strokes
toward perfection, and deprived of his music we should miss colour,
sonority, richness of tinting, and dramatic and dynamic contrasts. He
has had a great following. Tausig was the first to feel his influence,
and if he had lived longer would have beaten out a personal style of his
own. Of the two we prefer Liszt's version of the Paganini studies to
Schumann's. The Campanella is a favourite of well equipped virtuosi.

In my study of Chopin reference is made to Chopin's obligations to
Liszt. I prefer now to quote a famous authority on the subject, no less
a critic than Professor Frederick Niecks, whose biography of Chopin is,
thus far, the superior of all. He writes: "As at one time all
ameliorations in the theory and practice of music were ascribed to Guido
of Arezzo, so it is nowadays the fashion to ascribe all improvements and
extensions of the pianoforte technique to Liszt, who, more than any
other pianist, drew upon himself the admiration of the world, and
through his pupils continued to make his presence felt even after the
close of his career as a virtuoso. But the cause of this false opinion
is to be sought not so much in the fact that the brilliancy of his
artistic personality threw all his contemporaries into the shade, as in
that other fact, that he gathered up into one web the many threads
new and old which he found floating about during the years of his
development. The difference between Liszt and Chopin lies in this, that
the basis of the former's art is universality, that of the latter's,
individuality. Of the fingering of the one we may say that it is a
system, of that of the other that it is a manner. Probably we have here
also touched on the cause of Liszt's success and Chopin's want of
success as a teacher."

Niecks does not deny that Liszt influenced Chopin. In volume 1 of his
Frederick Chopin, he declares that "The artist who contributed the
largest quotum of force to this impulse was probably Liszt, whose fiery
passions, indomitable energy, soaring enthusiasm, universal tastes and
capacity of assimilation, mark him out as the opposite of Chopin. But,
although the latter was undoubtedly stimulated by Liszt's style of
playing the piano and of writing for this instrument, it is not so
certain as Miss L. Ramann, Liszt's biographer, thinks, that this
master's influence can be discovered in many passages of Chopin's music
which are distinguished by a fiery and passionate expression, and
resemble rather a strong, swelling torrent than a gently gliding
rivulet. She instances Nos. 9 and 12 of Douze Etudes, Op. 10; Nos. 11
and 12 of Douze Etudes, Op. 25; No. 24 of Vingt Quatre Préludes, Op. 28;
Premier Scherzo, Op. 20; Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op. 32. All these
compositions, we are told, exhibit Liszt's style and mode of feeling.
Now the works composed by Chopin before he came to Paris and got
acquainted with Liszt, comprise not only a sonata, a trio, two
concertos, variations, polonaises, waltzes, mazurkas, one or more
nocturnes, etc., but also--and this is for the question under
consideration of great importance--most of, if not all, the studies of
Op. 10 (Sowinski says that Chopin brought with him to Paris the MS. of
the first book of his studies) and some of Op. 25; and these works prove
decisively the inconclusiveness of the lady's argument. The twelfth
study of Opus 10 (composed in September, 1831) invalidates all she says
about fire, passion, and rushing torrents. In fact, no cogent reason can
be given why the works mentioned by her should not be the outcome of
unaided development. [That is to say, development not aided in the way
indicated by Miss Ramann.] The first Scherzo alone might make us pause
and ask whether the new features that present themselves in it ought not
to be fathered on Liszt. But seeing that Chopin evolved so much, why
should he not also have evolved this? Moreover, we must keep in mind
that Liszt had, up to 1831, composed almost nothing of what in after
years was considered either by him or others of much moment, and that
his pianoforte style had first to pass through the state of fermentation
into which Paganini's playing had precipitated it (in the spring of
1831) before it was formed; on the other hand, Chopin arrived in Paris
with his portfolios full of masterpieces, and in possession of a style
of his own as a player of his instrument as well as a writer for it.
That both learned from each other cannot be doubted; but the exact gain
of each is less easily determinable. Nevertheless, I think I may venture
to assert that whatever may be the extent of Chopin's indebtedness to
Liszt, the latter's indebtedness to the former is greater. The tracing
of an influence in the works of a man of genius, who, of course, neither
slavishly imitates nor flagrantly appropriates, is one of the most
difficult tasks. If Miss Ramann had first noted the works produced by
the two composers in question before their acquaintance began, and had
carefully examined Chopin's early productions with a view to ascertain
his capability of growth, she would have come to another conclusion, or,
at least have spoken less confidently."

To the above no exception may be taken except the reference to the
B-minor Scherzo as possibly having been suggested by Liszt. For me it is
most characteristic of Chopin in its perverse, even morbid, ironical
humour, its original figuration; who but Chopin could have conceived
that lyrical episode! Liszt, doubtless, was the first who introduced
interlocking octaves instead of the chromatic scale at the close; Tausig
followed his example. But there the matter ended. Once when Chopin heard
that Liszt intended to write an account of his concerts for the _Gazette
Musicale_, he said: "He will give me a little kingdom in his empire."
This remark casts much illumination on the relations of the two men.
Liszt was the broader minded of the two; Chopin, as Niecks points out,
forgave but never forgot.




IV

AT ROME, WEIMAR, BUDAPEST


I

ROME

The Roman candle has attracted many spiritual moths. Goethe, Humboldt,
Platen, Winckelmann, Thorwaldsen, Gregorovius and Liszt--to mention only
the first at hand--fluttered to Rome and ascribe to it much of their
finer productivity. For Franz Liszt it was a loadstone of double
power--the ideality of the place attracted him and its religion anchored
his spiritual restlessness.

Liszt liked a broad soul-margin to his life. Heine touched on this side
of Liszt's character when he wrote of him: "Speculation has the greatest
fascination for him; and still more than with the interests of his art
is he engrossed with all manner of rival philosophical investigations
which are occupied with the solution of all great questions of heaven
and earth. For long he was an ardent upholder of the beautiful
Saint-Simonian idea of the world. Later the spiritualistic or rather
vaporous thoughts of Ballanche enveloped him in their midst; now he is
enthusiastic over the Republican-Catholic dogmas of a Lamennais who has
hoisted his Jacobin cap on the cross.... Heaven knows in what mental
stall he will find his next hobby-horse!" This was written in 1837, and
only two years afterward Liszt paid his first visit to Rome.

Based on letters and diaries of Liszt, Gregorovius, Ad. Stahr, Fanny
Lewald, W. Allmers, Cardinal Wiseman, Jul. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and
Eugen Segnitz, a study of Franz Liszt in Rome may be made.

The time spent in the Eternal City was unquestionably an important one
in Liszt's life and worthy of the detailed attention given it. Rome in
1839 presented a contradictory picture. Contrasted to the pomp of the
Vatican were the unprincipled conditions of the city itself. Bands of
robbers infested it and the surroundings, making it as unsafe as an
English highway during the glorious but rather frisky times of Jonathan
Wild and his agile confrères. So, for instance, Massocia and his band
kidnapped the pupils of the seminary in Albano, and when the demanded
ransom was not forthcoming defiantly strung up these innocents on trees
flanking the gateways of Rome. So, too, the political freedom of the
city found a concession in the privilege of Cardinal Consalvi, who
permitted foreign papers of every political party to be read openly;
while the papal edict declared null and void all contracts closed
between Christian and Hebrew.

In matters of art things were not much better. The censor swung his axe
in a most irresponsible and, now to us, laughable manner. Overbeck's
Holy Family was condemned because the feet of the Madonna in it were too
bare; Thorwaldsen's Day and Night was offensive in its nudeness;
Raphael's art was an eyesore, and the same discriminating mind, Padre
Piazza, would have liked to consign to the flames all philosophical
books.

The musical taste and standard was not elevating at this time. Piccini,
Paisiello, Cimarosa, Sacchini, Anfossi, Sarti, Righini, Paer, and
Rossini wrote purely for the sensual enjoyment of the people.

Even the behaviour of the masses in theatres was defined by an edict
issued by Leo XII. Any poor devil caught wearing his hat in the theatre
was shown the door; if an actor interpolated either gesture or word not
provided for in the prompt-book he was sent to the galleys for five
years; the carrying of weapons in places of amusement was punishable
with life sentence in the galleys, and wounding another during a row
earned a death verdict for the unfortunate one; applause and hisses were
rewarded by a prison term from two months to half a year.

[Illustration: Countess Marie d'Agoult]

Liszt's first visit to Rome occurred in 1839, and in company with the
Countess d'Agoult. A strange mating this had been. Her salon was the
meeting-place where enthusiastic persons foregathered--æsthetes,
artists, and politicians. Liszt became a member of this circle, and
the impressionable young man of twenty-three was as so much wax in the
hands of this sensation-mongering woman six years his senior. Against
Liszt's wishes she had followed him to Berne, and there is plenty of
evidence at hand that he assumed the inevitable responsibilities with
good grace and treated her as his wife, but evidently not entirely to
her satisfaction. She fancied herself the muse of the young genius; but
the wings of the young eagle she had patronized soon out-stripped her.

Their years of wandering were noteworthy. From Paris to Berne and
Geneva; then two trips back to Paris, where Liszt fought his keyboard
duel with Thalberg. They rested awhile at Nohant, entertained by George
Sand, which they forsook for Lake Como, some flying trips to Milan
and eventually Venice. It happened to be the year of the Danube
flood--1837--and the call for help sent Liszt to Vienna where he gave
benefit concerts for the sufferers. This accomplished, the pair returned
to Venice and threaded their way to Rome by way of Lugano, Genoa, and
Florence.

Originally Liszt had no intention of concertising on this trip; but he
excused his appearances on the concert platforms in the Italian cities:
"I did not wish to forget my trade entirely."

The condition of music of the day in Italy held out no inducements or
illusions to him. He writes Berlioz that he wished to make the
acquaintance of the principal Italian cities and really could hope for
no benefiting influence from these flighty stops. But there was another
reason why he was so little influenced, and it was simply that Italy of
the day had nothing of great musical interest to offer Liszt.

His first public appearance in Rome was in January, 1839. Francilla
Pixis-Göhringer, adopted daughter of his friend Pixis and pupil of
Sonntag and Malibran, gave a concert at this time, and it was here that
Liszt assisted. After that the Romans did what ever so many had done
before them--threw wide their doors to the artist Liszt. Thus encouraged
he dared give serious recitals in face of all the Roman musical
flippancy. He defied public taste and craving and gave a series of what
he called in a letter to the Princess Belgiojoso "soliloques musicaux";
in these he assumed the rôle of a musical Louis XIV, and politely said:
"le concert c'est moi!" He quotes one of his programmes:

1. Overture to William Tell, performed by Mr. Liszt.

2. Fantaisie on reminiscences of Puritani, composed and performed by the
above named.

3. Studies and Fragments, composed and performed by the same.

4. Improvisation on a given theme--still by the same. That is all.

This was really nothing more than a forerunner of the present
piano-recital. Liszt was the first one who ventured an evening of piano
compositions without fearing the disgust of an audience. From his
accounts they behaved very well indeed, and applauded and chatted only
at the proper time.

Liszt, realising that he had nothing to learn from the living Italians,
turned to their dead; and for such studies his first visit to Rome was
especially propitious. Gregory XIV, had opened the Etruscan Museum but
two years before and was stocking it with the treasures which were being
unearthed in the old cities of Etruria. The same pope also enlarged the
Vatican library and took active interest in the mural decorations of
these newly added ten rooms. The painters Overbeck, Cornelius, and Veit
were kept actively employed in this city, and the influence of their
work was not a trifling one on the painter colony. The diplomat Von
Bunsen and the Cardinals Mezzofanti and Mai exerted their influences to
spread general culture.

An interesting one of Liszt's friendships, dating from this time, is
that with Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, director of the French
Académie. Strolling under the oaks of the Villa Medici, Ingres would
disentangle for his younger friend the confusion of impressions gathered
in his wanderings among Rome's art treasures. Himself a music lover and
a musician--he played the violin in the theatre orchestra of his native
place, Montauban, at some performances of Gluck's operas--Ingres admired
Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and above all Gluck, upon whom he looked as
the musical successor to Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Under such
sympathetic and intelligent guidance Liszt's admiration for the other
arts became ordered. After a day among the forest of statues he would
coax his friend to take up the violin, and Liszt writes almost
enthusiastically of his Beethoven interpretations.

It is entirely within reason to argue that we owe to this new viewpoint
such of Liszt's compositions as were inspired by works of the other
arts. Such, to name a few, were the Sposalizio and Il Penseroso--by
Raphael and Michelangelo--Die Hunnenschlacht--Kaulbach--and Danse
Macabre--after Andrea Orcagna. That Liszt was susceptible to such
impressions, even before, is proven by his essay Die Heilige Cäcelia by
Raphael, written earlier than this Roman trip; but under Ingres' hints
his width of vision was extended, and he began to find alluring
parallels between the fine arts--his comprehension of Mozart and
Beethoven grew with his acquaintance of the works of Raphael and
Michelangelo. He compared Giovanni da Pisa, Fra Beato, and Francia with
Allegri, Marcello, and Palestrina; Titian with Rossini!

What attracted Liszt principally during his first stay at Rome was the
religion of art, as it had attracted Goethe before him. Segnitz quotes
against this attitude the one of Berlioz, whom the ruins of Rome touched
slightly, as did Palestrina's church music. He found the latter devoid
of religious sentiment, and in this verdict he was joined by none less
than Mendelssohn.

The surroundings, the atmosphere of Rome, appealed to Liszt, and under
them his individuality thrived and asserted itself. The scattered and
often hurried impressions of this first visit ordered themselves
gradually, but the composite whole deflected his life's currents into
the one steady and broad stream of art. Like Goethe, he might have
regarded his first day at Rome as the one of his second birth, as the
one on which his true self came to light. The Via Sacra by which he left
Rome led him into the forum of the art world.

In June, 1839, after a stay of five months, Liszt, accompanied by the
Countess d'Agoult, left Rome for the baths at Lucca. The elusive peace
he was tracking escaped him here, and he wandered to the little fishing
village San Rossore. In November of the same year he parted company with
Italy--and also with the countess. The D'Agoult had romantic ideas of
their union, in which the inevitable responsibilities of this sort of
thing played no part. Segnitz regards the entire affair as having been a
most unfortunate one for Liszt, and believes that the latter only saved
himself and his entire artistic future by separating from the countess.
The years of contact had formed no spiritual ties between them and the
rupture was inevitable.

With her three children d'Agoult started for Paris there to visit
Liszt's mother; later, through Liszt's intervention, a complete
reconciliation with her family was effected. Although after the death of
her mother the countess inherited a fortune, Liszt continued to support
the children.

Leaving San Rossore the artist began his public life in earnest. It was
the beginning of his virtuoso period and Vienna was the starting-point
of his triumphal tournée across Europe. This period was an important one
for development of piano playing, placing the latter on a much higher
artistic plane than it had been; in it Liszt also inaugurated a new
phase of the possibilities of concert giving. It was the time in which
he fought both friend and enemy, fought without quarter for the cause of
art.

As a composer Liszt, during his first stay in Italy, 1837-40, was far
from active. The Fantaisie quasi Sonata après une lecture de Dante and
the twelve Etudes d'exécution transcendante both came to life at Lake
Como. There were besides the Chromatic Galop and the pieces Sposalizio,
Il Penseroso and Tre Sonetti di Petrarca, which became part of the
Années de Pèlerinage (Italie). His first song, with piano accompaniment,
Angiolin dal biondo crin, dates from these days. The balance of this
time was devoted to making arrangements of melodies by Mercadante,
Donizetti, and Rossini, and to finishing the piano transcriptions of
the Beethoven symphonies. These and a few others about cover his list of
compositions and arrangements.


II

Immediately after Liszt's separation from the Countess d'Agoult began a
period of restless activity for him. The eight nomadic years during
which he wandered up and down Europe, playing constantly in public, are
the ones in which his virtuosity flourished. To-day we are inclined to
mock at the mere mention of Liszt the virtuoso--we have heard far too
much of his achievements, achievements behind which the real Liszt has
become a warped and unrecognizable personality. But it was a remarkable
tour nevertheless, and so wholesale a lesson in musical interpretation
as Europe had never had before. Whenever and wherever he smote the
keyboard the old-fashioned clay idols of piano playing were shattered,
and however much it was attempted to patch them the pieces would not
quite fit. Liszt struck the death-blow to unemotional playing, but he
destroyed only to create anew: he erected ideals of interpretation which
are still honored.

When he accepted the Weimar post of Hofkapellmeister in 1847--he had _en
passant_ in a term, lasting from December, 1843, to February of the
following year, conducted eight successful concerts in Weimar--it
looked as if his wild spirit of travel had dissipated itself:
_ausgetobt_, as the Germans say.

With scarcely any time modulation this versatile genius began his career
of Hofkapellmeister, in which he topsy-turvied traditions and roused
Weimar from the lethargy into which it had fallen with the fading of
that wonderful Goethe circle. At this point the influence of woman is
again made manifest.

Gregorovius, the great antiquarian, gives us a few glimpses of her in
his Römischen Tagebüchern. He admits that her personality was repulsive
to him, but that she fairly sputtered spirituality. Also that she
wrote an article about the Sixtine Chapel for the _Revue du Monde
Catholique_--"a brilliant article: all fireworks, like her speech";
finally, that "she is writing an essay on friendship."

When the possibility of marriage with the Princess went up into thin air
Liszt began contemplating a permanent residence in Rome. Here he could
live more independently and privately than in Germany, and this was
desirable, since he still had some musical problems to solve. First of
all, he turned to his legend of the Holy Elizabeth, completing that;
then Der Sonnen-Hymnus des heiligen Franziskus von Assisi was written,
to say nothing of a composition for organ and trombone composed for one
of his Weimar adherents. Frequent excursions and work so consumed his
hours that soon we find him complaining as bitterly about the lack of
time in Rome as in Weimar.

Rome of this time was still "outside of Italy": the reverse side of the
Papal medallions showed Daniel in the lion's den and Pope Pio Nono
immersed in mysticism. The social features were important. Segnitz
mentions "die Kölnische Patrizierin Frau Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen,
Peter Cornelius, die Dame Schopenhauer," the Ottilie of Goethe. Besides
the artists Catel and Nerenz there was Frau von Schwarz, who attracted
Liszt. She boasted friendship with Garibaldi, and her salon was a
meeting-place of the intellectual multitude. Liszt seems to have
been king pin everywhere, and it is refreshing to read the curt,
unsentimental impression of him retailed by Gregorovius: "I have met
Liszt," wrote the latter; "remarkable, demoniac appearance; tall,
slender, long hair. Frau von Schwarz believes he is burned out, that
only the walls of him remain, wherein a small ghostly flame flits." To
add to the list of notables: the painter Lindemann-Frommel; the Prussian
representatives, Graf Arnim and Kurt von Schlözer; King Louis I, of
Bavaria, and the artists Riedel, Schweinfurt, Passini, and Feuerbach the
philosopher.

Naturally Liszt participated in the prominent church festivals and was
affected by their glamour; it even roused him to sentimental utterance.

Germany and the thoughts of it could not lure him away from Rome, nor
could the summer heat drive him out. The Holy Elizabeth was completed by
August 10, 1862, and with it he had finished the greater part of his
work as composer. Never did he lose interest in German art movements,
and was ever ready with advice and suggestions.

A severe shock, one which sent him to bed, came to him about the middle
of September of this year, when his youngest daughter, Blandine
Ollivier, the wife of Louis Napoleon's war minister, Emile Ollivier,
died. Liszt turned to religion and to his art for consolation; he slaved
away at the Christus oratorio and wrote two psalms and the instrumental
Evocatio in der Sixtinischen Kapelle. Invitations from London, Weimar,
and Budapest could not budge him from Rome; deeper and deeper he became
interested in the wonders and beauties of his religion.

The following year--1863--finds him hard at work as ever. His oratorio
is not achieving great progress, but he is revising his piano
arrangements of the Beethoven Symphonies. In the spring he changes his
quarters and moves into the Cloister Madonna del Rosario, in which he
had been offered several rooms. These new lodgings enchant him. Situated
on the Monte Mario, the site commanded a view of Rome and the Campagna,
the Albano Mountains and the River Tiber. So Signor Commendatore Liszt,
the friend of Padre Theiner, is living in a cloister and the religious
germs begin to sprout in this quiet surrounding. Liszt esteemed the
priest highly as an educated man and admired his personality.
Gregorovius, on the other hand, could pump up no liking at all for the
hermit-like Padre, discovered him dry and judged his writings and
philosophy as dry, archaic stuff.

In Italian politics and Italian music Liszt found nothing to attract
him. The latter was crude, as regards composition, and generally
resolved itself into Drehorgel-Lyrik. The piano was at that time not an
Italian object of furniture, and in the churches they still served up
operatic music with the thinnest religious varnish. In the salons one
seldom heard good music, so that Liszt, through his pupils Sgambati,
Berta, and others was able to work some reform in these matters.

On July 11, 1862, the tongue of all Rome was wagging: Pope Pius IX had
paid Liszt a visit at the Cloister Santa Maria del Rosario. Liszt
recounts that His Holiness had stayed with him about half an hour,
during which time the pianist had played for him on the harmonium and on
the little working piano. After that the Pope had spoken earnestly to
him and begged him to strive for the heavenly, even in earthly matters,
and to prepare himself for the eternal sounding harmonies by means of
the passing earthly ones.

Liszt was the first artist who had been honored thus. A few days later
the Pope granted him an audience in the Vatican, when he presented Liszt
with a cameo of the Madonna.

Segnitz quotes from two of Liszt's letters in which he voices his
religious sentiments, and hopes that eventually his bones may rest in
Roman earth.

Rather a remarkable phase of Liszt now was that he tried with might and
main to live down and forget his so-called "Glanzperiode," the one of
his virtuosity. An invitation from Cologne and also one from St.
Petersburg to play and display once more "that entrancing tone which he
could coax out of the keys" aroused his wrath. He asks, is he never to
be taken more seriously than as a pianist, is he not worthy of
recognition as a musician, a composer? On the other hand, nothing
flattered him as much as when an Amsterdam society performed his Graner
Messe and sent him a diploma of honorary membership. Furthermore, he
derived much encouragement from an article in the _Neue Zeitschrift für
Musik_, written by Heinrich Porges, in which Liszt's compositions were
seriously discussed.

Liszt found time to revise the four Psalms, 13--this was his favourite
one--18, 23, 137; and during this year he also composed for the piano
Alleluja, Ave Maria, Waldesrauschen, Gnomenreigen, the two legends, Die
Vogelpredigt and Der heilige Franz von Paula auf den Wogen schreitend;
then the organ variations on the Bach theme Weinen, klagen, sorgen,
zagen, and the Papsthymus. He again took up his former project of making
piano arrangements of the Beethoven quartets.

       *       *       *       *       *

The year after this one was remarkable for the facts that Liszt was
coaxed to play in public on the occasion of a benefit for the Peter's
Pence, and that he participated in the Karlsruhe music festival. He left
Rome in August and journeyed first to St. Tropez to visit his daughter's
grave; then to Karlsruhe. After this he went to Munich and visited Hans
and Cosima von Bülow on the way to Weimar. Finally a trip to Paris to
see his aged mother, and he returned to Rome at the end of October.
Besides working on his oratorio and making some piano transcriptions, he
composed only two new numbers, a litany for organ and a chorus with
organ accompaniment.

Two public appearances in Rome as pianist occurred during the spring of
1865, and then, to the surprise of many, on April 25, Liszt took minor
orders of priesthood, forsook the Cloister and made his abode in the
Vatican next to the rooms of his priestly friend Monseigneur Hohenlohe.

Gregorovius writes of this appearance of Liszt as the virtuoso: "He
played Die Aufforderung zum Tanz and Erlkönig--a queer adieu to the
world. No one suspected that already he carried his abbé's socks in his
pockets.... Now he wears the cloaklet of the abbé, lives in the Vatican,
and, as Schlözer tells me, is happy and healthy. This is the end of the
genial virtuoso, the personality of a sovereign. I am glad that I heard
Liszt play once more, he and his instrument seemed to be grown
together--a piano-centaur."

As we look back at the step now and are able to weigh the gradual
influence which asserted itself on Liszt the act seems to have been an
inevitable one. At the time, however, it was more or less unexpected.

He assures Breitkopf & Härtel that his old weakness for composition has
not deserted him, that he must commit to paper some of the wonderful
things which were spooking about in his head. And the public? Well, it
regretted that Liszt was wasting his time writing such dreadful
"Tonwirrwarr." Liszt smiled ironically--and continued to compose.

His patriotism sent him travelling once more--this year to Pesth, where
he conducted his arrangement of the Rakoczy March and the Divine Comedy.
He returned to Rome and learned that his friend Hohenlohe was about to
be made cardinal, an event which had its bearing on his stay in the
Vatican.

Liszt moved back to the Cloister after Hohenlohe had given up his
quarters in the Vatican for a cardinal's house. This year--1866--is also
a record of travel. After he had conducted his Dante Symphony in
Rome--and the natives found it "inspired but formless"--he went to
Paris to witness a performance of his Mass. Report had preceded him that
he was physically a wreck, and he delighted in showing himself to prove
the falsehood of the rumour. And partly to display his mental activity
he began theological studies, so that he might pass his examination and
take higher orders.

In addition to his Paris trip he also wandered to Amsterdam to hear his
Mass once more. Immediately after his return to Rome he completed the
Christus oratorio and began work on the arrangements of the Beethoven
quartets. He soon found that he had attacked an impossible task. "I
failed where Tausig succeeded," he lamented; and then explained that
Tausig had been wise enough to select only such movements as were
available for the piano.

       *       *       *       *       *

His compositions this year were not very numerous--some piano extracts
out of his oratorio and sketches for the Hungarian Coronation Mass.
Politics were throwing up dense clouds of dust in Rome, the Papal
secular power was petering out, and in consequence Liszt, who hated
politics, was compelled to change his residence again, moving this time
to the old cloister Santa Francesca Romana. Here he met his friends
weekly on Friday mornings, and besides animated conversation there was
much chamber music to be heard.

The Hungarian Mass was finished early in 1867, and Liszt went to Pesth,
where he conducted it with much success when Francis Joseph was made
King of Hungary. Then he appeared at the Wartburg Festival, and on his
return trip stopped at Lucerne to greet Wagner. After a short stay at
Munich, with Cosima and Hans von Bülow, he found himself once more in
Rome and was allowed a few months of rest. Besides the Hungarian Mass he
composed this year a Funeral March on the occasion of Maximilian of
Mexico's death--it appeared later as the sixth of the third collection:
Années de Pèlerinage. His piano transcriptions were confined to works by
Verdi and Von Bülow, and as a souvenir of the days passed with Wagner at
Triebschen he transcribed Isolde's Liebestod.

The social features of his stay in Rome were becoming unbearable, and
Liszt could only command privacy by being rude to the persistent ones.
Several little excursions out of Rome during the spring were followed by
a long journey in the summer with his friend Abbé Solfanelli. First to a
place of pilgrimage; then to the city of Liszt's patron saint, Assisi,
and from there to Loreto. When Liszt re-entered Rome he found the social
life so exigent that he was driven to the stillness of the Campagna, and
lived for some time in the Villa d'Este. This--1868--was his last year
at Rome, for the middle of January of the following year found him
settled in Weimar again. Although he was still spared many years in
which to work, yet the eve of his life was upon him. If he had hoped to
find finally in Weimar homely rest and peace he was doomed to
disappointment. He remained a wanderer to the end of his days.

There remains to be made a mention of his compositions during his last
year at Rome. Principal among these was the Requiem dedicated to the
memory of his deceased mother and his two children, Daniel and Blandine;
then three church compositions and the epilogue to his Tasso, Le
Triomphe du Tasse, and the usual transcriptions for the piano.

Whether or not Liszt's interest in matters religious abated is not made
very clear. So much is certain that his plans for taking higher orders
came to nothing. Was the Church after all a disappointment to him? One
recalls his childish delight when first he was created Abbé. Then he
wrote Hohenlohe: "They tell me that I wear my _soutane_ as though I
always had worn one."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Hungarian Government elected the Abbé honorary president of the
Landes Musikakademie in 1873. This gave Liszt's wanderings still a third
objective point, Budapest.

In Weimar his time was now devoted more to teaching than to composing,
and the Liszt pupils began to sprout by the gross. The absurd
sentimentality which clings about this period has never been condemned
sufficiently. Read this entry in the note-book of Gregorovius and draw
at least a few of your own conclusions: "Dined with Liszt at Weimar. He
was very lovable, made up to me and hoped at parting that I would give
him my confidence. This would be very difficult, as we have not one
point in common. He has grown very old; his face is all wrinkled; yet
his animation is very attractive. The Countess Tolstoy told me yesterday
that an American lady living here had stripped the covering off a chair
on which Liszt had sat, had had it framed and now it hung on her wall.
She related this to Liszt, who at first seemed indignant and then asked
if it were really true! If such a man does not despise mankind then one
must give him great credit for it."

Still Liszt fluttered to Rome from time to time. "If it had not been for
music I should have devoted myself entirely to the church and would have
become a Franciscan; It is in error that I am accused of becoming a
'frivolous Abbé' because of external reasons. On the contrary, it was my
most innermost wish which led me to join the church that I wished to
serve" he said.

During these later visits he took up his abode in the Hotel d'Alibert.
His rooms were furnished as plainly as possible--in the one a bed and a
writing-desk, and the second one, his reception and class-room, held a
grand piano. Some of his pupils lived at the same hotel--Stradal,
Ansorge, Göllerich, Burmeister, Stavenhagen, and Mademoiselle Cognetti.

Liszt's daily mode of life is rather intimately described. He arose at
four in the morning and began composing, which he continued until seven.
His pupils would drop in to greet him and be dismissed kindly with a
cigar. After a second breakfast he attended early mass in the San Carlo
Church, where he was accompanied by Stradal; then back to his rooms, and
after an hour's rest he would work or pay some visits.

His noon meal was taken regularly with the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein,
who now lived a retired life and devoted herself to religious studies.
These visits brought to Liszt much peace and to the Princess happiness;
they were still devoted to each other. After this meal Liszt returned to
his quarters and rested. Only on every other day he taught. The pupil
played the composition of his own choice and Liszt's criticisms would
follow. Muddy playing drove him frantic, and he often told his pupils to
"wash their dirty linen at home"! He taught liberal use of the pedal,
but with utmost discretion. The one thing he could not abide was
pedantic performance: "Among artists there is not the division of
professors and non-professors. They are only artists--or they are not."

Occasionally he would play for a small assembly--once he favoured the
few with the D-flat Etude, and the crossing left hand struck false notes
repeatedly. He played the piece to the end, and then atoned for his
bulls by adding an improvisation on the theme which moved the assembly
to tears!

During these class hours a small circle of intimate ones was usually
invited. The Princess Wittgenstein was noticeably absent; but there were
the Princess Minghetti, the Countess Reviczy--to whom the Fifth Rhapsody
is dedicated--and several barons and artists--Alma Tadema among the
latter. Depend upon it, wherever Liszt pitched his tent there were some
titles in the neighbourhood. From two until six in the afternoon these
lessons lasted. Then the small audience withdrew and Liszt played cards
with his pupils for one hour.

About eight in the evening Liszt would take himself to the house of the
Princess Wittgenstein and sup with her. This meal consisted principally
of ham, says the biographer, and Hungarian red wine. By nine he had
usually retired.

Stradal seems to have been one of his favourites and accompanied Liszt
on some of his little excursions to the beloved cloisters, San Onofrio
and Monte Mario, then into the Valle dell' Inferno. Here under the Tasso
oak Liszt spoke of the life of the great poet and compared his own fate
to that of Tasso. "They will not carry me in triumph across the Capitol,
but the time will come when my works will be acknowledged. This will
happen too late for me--I shall not be among you any more," he said. Not
an untrue prophecy.

[Illustration: Liszt in His Atelier at Weimar]

During these trips he gave alms freely. His servant Mischka filled
Liszt's right vest pocket with _lire_ and the other one with _soldi_
every morning. And Liszt always strewed about the silver pieces,
returning to his astonished servant with the pocket full of copper coins
untouched.

Rudolf Louis, another Liszt biographer, tells an amusing story which
fits in the time when Pius the Ninth visited Liszt in the cloister.
While most of the living composers contented themselves with envying
Liszt, old Rossini tried to turn the incident to his own advantage. He
begged Liszt to use his influence in securing the admission of female
voices in service of the church because he--Rossini--did not care to
hear his churchly compositions sung by croaking boys' voices! Of course
nothing came of this request.

The incident itself--the Pope's visit to Liszt--caused much gossip at
the time. It was even reported that Pio Nono had called Liszt "his
Palestrina."

M. Louis also makes a point which most Wagner biographers seem to have
overlooked in their hurry to make Richard appear a very moral man,
namely, that the little Von Bülow-Cosima-Wagner affair did not please
Papa Liszt at all. Truce was patched up only in 1873, when Liszt's
"Christus" performance at Weimar was witnessed by Wagner. Bayreuth of
'76 cemented the friendship once more.

Read this paragraph from the pen of the cynical Gregorovius; it refers
to the Roman performance of the Dante Symphony in the Galleria Dantesca
when the Abbé reaped an aftermath of homage: "The Ladies of Paradise
(?!) poured flowers on him from above; Frau L. almost murdered him with
a big laurel wreath! But the Romans criticised the music severely as
being formless. There is inspiration in it, but it does not reach(?!).
Liszt left for Paris. The day before his departure I breakfasted with
him at Tolstoy's; he played for a solid hour and allowed himself to be
persuaded to do this by the young Princess Nadine Hellbig--Princess
Shahawskoy--a woman of remarkably colossal figure, but also of
remarkable intelligence."




V

AS COMPOSER


Richard Wagner wrote to Liszt July 20, 1856, concerning his symphonic
poems:

"With your symphonic poems I am now quite familiar. They are the only
music I have anything to do with at present, as I cannot think of doing
any work of my own while undergoing medical treatment. Every day I read
one or the other of your scores, just as I would read a poem, easily and
without hindrance. Then I feel every time as if I had dived into a
crystalline depth, there to be all alone by myself, having left all the
world behind, to live for an hour my own proper life. Refreshed and
invigorated, I then come to the surface again, full of longing for your
personal presence. Yes, my friend, _you have the power! You have the
power!_"

And later (December 6, 1856): "I feel thoroughly contemptible as a
musician, whereas you, as I have now convinced myself, are the greatest
musician of all times." Wagner, too, could be generous and flattering.
He had praised the piano sonata; Mazeppa and Orpheus were his favourites
among the symphonic poems.

Camille Saint-Saëns was more discriminating in his admiration; he said:

"Persons interested in things musical may perhaps recall a concert given
many years ago in the hall of the Théâtre Italien, Paris, under the
direction of the author of this article. The programme was composed
entirely of the orchestral work of Franz Liszt, whom the world persists
in calling a great pianist, in order to avoid acknowledging him as one
of the greatest composers of our time. This concert was considerably
discussed in the musical world, strictly speaking, and in a lesser
degree by the general public. Liszt as a composer seemed to many to be
the equal of Ingres as a violinist, or Thiers as an astronomer. However,
the public, who would have come in throngs to hear Liszt play ten bars
on the piano, as might be expected, manifested very little desire to
hear the Dante Symphony, the _Berges à la crèche_ and _Les Mages_,
symphonic parts of _Christus_, and other compositions which, coming from
one less illustrious, but playing the piano fairly well, would have
surely aroused some curiosity. We must also state that the concert was
not well advertised. While the "Spanish Student" monopolized all the
advertising space and posters possible, the Liszt concert had to be
satisfied with a brief notice and could not, at any price, take its
place among the theatre notices.

"Several days later, a pianist giving a concert at the Italien, obtained
this favour. Theatres surely offer inexplicable mysteries to simple
mortals. The name of Liszt appeared here and there in large type on the
top row of certain posters, where the human eye could see it only by the
aid of the telescope. But, nevertheless, our concert was given, and not
to an empty hall. The musical press, at our appeal, kindly assisted;
but the importance of the works on which they were invited to express
an opinion seemed to escape them entirely. They considered, in
general, that the music of Liszt was well written, free from certain
peculiarities they expected to find in it, and that it did not lack a
certain charm. That was all.

"If such had been my opinion of the works of Liszt, I certainly should
not have taken the trouble to gather together a large orchestra and
rehearse two weeks for a concert. Moreover, I should like to say a few
words of these works, so little known, whose future seems so bright. It
is not long since orchestral music was confined to but two forms--the
symphony and the overture. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven had never
written anything else; who would have dared to do other than they?
Neither Weber, Mendelssohn, Schubert, nor Schumann. Liszt did dare."

Liszt understood that to introduce new forms he must cause a necessity
to be felt, in a word, produce a motive for them. He resolutely entered
on the path which Beethoven, with the Pastoral and Choral Symphonies,
and Berlioz, with the Symphonie Fantastique and Harold in Italy, had
suggested rather than opened, for they had enlarged the compass of the
symphony, but had not transformed it, and it was Liszt who created the
symphonic poem.

This brilliant and fecund creation will be to posterity one of Liszt's
greatest titles to glory, and when time shall have effaced the luminous
trace of this greatest pianist who has ever lived it will inscribe on
the roll of honour the name of the emancipator of instrumental music.

Liszt not only introduced into the musical world the symphonic poem, he
developed it himself; and in his own twelve poems he has shown the chief
forms in which it can be clothed.

Before taking up the works themselves, let us consider the form of which
it is the soul, the principle of programme music.

To many, programme music is a necessarily inferior _genre_. Much has
been written on this subject that cannot be understood. Is the music, in
itself, good or bad? That is the point. The fact of its being
"programme" or not makes it neither better not worse. It is exactly the
same in painting, where the subject of the picture, which is everything
to the vulgar mind, is nothing or little to the artist. The reproach
against music, of expressing nothing in itself without the aid of words,
applies equally to painting.

To the artist, programme music is only a pretext to enter upon new ways,
and new effects demand new means, which, by the way, is very little
desired by orchestra leaders and kapellmeisters who, above all, love
ease and tranquil existence. I should not be surprised to discover that
the resistance to works of which we speak comes not from the public, but
from orchestra leaders, little anxious to cope with the difficulties of
every nature which they contain. However, I will not affirm it.

The compositions to which Liszt gave the name symphonic poem are twelve
in number:

    1. Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne, after Victor Hugo.
    2. Tasso, Lamento and Trionfo.
    3. Les Preludes, after Lamartine.
    4. Orphée.
    5. Prométhée.
    6. Mazeppa.
    7. Fest-Klänge.
    8. Héroïde funèbre.
    9. Hungaria.
    10. Hamlet.
    11. La bataille des Huns, after Kaulbach.
    12. L'idéal, after Schiller.

The symphonic poem in the form in which Liszt has given it to us, is
ordinarily an ensemble of different movements depending on each other,
and flowing from a principal ideal, blending into each other, and
forming one composition. The plan of the musical poem thus understood
may vary infinitely. To obtain a great unity, and at the same time the
greatest variety possible, Liszt most often chooses a musical phrase,
which he transforms by means of artifices of rhythm, to give it the
most diverse aspects and cause it to serve as an expression of the most
varied sentiments. This is one of the usual methods of Richard Wagner,
and, in my opinion, it is the only one common to the two composers. In
style, in use of harmonic resources and instrumentation, they differ as
widely as two contemporary artists could differ, and yet really belong
to the same school.


THE BERG SYMPHONY

"Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne"--or, as it is more familiarly known,
"Die Bergsymphonie"--is ranked among the earliest of Liszt's symphonic
works. The first sketches of this symphonic poem were made as early as
1833-35, but they were not orchestrated until 1849, and the composition
had its first hearing in Weimar in 1853.

A German enthusiast says this work is the first towering peak of a
mountain chain, and that here already--in the first of the list of
Symphonic Poems--the mastery of the composer is indubitably revealed.
The subject is not a flippant one, by any means: it touches on the
relation of man to nature--das Welträtsel. Inspiration came directly
from Victor Hugo's poem, "Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne." The subject
is that of Nature's perfection contrasted to Man's misery:

    Die Welt ist volkommen überall,
    Wo der Mensch nicht hinkommt mit seiner Qual.

Only when one withdraws from the hurdy-gurdy trend of life, only from
the height of mountain does one see Truth in perspective. This is "What
one hears on the Mountain."

    Zuerst vermorr'ner, unermess'ner Lärm,
    Undeutlich wie der Wind in dichten Bäumen,
    Voll klarer Tone, süssen Lispelns, sanft
    Wie'n Abendlied, und stark wie Waffenklirren.

    Es war ein Tönen, tief und unausprechlich,
    Das flutend Kreise zog rings um die Welt
    Und durch die Himmel ...

    Die Welt, Gehüllt in diese Symphonie,
    Schwamm wie in Luft, so in der Harmonie.

This is the key-note to the introductory measures of Liszt's work. Out
of the sombre roll of the drum--which continues as a ground tone--the
different instruments assert themselves. Muted strings imitate the rush
of the sea; horns and woodwind hint at the battling of elements in
chaos, while the violins and harp swerve peacefully aloft in arpeggios.
The oboe chants sanft wie'n Abendlied, the beautiful melody of peaceful
idyllic nature. After this impression becomes a mood Liszt resumes the
poetic narrative and individualises the two voices:

    Vom Meer die eine; wie ein Sang von Ruhm und Glück,

    Die and're hob von uns'rer Erde sich,
    Sie war voll Trauer: das Geräusch der Menschen.

The voice of Man is the first to be heard. It obtrudes itself even while
the violins are preaching earthly peace, and eventually embroils them in
its cry of discontent. All this over the pedal point of worldly noises.

There is a sudden pause, and in the succeeding maestoso episode the
second voice is heard--Nature's Hymn:

    Der prächt'ge Ocean ...

    Liess eine friedliche frohe Stimme hören,
    Sang, wie die Harfe singt in Sion's Tempeln,
    Und pries der Schöpfung Schönheit.

Here there is composure and serenity, which diminishes to a tender piano
in string harmonics. But in the woodwind a dissenting theme appears from
time to time: Man and his torments invade this sanctity of peace. His
cry grows louder, and one hears in it the anguish of the pursued one.
The strings forsake their tranquil harmonics and resolve themselves into
a troublous tremolo, while the clarinettes, in a new theme, question
this intrusion. Meanwhile the misery of Man gains the upper hand, and in
the following Allegro con moto there sounds all the fury of a wild
chase:

    Ein Weinen, Kreischen, Schmähen and Verfluchen
    Und Hohn und Lästerung und wüst' Geschrei
    Taucht aus des Menschenlärmes Wirbelwogen.

The orchestra is in tumult, relieved only by a cry of agony coming from
Man; even the sea theme is tossed about, and the Motif of Nature
appears in mangled form. This fury lashes itself out by its own
violence, and after the strings once more echo the cry of despair all is
silent. Two light blows of the tam-tam suggest the fear which follows
upon such a display of tempestuous terror.

    ... warum man hier ist, was
    Der Zweck von allem diesen endlich,
    Und warum Gott ...
    Bestandig einet zu des Liedes Masston
    Sang der Natur mit seiner Menschen Schreinen.

This Warum is asked dismally, and as an answer the theme of Nature
reappears in its brightest garb. Question and answer succeed each other,
and are stilled by the recurring cry of Man until a final Why is
followed by a full stop.

The poet, weary of this restlessness, is searching for the consolation
of quietude; and here--as might be expected of Liszt--comes the thought
of religion shown by the Andante religioso. It is here, too, in the
realm of religious peace that the two antagonistic voices are
reconciled; they interweave, cross and are melted, one in the other.

This, the most intricate and longest part of the score, was employed by
Liszt to show his instrumental mastery. The two principal themes--the
two voices--are made to adjust with great skill, and are then sounded
simultaneously to prove their striving after unity.

The poet is almost convinced of this equalisation, when, without warning
and with the force of the full orchestra, brilliantly employed, a new
theme appears. This is repeated with even greater frenzy of utterance,
and usurps the theme of Man and that of Nature. The whole is the idea of
Faith, at which the poet now has arrived. A deep satisfaction silences
every sound--the clashing of the elements ceases and the last sigh
breathes itself out. Once more the plaintive "Why" is heard, and
resolves itself in a reminiscence of Man's fury. The trumpets quiet all
by intoning that sacrosanct Andante religioso, which concludes in a
mysterious chord through which the notes of the harp thread themselves.
The theme of Nature's Hymn returns pizzicato in the basses, and is
answered by harp arpeggios and chords in the brass. A few taps of the
tympani, with which the composition ends, give the ring of finality.

Arthur Hahn believes that this symphonic poem offers a solution to the
discord of the universe; that the ending with the two tympani taps and
the hollow preceding chords suggest a possible return of the storm.
Liszt made numerous sketches for this work two decades before its
composition.


TASSO

For the Weimar centennial anniversary of Goethe's birth, August 28,
1849, Liszt composed his Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo. And this stands
second in order of his symphonic poems. At the Weimar festival the work
preceded Goethe's Tasso, being played as an overture.

When the first part of this Tasso symphonic poem was written--there are
two parts, as you will see later--Liszt was not yet bold as a symphonic
poet, for he thought it necessary to define the meaning of his work in
words and thus explain his music.

Liszt's preface to Tasso is as follows: "I wished to define the contrast
expressed in the title of the work, and it was my object to describe the
grand antithesis of the genius, ill-used and misunderstood in life, but
in death surrounded with a halo of glory whose rays were to penetrate
the hearts of his persecutors. Tasso loved and suffered in Ferrara, was
avenged in Rome, and lives to this day in the popular songs of Venice.
These three viewpoints are inseparably connected with his career. To
render them musically I invoke his mighty shadow, as he wanders by the
lagoons of Venice, proud and sad in countenance, or watching the feasts
at Ferrara, where his master-works were created. I followed him to Rome,
the Eternal City, which bestowed upon him the crown of glory, and in him
canonised the martyr and the poet.

"Lamento e Trionfo--these are the contrasts in the fate of the poet, of
whom it was said that, although the curse might rest upon his life, a
blessing could not be wanting from his grave. In order to give to my
idea the authority of living fact, I borrowed the form of my tone
picture from reality, and chose for its theme a melody to which, three
centuries after the poet's death, I have heard Venetian gondoliers sing
the first strophes of his Jerusalem:

    Canto l'armi pietose e'l Capitano,
    Che'l gran Sepolcro liberò di Cristo.

"The motif itself has a slow, plaintive cadence of monotonous mourning;
the gondoliers, however, by drawling certain notes, give it a peculiar
colouring, and the mournfully drawn out tones, heard at a distance,
produce an effect not dissimilar to the reflection of long stripes of
fading light upon a mirror of water. This song once made a profound
impression on me, and when I attempted to illustrate Tasso musically, it
recurred to me with such imperative force that I made it the chief motif
for my composition.

"The Venetian melody is so replete with inconsolable mourning, with
bitter sorrow, that it suffices to portray Tasso's soul, and again it
yields to the brilliant deceits of the world, to the illusive, smooth
coquetry of those smiles whose slow poison brought on the fearful
catastrophe, for which there seemed to be no earthly recompense, but
which was eventually, clothed in a mantle of brighter purple than that
of Alfonso."

Following this came--in later years, it is true--a strange denial from
Liszt himself. He admitted that when finally his Tasso composition began
to take form Byron's Tasso was nearer his heart and thoughts than
Goethe's. "I cannot deny," he writes, "that when I received the order
for an overture to Goethe's drama the chief and commanding influence on
the form of my work was the respectful sympathy with which Byron treated
the manes of the great poet."

Naturally this influence could not have extended beyond the Lamento
since Byron's poem is only the Lament of Tasso, and has no share in the
Trionfo. Now the anti-programmites could make a very strong case out of
this incident, and probably would have done so long before this if they
had known or thought about it. But then this question of the fallibility
of programme music is an eternal one. Was it not the late Thayer,
constantly haunting detail and in turn haunted by it, who could not
abide Beethoven's Coriolanus in his youth because he only knew the
Shakespeare drama and could not fit the Beethoven overture to it simply
because it would not be fitted? And now some commentators declare that
Beethoven must have known the Shakespeare work, that he could not have
found his inspiration in the forgotten play of Von Collin.

Liszt's Tasso opens with a descending octaved theme in C minor, meant to
depict the depressed mood and oppressed station of the poet. Wagner has
made mention of Liszt's particular aptitude for making such musical
moments pregnant with meaning. Here it expresses the tragedy of the
poet's life, and a second theme is his agonised cry. Gradually this
impatience is fanned to fury, and culminates in a wild outbreak of pain.
The tragic first theme, now given fortissimo by the full orchestra and
long sustained, spreads its shadow over all. The characteristic
rehearsal of the themes concludes the introduction to the work.

With an adagio the principal motif is heard in full for the first time;
it is the boat song of the Venetian gondoliers, and embraces in part the
first tragic theme with which the composition opened. You recall what
Liszt said about the expressiveness of this sombre song. He has
heightened its gloom by the moody orchestration in which he has embedded
it.

As a contrast comes the belief in self which forces its way to the soul
of the poet, and this comes to our ears in the form of the noble main
theme--the Tasso motif--which now sounds brilliantly in major. These two
moods relieve one another, as they might in the mind of any brooding
mortal, especially a poet.

The next picture is Tasso at the court of Ferrara. The courtly life is
sketched in a minuet-like allegro and a courteous subsidiary. How aptly
Tasso is carried away by the surrounding splendour we hear when the
Tasso theme sounds in the character of the gay minuet. This theme
becomes more and more impassioned, the poet has raised his eyes to
Leonore, and the inevitable calamity precipitates itself with the
recurrence of the wild and frantic burst of rage and fury.

    Alles ist dahin! Nur eines bleibt:
    Die Thräne hat uns die Natur verliehen,
    Den Schrei des Schmerzes, wenn der Mann zuletzt
    Es nicht mehr trägt.

With this, the first half of the first part of the work closes.

The second half concerns itself with the poet's transfiguration. His
physical self has been sacrificed, but the world has taken up his cause
and celebrates his works.

A short pause separates the two divisions. Now the glorious allegro has
an upward swing, the former dragging rhythms are spurned along
impetuously. The Tasso theme is glorified, the public enthusiasm grows
apace, and runs to a tremendous climax in the presto. Then there sounds
a sudden silence--the public pulse has ceased for a moment--followed by
a hymn, built on the Tasso theme. The entire orchestra intones this,
every figure is one of jubilation, save the four double basses which
recall the rhythm of the former theme of misery; but--notice the logic
of the composer--its resemblance is only a distant one, and it is heard
only in the lowest of the strings. So this composition concludes.

The Epilogue to the Tasso symphonic poem was written many years
afterward. Liszt called it Le Triomphe funèbre du Tasse, and its first
performance was under Leopold Damrosch in New York in 1877. The subject
must have pursued Liszt through most of his life, and he seems to have
felt a certain affinity with the dead poet. We all know that the public
denied him credit for his compositions.

Göllerich in his Liszt biography mentions that once during his stay in
Italy the composer, in a covered wagon, had himself driven slowly over
the course along which the corpse of Tasso had been taken. And of this
incident he is supposed to have said: "I suffered the sad poetry of this
journey in the hopes that one day the bloody irony of vain apotheosis
may be spared every poet and artist who has been ill-treated during
life. Rest to the dead!"

The analysis of this work is short and precise. The musical programme is
simple. It opens with a cry of distressful mourning, while from the
distance the cortège approaches. A reminiscence of the Tasso theme is
recognisable in this pompous approach and the mood changes to one of
triumph. In the midst of all this the public adoration is mingled with
its tears, and the two climax in the Tasso motive.


LES PRELUDES

The third of Liszt's symphonic poems, Les Préludes, was sketched as
early as 1845, but not produced until 1854, and then in Weimar.
Lamartine's Meditations Poétiques set the bells tolling in Liszt's mind,
and he wrote Les Préludes. "What is life but a series of preludes to
that unknown song whose initial solemn note is tolled by Death? The
enchanted dawn of every life is love; but where is the destiny on whose
first delicious joys some storm does not break?--a storm whose deadly
blast disperses youth's illusions, whose fatal bolt consumes its altar.
And what soul thus cruelly bruised, when the tempest rolls away, seeks
not to rest its memories in the calm of rural life? Yet man allows
himself not long to taste the kindly quiet which first attracted him to
Nature's lap; but when the trumpet gives the signal he hastens to
danger's post, whatever be the fight which draws him to its lists, that
in the strife he may once more regain full knowledge of himself and all
his strength."

Corresponding to the first line of the programme the composition opens
promisingly with an ascending figure in the strings, followed by some
mysterious chords. Liszt had that wonderful knack--which he shared with
Beethoven and Wagner--of getting atmosphere immediately at the first
announcement. Gradually he achieves a climax with this device, and now
he has pictured the character--his hero--in defiant possession of full
manhood.

"The enchanted dawn of every life is love" reads the line, and the music
grows sentimental. That well-known horn melody occurs here, a theme
almost the character of a folk-song; then the mood becomes even more
tranquil until--

"But where is the destiny on whose first delicious joys some storm does
not break?--a storm whose deadly blast disperses youth's illusions,
whose fatal bolt consumes its altar." Here was one of those episodes on
which Liszt doted, a place where he could unloose all his orchestral
technique, piling his climaxes furiously high.

"And what soul thus cruelly bruised, when the tempest rolls away, seeks
not to rest its memories in the pleasant calm of rural life?" There was
nothing else for Liszt to do but to write the usual pastoral peace
dignified by Handel and Watteau.

"Yet man allowed himself not long to taste the kindly quiet which first
attracted him to Nature's lap; but when the trumpet gives the signal he
hastens to danger's post, whatever be the fight which draws him to its
lists, that in the strife he may once more regain full knowledge of
himself and all his strength." The martial call of the trumpets and the
majestic strife is made much of. Liszt tortures his peaceful motives
into expressing war, and welds the entire incident into a stirring one.

Logically, he concludes the work by recalling the theme of his hero upon
whose life he has preluded so tunefully.


ORPHEUS

Of the origin of his Orpheus Liszt writes: "Some years ago, when
preparing Gluck's Orpheus for production, I could not restrain my
imagination from straying away from the simple version that the great
master had made of the subject, but turned to that Orpheus whose name
hovers majestically and full of harmony about the Greek myths. It
recalled that Etruscan vase in the Louvre which represents the
poet-musician crowned with the mystic kingly wreath; draped in a
star-studded mantle, his fine slender fingers are plucking the lyre
strings, while his lips are liberating godly words and song. The very
stones seem moved to hearing, and from adamant hearts stinging, burning
tears are loosing themselves. The beasts of the forests stand enchanted,
and the coarse noise of man is besieged into silence. The song of birds
is hushed; the melodious coursing of the brook halts; the rude laughter
of joy gives way to a trembling awe before these sounds, which reveal to
man universal harmonies, the gentle power of art and the brilliancy of
their glory."

The "dull and prosaic formula"--so some English critic put it--differs
in this work from that of most of the others of Liszt's symphonic
poems. The short cutting themes are absent and sharp contrasts are
generally avoided; the music flows rather in a broad melodic stream,
serene but magnificent. It is rather difficult to fit a detailed
programme to the composition, and the general outline is not so sharply
dented with incidents as some of the others.

Again atmosphere is evoked and the mood achieved by the lyre preluding
of the poet. Then the voice of Orpheus rises with majestic calm, and
swells to a climax which is typical of the majestic splendour of art.
This sweeps all sounds of opposition before it and leaves in its trail
awe-stricken man. It is with this mood that the work closes in a
marvellous progression of chords, harmonies daring for their day.


PROMETHEUS

The same general plan of conception and interpretation, but of course
much more heroic, has Liszt employed in the next symphonic poem,
Prometheus. It is a noble figure that Liszt has translated into music,
the Titan. The ideas he meant to convey may be summed up in "Ein tiefer
Schmerz, der durch trotzbietendes Ausharren triumphiert." Immediately at
the opening the swirl of the struggle is upon us, and the first theme is
the defiance of the Titan--a noble yet obstinate melody. The god is
chained to the rock to great orchestral tumult. His efforts to break
the manacles incite further musical riot, and then comes the wail of
helpless misery:

    O Mutter, du Heil'ge! O Aether,
    Lichtquell des All's!
    Seh, welch Unrecht ich erdulde!

This recitative leads into a furious burst when the shackled one
clenches his fists and threatens all Godhead. Even Zeus is defied:

    Und mag er schleudern seines feurigen Blitzes Loh'n,
    In weissen Schneesturms Ungewittern, in Donnerhall
    Der unterirdischen Tiefe werwirren mischen das All:
    Nichts dessen wird mir beugen!

Then arises the belief in a deliverer, a faith motif which is one of
those heartfelt inventions of the melodic Liszt. After this the struggle
continues. Magnificently, the god, believing in his own obstinate will
for freedom, the composition concludes on this supreme note.


MAZEPPA

The sixth of Liszt's symphonic poems, Mazeppa, has done more than any
other to earn for its composer the disparaging comment that his piano
music was orchestral and his orchestral music Klaviermässig. This
Solomon judgment usually proceeds from the wise ones, who are aware that
the first form of Liszt's Mazeppa was a piano étude which appeared
somewhere toward the end of 1830.

Liszt's orchestral version of Mazeppa was completed the middle of last
century and had its first hearing at Weimar in 1854. Naturally this is a
work of much greater proportion than the original piano étude; it is, as
some one has said, in the same ratio as is a panoramic picture to a
preliminary sketch.

The story of the Cossack hetman has inspired poets and at least one
painter. Horace Vernet--who, as Heine said, painted everything hastily,
almost after the manner of a maker of pamphlets--put the subject on
canvas twice; the Russian, Bulgarin, made a novel of it; Voltaire
mentioned the incident in his History of Charles the Twelfth; Byron
moulded the tale into rhyme, as did Victor Hugo--and the latter poem was
used by Liszt for the outline for his composition.

The amorous Mazeppa was of noble birth--so runs the tale. But while he
was page to Jan Casimir, King of Poland, he intrigued with Theresia the
young wife of a Podolian count. Their love was discovered and the count
had the page lashed to a wild horse--_un cheval farouche_, as Voltaire
has it--which was turned loose.

From all accounts the beast did not allow grass to grow under its hoofs,
but lashed out with the envious speed of the wind. It so happened that
the horse was "a noble steed, a Tartar of the Ukraine breed." Therefore
it headed for the Ukraine, which woolly country it reached with its
burden; then it promptly dropped dead.

Mazeppa was unhanded or unhorsed by a friendly Cossack and nursed back
to happiness. Soon he grew in stature and in power, becoming an Ukraine
prince; as the latter he fought against Russia at Pultowa.

That is the skeleton of the legend. Liszt has begun his musical tale at
the point when Mazeppa is corded to the furious steed, and with a cry it
is off. This opens the composition; there follow the galloping triplets
to mark the flight of the beast, irregular and wild. Trees and mountains
seem to whirl by them--this is represented by a vertiginous tremolo
figure, against which a descending theme sounds and seems to give
perspective to the swirling landscape.

When the prisoner stirs convulsively in the agony of his plight, the
horse bounds forward even more recklessly. The fury of the ride
continues, increases, until Mazeppa loses consciousness and mists
becloud his senses. Now and again pictures appear before his eyes an
instant as in a dream fantastic.

Gradually, as an accompaniment to the thundering hoof falls, the passing
earth sounds as a mighty melody to the delirious one. The entire plain
seems to ring with song, pitying Mazeppa in his suffering.

The horse continues to plunge and blood pours from the wounds of the
prisoner. Before his eyes the lights dance and the themes return
distorted. The goal is reached when the steed breaks down, overcome with
the killing fatigue of its three days' ride. It pants its last, and a
plaintive andante pictures the groaning of the bound Mazeppa; this dies
away in the basses.

Now the musician soars away in the ether. When he returns to us it is
with an allegro of trumpet calls. Mazeppa has been made a prince in the
interim and is now leading the warriors of the steppe who freed him.
These fanfares lead to a triumphal march, which is the last division
of the composition. Local colour is logically brought in by the
introduction of a Cossack march; the Mazeppa theme is jubilantly shared
by trumpet calls, and the motif of his sufferings appears transformed as
a melody of victory--all this in barbaric rhythms.

In form the work is free; two general divisions are about as much as it
yields to the formal dissector. It follows the poem, and, having been
written to the poem, that is really all the sequence demanded by logic.

Liszt was decidedly at a disadvantage as a composer when he lacked a
programme. Usually in composing his purpose was so distinct, the music
measuring itself so neatly against the logic of the programme, that his
symphonic compositions should be most easily comprehended by an
audience.


FESTKLÄNGE

There is no definite programme to Liszt's Festklänge. Several probing
ones have been hot on the trail of such a thing. Pohl knew but would
not tell. He wrote: "This work is the most intimate of the entire group.
It stands in close relation with some personal experiences of the
composer--something which we will not define more clearly here. For this
reason Liszt himself has offered no elucidation to the work, and we must
respect his silence. The mood of the work is 'Festlich'--it is the
rejoicing after a victory of--the heart."

This is mysterious and sentimental enough to satisfy any conservatory
maiden. But Liszt died eventually, and then Pohl intimates that the
incident which this composition was meant to glorify was the marriage of
Liszt with the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein--a marriage which never came
off.

Philip Hale has taken up the question in his interesting Boston Symphony
Programme Notes, and summons several witnesses: "Brendel said that this
symphonic poem is a sphinx that no one can understand. Mr. Barry, who
takes a peculiarly serious view of all things musical, claims that
Festival Sounds, Sounds of Festivity or Echoes of a Festival is the
portrayal in music of scenes that illustrate some great national
festival; that the introduction, with its fanfares, gives rise to strong
feelings of expectation. There is a proclamation, 'The festival has
begun,' and he sees the reception of guests in procession. The event is
great and national--a coronation--something surely of a royal character;
and there is holiday making until the 'tender, recitative-like period'
hints at a love scene; guests, somewhat stiff and formal, move in the
dance; in the finale the first subject takes the form of a national
anthem.

"Some have thought that Liszt composed the piece in honour of the
fiftieth anniversary of the entrance into Weimar of his friend and
patroness Maria Paulowna, sister of the Czar Nicholas I, Grand Duchess
of Weimar. The anniversary was celebrated with pomp November 9, 1854, as
half a century before the noble dame was greeted with Schiller's lyric
festival play Die Huldigung der Künste.

"This explanation is plausible; but Lina Ramann assures us that
Festklänge was intended by Liszt as the wedding music for himself and
the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein; that in 1851 it seemed as
though the obstacles to the union would disappear; that this music was
composed as 'a song of triumph over hostile machinations'; 'bitterness
and anguish are forgotten in proud rejoicing'; the introduced
'Polonaise' pictures the brilliant mind of the Polish princess."

When this symphonic poem was first played in Vienna there were
distributed handbills written by "Herr K.," that the hearers might find
reasonable pleasure in the music. One of the sentences goes bounding
through the universe as follows: "A great universal and popular festival
calls within its magic circle an agitated crowd, joy on the brow, heaven
in the breast."

In whichever class you choose to place the Festklänge--whether in that
of a higher grade of wedding music or as music incidental to some
national event--you are apt to find contradictions in the music itself.
So it is most reasonable to waive the entire question of a programme
here, and take the music at its word. It must be admitted that this
composition is not among Liszt's great ones; the big swing is missing
and honesty compels the acknowledgment that much of it is blank bombast,
some of it tawdry.

The introductory allegro is devoted to some tympani thumps--à la
Meyerbeer--and some blaring fanfares which terminate in a loud, blatant
theme.

Then comes the andante with the principal subject of the work, meant to
be impressive, but failing in its purpose. The mood changes and grows
humourous, which again is contrasted by the following rather melancholy
allegretto. This latter spot would serve to knock some of the festival
programme ideas into a cocked hat.

The work eventually launches into a polonaise, and until the close Liszt
busies himself with varying the character and rhythms of the foregoing
themes. Finally the martial prevails again, decorated with fanfares, and
thus the composition closes.

Festklänge had its first performance at Weimar in 1854; but the composer
made some changes in the later edition that appeared in 1861, and this
version is the one usually played to-day.

A Liszt work which we seldom hear is "Chöre zu Herder's 'Entfesselte
Prometheus,'" which was composed and performed in Weimar in 1850.

On August 25 of that year there was a monument unveiled to Johann
Gottfried Herder in Weimar, and the memory of the "apostle of humanity"
was also celebrated in the theatre. This accounts for the composition of
the symphonic poem Prometheus, which served as an overture to these
choruses, written for voices and orchestra. Richard Pohl has put the
latter into shape for solitary performance in the concert room.

Prometheus sits manacled on the rock, but the fury of his rebellion is
over. Resolutely he awaits the decree of fate. At this point the Liszt
work takes up the narrative. The Titan is soliloquising, while man,
aided by the gift of fire, is calmly possessing the world. The elemental
spirits look enviously at the power of man and turn to Prometheus with
plaints; the Daughters of the Sea lament that the holy peace of the sea
is disturbed by man, who sails the water imperiously. Prometheus answers
Okeanus philosophically that everything belongs to every one.

Then the chorus of the Tritons glorifies the socialistic Titan with
"Heil Prometheus." This dies away to make room for the grumbling of
All-Mother Erda and her dryads, who bring charge against the fire giver.
An answer comes from the bucolic chorus of reapers and their brothers
the vintagers, who chant the praise of "Monsieur" Bacchus.

From the under world comes the sound of strife, and Hercules arises as
victor. Prometheus recognises him as the liberator, and the Sandow of
mythology breaks the Titan's fetters and slays the hovering eagle of
Zeus. The freed Prometheus turns to the rocks on which he has sat
prisoner so long and asks that in gratitude for his liberty a paradise
arise there. Pallas Athene respects the wish, and out of the naked rock
sprouts an olive tree.

A chorus of the Invisible Ones invites Prometheus to attend before the
throne of Themis. She intercedes in his behalf against his accusers, and
the Chorus of Humanity celebrates her judgment in the hymn which closes
"Heil Prometheus! Der Menschheit Heil!" Some of the thematic material
for these choruses and orchestral interludes is borrowed from the
symphonic poem Prometheus.

Liszt wrote a preface to Héroïde Funèbre, his eighth poem (1849-1850;
1856.) Among other things he declares that "Everything may change in
human societies--manners and cult, laws and ideas; sorrow remains always
one and the same, it remains what it has been from the beginning of
time. It is for art to throw its transfiguring veil over the tomb of the
brave--to encircle with its golden halo the dead and the dying, in order
that they may be envied by the living." Liszt incorporated with this
poem a fragment from his Revolutionary Symphony outlined in 1830.
Hungaria (1854; 1857) and Hamlet (1858; 1861) the ninth and tenth poems
are not of marked interest or novel character--that is when compared to
their predecessors. There is a so-called poem, From the Cradle to the
Grave, the thirteenth in the series, one which did not take seriously.
It is quite brief. But let us consider the eleventh and twelfth of the
series.


THE BATTLE OF THE HUNS

Liszt's Hunnenschlacht was suggested by Wilhelm von Kaulbach's mural
painting in the staircase-hall of the New Museum in Berlin. It was
conceived in Munich in November, 1856, and written in 1857. When
completed, it was put into rehearsal at Weimar in October, 1857, and
performed in April, 1858. Its first performance in Boston, was under Mr.
Theodore Thomas in 1872.

The picture which suggested this composition to Liszt shows the city of
Rome in the background; before it is a battle-field, strewn with corpses
which are seen to be gradually reviving, rising up, and rallying, while
among them wander wailing and lamenting women. At the heads of two
ghostly armies are respectively Attila--borne aloft on a shield by Huns,
and wielding a scourge--and Theodoric with his two sons, behind whom is
raised the banner of the cross.

The composition is perfectly free in form; one noteworthy feature being
the interweaving of the choral Crux Fidelis with themes of the
composer's own invention. The score bears no dedication.


DIE IDEALE

Die Ideale was projected in the summer of 1856, but it was composed in
1857. The first performance was at Weimar, September 5, 1857, on the
occasion of unveiling the Goethe-Schiller monument. The first
performance in Boston was by Theodore Thomas's orchestra, October 6,
1870. The symphonic poem was played here at a Symphony Concert on
January 26, 1889.

The argument of Schiller's poem, Die Ideale, first published in the
_Musenalmanach_ of 1796, has thus been presented: "The sweet belief in
the dream-created beings of youth passes away; what once was divine and
beautiful, after which we strove ardently, and which we embraced
lovingly with heart and mind, becomes the prey of hard reality; already
midway the boon companions--love, fortune, fame, and truth--leave us one
after another, and only friendship and activity remain with us as loving
comforters." Lord Lytton characterised the poem as an "elegy on departed
youth."

Yet Liszt departed from the spirit of the elegy, for in a note to the
concluding section of the work, the Apotheosis, he says: "The holding
fast and at the same time the continual realising of the ideal is the
highest aim of our life. In this sense I ventured to supplement
Schiller's poem by a jubilantly emphasising resumption of the motives of
the first section in the closing Apotheosis." Mr. Niecks, in his
comments on this symphonic poem, adds: "To support his view and justify
the alteration, Liszt might have referred to Jean Paul Richter's
judgment, that the conclusion of the poem, pointing as it does for
consolation to friendship and activity, comforts but scantily and
unpoetically. Indeed, Schiller himself called the conclusion of the poem
tame, but explained that it was a faithful picture of human life,
adding: 'I wished to dismiss the reader with this feeling of tranquil
contentment.' That, apart from poetical considerations, Liszt acted
wisely as a musician in making the alteration will be easily understood
and readily admitted. Among the verses quoted by the composer, there are
eight which were omitted by Schiller in the ultimate amended form of Die
Ideale. The order of succession, however, is not the same as in the
poem; what is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 with Liszt is 1, 4, 3, 2, 5 with Schiller.
The musician seized the emotional possibilities of the original, but
disregarded the logical sequence. And there are many things which the
tone poet who works after the word poet not only may but must disregard.
As the two arts differ in their nature, the one can be only an imperfect
translator of the other; but they can be more than translators--namely,
commentators. Liszt accordingly does not follow the poem word for word,
but interprets the feelings which it suggests, 'feelings which almost
all of us have felt in the progress of life.' Indeed, programme and
music can never quite coincide; they are like two disks that partly
cover each other, partly overlap and fall short. Liszt's Die Ideale is
no exception. Therefore it may not be out of place to warn the hearer,
although this is less necessary in the present case than in others,
against forming 'a grossly material conception of the programme,'
against 'an abstractly logical interpretation which allows itself to be
deceived by the outside, by what presents itself to the first glance,
disdains the mediation of the imagination.'"

Mr. Hale gives some interesting facts about the composition.

Liszt and Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein were both ill in the
spring of 1857, and the letters written by Liszt to her during this
period are of singular interest. Yet Liszt went about and conducted
performances until he suffered from an abscess in a leg and was obliged
to lie in bed. On the 30th of January Liszt had written to a woman, the
anonymous "Friend": "For Easter I shall have finished Die Ideale
(symphony in three movements)"; and in March he wrote the princess that
he was dreaming of Die Ideale. In May he went to Aix-la-Chapelle to
conduct at a music festival, and in July he returned to that town for
medical treatment. He wrote the princess (July 23) that he had completed
the indications, the "nuances," of the score that morning, and
he wished her to see that the copyist should prepare the parts
immediately--six first violins, six second violins, four violas, and
five double basses.

The performance at Weimar excited neither fierce opposition nor warm
appreciation. Liszt conducted the work at Prague, March 11, 1858, and it
appears from a letter to the Princess that he made cuts and alterations
in the score after the performance. Hans von Bülow produced Die Ideale
at Berlin in 1859, and the performance stirred up strife. Bülow thought
the work too long for the opening piece, and preferred to put it in the
second part. Then he changed his mind; he remembered that Liszt's
Festklänge was at the end of a concert the year before in Berlin, and
that many of the audience found it convenient to leave the hall for the
cloak-room during the performance. A few days later he wrote that he
would put it at the end of the first part: "My first rehearsal lasted
four hours. The parts of Die Ideale are very badly copied. It is a
magnificent work, and the form is splendid. In this respect I prefer it
to Tasso, to The Preludes, and to other symphonic poems. It has given me
an enormous pleasure--I was happier than I have been for a long time.
Apropos--a passage, where the basses and the trombones give the theme of
the Allegro, a passage that is found several times in the parts
is cut out in the printed score." Ramagn names 1859 as the date of
publication, while others say the score was published in 1858. "I have
left this passage as it is in the arts; for I find it excellent, and the
additional length of time in performance will be hardly appreciable. It
will go, I swear it!" The concert was on January 14, 1859, and when some
hissed after the performance of Die Ideale, Bülow asked them to leave
the hall. A sensation was made by this "maiden speech," as it was
called. (See the pamphlet, Hans v. Bülow und die Berliner Kritik,
Berlin, 1859, and Bülow's Briefe, vol. iii. pp. 202, 203, 205, 206,
Leipsic, 1898.) Bülow was cool as a cucumber, and directed the next
piece, Introduction to Lohengrin, as though nothing had happened. The
Princess of Prussia left her box, for it was nine o'clock, the hour of
tea; but there was no explosion till after the concert, when Bülow was
abused roundly by newspaper article and word of mouth. He had promised
to play two piano pieces at a Domchoir concert the 22d, and it was
understood that he would then be hissed and hooted. The report sold all
the seats and standing places. Never had he played so well, and instead
of a scandalous exhibition of disapproval there was the heartiest
applause. Liszt conducted Die Ideale at Bülow's concert in Berlin on
February 27 of that year, and there was then not a suspicion of
opposition to work or composer.

Bülow after the first performance at Berlin advised Liszt to cut out the
very last measures. "I love especially the thirds in the kettle-drums,
as a new and bold invention--but I find them a little too ear-boxing
for cowardly ears.... I know positively that these eight last drumbeats
have especially determined or rather emboldened the opposition to
manifestation. And so, if you do not find positive cowardice in my
request--put these two measures on my back--do as though I had had the
impertinence to add them as my own. I almost implore this of you!"

In 1863 Bülow sent Louis Köhler his latest photograph, "Souvenir du 14
janvier, 1859." It represents him standing, baton in hand; on a
conductor's desk is the score of Die Ideale, and there is this
inscription to Liszt: "'_Sub hoc signo vici, nec vincere desistam._' to
his Master, his artistic Ideal, with thanks and veneration out of a full
heart. Hans v. Bülow, Berlin, October 22, 1863." Liszt wrote Bülow from
Budapest (January 3, 1873): "You know I profess not to collect
photographs, and in my house portraits do not serve as ornaments. At
Rome I had only two in my chamber; yours--that of Die Ideale, '_Sub hoc
signo vici, nec vincere desistam_'--was one of them."

It appears that others wished to tinker the score of this symphonic
poem. Bülow wrote the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein (February 10,
1859) that he had anticipated the permission of Liszt, and had sent Die
Ideale to Leopold Damrosch, who would have the parts copied and produce
the work in the course of the month at Breslau. Carl Tausig produced Die
Ideale at Vienna for the first time, February 24, 1861, and in a letter
written before the performance to Liszt he said: "I shall conduct Die
Ideale wholly according to your wish, yet I am not at all pleased with
Damrosch's variante; my own are more plausible, ... and Cornelius has
strengthened me in my belief." When Die Ideale was performed again at
Vienna, in 1880, at a concert of the Society of Music Friends, led by
the composer, Eduard Hanslick based his criticism on the "witty answer"
made by Berthold Auerbach to a noble dame who asked him what he thought
of Liszt's compositions. He answered by putting another question: "What
would you think if Ludwig Devrient, after he had played Shakespeare,
Schiller, and Goethe with the complete mastery of genius, had said to
himself in his fiftieth year: 'Why should I not be able also to write
what I play so admirably? I'll be no longer a play actor; henceforth
I'll be a tragic poet'?"

Die Ideale was performed for the first time in England at a concert at
the Crystal Palace, April 16, 1881, with August Manns conductor.

This is C. A. Barry's answer to the question, Why was Liszt obliged to
invent the term symphonic poem?

It may be explained that finding the symphonic form, as by rule
established, inadequate for the purposes of _poetic_ music, which has
for its aim the reproduction and re-enforcement of the emotional essence
of dramatic scenes, as they are embodied in poems or pictures, he felt
himself constrained to adopt certain divergences from the prescribed
symphonic form, and, for the new art-form thus created, was consequently
obliged to invent a more appropriate title than that of "symphony," the
formal conditions of which this would not fulfil. The inadequateness of
the old symphonic form for translating into music imaginative
conceptions arising from poems or pictures, and which necessarily must
be presented in a fixed order, lies in its "recapitulation" section.
This Liszt has dropped; and the necessity of so doing is apparent. Hence
he has been charged with formlessness. In justification, therefore, of
his mode of procedure, it may be pointed out to those of his critics who
regard every divergence from the established form as tending to
formlessness, that the form which he has devised for his symphonic poems
in the main differs less from the established form than at first sight
appears. A comparison of the established form of the so-called classical
period with that devised by Liszt will make this apparent.

The former may be described as consisting of (1) the exposition of the
principal subjects; (2) their development; and (3) their recapitulation.
For this Liszt has substituted (1) exposition, (2) development, and (3)
further development; or, as Wagner has tersely expressed it, "nothing
else but that which is demanded by the subject and its expressible
development." Thus, though from sheer necessity, rigid formality has
been sacrificed to truthfulness, unity and consistency are as fully
maintained as upon the old system, but by a different method, the
reasonableness of which cannot be disputed.


A FAUST SYMPHONY

Franz Liszt as a composer was born too soon. Others plucked from his
amiable grasp the fruits of his originality. When Stendhal declared in
1830 that it would take the world fifty years to comprehend his analytic
genius he was a prophet, indeed, for about 1880, his work was felt by
writers of that period, Paul Bourget and the rest, and lived again in
their pages. But poor, wonderful Liszt, Liszt whose piano playing set
his contemporaries to dancing the same mad measure we recognise in these
days, Liszt the composer had to knock unanswered at many critical doors
for a bare recognition of his extraordinary merits.

One man, a poor, struggling devil, a genius of the footlights, wrote
him encouraging words, not failing to ask for a dollar by way of
compensating postscript. Richard Wagner discerned the great musician
behind the virtuoso in Liszt, discerned it so well that, fearing others
would not, he appropriated in a purely fraternal manner any of Liszt's
harmonic, melodic, and orchestral ideas that happened to suit him. So
heavily indebted was he to the big-hearted Hungarian that he married his
daughter Cosima, thus keeping in the family a "Sacred Fount"--as Henry
James would say--of inspiration. Wagner not only borrowed Liszt's
purse, but also his themes.

Nothing interests the world less than artistic plagiarism. If the
filching be but cleverly done, the setting of the stolen gems
individual, who cares for the real creator! He may go hang, or else
visit Bayreuth and enjoy the large dramatic style in which his themes
are presented. Liszt preferred the latter way; besides, Wagner was his
son-in-law. A story is told that Wagner, appreciating the humour of his
_Alberich_-like explorations in the Liszt scores, sat with his
father-in-law at the first Ring rehearsals in 1876, and when Sieglinde's
dream words "Kehrte der Vater nun heim" began, Wagner nudged Liszt,
exclaiming: "Now, papa, comes a theme which I got from you." "All
right," was the ironic answer, "then one will at least hear it."

This theme, which may be found on page 179 of Kleinmichael's piano
score, appears at the beginning of Liszt's Faust Symphony. Wagner had
heard it at a festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musik Verein in
1861. He liked it so well that he cried aloud: "Music furnishes us with
much that is beautiful, but this music is divinely beautiful!"

Liszt was already a revolutionist when Wagner published his sonata Op.
1, with its echoes of Haydn and Mozart. The Revolutionary Symphony still
survives in part in Liszt's eighth symphonic poem. These two early works
when compared show who was the real path breaker. Compare Orpheus and
Tristan and Isolde; the Faust Symphony and Tristan; Bénédiction de Dieu
and Isolde's Liebestod; Die Ideale and Der Ring--Das Rheingold in
particular; Invocation and Parsifal; Battle of the Huns and Kundry-Ritt;
The Legend of Saint Elizabeth and Parsifal, Excelsior and Parsifal.

The principal theme of the Faust Symphony may be heard in Die Walküre,
and one of its most characteristic themes appears, note for note, as the
"glance" motive in Tristan. The Gretchen motive in Wagner's Eine Faust
Ouverture is derived from Liszt, and the opening theme of the Parsifal
prelude follows closely the earlier written Excelsior of Liszt.

All this to reassure timid souls who suspect Liszt of pilfering. In
William Mason's Memories of a Musical Life is a letter sent to the
American pianist, bearing date of December 14, 1854, in which the
writer, Liszt, says, "Quite recently I have written a long symphony in
three parts, called Faust [without text or vocal parts] in which the
_horrible_ measures 7-8, 7-4, 5-4 alternate with common time and 3-4."
And Liszt had already finished his Dante Symphony. Wagner finished the
full score of Rheingold in 1854, that of Die Walküre in 1856; the last
act of Tristan was ended in 1859. The published correspondence of
the two men prove that Wagner studied the manuscripts of Liszt's
symphonic poems carefully, and, as we must acknowledge, with wonderful
assimilative discrimination. Liszt was the loser, the world of dramatic
music the gainer thereby.

Knowing these details we need not be surprised at the Wagnerian--alas,
it may be the first in the field who wins!--colour, themes, traits of
instrumentation, individual treatment of harmonic progressions that
abound in the symphony which Mr. Paur read for us so sympathetically.
For example, one astounding transposition--let us give the theft a
polite musical name--occurs in the second, the Gretchen, movement where
Siegfried, disguised as Hagen, appears in the Liszt orchestra near the
close.

You rub your eyes as you hear the fateful chords, enveloped in the
peculiar green and sinister light we so admire in Gotterdämmerung. Even
the atmosphere is abducted by Wagner. It is all magnificent, this
Nietzsche-like seizure of the weaker by the stronger man.

To search further for these parallelisms might prove disquieting.
Suffice to say that the beginnings of Wagner from Rienzi to Parsifal may
be found deposited nugget-wise in this Lisztian Golconda. The true
history of Liszt as composer has yet to be written; his marvellous
versatility--he overflowed in every department of his art--his industry
are memorable. Richard Wagner's dozen music-dramas, ten volumes of prose
polemics and occasional orchestral pieces make no better showing when
compared to the labours of his brain-and-money-banker, Franz Liszt.

Nor was Wagner the only one of the Forty Thieves who visited this Ali
Baba cavern. If Liszt learned much from Chopin, Meyerbeer--the duo from
the fourth act of Huguenots is in the Gretchen section--and Berlioz, the
younger men, Tschaikowsky, Rubinstein, and Richard Strauss, have simply
polished white and bare the ribs of the grand old mastodon of Weimar.

Faust is not a symphony. (Query: What is the symphonic archetype?)
Rather is it a congeries of symphonic moods, structurally united by
emotional intimacy and occasional thematic concourse. The movements are
respectively labelled Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles, the task, an
impossibly tremendous one, being the embodiment in tones of the general
characteristics of Goethe's poetic-philosophic master-work.

Therefore, discarding critical crutches, it is best to hear the
composition primarily as absolute music. We know that it is in C minor;
that the four leading motives may typify intellectual doubt, striving,
longing, and pride--the last in a triumphant E major; that the Gretchen
music--too lengthy--is replete with maidenly sweetness overshadowed by
the masculine passion of Faust (and also his theme); that in the
Mephistopheles Liszt appears in his most characteristic pose--Abbé's
robe tucked up, Pan's hoofs showing, and the air charged with cynical
mockeries and travesties of sacred love and ideals (themes are
topsy-turvied à la Berlioz); and that at the close this devil's dance is
transformed by the great comedian-composer into a mystic chant with
music celestial in its white-robed purities; Goethe's words, "Alles
Vergängliche," ending with the consoling "Das Ewig weiblich zieht uns
hinan."

But the genius of it all! The indescribable blending of the sensuous,
the mystic, the diabolic; the master grasp on the psychologic
development--and the imaginative musical handling of themes in which
every form, fugal, lyric, symphonic, latter-day poetic-symphonic, is
juggled with in Liszt's transcendental manner. The Richard Strauss
scores are structurally more complex, while, as painters, Wagner,
Tschaikowski, and Strauss outpoint Liszt at times. But he is Heervater
Wotan the Wise, or, to use a still more expressive German term, he is
the Urquell of young music, of musical anarchy--an anarchy that traces a
spiritual air-route above certain social tendencies of this century.

Nevertheless it must be confessed that there are some dreary moments in
the Faust.


SYMPHONY AFTER DANTE'S DIVINA COMMEDIA

The first sketches of this symphony were made during Liszt's stay at the
country house of the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein at Woronice,
October, 1847--February, 1848. The symphony was finished in 1855, and
the score was published in 1858. The first performance was at Dresden on
November 7, 1857, under the direction of Wilhelm Fischer. The first
part, Inferno, was produced in Boston at a Philharmonic Concert, Mr.
Listemann conductor, November 19, 1880. The whole symphony was performed
at Boston at a Symphony Concert, Mr. Gericke conductor, February 27,
1886.

The work is scored for 3 flutes (one interchangeable with piccolo), 2
oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2
trumpets, 3 trombones, bass tuba, 2 sets of kettle-drums, cymbals, bass
drum, gong, 2 harps, harmonium, strings, and chorus of female voices.
The score is dedicated to Wagner: "As Virgil led Dante, so hast thou led
me through the mysterious regions of tone-worlds drunk with life. From
the depths of my heart I cry to thee: 'Tu se lo mio maestro, e 'l mio
autore!' and dedicate in unalterable love this work. Weimar, Easter,
'59."

_I. Inferno: Lento, 4-4._

    Per me si va nella città dolente:
    Per me si va nell' eterno dolore:
    Per me si va tra la perduta gente!

    Through me the way is to the city dolent;
    Through me the way is to eternal dole;
    Through me the way among the people lost.

        --_Longfellow._

These words, read by Dante as he looked at the gate of hell, are
thundered out by trombones, tuba, double basses, etc.; and immediately
after trumpets and horn make the dreadful proclamation (C-sharp minor):
"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate" ("All hope abandon, ye who
enter in.") Liszt has written the Italian lines under the theme in the
score. The two "Hell motives" follow, the first a descending chromatic
passage in the lower strings against roll of drums, the second given to
bassoons and violas. There is illustration of Dante's lines that
describe the "sighs, complaints, and ululations loud":--

    Languages diverse, horrible dialects,
    Accents of anger, words of agony,
    And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands,
    Made up a tumult that goes whirling on
    Forever in that air forever black,
    Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes.

        --_Longfellow._

The Allegro frenetico, 2-2, in the development paints the madness of
despair, the rage of the damned. Again there is the cry, "All hope
abandon" (trumpets, horns, trombones, tuba). There is a lull in the
orchestral storm. Quasi Andante, 5-4. Harps, flutes, violins, a
recitative of bass clarinet and two clarinets lead to the episode of
Francesca da Rimini and Paolo. The cor anglais sings the lamentation:--

    There is no greater sorrow
    Than to be mindful of the happy time
    In misery.

Before the 'cello takes up the melody sung by the clarinet, the Lasciate
theme is heard (muted horn, solo,) and then in three tempo, Andante
amoroso, 7-4, comes the love duet, which ends with the Lasciate motive.
A harp cadenza brings the return to the first allegro tempo, in which
the Lasciate theme in combination with the two Hell motives is developed
with grotesque and infernal orchestration. There is this remark in the
score: "This whole passage should be understood as sardonic, blasphemous
laughter and most sharply defined as such." After the repetition of
nearly the whole of the opening section of the allegro the Lasciate
theme is heard _fff_.

_II. Purgatorio and Magnificat._ The section movement begins Andante con
moto, D major, 4-4. According to the composer there is the suggestion of
a vessel that sails slowly over an unruffled sea. The stars begin to
glitter, there is a cloudless sky, there is a mystic stillness. Over a
rolling figuration is a melody first for horn, then oboe, the Meditation
motive. This period is repeated a half-tone higher. The Prayer theme is
sung by 'cello, then by first violin. There is illustration of Dante's
tenth canto, and especially of the passage where the sinners call to
remembrance the good that they did not accomplish. This remorseful and
penitent looking-back and the hope in the future inspired Liszt,
according to his commentator, Richard Pohl, to a fugue based on a most
complicated theme. After this fugue the gentle Prayer and Repentance
melodies are heard. Harp chords established the rhythm of the Magnificat
(three flutes ascending in chords of E-flat). This motive goes through
sundry modulations. And now an unseen chorus of women, accompanied by
harmonium, sings, "Magnificat anima mea Dominum et exultavit spiritus
meus, in Deo salutari meo" (My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit
hath rejoiced in God my Saviour). A solo voice, that of the Mater
Gloriosa, repeats the song. A short choral passage leads to "Hosanna
Halleluja." The final harmonies are supposed to illustrate the passage
in the twenty-first canto of the Paradiso:--

                I saw rear'd up,
    In colour like to sun-illumined gold,
    A ladder, which my ken pursued in vain,
    So lofty was the summit; down whose steps
    I saw the splendours in such multitude
    Descending, every light in heaven, methought,
    Was shed thence.

        --_H. F. Cary._

The "Hosanna" is again heard, and the symphony ends in soft harmonies (B
major) with the first Magnificat theme.

Liszt wrote to Wagner, June 2, 1855: "Then you are reading Dante? He is
excellent company for you. I, on my part, shall furnish a kind of
commentary to his work. For a long time I had in my head a Dante
symphony, and in the course of this year it is to be finished. There are
to be three movements, 'Hell,' 'Purgatory,' and 'Paradise,' the two
first purely instrumental, the last with chorus."

Wagner wrote in reply a long letter from London: "That 'Hell' and
'Purgatory' will succeed I do not call into question for a moment, but
as to 'Paradise' I have some doubts, which you confirm by saying that
your plan includes choruses. In the Ninth Symphony the last choral
movement is decidedly the weakest part, although it is historically
important, because it discloses to us in a very naïve manner the
difficulties of a real musician who does not know how (after hell and
purgatory) he is to describe paradise. About this paradise, dearest
Franz, there is in reality a considerable difficulty, and he who
confirms this opinion is, curiously enough, Dante himself, the singer of
Paradise, which in his 'Divine Comedy' also is decidedly the weakest
part." And then Wagner wrote at length concerning Dante, Christianity,
Buddhism, and other matters. "But, perhaps, you will succeed better, and
as you are going to paint a _tone_ picture, I might almost predict your
success, for music is essentially the artistic, original image of the
world. For the initiated no error is here possible. Only about the
'Paradise,' and especially about the choruses, I feel some friendly
anxiety."

The next performance of the symphony in Boston was May 1, 1903, again
under the direction of Mr. Gericke. Mr. Philip Hale furnished the notes
for the analytical programme. Richard Pohl, whose critical annotations
were prompted and approved by Liszt, points out that a composer worthy
of a theme like Faust must be something more than a tone-composer: his
concern ought to be with something that neither the word with its
concrete definiteness can express, nor form and colour can actually
realise, and this something is the world of the profoundest and most
intimate feelings that unveil themselves to man's mind only in tones.
None but the tone poet can render the fundamental moods. But in order to
seize them in their totality, he must abstract from the material moments
of Dante's epic, and can at most allude to few of them. On the other
hand, he must also abstract from the dramatic and philosophical
elements. These were Liszt's views on the treatment of the subject.

The Dante idea had obsessed Liszt for years. In 1847 he had planned
musical illustrations of certain scenes from the epic with the aid of
the newly-invented Diorama. This plan was never carried out. The
Fantasia quasi-sonata for pianoforte (Années de Pèlerinage), suggested
by a poem of Victor Hugo, "Après une lecture de Dante," is presumably a
sketch; it is full of fuliginous grandeur and whirling rhythms. Composed
of imagination and impulse, his mind saturated with contemporary
literature, Liszt's genius, as Dannreuther declares, was one that could
hardly express itself save through some other imaginative medium. He
devoted his extraordinary mastery of instrumental technique to the
purposes of illustrative expression; and, adds the authority cited, he
was now and then inclined to do so in a manner that tends to reduce his
music to the level of decorative scene painting or _affresco_ work. But
the unenthusiastic critic admits that there are episodes of sublimity
and great beauty in the Dante Symphony. The influence of Berlioz is not
marked in this work.


WEINGARTNER'S AND RUBINSTEIN'S CRITICISMS

In his The Symphony Since Beethoven, Felix Weingartner, renowned as a
conductor and composer, has said some pertinent things of the Liszt
symphonic works. It must not be forgotten that he was a pupil of the
Hungarian composer. He has been discussing Beethoven's first Leonora
overture and continues thus:

"The same defects that mark the Ideale mark Liszt's Bergsymphonie, and,
in spite of some beauties, his Tasso. Some other of his orchestral
works, as Hamlet, Prometheus, Héroïde Funèbre, are inferior through
weakness of invention. An improvisatore style, often passing into
dismemberment, is peculiar to most of Liszt's compositions. I might say
that while Brahms is characterised by a musing reflective element, in
Liszt a rhapsodical element has the upper hand, and can be felt as a
disturbing element in his weaker works. Masterpieces, besides those
already mentioned, are the Hungaria, Festklänge the Hunnenschlacht, a
fanciful piece of elementary weird power; Les Préludes, and, above all,
the two great symphonies to Faust and Dante's Divine Comedy. The Faust
Symphony intends not at all to embody musically Goethe's poem, but
gives, as its title indicates, three character figures, Faust, Gretchen
and Mephistopheles. The art and fancy with which Liszt here makes and
develops psychologic, dramatic variation of a theme are shown in the
third movement. Mephistopheles, the 'spirit that denies,' 'for all that
does arise deserves to perish,' is the principle of the piece.

"Hence, Liszt could not give it a theme of its own, but built up the
whole movement out of caricatures of previous themes referring specially
to Faust; and it is only stupid lack of comprehension that brought
against Liszt, in a still higher degree than against Berlioz, the
reproach of poverty of invention. I ask if our old masters made great
movements by the manifold variation of themes of a few bars, ought the
like to be forbidden to a composer when a recognisably poetic thought is
the moving spring? Does not invention belong to such characteristic
variation? And just this movement reveals to us most clearly Liszt's
profound knowledge of the real nature of music. When the hellish Devil's
brood has grown to the most appalling power, then, hovering in the
clouds of glory, the main theme of the Gretchen movement appears in its
original, untouched beauty. Against it the might of the devil is
shattered, and sinks back into nothing. The poet might let Gretchen
sink, nay, become a criminal; the musician, in obedience to the ideal,
noble character of his art, preserves for her a form of light. Powerful
trombone calls resound through the dying hell-music, a male chorus
begins softly Goethe's sublime words of the chorus mysticus, 'All that
is transient is emblem alone,' and in the clearly recognised notes of
the Gretchen theme a tenor voice continues, 'The ever-womanly draweth us
up!' This tenor voice may be identified with Goethe's Doctor Marianus;
we may imagine Gretchen glorified into the Mater Gloriosa, and recall
Faust's words when he beholds Gretchen's image in the vanishing clouds:

    'Like some fair soul, the lovely form ascends,
    And, not dissolving, rises to the skies
    And draws away the best within me with it.'

"So, in great compositions, golden threads spun from sunshine move
between the music and the inspiring poetry, light and swaying, adorning
both arts, fettering neither.

"Perhaps with still more unity and power than the Faust Symphony is the
tone poem to Dante's Divine Comedy, with its thrilling representations
of the torments of hell and the 'purgatorio,' gradually rising in higher
and higher spheres of feeling. In these works Liszt gave us the best he
could give. They mark the summit of his creative power, and the ripest
fruit of that style of programme music that is artistically justified,
since Berlioz.

"Outside of these two symphonies Liszt's orchestral works consist of
only one movement and, as you know, are entitled Symphonic Poems. The
title is extremely happy, and seems to lay down the law, perhaps
the only law that a composition must follow if it has any raison
d'être. Let it be a 'poem,' that is, let it grow out of a poetic
idea, an inspiration of the soul, which remains either unspoken or
communicated to the public by the title and programme; but let it also
be 'symphonic,' which here is synonymous with 'musical.' Let it have a
form, either one derived from the classic masters, or a new one that
grows out of the contents and is adapted to them. Formlessness in art is
always censurable and in music can never win pardon by a programme or by
'what the composer was thinking.' Liszt's symphonic works show a great
first step on a new path. Whoever wishes to follow it must, before all
things, be careful not to imitate Liszt's weakness, a frequently
remarkable disjointed conception, nor to make it a law, but to write
compositions which are more than musical illustrations to programmes."

Rubinstein, though he had been intimate with Liszt at Weimar, and
profiting by his advice, made no concealment of his aversion to the
compositions. In his "Conversation on Music" he said: "Liszt's career as
a composer from 1853 is, according to my idea, a very disappointing one.
In every one of his compositions 'one marks design and is displeased.'
We find programme music carried to the extreme, also continual
posing--in his church music before God, in his orchestral music works
before the public, in his transcriptions of songs before the composers,
in his Hungarian rhapsodies before the gipsies--in short, always and
everywhere posing.

"'Dans les arts il faut faire grand' was his usual dictum, therefore the
affectation in his work. His fashion for creating something new--à
tout prix--caused him to form entire compositions out of a simple
theme.... So: the sonata form--to set this aside means to extemporise
a fantasia that is however not a symphony, not a sonata, not a
concerto. Architecture is nearest allied to music in its fundamental
principles--can a formless house or church or any other building be
imagined? Or a structure, where the façade is a church, another part of
the structure a railway station, another part a floral pavilion, and
still another part a manufactory, and so on? Hence lack of form in music
is improvisation, yes, borders almost on digression. Symphonic poems (so
he calls his orchestral works) are supposed to be another new form of
art--whether a necessity and vital enough to live, time, as in the case
of Wagner's Music-Drama, must teach us. His orchestral instrumentation
exhibits the same mastery as that of Berlioz and Wagner, even bears
their stamp; with that, however, it is to be remembered that his
pianoforte is the _Orchestra-Pianoforte_ and his orchestra the
_Pianoforte-Orchestra_, for the orchestral composition sounds like an
instrumented pianoforte composition. All in all I see in Berlioz,
Wagner, and Liszt, the Virtuoso-Composer, and I would be glad to believe
that their 'breaking all bounds' may be an advantage to the coming
genius. In the sense, however, of specifically musical creation I can
recognise neither one of them as a composer--and, in addition to this, I
have noticed so far that all three of them are wanting in the chief
charm of creation--the naïve--that stamp of geniality and, at the same
time, that proof that genius after all is a child of humanity. Their
influence on the composers of the day is great, but as I believe
unhealthy."


THE RHAPSODIES

Liszt wrote fifteen compositions for the pianoforte, to which he gave
the name of Rhapsodies Hongroises; they are based on national Magyar
melodies. Of these he, assisted by Franz Doppler, scored six for
orchestra. There is considerable confusion between the pianoforte set
and the orchestral transcriptions, in the matter of numbering. Some of
the orchestral transcriptions, too, are transposed to different keys
from the originals. Here are the lists of both sets.

ORIGINAL SET, FOR PIANOFORTE.

     I.    In E-flat major, dedicated to E. Zerdahely.

     II.   In C-sharp minor and F-sharp major, dedicated to Count
             Ladislas Teleki.

     III.  In B-flat major, dedicated to Count Leo Festetics.

     IV.   In E-flat major, dedicated to Count Casimir Eszterházy.

     V.    _Héroïde élégiaque_, in E minor, dedicated to Countess
             Sidonie Reviczky.

     VI.   In D-flat major, dedicated to Count Antoine d'Apponyi.

     VII.  In D minor, dedicated to Baron Fery Orczy.

     VIII. In F-sharp minor, dedicated to M. A. d'Augusz.

     IX.   _Le Carnaval de Pesth_, in E-flat major, dedicated to H. W.
             Ernst.

     X.    _Preludio_, in E major, dedicated to Egressy Bény.

     XI.   In A minor, dedicated to Baron Fery Orczy.

     XII.  In C-sharp minor, dedicated to Joseph Joachim.

     XIII. In A minor, dedicated to Count Leo Festetics.

     XIV.  In F minor, dedicated to Hans von Bülow.

     XV.   _Rákóczy Marsch_, in A minor.

ORCHESTRAL SET.

     I.    In F minor                   (No. 14 of the original set).

     II.   Transposed to D minor                    (No. 12 " " " ").

     III.  Transposed to D major                     (No. 6 " " " ").

     IV. Transposed to D minor and G major           (No. 2 " " " ").

     V. In E minor                                   (No. 5 " " " ").

     VI. _~Pesther~ Carneval_, transposed to D major (No. 9 " " " ").

The dedications remain the same as in the original set.


AUGUST SPANUTH'S ANALYSIS

August Spanuth, now the editor of the _Signale_ in Berlin, wrote _inter
alia_ of the Rhapsodies in his edition prepared for the Ditsons:

"After Liszt's memorable visit to his native country in 1840 he freely
submitted to the influence of the gipsy music. The catholicity of his
musical taste, due to his very sensitive and receptive nature as well as
his cosmopolitan life, would have enabled him to usurp the musical
characteristics of any nation, no matter how uncouth, and work wonders
with them. His versatility and resourcefulness in regard to form seemed
to be inexhaustible, and he would certainly have been able to write some
interesting fantasias on Hungarian themes had his affection for that
country been only acquired instead of inborn. Fortunately his heart was
in the task, and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies not only rank among his
most powerful and convincing works, but must also be counted as superior
specimens of national music in general. It does not involve an injustice
toward Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert, who occasionally affected
Hungarian peculiarities in their compositions, to state that it was
Liszt who with his rhapsodies and kindred compositions started a new era
of Hungarian music. 'Tunes' which heretofore served to amuse a
motley crowd at the czardas on the 'Puszta' have through Liszt been
successfully introduced into legitimate music. And most wonderful of
all, he has not hesitated to preserve all the drastic and coarse effects
of the gipsy band without ever leaning toward vulgarity. Who, before
Franz Liszt, would have dreamed of employing cymbal-effects in
legitimate piano playing? Liszt, such is the power of artistic
transfiguration, imitates the cymbal to perfection and yet does not mar
the illusion of refinement; while, on the other hand, the cymbal as a
solo instrument must still impress us as primitive and rude. Liszt did
not conceive the Hungarian music with his outer ear alone, as most of
his numerous imitators did. They caught but the outline, some rhythmical
features and some stereotyped ornaments; but Liszt was able to penetrate
to the very source of it, he carried the key to its secret in his
Hungarian temperament.

"To speak of Hungarian folk-songs is hardly permissible since a song
includes the words as well as the music. Hungary is a polyglot country,
and a song belonging through its words, as well as its notes, to the
vast majority of the inhabitants is therefore an impossibility. The
Magyars, of course, claim to be the only genuine Hungarians, and
since they settled there almost a thousand years ago and are still
indisputably the dominating race of the country, their claim may remain
uncontested. Even the fact that the Magyars are but half of the total of
a strange mixture, made up of heterogeneous elements, would not
necessarily render invalid any pretension that their songs are the
genuine Hungarian songs. But the proud Magyar will admit that Hungarian
music is first and foremost gipsy music, Hungarian gipsy music. How much
the Magyars have originally contributed to this music does not appear to
be clear. Perhaps more research may lead to other results, but the now
generally accepted conjecture gives the rhythmic features to the Magyars
and the characteristic ornaments to the gipsies. It will probably not be
denied that this presumption looks more like a compromise than the fruit
of thorough scientific investigation. Furthermore, rhythm and ornaments
are in Hungarian music so closely knit that it seems incomprehensible
that they should have originated as characteristic features of two races
so widely divergent. If this is so, however, we may hope that out of our
own negro melodies and the songs of other elements of our population
real American folk-music will yet after centuries develop, though it is
to be feared that neither the negroes nor other inhabitants of the
United States will be in a position to preserve sufficient naïveté,
indispensable for the production of real folk-music. Otherwise the
analogon is promising, the despised gipsy taking socially about the same
position in Hungary as our own negro here.

"The Hungarian music as known to-day will impress everybody as a unit;
so much so that its restrictions are obvious, and likely to produce a
monotonous effect if too much of it is offered. Above all, this music is
purely instrumental and therefore different from all other folk-music.
It is based, though not exclusively, on a peculiar scale, the harmonic
minor scale with an augmented fourth. Some commentators read this scale
differently by starting at the dominant. Thus it appears as a major
scale with a diminished second and a minor sixth, a sort of major-minor
mode. The latter scale can be found on the last page of Liszt's
Fifteenth Rhapsody, where it runs from _a_ to _a_, thus: _a_, _b_-flat,
_c_-sharp, _d_, _e_, _f_, _g_-sharp and _a_. But for every scale of this
construction a dozen of the former may be gathered in the Rhapsodies.
While the notes are identical in both, the effect upon the ear is
different, according to the starting note, just as the descending
melodic minor scale is _de facto_ the same as the relative major scale,
but not in its effect. The austerity and acidity of the altered harmonic
minor scale is the chief characteristic of the melodious and harmonic
elements of Hungarian music. Imbued with a plaintive and melancholy
flavour this mode will always be recognised as the gipsy kind. To revel
in sombre melodies seems to be one half of the purpose of Hungarian
music, and in logical opposition a frolicsome gaiety the other half. In
the regular czardas, a rustic dance at the wayside inn on the Puszta,
the melancholy _lassan_ alternates in well-proportioned intervals with
the extravagant and boisterous _friska_. The rhythm may be said to be a
sort of spite-rhythm, very decisive in most cases, but most of the time
in syncopation. This rhythm proves conclusively that the origin of
Hungarian music is instrumental, for even in cantabile periods, where
the melody follows a more dreamy vein, the syncopations are seldom
missing in the accompaniment. At every point one is reminded that the
dance was father to this music, a dance of unconventional movements
where the dancer seems to avoid the step which one expected him to take,
and instead substitutes a queer but graceful jerk. Where actual jerks in
the melody would be inopportune, the ornaments are at hand and help to
prevent every semblance of conventionality.

"Liszt, of course, has widened the scope of these ornamental features
considerably. His fertility in applying such ornaments to each and every
musical thought he is spinning is stupendous. In all his nineteen
rhapsodies--the Twentieth Rhapsody is still in manuscript--the style,
form, constructive idea, and application of these ornaments are
different, but every one is characteristic not only of Hungarian music
in general, but of the rhapsody in particular.

"Both the syncopated rhythm and the rich ornamentation which naturally
necessitate a frequent tempo rubato help to avoid the monotony which
might result from the fact that Hungarian music moves in even rhythm
only. Four-quarter and two-quarter time prevail throughout, while
three-quarter and six-eight do not seem to fit in the rhythmic design of
Hungarian music. Attempts have been made to introduce uneven rhythm,
but they were not successful. Where three-quarter and similar rhythm
appears, the Hungarian spirit evaporates. Much more variety is available
regarding the tempo, the original _lassan_ and _friska_ not being
indispensable. A moderate and graceful _allegretto_ is frequently used
by Liszt, and he also graduates the speed of the brilliant finales as
well as the languor of the introductions of his Rhapsodies."


AS SONG WRITER

"It is not known exactly when Liszt began to compose songs," writes
Henry T. Finck in his volume on Songs and Song Writers. "The best of
them belong to the Weimar period, when he was in the full maturity of
his creative power. There are stories of songs inspired by love while he
lived in Paris; and he certainly did write six settings of French songs,
chiefly by Victor Hugo. These he prepared for the press in 1842. While
less original in melody and modulation than the best of his German
songs, they have a distinct French esprit and elegance which attest his
power of assimilation and his cosmopolitanism. These French songs,
fortunately for his German admirers, were translated by Cornelius.
Italian leanings are betrayed by his choice of poems by Petrarca and
Bocella; but, as already intimated his favourite poets are Germans:
Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Uhland, Rückert and
others. Goethe--who could not even understand Schubert, and to whom
Liszt's music would have been pure Chinese--is favoured by settings of
Mignon's Lied (Kennst du das Land), Es war ein König in Thule, Der du
von dem Himmel bist, Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh, Wer nie sein Brod mit
Thränen äss, Freudvoll und Leidvoll (two versions).

"Mignon was the second of his German songs, and it is the most deeply
emotional of all the settings of that famous poem. Longing is its
keynote; longing for blue-skyed Italy, with its orange groves, marble
treasures and other delights. One of the things which Wagner admired in
Liszt's music was 'the inspired definiteness of musical conception'
which enabled him to concentrate his thought and feeling in so pregnant
a way that one felt inclined to exclaim after a few bars: 'Enough, I
have it all.' The opening bar of Mignon's Lied thus seems to condense
the longing of the whole song; yet, as the music proceeds, we find it is
only a prelude to a wealth of musical detail which colours and
intensifies every word and wish of the poem.

"All of the six settings of Goethe poems are gems, and Dr. Hueffer quite
properly gave each of them a place in his collection of Twenty Liszt
Songs. Concerning the Wanderer's Night Song (Ueber allen Gipfeln ist
Ruh), Dr. Hueffer has well said that Liszt has rendered the heavenly
calm of the poem by his wonderful harmonies in a manner which alone
would secure him a place among the great masters of German song.
'Particularly the modulation from G major back into the original E major
at the close of the piece is of surprising beauty.'

"For composers of musical lyrics Schiller wrote much fewer available
poems than Goethe. But Schubert owed to him one of his finest songs, The
Maiden's Lament, and next to him as an illustrator of Schiller I feel
inclined to place Liszt, who is at his best in his settings of three
poems from William Tell, The Fisher Boy, The Shepherd and The Alpine
Hunter. Liszt, like Schubert, favours poems which bring a scene or a
story vividly before the mind's eye, and he loves to write music which
mirrors these pictorial features. Schubert's Mullerlieder seemed to have
exhausted the possible ways of depicting in music the movements of the
waters--but listen to the rippling arpeggios in Liszt's Fisher Boy,
embodying the acquisitions of modern pianistic technic. The shepherd's
song brings before our eyes and ears the flower meadows and the brooks
of the peaceful Alpine world in summer, while the song of the hunter
gives us dissolving views of destructive avalanches and appalling
precipices, with sudden glimpses, through cloud rifts, of meadows and
hamlets at dizzy depths below. Wagner himself, in the grandest mountain
and cloud scenes of the Walküre and Siegfried, has not written more
superbly dissonant and appropriate dramatic music than has Liszt in this
exciting song."

The King of Thule and Lorely are masterpieces and contain in essence all
the dramatic lyricism of modern writers, Strauss included.


PIANO AND ORCHESTRA

CONCERTO FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA, No. 1, IN E FLAT

This, the better known of Liszt's two pianoforte concertos, is
constructed along the general lines of the symphonic poem--a species of
free orchestral composition which Liszt himself gave to the world. The
score embraces four sections arranged like the four movements of a
symphony, although their internal development is of so free a nature,
and they are merged one into another in such away as to give to the work
as a whole the character of one long movement developed from several
fundamental themes and sundry subsidiaries derived therefrom. The first
of these themes [this is the theme to which Liszt used to sing, "Das
versteht ihr alle nicht!" but, according to Von Bülow and Ramann, "Ihr
könnt alle nichts!"] appears at the outset, being given out by the
strings with interrupting chords of wood-wind and brass allegro maestoso
leading at once to an elaborate cadenza for the pianoforte. The second
theme, which marks the beginning of the second section--in B major,
Quasi adagio and 12-8 (4-4) time--is announced by the deeper strings
(muted) to be taken up by the solo instrument over flowing left-hand
arpeggios. A long trill for the pianoforte, embellished by expressive
melodies from sundry instruments of the orchestra, leads to the third
section--in F-flat minor, allegretto vivace and 3-4 time--whereupon the
strings give out a sparkling scherzo theme which the solo instrument
proceeds to develop capriciously. This section closes with a pianissimo
cadenza for the pianoforte following which a rhapsodical passage
(Allegro animato) leads to the finale--in E-flat major, Allegro marziale
animato and 4-4 time--in which the second theme reappears transformed
into a spirited march.

The concerto was composed in 1848, revised in 1853, and published in
1857. It was performed for the first time at Weimar during the Berlioz
week, February 16, 1855, when Liszt was the pianist and Berlioz
conducted the orchestra. It is dedicated to Henri Litolff.

Liszt wrote at some length concerning this concerto in a letter to
Eduard Liszt, dated Weimar, March 26, 1857:

"The fourth movement of the concerto from the Allegro marziale
corresponds with the second movement, Adagio. It is only an urgent
recapitulation of the earlier subject-matter with quickened, livelier
rhythm, and contains no new motive, as will be clear to you by a glance
through the score. This kind of _binding together_ and rounding off a
whole piece at its close is somewhat my own, but it is quite maintained
and justified from the stand-point of musical form. The trombones and
basses take up the second part of the motive of the Adagio (B major).
The pianoforte figure which follows is no other than the reproduction of
the motive which was given in the Adagio by flute and clarinet, just as
the concluding passage is a Variante and working up in the major of the
motive of the Scherzo, until finally the first motive on the dominant
pedal B-flat, with a shake-accompaniment, comes in and concludes the
whole.

"The Scherzo in E-flat minor, from the point where the triangle begins,
I employed for the effect of contrast.

"As regards the triangle I do not deny that it may give offence,
especially if struck too strong and not precisely. A preconceived
disinclination and objection to instruments of percussion prevails,
somewhat justified by the frequent misuse of them. And few conductors
are circumspect enough to bring out the rhythmic element in them,
without the raw addition of a coarse noisiness, in works in which they
are deliberately employed according to the intention of the composer.
The dynamic and rhythmic spicing and enhancement, which are effected by
the instruments of percussion, would in more cases be much more
effectually produced by the careful trying and proportioning of
insertions and additions of that kind. But musicians who wish to appear
serious and solid prefer to treat the instruments of percussion _en
canaille_, which must not make their appearance in the seemly company
of the symphony. They also bitterly deplore inwardly that Beethoven
allowed himself to be seduced into using the big drum and triangle in
the Finale of the Ninth Symphony. Of Berlioz, Wagner, and my humble
self, it is no wonder that 'like draws to like,' and, as we are treated
as impotent _canaille_ amongst musicians, it is quite natural that we
should be on good terms with the _canaille_ among the instruments.
Certainly here, as in all else, it is the right thing to seize upon and
hold fast [the] mass of harmony. In face of the most wise proscription
of the learned critics I shall, however, continue to employ instruments
of percussion, and think I shall yet win for them some effects little
known."

"This eulogy of the triangle," Mr. Philip Hale says, "was inspired by
the opposition in Vienna when Pruckner played the concerto in that city
(season of 1856-57). Hanslick cursed the work by characterising it as a
'Triangle Concerto,' and for some years the concerto was therefore held
to be impossible. It was not played again in Vienna until 1869, when
Sophie Menter paid no attention to the advice of the learned and her
well-wishers. Lina Ramann tells the story. Rubinstein, who happened to
be there, said to her: 'You are not going to be so crazy as to play this
concerto? No one has yet had any luck with it in Vienna.' Bösendorfer,
who represented the Philharmonic Society, warned her against it. To
which Sofie replied coolly in her Munich German: 'Wenn i dös nit
spielen kann, speil i goar nit--i muss ja nit in Wien spielen' ('if I
can't play it, I don't play at all--I must not play in Vienna'). She did
play it, and with great success.

"Yet the triangle is an old and esteemed instrument. In the eighteenth
century it was still furnished with metal rings, as was its forbear, the
sistrum. The triangle is pictured honourably in the second part of
Michael Prätorius' 'Syntagma musicum' (Part II., plate xxii.,
Wolffenbüttel, 1618). Haydn used it in his military symphony, Schumann
in the first movement of his B-flat symphony; and how well Auber
understood its charm!"


CONCERTO FOR PIANO, NO. 2, IN A MAJOR

This concerto, as well as the one in E-flat, was probably composed in
1848. It was revised in 1856 and in 1861, and published in 1863. It is
dedicated to Hans von Bronsart, by whom it was played for the first time
January 7, 1857, at Weimar.

The autograph manuscript of this concerto bore the title, "Concert
Symphonique," and, as Mr. Apthorp once remarked, "The work might be
called a symphonic poem for pianoforte and orchestra, with the title,
'The Life and Adventures of a Melody.'"

The concerto is in one movement. The first and chief theme binds the
various episodes into an organic whole. Adagio sostenuto assai, A
major, 3-4. The first theme is announced at once by wood-wind
instruments. It is a moaning and wailing theme, accompanied by harmonies
shifting in tonality. The pianoforte gives in arpeggios the first
transformation of this musical thought and in massive chords the second
transformation. The horn begins a new and dreamy song. After a short
cadenza of the solo instrument a more brilliant theme in D minor is
introduced and developed by both pianoforte and orchestra. A powerful
crescendo (pianoforte alternating with string and wood-wind instruments)
leads to a scherzo-like section of the concerto, Allegro agitato assai,
B-flat minor, 6-8. A side motive fortissimo (pianoforte) leads to a
quiet middle section. Allegro moderato, which is built substantially on
the chief theme (solo 'cello). A subsidiary theme, introduced by the
pianoforte, is continued by flute and oboe, and there is a return to the
first motive. A pianoforte cadenza leads to a new tempo. Allegro deciso,
in which rhythms of already noted themes are combined, and a new theme
appears (violas and 'cellos), which at last leads back to the tempo of
the quasi-scherzo. But let us use the words of Mr. Apthorp rather than a
dry analytical sketch: 'From this point onward the concerto is one
unbroken series of kaleidoscopic effects of the most brilliant and
ever-changing description; of musical form, of musical coherence even,
there is less and less. It is as if some magician in some huge cave,
the walls of which were covered with glistening stalactites and flashing
jewels, were revealing his fill of all the wonders of colour,
brilliancy, and dazzling light his wand could command. Never has even
Liszt rioted more unreservedly in fitful orgies of flashing colour. It
is monstrous, formless, whimsical, and fantastic, if you will; but it is
also magical and gorgeous as anything in the Arabian Nights. It is its
very daring and audacity that save it. And ever and anon the first
wailing melody, with its unearthly chromatic harmony, returns in one
shape or another, as if it were the dazzled neophyte to whom the
magician Liszt were showing all these splendours, while initiating it
into the mysteries of the world of magic, until it, too, becomes
magical, and possessed of the power of working wonders by black art.'


THE DANCE OF DEATH

Liszt's Todtentanz is a tremendous work. This set of daring variations
had not been heard in New York since Franz Rummel played them years ago,
under the baton of the late Leopold Damrosch, although d'Albert, Siloti
and Alexander Lambert have had them on their programmes--in each case
some circumstance prevented our hearing them here. Harold Bauer played
them with the Boston Symphony, both in Boston and Brooklyn, and Philip
Hale, in his admirable notes on these concerts, has written in part:
"Liszt was thrilled by a fresco in the Campo Santo of Pisa, when he
sojourned there in 1838 and 1839. This fresco, The Triumph of Death, was
for many years attributed to a Florentine, Andrea Orcagna, but some
insist that it was painted by Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti."

The right of this fantastical fresco portrays a group of men and women,
who, with dogs and falcons, appear to be back from the chase, or they
may be sitting as in Boccaccio's garden. They are sumptuously dressed. A
minstrel and a damsel sing to them, while cupids flutter about and wave
torches. But Death flies swiftly toward them, a fearsome woman, with
hair streaming wildly, with clawed hands. She is bat-winged, and her
clothing is stiff with mire. She swings a scythe, eager to end the joy
and delight of the world. Corpses lie in a heap at her feet--corpses of
kings, queens, cardinals, warriors, the great ones of the earth, whose
souls, in the shape of new born babes, rise out of them. "Angels like
gay butterflies" are ready to receive the righteous, who fold their
hands in prayer; demons welcome the damned, who shrink back with horror.
The devils, who are as beasts of prey or loathsome reptiles, fight for
souls; the angels rise to heaven with the saved; the demons drag their
victims to a burning mountain and throw them into the flames. And next
this heap of corpses is a crowd of beggars, cripples, miserable ones,
who beg Death to end their woe; but they do not interest her. A rock
separates this scene from another, the chase. Gallant lords and noble
dames are on horseback, and hunters with dogs and falcons follow in
their train. They come upon three open graves, in which lie three
princes in different stages of decay. An aged monk on crutches, possibly
the Saint Macarius, points to this _memento mori_. They talk gaily,
although one of them holds his nose. Only one of the party, a woman,
rests her head on her hand and shows a sorrowful face. On mountain
heights above are hermits, who have reached through abstinence and
meditation the highest state of human existence. One milks a doe while
squirrels play about him; another sits and reads; a third looks into a
valley that is rank with death. And, according to tradition, the faces
in this fresco are portraits of the painter's contemporaries.

How such a scene must have appealed to Liszt is easily comprehensible,
and he put it into musical form by taking a dour Dies Irae theme and
putting it through the several variations of the emotions akin to the
sardonic. The composer himself referred to the work as "a monstrosity,"
and he must have realised full well that it would stick in the crop of
the philistines. And it has. But Von Bülow stood godfather to the work
and dared criticism by playing it.

As a work it is absolutely unconventional and follows no distinct
programme, as does the Saint-Saëns "clever cemetery farce." Its opening
is gloomily impressive and the orchestration fearfully bold. The piano
in it is put to various uses, with a fill of _glissandi_ matching the
diabolic mood. The cadenzas might be dispensed with, but, after all, the
piece was written by Liszt, and cadenzas were a part of his nature. But
to take this work lightly is to jest with values. The theme itself is
far too great to be depreciated and the treatments of it are marvellous.
Our ears rebel a bit that the several variations were not joined--which
they might easily have been--and then the work would sound more _en
bloc_. But, notwithstanding, it is one of the most striking of Liszt's
piano compositions.


BURMEISTER ARRANGEMENTS

Richard Burmeister made an arrangement of Liszt's Concerto Pathétique in
E minor by changing its original form for two pianos into a concerto for
piano solo with orchestral accompaniment. Until now the original has
remained almost an unknown composition; partly for the reason that it
needed for a performance two first rank piano virtuosi to master the
extreme technical difficulties and partly that Liszt had chosen for it
such a rhapsodical and whimsical form as to make it an absolutely
ineffective concert piece. Even Hans von Bülow tried in a new edition to
improve some passages by making them more consistent, but without
success.

However, as the concerto contains pathetic musical ideas, among the best
Liszt conceived and is of too much value to be lost, Mr. Burmeister
ventured to give it a form by which he hopes to make it as popular as
the famous E-flat major concerto by the same composer. The task was a
rather risky one, as some radical changes had to be made and the
character of the composition preserved.

To employ a comparison, Mr. Burmeister cut the concerto like a beautiful
but badly tuned bell into pieces and melted and moulded it again into a
new form. Some passages had to change places, some others to be omitted,
others again repeated and enlarged. Mr. Burmeister went even so far as
to add some of his own passages--for instance, a cadence at the
beginning of the piano part, the end of the slow movement and a
short fugato introducing the finale. As to the new form, the result
now comes very near to a restoration of the old classical form:
Allegro--Andante--Allegro.

Mr. Burmeister has also made a very effective welding of Liszt's diabolic
Mephisto Waltz for piano and orchestra which he has successfully played
in Germany. He also arranged the Fifth Hungarian Rhapsody for piano and
orchestra (Héroïde--Elégiaque). To Mr. Burmeister I am indebted for
valuable information regarding his beloved master Liszt, with whom he
studied in Weimar, Rome and Budapest.


THE OPERATIC PARAPHRASES

"It is commonly assumed that the first musician who made a concert
speech of the kind now so much in vogue was Hans von Bülow," says Mr.
Finck. "Probably he was the first who made such speeches frequently, and
he doubtless made the longest on record, when, on March 28, 1892, he
harangued a Philharmonic audience in Berlin on Beethoven and Bismarck;
this address covers three pages of Bülow's invaluable Briefe und
Schriften. The first concert speech, however, was made by that
many-sided innovator, Franz Liszt, who tells about it in an amusing
letter he wrote from Milan to the Paris _Gazette Musicale_, in 1837. It
was about this time that he originated the custom of giving 'piano
recitals,' as he called them; that is, monologues by the solo pianist,
without assisting artist or orchestra. In Italy, where he first took to
this habit, it was particularly risky, because the Italians cared for
little besides operatic pomp, vocal display, and strongly spiced musical
effect. For pianists, in particular, they had little or no use. In those
days (and times have not changed), a pianist travelling in Italy was
wise if, in the words of Liszt, he 'pined for the sun rather than for
fame, and sought repose rather than gold.'

"He succeeded, nevertheless, in making the Italians interested in piano
playing, but he had to stoop to conquer. When he played one of his own
études, a gentleman in the pit called out that he had come to the
theatre to be entertained and not to hear a 'studio.' Liszt thereupon
improvised fantasias on Italian operatic melodies, which aroused
tumultuous enthusiasm. He also asked the audiences, after the fashion of
the time, to suggest themes for him to improvise on or topics for him to
illustrate in tones. One auditor suggested the Milan Cathedral, another
the railway, while a third sent up a paper asking Liszt to discuss on
the piano the question: 'Is it better to marry or remain a bachelor?'
This was a little too much even for the pianist, who was destined to
become the supreme master of programme music, so he made a speech. To
cite his own words: 'As I could only have answered this question after a
long pause, I preferred to recall to the audience the words of a wise
man: "Whatever you do, marry or remain single, you will be sure to
regret it." You see, my friend, that I have found a splendid means of
rendering a concert cheerful when ennui makes it rather a cool duty
than a pleasure. Was I wrong to say my _Anch'io_ in this land of
improvisation?'

"The operatic fantasias which Liszt first improvised for the Italians
found great favour in other countries; so much so that eager publishers
used to follow him from city to city, begging him to put them on paper,
and allow them to print them. There are thirty-six of these fantasias in
all, ranging from Sonnambula and Lucia to the operas of Meyerbeer,
Verdi, and Wagner. It has been the fashion among critics to sneer at
them, but, as Saint-Saëns has said, there is much pedantry and prejudice
in these sneers. In structure they are as artistic as the overtures to
such operas as Zampa, Euryanthe, and Tannhäuser, which likewise are
'practically nothing but fantasias on the operas which they introduce.'
Berlioz was the first to point out how, in these pieces, Liszt actually
improves on the originals; in the Robert the Devil fantasia, for
instance, his ingenious way of combining the Bertram aria of the third
act with the aria of the ballet of nuns produced an 'indescribable
dramatic effect.' What is more, these fantasias contain much of Liszt's
own genius, not to speak of his wonderful pianistic idiom. He scattered
his own pearls and diamonds among them lavishly."


THE ETUDES

The late Edward Dannreuther, who changed his opinion of Liszt, wrote a
short introduction to his edition of the Transcendental Studies (Augener
& Co.) which is of interest.

"The Etudes, which head the thematic catalogue of Liszt's works, show,
better than anything else, the transformation his style has undergone;
and for this reason it may be well to trace the growth of some of them.
Etudes en douze exercices, par François Liszt, Op. 1, were published at
Marseilles in 1827. They were written during the previous year, Liszt
being then under sixteen. The second set of Etudes, dédiées a Monsieur
Charles Czerny, appeared in 1839, but were cancelled; and the Etudes
d'exécution transcendante, again dedicated to Czerny, "en témoignage de
reconnaissance et de respectueuse amitié de son élève," appeared in
1852. The now cancelled copy of the Etudes which Schumann had before him
in 1839, when he wrote his brilliant article, shows these studies to be
more extravagant and, in some instances, technically more difficult than
even the final version. The germs of both the new versions are to be
seen in the Op. 1 of 1827. Schumann transcribed a couple of bars from
the beginning of Nos. 1, 5, 9, and 11, from both the new and old copies,
and offered a few of his swift and apt comments. The various changes in
these Etudes may be taken to represent the history of the pianoforte
during the last half of the nineteenth century, from the 'Viennese
Square' to the concert grand, from Czerny's Schule der Geläufigkeit to
Liszt's Danse macabre. Czerny might have written the original exercise
No. 1, but it would not have been so shapely a thing as Liszt's final
version. The difference between the two versions of No. 1 is, however,
considerably less than that which separates Nos. 2, 3, and 4 from their
predecessors. If the earlier and the later versions of No. 3 in F and
No. 4 in D minor were signed by different composers, the resemblance
between them would hardly attract notice. Of No. 2 little remains as it
stood at first. Instead of a reduction there is an increase (38 to 102)
in the number of bars. Some harmonic commonplaces which disfigure the
original, as, for instance, the detour to C (bars 9-16), have been
removed. The remainder is enlarged, so as to allow of more extensive
modulation, and thus to avoid redundancy. A short introduction and a
coda are added, and the diction throughout is thrown into high relief.
Paysage, No. 3 in F, has been subjected to further alteration since
Schumann wrote about it. In his article he commends the second version
as being more interesting than the first, and points to a change of
movement from square to triple time, and to the melody which is
superadded, as improvements. On the other hand he calls an episode in A
major 'comparatively trivial,' and this, it may be noticed, is omitted
in the final version. As it now stands, the piece is a test study for
pianists who aim at refinement of style, tone, and touch. The Etude
entitled Mazeppa is particularly characteristic of Liszt's power of
endurance at the instrument, and it exhibits the gradual growth of his
manner, from pianoforte exercises to symphonic poems in the manner of
Berlioz. It was this Etude, together perhaps with Nos. 7 (Vision), 8
(Wilde Jagd), and 12 (Chasse-neige), that induced Schumann to speak of
the entire set as Wahre Sturm- und Graus-Etuden (Studies of storm and
dread), studies for, at the most, ten or twelve players in the world.
The original of No. 5, in B flat, is a mere trifle, in the manner of J.
B. Cramer--the final version entitled Feux follets is one of the most
remarkable transformations extant, and perhaps the best study of the
entire series, consistent in point of musical design and full of
delicate technical contrivances. Ricordanza, No. 9, and Harmonies du
soir, No. 11, may be grouped together as showing how a musical
Stimmungsbild (a picture of a mood or an expression of sentiment) can be
evoked from rather trite beginnings. Schumann speaks of the melody in E
major, which occurs in the middle of the latter piece, as "the most
sincerely felt"; and in the last version it is much improved. Both
pieces, Ricordanza and Harmonies du soir, show to perfection the
sonority of the instrument in its various aspects. The latter piece,
Harmonies du soir in the first, as well as in the final version, appears
as a kind of Nocturne. No. 10, again, begins as though it were Czerny's
(_a_) and in the cancelled edition is developed into an Etude of almost
insuperable difficulty (_b_). As finally rewritten, this study is
possible to play and well worth playing (_c_).

"No. 12 also has been recast and much manipulated, but there is no
mending of weak timber. We must also mention Ab-Irato, an Etude in E
minor cancelled and entirely rewritten; three Etudes de concert (the
second of which has already been mentioned as Chopinesque); and two fine
Etudes, much later in date and of moderate difficulty, Waldesrauschen
and Gnomentanz. The Paganini Studies, _i.e._, transcriptions in rivalry
with Schumann of certain Caprices for the violin by Paganini, and far
superior to Schumann's, do not call for detailed comment. They were
several times rewritten (final edition, 1852) as Liszt, the virtuoso,
came to distinguish between proper pianoforte effects and mere haphazard
bravura."

The first version of the Ab-Irato was a contribution to Fétis' and
Moscheles' Méthode des Méthodes, Paris, 1842, where it is designated
Morceau de Salon--Etude de Perfectionnement. The second version, Berlin,
1852, was presented as "entièrement revue et corrigée par l'Auteur" and
called Ab-Irato (_i.e._ in a rage, or in a fit of temper). It exceeds
the first version by 28 bars and is a striking improvement, showing the
growth of Liszt's technic and his constant effort to be emphatic and to
avoid commonplace.

No pianist can afford to ignore Liszt's Etudes--he may disparage them if
he chooses, but he ought to be able to play them properly. We play the
three B's, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, each from a somewhat different point
of view. But these great men have this in common, that in each case, yet
in a different degree, when we play their music we address the hearer's
intellect rather than his nervous sensibility--though the latter is
never excluded. With Liszt and his pupils the appeal is, often and
without disguise, rather an appeal to the hearer's nerves; but the
methods employed are, in the master's case at least, so very clever, and
altogether _hors ligne_, that a musician's intelligence, too, may be
delighted and stimulated.

Of the B-minor sonata Dannreuther has written:

"The work is a curious compound of true genius and empty rhetoric, which
contains enough of genuine impulse and originality in the themes of the
opening section, and of suave charm in the melody of the section that
stands for the slow movement, to secure the hearer's attention. Signs of
weakness occur only in the centre, where, according to his wont, Liszt
seems unable to resist the temptation to tear passion to tatters and
strain oratory to bombast. None the less the Sonata is an interesting
study, eminently successful in parts, and well worthy the attention of
pianists.

"Two Ballades, a Berceuse, a Valse-impromptu, a Mazurka, and two
Polonaises sink irretrievably if compared with Chopin's pieces similarly
entitled. The Scherzo und Marsch in D minor, an inordinately difficult
and somewhat dry piece, falls short of its aim. Two legends, St. Francis
of Assisi preaching to the birds, a clever and delicate piece, and St.
Francis of Paula stepping on the waves, a kind of Etude, are examples of
picturesque and decorous programme music.

"Liszt was also a master in the notation of pianoforte music--a very
difficult matter indeed, and one in which even Chopin frequently erred.
His method of notation coincides in the main with that of Beethoven,
Berlioz, Wagner, and Brahms. Let the player accurately play what is set
down and the result will be satisfactory. The perspicuity of certain
pages of Liszt's mature pianoforte pieces, such as the first two sets of
Années de pèlerinage, Consolations, Sonata in B minor, the Concertos,
the Danse macabre, and the Rhapsodies hongroises, cannot be surpassed.
His notation often represents a condensed score, and every rest not
absolutely necessary is avoided; again, no attempt is made to get a
semblance of an agreement between the rhythmic division of the bar and
the freedom of certain rapid ornamental passages, but, on the other
hand, everything essential to the rendering of accent or melody, to the
position of the hands on the keyboard, to the details of special
fingering and special pedalling, is faithfully recorded. Thus the most
complex difficulties, as in the Fantaisies Dramatiques, and even
apparently uncontrollable effects of _tempo rubato_, as in the first
fifteen Rhapsodies or the Etude Ricordanza, or the Tre Sonetti di
Petrarca, are so closely indicated that the particular effect intended
cannot be mistaken."


THE MASSES AND THE PSALMS

In his studies of Liszt's religious music, contributed to the Oxford
History of Music, Edward Dannreuther, then no longer a partisan of
Liszt, said of his mass:

"Among Liszt's many contributions to the répertoire of Catholic church
music the Missa solemnis, known as the Graner Festmesse, is the most
conspicuous. Written to order in 1855, performed at the Consecration of
the Basilica at Gran, in Hungary, in 1856, it was Liszt's first serious
effort in the way of church music proper, and shows him at his best in
so far as personal energy and high aim are concerned. 'More prayed than
composed,' he said, in 1856, when he wanted to smooth the way for it in
Wagner's estimation--'more criticised than heard,' when it failed to
please in the Church of St. Eustache, in Paris, in 1866. It certainly is
an interesting and, in many ways, a remarkable work.

"Liszt's instincts led him to perceive that the Catholic service, which
makes a strong appeal to the senses, as well as to the emotions, was
eminently suited to musical illustration. He thought his chance lay in
the fact that the function assigned to music in the ceremonial is mainly
decorative, and that it would be possible to develop still further its
emotional side. The Church employs music to enforce and embellish the
Word. But the expansion of music is always controlled and in some sense
limited by the Word--for the prescribed words are not subject to change.
Liszt, however, came to interpret the Catholic ritual in a histrionic
spirit, and tried to make his music reproduce the words not only
as _ancilla theologica et ecclesiastica_, but also as _ancilla
dramaturgica_. The influence of Wagner's operatic method, as it appears
in Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and Das Rheingold, is abundantly evident; but
the result of this influence is more curious than convincing. By the
application of Wagner's system of Leitmotive to the text of the mass,
Liszt succeeded in establishing some similarity between different
movements, and so approached uniformity of diction. It will be seen, for
example, that his way of identifying the motive of the Gloria with that
of the Resurrexit and that of the Hosanna, or the motive of the Sanctus
and the Christie Eleison with that of the Benedictus, and also his way
of repeating the principal preceding motives in the 'Dona nobis pacem,'
especially the restatement, at its close, of the powerful motive of the
Credo, has given to the work a musical unity which is not always in very
clear accordance with the text.

"In the Hungarian Coronation Mass (Ungarische Krönungsmesse, 1866-7)
Liszt aimed at characteristic national colour, and tried to attain it by
persistently putting forward some of the melodic formulæ common to music
of the Hungarian type which occurs in the national Rakoczy March and in
numberless popular tunes--or an emphatic melisma known to everybody
through the famous Rhapsodies. From beginning to end the popular
Hungarian element is represented by devices of this kind in a manner
which is always ingenious and well suited to the requirements of a
national audience.

"But the style of the entire Mass is as incongruous as a gipsy musician
in a church vestment--doubly strange to students of the present day,
who in Liszt's Rhapsodies and Brahms' Ungarische Tänze have become
familiar with the rhythmical and melodic phrases of the Hungarian gipsy
idiom, and who all along have known them in their most mundane aspect.
Apart, however, from its incongruities of style, the Offertorium is a
shapely composition with a distinct stamp of its own.

"Liszt's manner of writing for solo and choral voices is generally
practical and effective. The voice-parts are carefully written so as to
lessen the difficulties of intonation which the many far-fetched
modulations involve, and are skilfully disposed in point of sonority.
The orchestration, always efficient, is frequently rich and beautiful."

The opinion on this work, expressed in the _Tageblatt_ by Dr. Leopold
Schmidt (who used to be an uncompromising opponent of Liszt), is
illuminative of the present status of the Liszt cult:

"The Graner Messe is the older of Liszt's two Hungarian festival masses,
and was composed in 1855. The dispute as to its significance has lost
its point in these days of emancipation from the embarrassments and
prejudices of a former generation. In church music, as in everything
else, we now allow every writer to express his personality, and a
personality with the poetic qualities of Liszt wins our sympathies at
the outset.... The dramatic insistence on diverse details diminishes the
grandeur of the style; this method is out of place here, and is no
adequate substitute for the might of the older form-language. All the
other peculiar traits of Liszt we find here: the pictorial element, the
unconsciously theatrical (Wagner's influence is strongly felt), and the
preponderating of the instrumental over the vocal. Nevertheless, the
Graner Messe is probably Liszt's most important and most personal
creation. The touching entreaty of the Kyrie, the beginning of the
Gloria with its fabulously pictorial effect, the F-sharp major part of
the Credo are beauties of a high order. The final portions are less
inspired, the impression is weakened; but we learn to love this work for
many tender lyric passages, for the original treatment of the text, and
the genuine piety which pervades and ennobles it." This mass was sung at
the Worcester festival in 1909 under the conductorship of Arthur Mees.

In St. Elisabeth, which is published as a concert oratorio, Dannreuther
thinks that Liszt has produced something like an opera sacra. Lina
Ramann said that when the work was performed with scenic accessories it
came as a surprise to the composer. He took his cue from the order of
Moritz v. Schwindt's frescoes, which illustrate the history of Elisabeth
of Hungary in the restored hall of the Wartburg at Eisenach and planned
six scenes for which Otto Roquette furnished the verse. The scenes are:
the arrival of the child from Hungary--a bright sunny picture; the rose
miracle--a forest and garden scene; the Crusaders--a picture of Medæival
pageantry; Elisabeth's expulsion from the Wartburg--a stormy nocturne;
Elisabeth's death, solemn burial, and canonisation. Five sections belong
to the dramatic presentation of the story. The sixth and last, the
burial and canonisation, is an instrumental movement which serves as a
prologue. The leitmotive, five in number, consist of melodies of a
popular type.

William J. Henderson, who can hardly be accused of being a Lisztianer,
wrote of the St. Elisabeth--after a performance some years ago in
Brooklyn at the Academy of Music, under the conductorship of Walter
Hall--as follows:

"To the great majority of the hearers, and to most of the performers,
the work must have been a novelty, and had the attraction of curiosity.
It is an early attempt at that dramatic narration, with an illusive
'atmosphere' supplied by the orchestra, which has been so extensively
practised since its composition. If Liszt had had the advantage of his
own experiment, and of the subsequent failures and successes of other
composers in the same attempt, no doubt his work would have been more
uniformly successful. As it is, no work which is heard in New York but
once in twenty years can be called a popular success. It is true that it
is worth a hearing oftener than that. True, also, that in Prague, with
the advantage of costumes and scenery, it had a 'run' of some sixty
nights. There is a strongly patriotic Magyar strain both in the book and
in the music, which would account for popular success in Hungary, if not
in Bohemia. But it must be owned that the orchestral introduction is
tedious, and much of the music of the first part a very dry recitative.
In this respect, however, the work acquires strength by going. The
Crusaders' March, which ends the first part, is so effective an
orchestral number that it is odd it should never be done in the concert
room. In the second part, much of the music allotted to Elisabeth is
melodious and pathetic, the funeral scene and the funeral march are
effective ensemble writing, and the last series of choruses, largely of
churchly 'plain song' for the voices with elaborate orchestral
embroidery, are impressive and even majestic."

In 1834 Liszt wrote to the _Gazette Musicale_ and described his own and
Berlioz's ideal of romantic religious music thus: "For want of a better
term we may well call the new music Humanitarian. It must be devotional,
strong, and drastic, uniting--on a colossal scale--the theatre and the
church, dramatic and sacred, superb and simple, fiery and free, stormy
and calm, translucent and emotional." Berlioz played up to this romantic
programme even better than Liszt. Need we adduce the tremendous Requiem!
Liszt's Graner-messe follows a close second.

Even if Liszt's bias was essentially histrionic his oratorio Christus
(1863-1873) is his largest and most sustained effort and the magnum opus
of his later years; you may quite agree with Dannreuther that its
conception is Roman Catholic, devotional, and contemplative in a Roman
Catholic sense both in style and intended effect. It contains nothing
that is not in some way connected with the Catholic ritual or the
Catholic spirit; and, more than any other work of its composer,
continues our critic, recognises and obeys the restrictions imposed by
the surroundings of the Church service. The March of the Three Kings was
inspired by a picture in the Cologne Cathedral. The Beatitudes and the
Stabat Mater Dolorosa contain pathetic and poignant writing.

"Liszt's Thirteenth Psalm is of especial importance, because the
epoch-making ecclesiastical music of the great composer is as yet so
little known in America," declares Mr. Finck. "This is the real music
of the future for the church, and it is inspired as few things are
in the whole range of music. Liszt himself considered it one of his
master-works. In one of his letters to Brendel, he says that it 'is one
of those I have worked out most fully, and contains two fugue movements
and a couple of passages which were written with tears of blood.' He had
reason to write with tears of blood; he had given to the world a new
orchestral form, had found new paths for sacred music, had done
more as a missionary for his art than any other three masters, yet
contemporaneous criticism was as bitter against him as if he had been an
invading Hun. To him the Psalmist's words, 'How long shall they that
hate me, be exalted against me?' had a meaning which could indeed be
recorded only in 'tears of blood.' There is a pathos in this psalm that
one would seek for in vain in any other sacred work since Bach's St.
Matthew's Passion. Liszt himself has well described it in the letter
referred to (vol. II, p. 72): 'Were any one of my more recent works
likely to be performed at a concert with orchestra and chorus, I would
recommend this psalm. Its poetic subject welled up plenteously out of my
soul; and besides I feel as if the musical form did not roam about
beyond the given tradition. It requires a lyrical tenor; in his song he
must be able to pray, to sigh, and lament, to become exalted, pacified,
and biblically inspired. Orchestra and chorus, too, have great demands
made upon them. Superficial or ordinarily careful study would not
suffice.'"

This superb psalm, performed at the recent Birmingham Musical Festival,
recalls to an English critic an interesting comment of the composer's in
regard to that particular work. When Sir Alexander Mackenzie met Liszt
in Florence several years ago, Sir Alexander said he was glad to tell
him (Liszt) that a performance of his Thirteenth Psalm had been
announced in England. A grim smile passed over the face of the great
composer as he replied: "O Herr, wie lang?" ("O Lord, how long?"), the
opening words of the psalm.

Mr. Richard Aldrich writes of the Angelus as follows:

"The little Angelus of Liszt is one of the very few pieces of
chamber music that he composed--his genius was more at home upon the
pianoforte, in the orchestra and in the massive effects of choral
singing. This piece has the character suggested in its subtitle: 'Prayer
to the Guardian Angels,' and is an expression of the deeply religious,
mystical side of his nature that led him to take holy orders in the
Church of Rome. It was originally written for a string quartet, but the
master added a fifth part for contrabass for a performance of it given
in London in 1884 by a large string orchestra under the direction of his
pupil, Walter Bache. It is given this afternoon in this form. The sense
of yearning, of aspiration and of spiritual elevation toward celestial
things is what the composer has aimed to embody in the music. After
brief preluding on the muted strings (without the contrabass) the first
violins take up a sustained cantabile that soon rises to a fervent
climax, fortissimo, and breaking into triplets reaches the highest
positions on the first violin, accompanied by full and vibrant harmony
on the other instruments, as though publishing feelings of the utmost
exaltation. There is a pause and the piece ends with the quiet feeling
in which it began."

"A most welcome novelty is the Chorus of Angels, composed by Liszt in
1849 for the celebration of the hundredth birthday of Goethe," said Mr.
Finck. "It is a setting of some of the most mystical lines in Faust,
originally written for mixed voices and pianoforte, and subsequently
arranged for women's voices and harp. Mr. Damrosch used Zoellner's
arrangement for choir and orchestra, and in this version it proved to
be one of the most ethereal and fascinating of Liszt's creations.

"Now that Mr. Damrosch has begun to explore the stores of Liszt's choral
music he will doubtless bring to light many more of these hidden
treasures. In doing so he will simply follow in the footsteps of his
father, who was one of Liszt's dearest friends, and who steadily
preached his gospel in New York. Of this good work an interesting
illustration is given in the eighth volume of Liszt's letters, issued a
few weeks ago by Breitkopf & Härtel. On December 27, 1876, Liszt wrote
to Leopold Damrosch:

     "'ESTEEMED FRIEND: A few days ago I sent you the score of my
     Triomphe funèbre du Tasse. This funeral ode came into my mind on
     the street of Tasso's Lament and Triumph, in which I often walk on
     the way to my residence on the Monte Mario. The enclosed commentary
     on it--based on the Tasso biography of Pier Antonio Serassi--I beg
     you to print on your concert programme in a good English
     translation.

     "'I trust that this work may be received in New York with the same
     favor that has been accorded to some of my other compositions. Amid
     the incessant European fault-finding, the American kindness gives
     me some consolation. Once more, I thank my esteemed friend Damrosch
     for his admirable interpretations of my works, and remain his
     cordially devoted

         "'FRANZ LISZT.'"


THE RAKOCZY MARCH

When Prince Franz Rakoczy II (1676-1735), with his young wife, the
Princess Amalie Caroline of Hesse, made his state entry into his capital
of Eperjes, his favourite musician, the court violinist Michael Barna,
composed a march in honour of the illustrious pair and performed it with
his orchestra. This march had originally a festive character, but was
revised by Barna. He had heard that his noble patron, after having made
peace with the Emperor Leopold I in 1711, was, in spite of the general
amnesty, again planning a national rising against the Austrian house.
Barna flung himself at the prince's feet and with tears in his eyes,
cried "O gracious Prince, you abandon happiness to chase nothing!" To
touch his master's heart he took his violin and played the revised
melody with which he had welcomed the prince, then happy and in the
zenith of his power. Rakoczy died in Turkey, where he, with some
faithful followers, among them the gipsy chief Barna, lived in exile.

This Rakoczy March, full of passion, temperament, sorrow, and pain, soon
became popular among the music loving gipsies as well as among the
Hungarian people. The first copy of the Rakoczy March came from Carl
Vaczek, of Jaszo, in Hungary, who died in 1828, aged ninety-three.
Vaczek was a prominent dilettante in music, who had often appeared as
flautist before the Vienna Court, and enjoyed the reputation of a great
musical scholar. Vaczek heard the Rakoczy March from a granddaughter of
Michael Barna, a gipsy girl of the name of Panna Czinka, who was famous
in her time for her beauty and her noble violin playing throughout all
Hungary. Vaczek wrote down the composition and handed the manuscript to
the violinist Ruzsitska. He used the Rakoczy Lied as the basis of a
greater work by extending the original melody by a march and a "battle
music." All three parts formed a united whole.

The original melody composed by Michael Barna remained, however, the one
preferred by the Hungarian people. In the Berlioz transcription the
composition of Ruzsitska was partially employed. Berlioz worked together
the original melody; that is, the Rakoczy Lied proper, and the battle
music of Ruzsitska and placed them in his Damnation de Faust.

The Rakoczy March owes its greatest publicity to the above named Panna
Czinka. The gipsy girl's great talent as a violinist was recognised by
her patron, Joann von Lanyi, who had her educated in the Upper Hungarian
city of Rozsnyo, where as a pupil of a German kapellmeister she received
adequate musical instruction. When she was fifteen she married a gipsy,
who was favourably known as the player of the viola de gamba in Hungary.
With her husband and his two brothers, who also were good musicians, she
travelled through all Hungary and attracted great attention, especially
by the Rakoczy March. Later her orchestra, over which she presided till
her death, consisted only of her sons. Her favourite instrument, a noble
Amati, which had been presented to her by the Archbishop of Czaky, was,
in compliance with her wishes expressed in life, buried with her.

The Rakoczy March has meanwhile undergone countless revisions, of which
the most important is beyond doubt that of Berlioz.

Berlioz composed this march while in Hungary, and had it performed
there. Its first performance at Pesth led to a scene of excitement which
is one of the best-remembered incidents in Berlioz's life. In
consequence of its success, Berlioz was asked to leave the original
score in Pesth, which he did; requesting, however, to be furnished with
a copy without the Coda, as he intended to rewrite that section.
The new Coda is the one always played now, the old one having indeed
disappeared.

Liszt's arrangement of the same march, it may be remembered, led to a
debate in the Hungarian Diet, in which M. Tisza spoke of the march as
the work of Franz Rakoczy II. He was wrong; and so was Berlioz mistaken
in saying that it is by an unknown composer. Its real author, according
to a statement quoted by Liszt's biographer, Miss Ramann, was a military
band master named Scholl. Liszt had really made his transcription in
1840, but refrained, out of respect for Berlioz, from publishing it till
1870.




VI

MIRRORED BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES


VON LENZ

The Russian councillor and the author of the well-known work, Beethoven
et Ses Trois Styles, has contributed quite a small library of articles
on Liszt, but as it is impossible to quote all of them, we select the
following, which refers more particularly to his own intimacy and first
acquaintance with the great musician:

"In 1828 I had come to Paris, at the age of nineteen, to continue my
studies there, and, moreover, as before, to take lessons on the piano;
now, however, with Kalkbrenner. Kalkbrenner was a man of Hebrew
extraction, born in Berlin; and in Paris under Charles X he was the
Joconde of the drawing-room piano. Kalkbrenner was a Knight of the
Legion of Honour, and the fair Camille Mock, afterward Madame Pleyel,
who was not indifferent to Chopin or Liszt, was the favourite pupil of
the irresistible Kalkbrenner. I heard her, between Kalkbrenner and
Onslow, play in the sextuor of the last named composer at the house of
Baron Trémont, a tame musical Mæcenas of that day in Paris. She played
the piano as a pretty Parisian wears an elegant shoe. Nevertheless I was
in danger of becoming Kalkbrenner's pupil, but my stars and Liszt willed
it otherwise. Already on the way to Kalkbrenner (who plays a note of his
now?), I came to the boulevards, and read on the theatre bills of the
day, which had much attraction for me, the announcement of an extra
concert to be given by Liszt at the Conservatoire (it was in November),
with the piano concerto of Beethoven, in E flat, at the head. At that
time Beethoven was, and not in Paris only, a Paracelsus in the concert
room. I only knew this much of him, that I had been very much afraid of
the very black-looking notes in his D-major trio and choral fantasia,
which I had once and again looked over in a music shop of my native
town, Riga, in which there was much more done in business than in music.

"If any one had told me as I stood there innocently, and learned from
the factotum that there were such things as piano concertos by
Beethoven, that I should ever write six volumes in German and two in
French on Beethoven! I had heard of a septet, but the musician who wrote
that was called J. N. Hummel.

"From the bill on the boulevards I concluded, however, that anyone who
could play a concerto of Beethoven in public must be a very wonderful
fellow, and of quite a different breed from Kalkbrenner, the composer of
the fantasia, Effusio Musica. That this Effusio was mere rubbish I
already understood, young and heedless though I was.

"In this way, on the then faithful boulevards of Paris, I met for the
first time in my life the name of Liszt, which was to fill the
world. This bill of the concert was destined to exert an important
influence on my life. I can still see, after so many years, the
colours of the important paper--thick monster letters on a yellow
ground--the fashionable colour at the time in Paris. I went straight to
Schlesinger's, then the musical exchange of Paris, Rue Richelieu.

"'Where does Mr. Liszt live?' I asked, and pronounced it Litz, for the
Parisians have never got any further with the name of Liszt than Litz.

"The address of Liszt was Rue Montholon; they gave it me at
Schlesinger's without hesitation. But when I asked the price of _Litz_,
and expressed my wish to take lessons from him, they all laughed at me,
and the shopmen behind the counters tittered, and all said at once, 'He
never gives a lesson; he is no professor of the piano!'

"I felt that I must have asked something very foolish. But the answer,
no professor of the piano, pleased me nevertheless, and I went
straightway to the Rue Montholon.

"Liszt was at home. That was a great rarity, said his mother, an
excellent woman with a true German heart, who pleased me very much; her
Franz was almost always in church, and no longer occupied himself with
music at all. Those were the days when Liszt wished to become a
Saint-Simonist. It was a great time, and Paris the centre of the world.
There lived Rossini and Cherubini, also Auber, Halévy, Berlioz and the
great violinist, Baillot; the poet, Victor Hugo, had lately published
his Orientales, and Lamartine was recovering from the exertion of his
Méditations Poétiques. Georges Sand was not yet fairly discovered;
Chopin not yet in Paris. Marie Taglioni danced tragedies at the Grand
Opéra; Habeneck, a German conductor, directed the picked orchestra of
the Conservatoire, where the Parisians, a year after Beethoven's death,
for the first time heard something of him. Malibran and Sontag sang at
the Italian Opéra the Tournament duet in Tancredi. It was in the winter
of 1828-9 Baillot played quartets; Rossini gave his Guillaume Tell in
the spring.

"In Liszt I found a thin, pale-looking young man, with infinitively
attractive features. He was lounging, deep in thought, lost in himself
on a broad sofa, and smoking a long Turkish pipe, with three pianos
standing around him. He made not the slightest movement on my entrance,
but rather appeared not to notice me at all. When I explained to him
that my family had directed me to Kalkbrenner, but I came to him because
he wished to play a concerto by Beethoven in public, he seemed to smile.
But it was only as the glitter of a dagger in the sun.

"'Play me something,' he said, with indescribable satire, which,
however, had nothing to wound in it, just as no harm is done by summer
lightning.

"'I play the sonata for the left hand (pour la main gauche principale),
by Kalkbrenner,' I said, and thought I had said something correct.

"'That I will not hear; I don't know it, and don't wish to,' he
answered, with increased satire and suppressed scorn.

"I felt that I was playing a pitiful part--doing penance, perhaps, for
others, for Parisians; but I said to myself, the more I looked at this
young man, that this Parisian (for such he seemed to be by his whole
appearance) must be a genius, and I would not without further skirmishes
be beaten off the field. I went with modest but firm step to the piano
standing nearest to me.

"'Not that one,' cried Liszt, without in the least changing his half
reclining position on the sofa; 'there, to that other one.'

"I stepped to the second piano. At that time I was absorbed in the
'Aufforderung zum Tanz'; I had married it for love two years before, and
we were still in our honeymoon. I came from Riga, where, after the
unexampled success of the 'Freischütz,' we had reached the piano
compositions of Weber, which did not happen till long after in Paris,
where the Freischütz was called Robin des Bois(!). I learnt from
good masters. When I tried to play the first three A-flats of the
Aufforderung, the instrument gave no sound. What was the matter? I
played forcibly, and the notes sounded quite piano. I seemed to myself
quite laughable, but without taking any notice I went bravely on to the
first entry of the chords; then Liszt rose, stepped up to me, took my
right hand without more ado off the instrument, and asked:

"'What is that? That begins well!'

"'I should think so,' I said; 'that is by Weber.'

"'Has he written for the piano, too?' he asked with astonishment. 'We
only know here the Robin des Bois.'

"'Certainly he has written for the piano, and more finely than any one!'
was my equally astonished answer. 'I have in my trunk,' I added, 'two
polonaises, two rondos, four sets of variations, four solo sonatas, one
which I learned with Wehrstaedt, in Geneva, which contains the whole of
Switzerland, and is incredibly beautiful; there all the fair women smile
at once. It is in A flat. You can have no idea how beautiful it is!
Nobody has written so for the piano, you may believe me.'

"I spoke from my heart, and with such conviction that I made a visible
impression on Liszt. He answered in a winning tone: 'Now, pray bring me
all that out of your trunk and I will give you lessons for the first
time in my life, because you have introduced me to Weber on the piano,
and also were not frightened at this heavy instrument. I ordered it on
purpose, so as to have played ten scales when I had played one. It is an
altogether impracticable piano. It was a sorry joke of mine. But why did
you talk about Kalkbrenner, and a sonata by him for the left hand? But
now play me that thing of yours that begins so seriously. There, that is
one of the finest instruments in Paris--there, where you were going to
sit down first.'

"Now I played with all my heart the 'Aufforderung,' but only the melody
marked wiegend, in two parts. Liszt was charmed with the composition.
'Now bring that,' he said; 'I must have a turn at that!'

"At our first lesson Liszt could not tear himself away from the piece.
He repeated single parts again and again, sought increased effects, gave
the second part of the minor in octaves and was inexhaustible in praise
of Weber. With Weber's sonata in A flat Liszt was perfectly delighted. I
had studied it in much love with Wehrstaedt at Geneva, and gave it
throughout in the spirit of the thing. This Liszt testified by the way
in which he listened, by lively gestures and movements, by exclamations
about the beauty of the composition, so that we worked at it with both
our heads! This great romantic poem for the piano begins, as is well
known, with a tremolo of the bass on A flat. Never had a sonata opened
in such a manner! It is as sunshine over the enchanted grove in which
the action takes place. The restlessness of my master became so great
over the first part of this allegro that even before its close he pushed
me aside with the words, 'Wait! wait! What is that? I must go at that
myself!' Such an experience one had never met with. Imagine a genius
like Liszt, twenty years old, for the first time in the presence of such
a master composition of Weber, before the apparition of this knight in
golden armour!

"He tried his first part over and over again with the most various
intentions. At the passage in the dominant (E flat) at the close of the
first part (a passage, properly speaking, the sonata has not; one might
call it a charming clarinet phrase interwoven with the idea) Liszt said,
'It is marked legato. Now, would not one do it better _pp._ and
staccato? Yet there is a leggieramente as well." He experimented in all
directions. In this way it was given me to observe how one genius looks
upon another and appreciates him for himself.

"'Now what is the second part of the first allegro like?' asked Liszt,
and looked at it. It seemed to me simply impossible that any one could
read at sight this thematic development, with octaves piled one on
another for whole pages.

"'This is very difficult,' said Liszt, 'yet harder still is the coda,'
and the combining of the whole in this close, here at this centrifugal
figure (thirteenth bar before the end). The passage (in the second part,
naturally in the original key of A flat), moreover, we must not play
staccato; that would be somewhat affected; but we must also not play it
legato; it is too thin for that. We'll do it spiccato; let us swim
between the two waters.'

"If I had wondered at the fire and life, the pervading passion in the
delivery of the first part by Liszt, I was absolutely astonished in the
second part at his triumphant repose and certainty, and the self-control
with which he reserved all his force for the last attack. 'So young, and
so wise!' I said to myself, and was bewildered, absorbed, discouraged.

"In the andante of the sonata I learned in the first four bars more from
Liszt than in years from my former good teachers. 'You must give out
this opening just as Baillot plays a quartet; the accompanying parts
consist of the detached semiquavers, but Baillot's parts are very good,
and yours must not be worse. You have a good hand, and can learn it. Try
it, it is not easy; one might move stones with it. I can just imagine
how the hussars of the piano tear it to pieces! I shall never forget
that it is through you I have learned to know the sonata. Now you shall
learn something from me; I will tell you all I know about our
instrument.'

"The demi-semiquaver figure in the bass (at the thirty-fifth bar of this
andante) is heard only too often given out as a 'passage' for the left
hand; the figure should be delivered caressingly--it should be an
amorous violoncello solo. In this manner Liszt played it, but gave out
in fearful majesty the outbursts of octaves on the second subject in C
major, that Henselt calls the 'Ten Commandments'--an excellent
designation. And now, as for menuetto capriccioso and rondo of the
sonata. How shall I describe what Liszt made of these genial movements
on a first acquaintance? How he treated the clarinet solo in the trio of
the menuetto, and the winding of the rondo? How Liszt glorified Weber on
the piano; how like an Alexander he marched in triumphant procession
with Weber (especially in the 'Concertstück') through Europe, the world
knows, and future times will speak of it."


BERLIOZ

In the preface to Berlioz's published Correspondence, is the following
account of Liszt's evenings with the great French composer and his first
wife:

"The first years of their married life were full of both hardship and
charm. The new establishment, the revenues of which amounted, to begin
with, to a lump sum of 300 francs, was migratory--at one time in the Rue
Neuve Saint-Marc, at another at Montmartre, and then in a certain Rue
Saint-Denis of which it is impossible now to find trace. Liszt lived in
the Rue de Province, and paid frequent visits to the young couple; they
spent many evenings together, when the great pianist would play
Beethoven's sonatas in the dark, in order to produce a greater
impression. In his turn, Berlioz took up the cudgels for his friend
in the newspapers to which he was accustomed to contribute--the
_Correspondent_, the _Revue Européenne_ and, lastly, the _Débats_. How
angry he became when the volatile Parisians attempted to espouse the
cause of Thalberg against his rival! A lion showing his teeth could not
have appeared more formidable. Death to him who dared to say Liszt was
not the first pianist of all time, past, present, and to come! And when
the critic enunciated any musical axiom as being beyond discussion, he
really thought it so, for he never went against his own convictions, and
bore himself in regard to mediocrities with a contempt savouring
of rudeness. Liszt after all gave him back measure for measure,
transcribing the Symphonie Fantastique, and playing at the numerous
concerts which the young maestro gave during the winter with ever
increasing success."

In 1830, after many repeated failures Berlioz won the much coveted "Prix
de Rome" at the Paris Conservatoire, which entitled him to reside three
years in Italy at the expense of the French Government. Before he
started for the musical land of promise, Berlioz gave two concerts, and
relates in his Memoirs the circumstances under which he first became
acquainted with Liszt:

"On the day before the concert I received a visit from Liszt, whom I had
never yet seen. I spoke to him of Goethe's Faust, which he was obliged
to confess he had not read, but about which he soon became as
enthusiastic as myself. We were strongly attracted to one another, and
our friendship has increased in warmth and depth ever since. He was
present at the concert, and excited general attention by his applause
and enthusiasm."

When Berlioz gave his first concert in Paris, after his return from
Italy, he wrote:

"Weber's Concertstück, played by Liszt with the overpowering vehemence
which he always puts into it, obtained a splendid success. Indeed I so
far forgot myself, in my enthusiasm for Liszt, as publicly to embrace
him on the stage--a stupid impropriety which might have covered us both
with ridicule had the spectators been disposed to laugh."

Liszt's and Berlioz's intimacy was renewed at Prague, as will be seen
from the composer's account:

"I gave six concerts at Prague, either in the theatre or in Sophie's
concert room. At the latter I remember to have had the delight of
performing my symphony of Romeo and Juliet for Liszt for the first time.
Several movements of the work were already known in Prague....

"That day, having already encored several pieces, the public called for
another, which the band implored me not to repeat; but as the shouts
continued Mr. Mildner took out his watch, and held it up to show that
the hour was too far advanced to allow of the orchestra remaining till
the end of the concert if the piece was played a second time, since
there was an opera at 7 o'clock. This clever pantomime saved us. At the
end of the séance, just as I was begging Liszt to serve as my
interpreter, and thank the excellent singers, who had been devoting
themselves to the careful study of my choruses for the last three weeks
and had sung them so bravely, he was interrupted by them with an inverse
proposal. Having exchanged a few words with them in German, he turned to
me and said: 'My commission is changed; these gentlemen rather desire me
to thank you for the pleasure you have given them in allowing them to
perform your work, and to express their delight at your evident
satisfaction.'"

At a banquet in honour of Berlioz the composer says:

"Liszt was unanimously chosen to make the presentation speech instead of
the chairman, who had not sufficient acquaintance with the French
language. At the first toast he made me, in the name of the assembly, an
address at least a quarter of an hour long, with a warmth of spirit, an
abundance of ideas and a choice of expressions, which excited the envy
of the orators present, and by which I was profoundly touched.
Unhappily, if he spoke well, he also drank well--the treacherous cup
inaugurated by the convives held such floods of champagne that all
Liszt's eloquence made shipwreck in it. Belloni and I were still in the
streets of Prague at 2 o'clock in the morning persuading him to wait for
daylight before exchanging shots at two paces with a Bohemian who had
drunk better than himself. When day came we were not without anxiety
about Liszt, whose concert was to take place at noon. At half-past
eleven he was still sleeping; at last some one awoke him; he jumped into
a cab, reached the hall, was received with three rounds of applause and
played as I believe he has never played in his life before."

Berlioz, in his À Travers Chants, relates the following incident:

"One day Liszt was playing the adagio of Beethoven's sonata in C-sharp
minor before a little circle of friends, of which I formed part, and
followed the manner he had then adopted to gain the applause of the
fashionable world. Instead of those long sustained notes, and instead of
strict uniformity of rhythm, he overlaid it with trills and the tremolo.
I suffered cruelly, I must confess--more than I have ever suffered in
hearing our wretched cantatrices embroider the grand air in the
'Freischütz'; for to this torture was added my distress at seeing an
artist of his stamp falling into the snare which, as a rule, only besets
mediocrities. But what was to be done? Liszt was then like a child, who
when he stumbles, likes to have no notice taken, but picks himself up
without a word and cries if anybody holds him out a hand. He had picked
himself up splendidly. A few years afterward one of those men of heart
and soul that artists are always happy to come across (Mr. Legouvé), had
invited a small party of friends--I was one of them.

"Liszt came during the evening, and finding the conversation engaged on
the valuable piece by Weber, and why when he played it at a recent
concert he had received a rather sorry reception, he went to the piano
to reply in this manner to Weber's antagonists. The argument was
unanswerable, and we were obliged to acknowledge that a work of genius
was misunderstood. As he was about to finish, the lamp which lighted the
apartment appeared very soon to go out; one of us was going to relight
it: 'Leave it alone,' I said to him; 'if he will play the adagio of
Beethoven's sonata in C-sharp minor this twilight will not spoil it.'

"'Willingly,' said Liszt; 'but put the lights out altogether; cover the
fire that the obscurity may be more complete.' Then, in the midst of
darkness, after a moment's pause, rose in its sublime simplicity the
noble elegy he had once so strangely disfigured; not a note, not an
accent was added to the notes and the accents of the author. It was the
shade of Beethoven, conjured up by the virtuoso to whose voice we were
listening. We all trembled in silence, and when the last chord had
sounded no one spoke--we were in tears."

Berlioz in a letter to Liszt wrote as follows to the pianist on his
playing:

"On my return from Heckingen I stayed some days longer at Stuttgart, a
prey to new perplexities. You, my dear Liszt, know nothing of these
uncertainties; it matters little to you whether the town to which you go
has a good orchestra, whether the theatre be open or the manager place
it at your disposal, etc. Of what use indeed would such information be
to you? With a slight modification of the famous mot of Louis XIV you
may say with confidence, I myself am orchestra, chorus, and conductor. I
make my piano dream or sing at pleasure, re-echo with exulting harmonies
and rival the most skilful bow in swiftness. Neither theatre, nor long
rehearsals, for I want neither musicians nor music.

"Give me a large room and a grand piano, and I am at once master of a
great audience. I have but to appear before it to be overwhelmed with
applause. My memory awakens, my fingers give birth to dazzling
fantasias, which call forth enthusiastic acclamations. I have but to
play Schubert's Ave Maria or Beethoven's Adelaïde to draw every heart to
myself, and make each one hold his breath. The silence speaks;
admiration is intense and profound. Then come the fiery shells, a
veritable bouquet of grand fireworks, the acclamations of the public,
flowers and wreaths showered upon the priest of harmony as he sits
quivering on his tripod, beautiful young women kissing the hem of his
garment with tears of sacred frenzy; the sincere homage of the serious,
the feverish applause forced from the envious, the intent faces, the
narrow hearts amazed at their own expansiveness. And perhaps next day
the inspired young genius departs, leaving behind him a trail of
dazzling glory and enthusiasm. It is a dream! It is one of those golden
dreams inspired by the name of Liszt or Paganini. But the composer who,
like myself, must travel to make his work known, has, on the contrary,
to nerve himself to a task which is never ending, still beginning, and
always unpleasant."

The well-known dramatist, Scribe, once wrote a libretto for Berlioz, but
in consequence of some difficulty with the director of the Paris Grand
Opéra he demanded the return of the work, and handed it over to Gounod,
who subsequently wrote the music. Berlioz devotes some space to these
proceedings in his Memoirs, and in the course of his remarks says:

"When I saw Scribe, on my return to Paris, he seemed slightly confused
at having accepted my offer, and taken back my poem. 'But, as you know,'
said he, 'Il faut que le prêtre vive de l'autêl.' Poor fellow! he could
not, in fact, have waited; he has only some 200,000 or 300,000 per
annum, a house in town, three country houses etc. Liszt made a capital
pun when I repeated Scribe's speech to him. 'Yes,' said he, 'by his
hotel'--comparing Scribe to an innkeeper."


D'ORTIGUE

D'Ortigue, who is better known as a theorist than a composer and musical
critic, was a great admirer of Liszt, as may be seen by the following
extract from his writings:

"Beethoven is for Liszt a god, before whom he bows his head. He
considered him as a deliverer whose arrival in the musical realm has
been illustrated through the liberty of poetical thought, and through
the abolishing of old dominating habits. Oh, one must be present when he
begins with one of those melodies, one of those posies which have long
been called symphonies! One must see his eyes when he opens them as if
receiving an inspiration from above, and when he fixes them gloomily on
the ground. One must see him, hear him, and be silent.

"We feel here only too well how weak is the expression of our
imagination. He conquers everything but his nerves; his head, hands and
whole body are in violent motion; in one word, you see a dreadfully
nervous man agitatedly playing his piano!"


BLAZE DE BURY

Baron Blaze de Bury, in a musical feuilleton contributed to the _Revue
des Deux Mondes_, no doubt more in fun than ill feeling, wrote as
follows on Liszt and his Hungarian sword:

"We must have dancers, songstresses, and pianists. We have enthusiasm
and gold for their tour de force. We abandon Petrarch in the streets to
bring Essler to the Capitol; we suffer Beethoven and Weber to die of
hunger, to give a sword of honor to Mr. Liszt."

Liszt was furious when this met his eye, and wrote immediately a long
letter to the editor of the _Revue_, of which the following is the
essential passage:

"The sword which has been given to me at Pesth is a reward awarded by a
nation under a national form. In Hungary--in this country of ancient and
chivalrous manners--the sword has a patriotic significance. It is the
sign of manhood par excellence; it is the arm of all men who have the
right to carry arms. While six out of the most remarkable men of my
country presented it to me, with the unanimous acclamations of my
compatriots, it was to acknowledge me again as a Hungarian after an
absence of fifteen years."


OSCAR COMMETTANT

Oscar Commettant, in one of his works, gives the following satirical
sketch of Liszt in the height of his popularity in the Parisian concert
rooms:

"A certain great pianist, who is as clever a manager as he is an
admirable executant, pays women at a rate of 25 frs. per concert to
pretend to faint away with pleasure in the middle of a fantasia taken at
such a rapid pace that it would have been humanly impossible to finish
it. The pianist abruptly left his instrument to rush to the assistance
of the poor fainting lady, while everybody in the room believed that,
but for that accident, the prodigious pianist would have completed the
greatest of miracles. It happened one night that a woman paid to faint
forgot her cue and fell fast asleep. The pianist was performing Weber's
Concertstück. Reckoning on the fainting of this female to interrupt the
finale of the piece, he took it in an impossible time. What could he do
in such a perplexing cause? Stumble and trip like a vulgar pianist, or
pretend to be stopped by a defective memory? No; he simply played the
part which the faintress (excuse the word) ought to have acted, and
fainted away himself. People crowded around the pianist, who had become
doubly phenomenal through his electric execution, and his frail and
susceptible organization. They carried him out into the greenroom. The
men applauded as if they meant to bring down the ceiling; the women
waved their handkerchiefs to manifest their enthusiasm, and the
faintress, on waking, fainted, perhaps really, with despair of not
having pretended to faint."


LEON ESCUDIER

The once celebrated musical publisher and director of the Parisian
Italian Opera season gives the following description of Danton's
statuette of Liszt, which was exhibited in the Paris salon half a
century ago:

"The pianist is seated before a piano, which he is about to destroy
under him. His fingers multiply at the ends of his hands; I should think
so--Danton made him ten at each hand. His hair like a willow floats over
his shoulders. One would say that he is whistling. Now for the account.
Liszt saw the statue, and made a grimace. He found that the sculptor had
exaggerated the length of his hair. It was a criticism really pulled by
the hair. Danton knew it.

"But after Liszt had gone he went again to work and made immediately a
second statuette. In this, one only sees a head of hair (the pianist is
seen from the back) always seated before the piano. The head of hair,
which makes one think of a man hidden behind, plays the piano absolutely
like the first model. All the rest is the same."

Leon Escudier also relates an incident at one of Henri Herz's concerts:

"A piece for four pianos was to be played. Herz knew how to choose his
competitors. The three other pianists were Thalberg, Liszt, and
Moscheles. The room was crowded, as may be imagined. The audience was
calm at first; but not without slight manifestations of impatience quite
natural under the circumstances. They did not consider the regrettable
habit that Liszt had, at this epoch, to make people wait for him.
Punctuality, however, is the politeness of kings, and Liszt was a king
of the piano. Briefly, the pianists gave up waiting for Liszt; but this
resolution was not taken without a little confusion in the artists'
room. The musical parts were changed at the piano, and they were going
to play a trio instead of a quatour, when Liszt appeared. It was time!
They were about to commence without him. While the four virtuosi seated
themselves they perceived that the musical parts were not the same which
belonged to them. In the confusion which preceded their installation
the parts got mixed, and No. 1 had before his eyes the part of No. 3;
the No. 2 had No. 1, and so on. What was to be done?--rise and rearrange
the parts! The public was already disappointed by the prolonged waiting
that they had experienced. They murmured. The four virtuosi looked at
each other sternly, not daring to rise, when Herz took a heroic
resolution, exclaiming: 'Courage! Allons toujours!' And he gave the
signal in passing his fingers over the keyboard. The others played, and
the four great pianists improvised each the part of the other. The
public did not notice the change, and finished by applauding loudly."


MOSENTHAL

Anton Rubinstein's librettist, in some reminiscences of his
collaborateur says:

"It must have been in 1840 that I saw Rubinstein for the first time,
when scarcely ten years old; he had travelled in Paris with his teacher,
and plucked his first laurels with his childish hands. It was then that
Franz Liszt, hearing the boy play, and becoming acquainted with his
first compositions, with noble enthusiasm proclaimed him the sole
inheritor of his fame. The prediction has been fulfilled; already in the
fulness of his activity, Liszt recognised in Rubinstein a rival on equal
footing with himself, and since he has ceased to appear before the
public he has greeted Rubinstein as the sole ruler in the realm of
pianists. When Rubinstein was director of the Musical Society in Vienna,
1876, and the élite of the friends of art gathered every week in his
hospitable house, I once had the rare pleasure of hearing him and Liszt
play, not only successively during the same evening, but also together
on the piano. The question, which of the two surpassed the other,
recalled the old problem whether Goethe or Schiller is the greatest
German poet. But when they both sat down to play a new concerto by
Rubinstein, which Liszt, with incredible intuition, read at sight, it
was really as good as a play to watch the gray-haired master, as,
smiling good-naturedly, he followed his young artist, and allowed
himself, as if on purpose, to be surpassed in fervor and enthusiastic
powers."


MOSCHELES

There are several allusions to Liszt in Moscheles' Diary. Liszt visited
London in 1840, and Moscheles records:

"At one of the Philharmonic Concerts he played three of my studies quite
admirably. Faultless in the way of execution, by his talent he has
completely metamorphosed these pieces; they have become more his studies
than mine. With all that they please me, and I shouldn't like to hear
them played in any other way by him. The Paganini studies too were
uncommonly interesting to me. He does anything he chooses, and does it
admirably; and those hands raised aloft in the air come down but seldom,
wonderfully seldom, upon a wrong note. 'His conversation is always
brilliant,' adds Mrs. Moscheles. 'It is occasionally dashed with satire
or spiced with humour. The other day he brought me his portrait, with
his hommages respectueux written underneath; and what was the best
"hommage" of all he sat down to the piano, and played me the Erl King,
the Ave Maria and a charming Hungarian piece.'"

Liszt was again in London in 1841, and Moscheles records that at the
Philharmonic Society's concert, on July 14:

"The attention of the audience was entirely centred upon Liszt. When he
came forward to play in Hummel's septet one was prepared to be
staggered, but only heard the well-known piece which he plays with the
most perfect execution, storming occasionally like a Titan, but still in
the main free from extravagance; for the distinguishing mark of Liszt's
mind and genius is that he knows perfectly the capability of the
audience and the style of music he brings before them, and uses his
powers, which are equal to everything, merely as a means of eliciting
the most varied kinds of effects."

Mrs. Moscheles, in some supplementary notes to her husband's Diary,
says:

"Liszt and Moscheles were heard several times together in the Preciosa
variations, on which Moscheles remarks: 'It seemed to me that we were
sitting together on Pegasus.' When Moscheles showed him his F-sharp and
D-minor studies, which he had written for Michetti's Beethoven Album,
Liszt, in spite of their intricacies and difficulties, played them
admirably at sight. He was a constant visitor at Moscheles' house, often
dropping in unexpectedly; and many an evening was spent under the double
fascination of his splendid playing and brilliant conversation. The
other day he told us: 'I have played a duet with Cramer; I was the
poisoned mushroom, and I had at my side my antidote of milk.'"

Moscheles attended the Beethoven Festival at Bonn, in 1845, and on
August 10 recorded in his Diary:

"I am at the Hôtel de l'Étoile d'Or, where are to be found all the
crowned heads of music--brown, gray or bald. This is a rendezvous for
all ladies, old and young, fanatics for music, all art judges, German
and French reviewers and English reporters; lastly, the abode of Liszt,
the absolute monarch, by virtue of his princely gifts, outshining all
else.... I have already seen and spoken to colleagues from all the four
quarters of the globe; I was also with Liszt, who had his hands full of
business, and was surrounded with secretaries and masters of ceremonies,
while Chorley sat quietly ensconced in the corner of a sofa. Liszt too
kissed me; then a few hurried and confused words passed between us, and
I did not see him again until I met him afterwards in the concert
room."

On August 12, Moscheles records:

"I was deeply moved when I saw the statue of Beethoven unveiled, the
more so because Hähnel has obtained an admirable likeness of the
immortal composer. Another tumult and uproar at the table d'hôte in the
'Stern' Hotel. I sat near Bachez, Fischof and Vesque, Liszt in all his
glory, a suite of ladies and gentlemen in attendance on him, Lola Montez
among the former."

At the banquet after the unveiling of Beethoven's statue at Bonn,
Moscheles records:

"Immediately after the king's health had been proposed, Wolff, the
improvisatore, gave a toast which he called the 'Trefoil.' It was to
represent the perfect chord--Spohr the key-note, Liszt the connecting
link between all parties, the third, Professor Breidenstein, the
dominant leading all things to a happy solution. (Universal applause.)
Spohr proposes the health of the Queen of England, Dr. Wolff that of
Professor Hähnel, the sculptor of the monument, and also that of the
brass founder. Liszt proposes Prince Albert; a professor with a
stentorian voice is laughed and coughed down--people will not listen to
him; and then ensued a series of most disgraceful scenes which
originated thus: Liszt spoke rather abstrusely upon the subject of the
festival. 'Here all nations are met to pay honour to the master. May
they live and prosper--the Dutch, the English, the Viennese--who have
made a pilgrimage hither!' Upon this Chelard gets up in a passion, and
screams out to Liszt, 'Vous avez oublié les Français.'

"Many voices break in, a regular tumult ensues, some for, some against
the speaker. At last Liszt makes himself heard, but in trying to
exculpate himself seems to get entangled deeper and deeper in a
labyrinth of words, seeking to convince his hearers that he had lived
fifteen years among Frenchmen, and would certainly not intentionally
speak slightingly of them. The contending parties, however, become more
uproarious, many leave their seats, the din becomes deafening and the
ladies pale with fright. The fête is interrupted for a full hour, Dr.
Wolff, mounting a table, tries to speak, but is hooted down three or
four times, and at last quits the room, glad to escape the babel of
tongues. Knots of people are seen disputing in every part of the great
salon, and, the confusion increasing, the cause of dispute is lost sight
of. The French and English journalists mingle in this fray, by
complaining of omissions of all sorts on the part of the festival
committee. When the tumult threatens to become serious the landlord hits
upon the bright idea of making the band play its loudest, and this
drowns the noise of the brawlers, who adjourned to the open air.

"The waiters once more resumed their services, although many of the
guests, especially ladies, had vanished. The contending groups outside
showed their bad taste and ridiculous selfishness, for Vivier and some
Frenchmen got Liszt among them, and reproached him in a most shameful
way. G. ran from party to party, adding fuel to the fire; Chorley was
attacked by a French journalist; M. J. J. (Jules Janin) would have it
that the English gentleman, Wentworth Dilke, was a German who had
slighted him; I stepped in between the two, so as at least to put an end
to this unfair controversy. I tried as well as I could to soothe these
overwrought minds, and pronounced funeral orations over those who had
perished in this tempest of words. I alone remained shot proof and
neutral, so also did my Viennese friends. By 6 o'clock in the evening I
became almost deaf from the noise, and was glad to escape."


DWIGHT

John S. Dwight, the Boston musical critic, in an article on Dr. von
Bülow, written while travelling in Germany with a friend, relates the
following interview with Liszt:

"It was in Berlin, in the winter of 1861, that we had the privilege of
meeting and hearing Bülow. We were enjoying our first and only interview
with Liszt, who had come for a day or two to the old Hôtel de
Brandebourg, where we were living that winter. On the sofa sat his
daughter, Mrs. von Bülow, bearing his unmistakable impress upon her
features; the welcome was cordial, and the conversation on the part of
both of them was lively and most interesting; chiefly of course it was
about music, artists, etc., and nothing delighted us more than the
hearty appreciation which Liszt expressed of Robert Franz, then, strange
as it may seem, but very little recognised in Germany. Of some other
composers he seemed inclined to speak ironically and even bitterly, as
if smarting under some disappointment--perhaps at the unreceptive mood
of the Berliners toward his own symphonic poems, to whose glories Bülow
had been labouring to convert them.

"Before we had a chance to hint of one hope long deferred, that of
hearing Liszt play, he asked, 'Have you heard Bülow?' alluding to him
more than once as the pianist to be heard--his representative and heir,
on whom his mantle had verily fallen. Thinking it possible that there
was some new grand composition by some one of his young disciples to be
brought out, and that he had come to Berlin to stand godfather, as it
were, to that, we modestly ventured to inquire. He smilingly replied,
'No; I am here literally as godfather, having come to the christening of
my grandchild.' Presently the conversation was interrupted by a rap at
the door, and in came with lively step a little man, who threw open the
furs in which he was buried, Berlin fashion, and approached the
presence, bowed his head to the paternal laying on of hands, and we were
introduced to Von Bülow."


HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

The author of the charming fairy tales, which are still admired by young
as well as old people, in his usual graceful style, gives a description
of a Liszt concert in 1840:

"In Hamburg, at the City of London Hotel, Liszt gave a concert. In a few
minutes the hall was crowded. I came too late, but I got the best
place--close upon the orchestra, where the piano stood--for I was
brought up by a back staircase. Liszt is one of the kings in the realm
of music. My guide brought me to him, as I have said, up a back stair,
and I am not ashamed to acknowledge this. The hall--even the side
rooms--beamed with lights, gold chains and diamonds. Near me, on a sofa,
reclined a young Jewess, stout and overdressed. She looked like a walrus
with a fan. Grave Hamburg merchants stood crowded together, as if they
had important business 'on 'Change' to transact. A smile rested on their
lips, as though they had just sold 'paper' and won enormously. The
Orpheus of mythology could move stones and trees by his playing. The new
Liszt-Orpheus had actually electrified them before he played. Celebrity,
with its mighty prestige, had opened the eyes and ears of the people. It
seemed as if they recognised and felt already what was to follow. I
myself felt in the beaming of those many flashing eyes, and that
expectant throbbing of the heart, the approach of the great genius who
with bold hands had fixed the limits of his art in our time. London,
that great capital of machinery, or Hamburg, the trade emporium of
Europe, is where one should hear Liszt for the first time; there time
and place harmonise; and in Hamburg I was to hear him. An electric shock
seemed to thrill the hall as Liszt entered. Most of the ladies rose. A
sunbeam flashed across each face, as though every eye were seeing a
dear, beloved friend. I stood quite close to the artist. He is a slight
young man. Long, dark hair surrounded the pale face. He bowed and seated
himself at the instrument. Liszt's whole appearance and his mobility
immediately indicate one of those personalities toward which one is
attracted solely by their individuality. As he sat at the piano the
first impression of his individuality and the trace of strong passions
upon his pale countenance made me imagine that he might be a demon
banished into the instrument from which the tones streamed forth. They
came from his blood; from his thoughts; he was a demon who had to free
his soul by playing; he was under the torture; his blood flowed, and his
nerves quivered. But as he played the demonia disappeared. I saw
the pale countenance assume a nobler, more beautiful expression.
The divine soul flashed from his eyes, from every feature; he grew
handsome--handsome as life and inspiration can make one. His Valse
Infernale is more than a daguerreotype from Meyerbeer's Robert. We do
not stand before and gaze upon the well-known picture. No, we transport
ourselves into the midst of it. We gaze deep into the very abyss, and
discover new, whirling forms. It did not seem to be the strings of a
piano that were sounding. No, every tone was like an echoing drop of
water. Any one who admires the technic of art must bow before Liszt; he
that is charmed with the genial, the divine gift, bows still lower. The
Orpheus of our day has made tones sound through the great capital of
machinery and a Copenhagener has said that 'his fingers are simply
railroads and steam engines.' His genius is more powerful to bring
together the great minds of the world than all the railroads on earth.
The Orpheus of our day has preached music in the trade emporium of
Europe, and (at least for a moment) the people believed the gospel. The
spirit's gold has a truer ring than that of the world. People often use
the expression 'a sea of sound' without being conscious of its
significance, and such it is that streams from the piano at which Liszt
sits. The instrument appears to be changed into a whole orchestra. This
is accomplished by ten fingers, which possess a power of execution that
might be termed superhuman. They are guided by a mighty genius. It is a
sea of sound, which in its very agitation is a mirror for the life task
of each burning heart. I have met politicians who, at Liszt's playing,
conceived that peaceful citizens at the sound of the Marseillaise might
be so carried away that they might seize their guns and rush forth from
hearths and homes to fight for an idea! I have seen quiet Copenhageners,
with Danish autumnal coolness in their veins, become political
bacchantes at his playing. The mathematician has grown giddy at the
echoing fingers and the reckoning of the sounds. Young disciples
of Hegel (and among those the really gifted and not merely the
light-headed, who at the mere galvanic stream of philosophy make a
mental grimace) perceived in this sea of music the wave-like advances of
knowledge toward the shore of perfection. The poet found the rein of his
heart's whole lyric, or the rich garment of his boldest delineation. The
traveller (yes, I conclude with myself) receives musical pictures of
what he sees or will see. I heard his playing as it were an overture to
my journey. I heard how my heart throbbed and bled on my leaving home. I
heard the farewell of the waves--the waves that I should only hear again
on the cliffs of Terracina. Organ tones seemed to sound from Germany's
old cathedrals. The glaciers rolled from the Alpine hills, and Italy
danced in carnival dresses, and struck with her wooden sword while she
thought in her heart of Cæsar, Horace and Raphael. Vesuvius and Ætna
burned. The trumpet of judgment resounded from the hills of Greece,
where the old gods are dead. Tones that I knew not--tones for which I
have no words--pointed to the East, the home of fancy, the poet's second
fatherland. When Liszt had done playing the flowers rained down on him.
Young, pretty girls, old ladies, who had once been pretty girls, too,
threw their bouquets. He had indeed thrown a thousand bouquets into
their hearts and brain.

"From Hamburg Liszt was to fly to London, there to strew new
tone-bouquets, there to breathe poetry over material working day life.
Happy man! who can thus travel throughout his whole life, always to see
people in their spiritual Sunday dress--yea, even in the wedding garment
of inspiration. Shall I often meet him? That was my last thought, and
chance willed it that we meet on a journey at a spot where I and my
readers would least expect it--met, became friends, and again separated.
But that belongs to the last chapter of this journey. He now went to the
city of Victoria--I to that of Gregory the Sixteenth."


HEINE

There are several reminiscences of Liszt to be found in the collected
works of the great German author. Heine, writing in 1844 at Paris, says:

"When I some time ago heard of the marvellous excitement which broke out
in Germany, and more particularly in Berlin, when Liszt showed himself
there, I shrugged my shoulders and thought quiet, Sabbath-like Germany
does not want to lose the opportunity of indulging in a little
'permitted' commotion; it longs to stretch its sleep-stiffened limbs,
and my Philistines on the banks of the Spree are fond of tickling
themselves into enthusiasm, while one declaims after the other, 'Love,
ruler of gods and men!' It does not matter to them, thought I, what the
row is about, so long as it is a row, whether it is called George
Herwegh (the "Iron Lark"), Fanny Essler or Franz Liszt. If Herwegh be
forbidden we turn to the politically 'safe' and uncompromising Liszt. So
thought I, so I explained to myself the Liszt mania; and I accepted it
as a sign of the want of political freedom on the other side of the
Rhine. But I was in error, which I recognised for the first time at the
Italian Opera House where Liszt gave his first concert, and before an
assembly which is best described as the élite of society here. They
were, anyhow, wide-awake Parisians: people familiar with the greatest
celebrities of modern times, totally blasé and preoccupied men, who had
'done to death' all things in the world, art included; women equally
'done up' by having danced the polka the whole winter through. Truly it
was no German sentimental, Berlin-emotional audience before which Liszt
played--quite alone, or rather accompanied only by his genius. And yet,
what an electrically powerful effect his mere appearance produced! What
a storm of applause greeted him! How many bouquets were flung at his
feet! It was an impressive sight to see with what imperturbable
self-possession the great conqueror allowed the flowers to rain upon him
and then, at last, graciously smiling, selected a red camellia and stuck
it in his buttonhole. And this he did in the presence of several young
soldiers just arrived from Africa, where it did not rain flowers but
leaden bullets, and they were decorated with the red camellias of their
own heroes' blood, without receiving any particular notice either here
for it. Strange, thought I, these Parisians have seen Napoleon, who was
obliged to supply them with one battle after another to retain their
attention--these receive our Franz Liszt with acclamation! And what
acclamation!--a positive frenzy, never before known in the annals of
furore."

Heine relates the following curious conversation he had with a medical
man about Liszt:

"A physician whose specialty is woman, whom I questioned as to the
fascination which Liszt exercises on his public, smiled very strangely,
and at the same time spoke of magnetism, galvanism, and electricity, of
contagion in a sultry hall, filled with innumerable wax-lights, and some
hundred perfumed and perspiring people, of histrionic epilepsy, of the
phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantharides, and other unmentionable
matters, which, I think, have to do with the mysteries of the bona dea;
the solution of the question, however, does not lie perhaps so strangely
deep, but on a very prosaic surface. I am sometimes inclined to think
that the whole witchery might be explained thus--namely, that nobody in
this world knows so well how to organise his successes, or rather
their mise en scène, as Franz Liszt. In this art he is a genius,
a Philadelphia, a Bosco, a Houdin--yea, a Meyerbeer. The most
distinguished persons serve him gratis as compères, and his hired
enthusiasts are drilled in an exemplary way."

This amusing anecdote about Liszt and the once famous tenor, Rubini, is
also told by Heine:

"The celebrated singer had undertaken a tour with Franz Liszt, sharing
expenses and profits. The great pianist took Signor Belloni about with
him everywhere (the entrepreneur in general of his reputation), and to
him was left the whole of the business management. When, however, all
accounts had been settled up, and Signor Belloni presented his little
bill, what was Rubini's horror to find that among the mutual expenses
there appeared sundry considerable items for 'laurel wreaths,'
'bouquets,' 'laudatory poems,' and suchlike 'ovation expenses.'

"The naïve singer had, in his innocence, imagined that he had been
granted these tokens of public favour solely on account of his lovely
voice. He flew into a great rage, and swore he would not pay for the
bouquets which probably contained the most expensive camellias."

That Heine could appreciate Liszt seriously, these extracts testify
sufficiently:

"He (Liszt) is indisputably the artist in Paris who finds the most
unlimited enthusiasm as well as the most zealous opponents. It is a
characteristic sign that no one speaks of him with indifference. Without
power no one in this world can excite either favourable or hostile
passions. One must possess fire to excite men to hatred as well as to
love. That which testifies especially for Liszt is the complete esteem
with which even his enemies speak of his personal worth. He is a man of
whimsical but noble character, unselfish and without deceit. Especially
remarkable are his spiritual proclivities; he has great taste for
speculative ideas, and he takes even more interest in the essays of the
various schools which occupy themselves with the solution of the
problems of heaven and earth than in his art itself. It is, however,
praiseworthy, this indefatigable yearning after light and divinity; it
is a proof of his taste for the holy, for the religious....

"Yes, Franz Liszt, the pianist of genius, whose playing often appears to
me as the melodious agony of a spectral world, is again here, and giving
concerts which exercise a charm which borders on the fabulous. By his
side all piano players, with the exception of Chopin, the Raphael of the
piano, are as nothing. In fact, with the exception of this last named
artist alone, all the other piano players whom we hear in countless
concerts are only piano players; their only merit is the dexterity with
which they handle the machine of wood and wire. With Liszt, on the
contrary, the people think no more about the 'difficulty overcome'; the
piano disappears, the music is revealed. In this respect has Liszt,
since I last heard him, made the most astonishing progress. With this
advantage he combines now a reposed manner, which I failed to perceive
in him formerly. If, for example, he played a storm on the piano we saw
the lightning flicker about his features; his limbs fluttered as with
the blast of a storm, and his long locks of hair dripped as with real
showers of rain. Now when he plays the most violent storm he seems
exalted above it, like the traveller who stands on the summit of an Alp
while the tempest rages in the valley; the clouds lie deep below him,
the lightning curls like snakes at his feet, but his head is uplifted
smilingly into the pure ether."

The following remarks on Liszt, to be found in Heine's letters to his
friends, are also interesting:

"That such a restless head, driven and perplexed by all the needs and
doctrines of his time, feeling compelled to trouble himself about all
the necessities of humanity, and eagerly sticking his nose into all the
pots in which the good God brews the future--that Franz Liszt can be no
quiet piano player for tranquil townfolks and good-natured night-caps is
self-evident. When he sits down at the piano, and has stroked his hair
back over his forehead several times, and begins to improvise, he often
storms away right madly over the ivory keys, and there rings out a
wilderness of heaven-height thought, amid which here and there the
sweetest flowers diffuse their fragrance, so that one is at once
troubled and beatified, but troubled most."

To another he writes:

"I confess to you, much as I love Liszt, his music does not operate
agreeably upon my mind; the more so that I am a Sunday child, and also
see the spectres which others only hear; since, as you know, at every
tone which the hand strikes upon the keyboard the corresponding tone
figure rises in my mind; in short, since music becomes visible to my
inward eye. My brain still reels at the recollection of the concert in
which I last heard Liszt play. It was in a concert for the unfortunate
Italians, in the hotel of that beautiful, noble, and suffering princess,
who so beautifully represents her material and her spiritual fatherland,
to wit, Italy and Heaven. (You surely have seen her in Paris, that ideal
form, which yet is but the prison in which the holiest angel-soul has
been imprisoned; but this prison is so beautiful that every one lingers
before it as if enchanted, and gazes at it with astonishment.) It was at
a concert for the benefit of the unhappy Italians where I last heard
Liszt, during the past winter, play, I know not what, but I could swear
he varied upon themes from the Apocalypse. At first I could not quite
distinctly see them, the four mystical beasts; I only heard their
voices, especially the roaring of the lion and the screaming of the
eagle. The ox with the book in his hand I saw clearly enough. Best of
all, he played the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There were lists as at a
tournament, and for spectators the risen people, pale as the grave and
trembling, crowded round the immense space. First galloped Satan into
the lists, in black harness, on a milk-white steed. Slowly rode behind
him Death on his pale horse. At last Christ appeared, in golden armour,
on a black horse, and with His holy lance He first thrust Satan to the
ground, and then Death, and the spectators shouted. Tumultuous applause
followed the playing of the valiant Liszt, who left his seat exhausted
and bowed before the ladies. About the lips of the fairest played that
melancholy smile."

Heine also relates:

"On one occasion two Hungarian countesses, to get his snuff-box, threw
each other down upon the ground and fought till they were exhausted!"


CAROLINE BAUER

The lady whose revelations in her Mémoires about various royal and
princely personages furnished the contributors of "Society" papers with
a large amount of "copy" at the time of its publication, writes as
follows concerning Liszt's intimacy with Prince Lichnowsky in 1844:

"I had heard a great deal in Ratibor of mad Prince Felix Lichnowsky, who
lived at his neighbouring country seat, and who furnished an abundant
daily supply for the scandal-mongers of the town. Six years before that
time the prince had quitted the Prussian service, owing to his debts and
other irregularities, and had gone to Spain to evade his unhappy
creditors, and to offer his ward to the Pretender, Don Carlos. Three
years afterward he had returned from Spain with the rank of Carlist
brigadier-general, and now he lived in his hermitage, near Ratibor, by
no means a pious hermit. And then, one evening, shortly before the
commencement of the 'Letzter Waffengang,' when I was already dressed in
my costume, the prince stood before me behind the scanty wings of the
Ratibor stage, to renew his acquaintance with me. He had aged, his
checkered life not having passed over him without leaving traces; but he
was still the same elegant, arrogant libertine he was at Prague, of whom
a journalist wrote: 'Prince Felix Lichnowsky, like Prince Pückler,
belongs to those dandies, roués, lions who attract the attention of the
multitude at any cost by their contempt of men, their triviality,
impudence, liaisons, horses, and duels; a kind of modern Alcibiades,
every dog cutting the tail of another dog.' Within the first five
minutes I learned from the prince's lips: 'My friend Liszt has lately
been living with me at my hermitage for several weeks, and we have led a
very agreeable life together.' Yes, indeed, in Ratibor, the people
related the wildest stories of this pasha life! The following forenoon
the prince invited us to a déjeûner à la fourchette at his 'hermitage,'
as he liked to call it. We inspected the park, which contained many fine
trees; I tried the glorious 'grand' which Liszt had consecrated. But I
was not to rise from the table without having had a new skirmish with my
prince from Prague--preux chevalier. The conversation turned about
Director Nachtigall, and suddenly Lichnowsky said roughly:

"'Just fancy, this Nachtigall had the impudence to call here and invite
my friend Liszt to play upon his miserable Ratibor stage. A Liszt, and
my guest, to play in Ratibor, and with a Nachtigall--unheard of! You may
imagine that I gave this Nachtigall a becoming answer.'

"The bit stuck in my mouth, and, trembling with indignation, I said
sharply:

"'My prince, am I not your guest, too? And do not I play in Ratibor, and
with a Nachtigall? If your friend Liszt had done nothing worse here than
play the piano in Ratibor he would not have degraded himself in any
way.'

"'Ah! the town gossip of Ratibor has your ear, too, I see!' Lichnowsky
said, with a scornful smile. 'But of course we are not going to
quarrel.'"

Caroline Bauer also relates in her Mémoires the following anecdote about
Liszt and the haughty Princess Metternich:

"Liszt had been introduced to the princess and paid her a visit in
Vienna. He was received and ushered into the drawing-room, in which the
princess was holding a lively conversation with another lady. A
condescending nod of the head was responded to the bow of the
world-renowned artist; a gracious movement of the head invited him to be
seated. In vain the proud and spoiled man waited to be introduced to the
visitor, and to have an opportunity of joining in the conversation. The
princess quietly continued to converse with the lady as if Franz Liszt
were not in existence at all, at least not in her salon. At last she
asked him in a cool and off-hand manner:

"'Did you do a good stroke of business at the concert you gave in
Italy?'

"'Princess,' he replied coldly, 'I am a musician, and not a man of
business.'

"The artist bowed stiffly and instantly left.

"Soon after this Prince Metternich proved himself to be as perfect a
gentleman as he was a diplomatist. At Liszt's first concert in Vienna he
went to him and, entering the artist's room, cordially pressed his hands
before everybody, and, with a gracious smile, said softly:

"'I trust you will pardon my wife for a slip of the tongue the other
day; you know what women are!'"


FANNY KEMBLE

Mrs. Kemble, in her chatty book, Records of Later Life, relates a
pleasant incident in September, 1842:

"Our temporary fellowship with Liszt procured for us a delightful
participation in a tribute of admiration from the citizen workmen of
Coblentz, that was what the French call saisissant. We were sitting all
in our hotel drawing-room together, the maestro, as usual, smoking his
long pipe, when a sudden burst of music made us throw open the window
and go out on the balcony, when Liszt was greeted by a magnificent
chorus of nearly two hundred men's voices. They sang to perfection,
each with his small sheet of music and his sheltered light in his hand;
and the performance, which was the only one of the sort I ever heard,
gave a wonderful impression of the musical capacity of the only really
musical nation in the world."

Mrs. Kemble also gives her impression of Liszt at Munich in 1870:

"I had gone to the theatre at Munich, where I was staying, to hear
Wagner's opera of the Rheingold, with my daughter and her husband. We
had already taken our places, when S. exclaimed to me, 'There is Liszt.'
The increased age, the clerical dress had effected but little change in
the striking general appearance, which my daughter (who had never seen
him since 1842, when she was quite a child) recognised immediately. I
went round to his box, and, recalling myself to his memory, begged him
to come to ours, and let me present my daughter to him. He very
good-naturedly did so, and the next day called upon us at our hotel and
sat with us a long time. His conversation on matters of art (Wagner's
music which he and we had listened to the evening before) and literature
was curiously cautious and guarded, and every expression of opinion
given with extreme reserve, instead of the uncompromising fearlessness
of his earlier years; and the Abbé was indeed quite another from the
Liszt of our summer on the Rhine of 1842."


LOLA MONTEZ

The once notorious actress, who, after a series of adventures caused
some uproar at Munich, met Liszt during his travels in Germany, and her
biographer relates how they divided honours at Dresden in 1842.

"Through the management of influential friends an opening was made for
her at the Royal Theatre at Dresden, where she met the celebrated
pianist, Franz Liszt, who was then creating such a furore that when he
dropped his pocket handkerchief it was seized by the ladies and torn
into rags, which they divided among themselves--each being but too happy
to get so much as a scrap which had belonged to the great artist. The
furore created by Lola Montez' appearance at the theatre in Dresden was
quite as great among the gentlemen as was Liszt's among the ladies."

Lola Montez, during the last few years of her life, devoted herself to
lecturing in various European cities, and the following is extracted
from a published one entitled, "The Wits and Women of Paris":

"There was a gifted and fashionable lady (the Countess of Agoult),
herself an accomplished authoress, concerning whom and George Sand a
curious tale is told. They were great friends, and the celebrated
pianist Liszt was the admirer of both. Things went on smoothly for some
time, all couleur de rose, when one fine day Liszt and George Sand
disappeared suddenly from Paris, having taken it into their heads to
make the tour of Switzerland for the summer together. Great was the
indignation of the fair countess at this double desertion; and when they
returned to Paris Madame d'Agoult went to George Sand and immediately
challenged the great writer to a duel, the weapons to be finger-nails,
etc. Poor Liszt ran out of the room and locked himself up in a dark
closet till the deadly affray was ended, and then made his body over in
charge to a friend, to be preserved, as he said, for the remaining
assailant. Madame d'Agoult was married to a bookworm, who cared for
naught else but his library; he did not know even the number of children
he possessed, and so little the old philosopher cared about the matter
that when a stranger came to the house he invariably, at the appearance
of the family, said: 'Allow me to present to you my wife's children';
all this with the blandest smile and most contented air."

Lola Montez also says in her lecture:

"I once asked George Sand which she thought the greatest pianist, Liszt
or Thalberg. She replied, 'Liszt is the greatest, but there is only one
Thalberg. If I were to attempt to give an idea of the difference between
Liszt and Thalberg, I should say that Thalberg is like the clear, placid
flow of a deep, grand river; while Liszt is the same tide foaming and
bubbling and dashing on like a cataract.'"


MRS. ELLET

This lady, in an account of an autumn holiday on the Rhine, relates:

"Liszt, with his wonted kindness, had offered to give a concert in
Cologne, the proceeds of which were to be appropriated to the completion
of the Cathedral; the Rhenish Liedertafel resolved to bring him with due
pomp from the island of Nonnenwerth, near Bonn, where he had been for
some days. A steamboat was hired expressly for this purpose, and
conveyed a numerous company to Nonnenwerth at 11 in the morning. The
Liedertafel then greeted the artist, who stood on the shore, by singing
a morning salute, accompanied by the firing of cannons and loud hurrahs.
They then marched with wind-instruments in advance to the now empty
chapel of the cloister of Nonnenwerth, where they sang, and thence to
Rolandseck, where an elegant dinner was prepared for the company. All
eyes were fixed on Liszt; all hearts were turned to him. He proposed a
toast in honour of his entertainers; and at the conclusion of his speech
observed with justice that nowhere in the world could any club be found
like the Liedertafel in Germany. When the banquet was over they returned
to Nonnenwerth, where a crowd of people from the surrounding country was
assembled. The universal wish to hear Liszt was so evident that he was
induced to send for a piano to be brought into the chapel, and to
gratify the assembly--listening and rapt with delight--by a display of
his transcendent powers. The desolate halls of the chapel once more
resounded with the stir and voices of life. Not even the nuns, we will
venture to say, who in former times used here to offer up prayers to
heaven, were impressed with a deeper sense of the heavenly than was this
somewhat worldly assembly by the magnificent music of Liszt, that seemed
indeed to disclose things beyond this earth. At 7 o'clock the
Liedertafel, with Liszt at their head, marched on their return, and went
on board the steamboat, which was decorated with coloured flags, amid
peals of cannon. It was 9, and quite dark, when they approached their
landing. Rockets were sent up from the boat, and a continued stream of
coloured fireworks, so that as the city rose before them from the bosom
of the Rhine the boat seemed enveloped in a circle of brilliant flame
which threw its reflection far over the waters. Music and hurrahs
greeted our artist on shore; all Cologne was assembled to give him the
splendid welcome which in other times only monarchs received. Slowly the
procession of the Liedertafel moved through the multitude to the hotel,
where again and again shouts and cheers testified the joy of the people
at the arrival of their distinguished guest."


MINASI

Minasi, the once popular painter, who sketched a portrait of Thalberg
during his first sojourn in London, also wrote an account of an
interesting conversation about Liszt:

"The purpose of my requesting an introduction to M. Thalberg was, first,
to be acquainted with a man of his genius; and next, to request the
favour of his sitting for his portrait, executed in a new style with pen
and ink. His total freedom from all ceremony and affectation perfectly
charmed me. He appointed the next morning at 9 for his first sitting;
and in my eagerness to commence my task, and make one of my best
studies, I was in his breakfast room a quarter of an hour before my
time. While he was taking his breakfast I addressed him in my own
language; and when he answered me with a most beautiful accent I was
delighted beyond measure. I felt doubly at home with him. Since then I
find that he is a perfect scholar, possessing, with his finished
pronunciation, a great propriety of conception.

"While I was putting on paper the outlines of his profile (a striking
feature of his face), I inquired whether he was acquainted with my
friend Liszt in Paris. He remarked that Liszt had disgraced himself with
all impartial persons by writing against him with violent acrimony in
the public prints; and which act he himself acknowledged was the result
of professional jealousy. I was the more grieved to hear this, because I
had entertained the highest respect for Liszt, who, as I told Thalberg,
would never have demeaned himself had his father been living; whose last
words to his son were: 'My son, you have always conducted yourself well;
but I fear, after my death, some designing knave will lay hold of and
make a dupe of you. Take care, my dear son, with whom you associate.' In
one instance, Liszt met Thalberg, and proposed that they should play a
duet in public, and that he (Liszt) should appoint the time. Thalberg's
answer was: 'Je n'aime pas d'être accompagné,' which greatly amused the
Parisians. Upon another occasion, Liszt made free to tell Thalberg that
he did not admire his compositions. Thalberg replied: 'Since you do not
like my compositions, Liszt, I do not like yours.'

"To the honour of Liszt, however, it should be stated that, having
called upon Thalberg, he acknowledged his errors, making him a solemn
promise never to offend in the same manner, adding that the cause of his
attack upon him arose from jealousy of his rival's high talents, which
made him the idol of the Parisians, and by whom he was received with the
greatest enthusiasm. Thalberg dismissed the subject with me, by doing
justice to himself as a public performer; at the same time declaring
that Liszt is one of the greatest pianists in Europe, and he concluded
with the following generous admission: 'Nevertheless, after all that
has passed between us, I think Liszt would do anything to oblige me.'"


MACREADY

The once popular novelist, the Countess of Blessington, on May 31, 1840,
invited many distinguished personages to her London house to meet Liszt,
and among those who came were Lord Normanby, Lord Canterbury, Lord
Houghton (then Mr. Monckton Milnes), Chorley, Rubini, Stuart Wortley,
Palgrave Simpson, and Macready, the famous tragedian. Liszt played
several times during the evening, and created an impression on all those
present, especially on Macready, who notes in his diary:

"Liszt, the most marvellous pianist I ever heard; I do not know when I
have been so excited."


AN ANONYMOUS GERMAN ADMIRER

The following recollections of Liszt's first visit to Stuttgart were
published in a periodical many years ago. Though they appeared without
any signature, the author seems to have been on intimate terms with the
great musician:

"Liszt played several times at court, for which he received all possible
distinctions which the King of Wurtemberg could confer upon an artist.
The list of honours was exhausted when the royal princesses wished to
hear once more this magician of the piano keys quite privately in their
own apartments. Liszt, our truly chivalric artist, accepted with delight
such an invitation, expecting less to show himself as an artist than to
express his thanks for the many honours received. It must have been rare
enjoyment for a royal family which recognised in art only a graceful
pastime and a delightful intoxication of the sense, with an agreeable
excitement of the sentiments; for no artist in the world understands
better than Liszt how to survey at a glance the character and the most
hidden recesses in the hearts of his audience. This very fact is the
cause of his wonderful effects, and will secure them to him always. He
played on that occasion Weber's Invitation à la Valse, with his own
effectual, free, final cadenza, his Chromatic Galop (which causes all
nerves to vibrate), and a few of his transcriptions of Schubert's
songs--those genuine pearls, the richness and colouring of which none
can show so well as himself, being a unique and most perfect master of
the art of touch. And, finally, in order to show something at least of
his immense bravura, he played a little concert piece. The most gracious
words of acknowledgment were showered upon him. Liszt, enraptured by the
truly heavenly eyes of one of the princesses, which, rendered still more
beautiful by a singular moisture, were fixed upon him, declared his
happiness in thus being able to express his thanks for the many honours
conferred upon him.

"Among all the princes of Europe, however, there is none so little
inclined to accept of services without remuneration as the King of
Wurtemberg. This is one of the many chivalric traits in the character of
that monarch; no other rewards artists in such royal style. On the next
morning I was with Liszt, each of us smoking a real Havana comfortably
on one end of the sofa. Liszt was telling me of his last visit to court,
when one of its servants entered. He placed a roll of 150 ducats in gold
upon the table, and presenting Liszt with an open receipt, asked him to
sign it. Liszt read: 'Received for playing,' etc. Aloud, and in a tone
of astonishment, Liszt repeated the words, 'Received for my playing?'
and, rising with that peculiar aristocratic grace, he says in a mild,
condescending tone: 'For my playing--am I to sign this document? My
friend, I imagine some clerk of the court treasury has written this
scrawl.' Upon which the servant, interrupting, said that it had been
written by Herr Tagel, Counsellor of Court and Director of the Court
Treasury. 'Well,' said Liszt, 'take back the receipt and money, and
tell' (raising his voice) 'the counsellor from me, that neither king nor
emperor can pay an artist for his playing--only, perchance, for his lost
time, and' (with haughty indignation) 'that the counsellor is a
blockhead if he does not comprehend that. For your trouble, my friend,'
(giving him 5 ducats) 'take this trifle.'"

The writer goes on to say:

"The servant, in utter astonishment, knew not what to answer, and looked
at me. But Liszt's slight figure was erect, his finely cut lips were
compressed, his head was boldly thrown back, so that his thick hair fell
far down on his shoulders; his nostrils were expanding, the lightning of
his keen and brilliant eye was gleaming, his arms were folded, and he
showed all his usual indications of inward commotion. Knowing,
therefore, that Liszt had by that document been touched in his most
sensitive point, and that this was nothing more nor less than a small
battle in his great contest for the social position and rights of
artists--a contest which, when a boy of fifteen years, he had already
taken up--I was well aware of the impossibility of changing his mind for
the present, and therefore remained silent, while the discomfited lackey
retired with many low bows, taking money and scroll with him. Whether he
really delivered the message I know not; but I was still with Liszt when
he reappeared and, laying the money upon the table, gave Liszt a large
sealed letter, which read as follows: 'The undersigned officer of the
Treasury of Court, commanded by His Majesty the King, begs Dr. Liszt to
accept, as a small compensation for his lost time with the princesses,
the sum of 150 ducats.' Liszt handed me the paper, and with a silent
glance I interrogated him in return. It is an old fact that the soul is
always most clearly reflected in homely features, and I distinctly read
in his face reconciliation and the kindest feeling again. He sat down
and wrote on a scrap of paper with pencil: 'Received from the Royal
Treasury 150 ducats--Franz Liszt,' and gave it to the servant very
politely, accompanied by another rich gift. There was never afterward
any further allusion to the affair.

"The price of admission to Liszt's concerts was unusually high, so that
they could only be frequented by the wealthier classes. At a party the
conversation fell upon the subject, and it was regretted that for such a
reason many teachers and scholars, in spite of their great anxiety to
hear the great master, were prevented from doing so. I told Liszt this,
and he answered: 'Well, arrange a concert for them, only charge as much
or as little as you think proper, and let me know when and what I shall
play. Immediately a committee was formed, and a concert for teachers and
scholars only arranged, to which the price of admission amounted to only
18 kreutzers (about sixpence). Quantities of tickets were sold, and
immense galleries had to be erected in the large hall. Liszt viewed with
delight the juvenile multitude, whose enthusiasm knew no bounds, and I
never heard him play more beautifully. With a delighted heart he stood
amid a shower of flowers which thousands of little hands were strewing
for him, and when at last six veritable little angels approached in
order to thank him, he embraced them with tears in his eyes--not heeding
the fact that the grown-up people were appropriating his gloves,
handkerchief, and all they could get hold of, tearing them up into a
thousand bits to keep in remembrance of him. On the next morning we
brought him the proceeds of the concert (nearly 1,000 florins). He
declared that he had felt happier at that concert than ever before, and
that nothing could induce him to accept the money, with which the
committee might do as they pleased, and if, after so much delight, they
did not wish really to hurt his feelings he would beg of them never to
mention that money to him again. It was appropriated to a Liszt Fund,
which will continue to exist forever, and a poor teacher's son, on going
to college, is destined to receive the first interest.

"Liszt was once at my house, when a woman was announced to whom I was in
the habit of giving quarterly a certain sum for her support. It being a
few days before the usual time, she gave as an excuse (it was November)
the hard times. While providing for her I told Liszt in an under-tone
that she was an honest but very indigent widow of a painter, deceased in
his prime, to whom an number of brother artists were giving regular
contributions in order to enable her to get along with her two small
children. I confess, while telling him this, I hoped that Liszt, whose
liberality and willingness to do good had almost become proverbial,
would ask me to add something in his name, and was, therefore, surprised
to see him apparently indifferent, for he answered nothing and continued
looking down in silence. After a few days, however, the widow
reappeared, her heart overflowing with thankfulness and her eyes filled
with tears of joy, for she and her children had at the expense of a man
whose name she was not permitted to know, received beautiful and new
winter clothing, while kitchen and cellar had been stored with every
necessary for the coming winter. Now all this had been arranged by the
landlady of a certain hotel, at which Liszt was then stopping. A piano
maker, who had not the means to erect a factory, needed but to convince
Liszt of his rare ability, and immediately he had at his command over
80,000 frs. This man is now dead, and Liszt never had received a
farthing of that money back."


GEORGE ELIOT

The English novelist visited Liszt at Weimar in 1854 and records some
pleasing recollections:

"About the middle of September the theatre opened. We went to hear
Ernani. Liszt looked splendid as he conducted the opera. The grand
outline of his face and floating hair was seen to advantage, as
they were thrown into the dark relief by the stage lamps. Liszt's
conversation is charming. I never met a person whose manner of telling a
story was so piquant. The last evening but one that he called on us,
wishing to express his pleasure in G----'s article about him, he very
ingeniously conveyed that expression in a story about Spontini and
Berlioz. Spontini visited Paris while Liszt was living there and
haunted the opera--a stiff, self-important personage, with high shirt
collars--the least attractive individual imaginable. Liszt turned up his
own collars and swelled out his person, so as to give us a vivid idea of
the man. Every one would have been glad to get out of Spontini's way;
indeed, elsewhere 'on feignait de le croire mort'; but at Paris, as he
was a member of the Institute, it was necessary to recognise his
existence.

"Liszt met him at Erard's more than once. On one of these occasions
Liszt observed to him that Berlioz was a great admirer of his
(Spontini), whereupon Spontini burst into a terrible invective against
Berlioz as a man who, with the like of him, was ruining art, etc.
Shortly after the Vestale was performed and forthwith appeared an
enthusiastic article by Berlioz on Spontini's music. The next time Liszt
met him of the high collars he said: 'You see I was not wrong in what I
said about Berlioz's admiration of you.' Spontini swelled in his collars
and replied, 'Monsieur, Berlioz a du talent comme critique.' Liszt's
replies were always felicitous and characteristic. Talking of Madame
d'Agoult he told us that when her novel, Nélida, appeared in which Liszt
himself is pilloried as a delinquent, he asked her, 'Mais pourquoi
avez-vous tellement maltraité ce pauvre Lehmann?' The first time we were
asked to breakfast at his house, the Altenburg, we were shown into the
garden, where in a salon formed by the overarching trees déjeûner
was sent out. We found Hoffmann von Fallersleben, the lyric poet,
Dr. Schade, a Gelehrter, and Cornelius. Presently came a Herr or
Doctor Raff, a musician, who had recently published a volume called
Wagnerfrage. Soon after we were joined by Liszt and the Princess
Marie, an elegant, gentle-looking girl of seventeen, and at last by
the Princess Wittgenstein, with her nephew, Prince Eugene, and a young
French artist, a pupil of Scheffer.

"The princess was tastefully dressed in a morning robe of some
semi-transparent white material, lined with orange colour, which formed
the bordering and ornament of the sleeves, a black lace jacket and a
piquant cap on the summit of her comb, and trimmed with violet colour.
When the cigars came, Hoffmann was requested to read some of his poetry,
and he gave us a bacchanalian poem with great spirit. I sat next to
Liszt, and my great delight was in watching him and in observing the
sweetness of his expression. Genius, benevolence, and tenderness beam
from his whole countenance, and his manners are in perfect harmony with
it. Then came the thing I had longed for--his playing. I sat near him so
that I could see both his hands and face. For the first time in my life
I beheld real inspiration--for the first time I heard the true tones of
the piano. He played one of his own compositions, one of a series of
religious fantasies. There was nothing strange or excessive about his
manner. His manipulation of the instrument was quiet and easy, and his
face was simply grand--the lips compressed and the head thrown a little
backward. When the music expressed quiet rapture or devotion a smile
flitted over his features; when it was triumphant the nostrils dilated.
There was nothing petty or egotistic to mar the picture. Why did not
Scheffer paint him thus, instead of representing him as one of the three
Magi? But it just occurs to me that Scheffer's idea was a sublime one.
There are the two aged men who have spent their lives in trying to
unravel the destinies of the world, and who are looking for the
Deliverer--for the light from on high. Their young fellow seeker, having
the fresh inspiration of early life, is the first to discern the herald
star, and his ecstasy reveals it to his companions. In this young Magi
Scheffer has given a portrait of Liszt; but even here, where he might be
expected to idealise unrestrainedly, he falls short of the original. It
is curious that Liszt's face is the type that one sees in all Scheffer's
pictures--at least in all I have seen.

"In a little room which terminates the suite at the Altenburg there is a
portrait of Liszt, also by Scheffer--the same of which the engraving is
familiar to every one. This little room is filled with memorials of
Liszt's triumphs and the worship his divine talent has won. It was
arranged for him by the princess, in conjunction with the Arnims, in
honour of his birthday. There is a medallion of him by Schwanthaler, a
bust by an Italian artist, also a medallion by Rietschl--very fine--and
cabinets full of jewels and precious things--the gifts of the great. In
the music salon stand Beethoven's and Mozart's pianos. Beethoven's was a
present from Broadwood, and has a Latin inscription intimating that it
was presented as a tribute to his illustrious genius. One evening Liszt
came to dine with us at the Erbprinz, and introduced M. Rubinstein, a
young Russian, who is about to have an opera of his performed at
Weimar."


AN ANONYMOUS LADY ADMIRER

This lady relates a touching incident about Liszt and a young music
mistress:

"Liszt was still at Weimar, and no one could venture to encroach upon
his scant leisure by a letter of introduction. I saw him constantly at
the mid-day table d'hôte. His strange, impressive figure as he sat at
the head of the table was a sight to remember; the brilliant eyes that
flashed like diamonds, the long hair, in those days only iron gray,
the sensitive mouth, the extraordinary play of expression, once
seen, could never fade from memory. Everything, indeed, about him was
phenomenal--physiognomy, appearance, mental gifts; last, but not least,
amiability of character and an almost morbid terror of inflicting pain.
This characteristic, of course, led him into many embarrassments, at the
same time into the committal of thousands of kind actions; often at the
sacrifice of time, peace of mind, and, without doubt, intellectual
achievements.

"As I proposed to spend some months at Weimar, I engaged a music
mistress, one of Liszt's former pupils, whom I will call Fräulein Marie.
'I will myself introduce you to the Herr Doctor,' she said. 'To his
pupils he refuses nothing.' I must add that Fräulein Marie was in better
circumstances than most German teachers of music. She had, I believe,
some small means of her own, and belonged to a very well-to-do family.
The poor girl, who was, as I soon found out, desperately in love with
her master, got up a charming little fête champêtre in his honour and my
own. A carriage was ordered, picnic baskets packed, and one brilliant
summer afternoon hostess and guests started for Tieffurt. The party
consisted of Liszt, Fräulein Marie, a violinist of the other sex, a
young lady pianist from a neighbouring town, and myself. Liszt's
geniality and readiness to enter into the spirit of the occasion were
delightful to witness. The places of honour were assigned to the English
stranger and the violinist, Liszt insisting on seating a pupil on
each side, on the opposite seat of the carriage, not in the least
disconcerted by such narrow accommodation. Thus, chatting and laughing,
all of us in holiday mood, we reached the pretty park and chateau of
Tieffurt.

"As the evening was cool, we supped inside the little restaurant, and
here a grievous disappointment awaited our hostess. Tieffurt is
celebrated for its trout; indeed this delicacy is as much an attraction
to many visitors as its literary and artistic associations. But
although trout had been ordered by letter beforehand none was
forthcoming wherewith to fête the Maestro. Fräulein Marie was in tears.
Liszt's gaiety and affection, however, put everything right. He cut
brown bread and butter for the two girls, and made them little
sandwiches with the excellent cold wurst. 'Ah, das schmeckt so gut,'
they cried, as they thanked him adoringly. He told stories; he made the
rest do the same. 'Erzählen von Erfurt' (tell us Erfurt news), he said
to the young lady guest. The moments passed all too rapidly. Then in the
clear delicious twilight we drove back to Weimar, his pupils kissing his
hands reverentially as he quitted us. So far all had been bright,
joyous, transparent; but I soon discovered that this charming girl, who
possessed the vivacity of a French woman, combined with the schwärmerei
or sentimentality of a Teutonic maiden, was rendered deeply unhappy by
her love for Liszt.

"He was at that time enmeshed in the toils of another and far less
guileless passion. Whilst to his gentle and innocent pupil he could
accord only the affection of a loving and sympathetic friend and master,
there were other women about him. Fräulein Marie's hapless sentiment
could never discredit either herself or its object, but it occasioned a
good deal of embarrassment and wretchedness, as we shall see. A few days
after this gay al fresco tea she came to me in great distress, begging
me forthwith to deliver a little note into the master's hand. I was
reluctantly obliged to delegate the delicate mission to a hired
messenger. Ill would it have become a stranger to interfere in these
imbroglios. Moreover, at that very time Liszt had, as I have hinted, a
love affair on his hands--had, in fact, momentarily succumbed to the
influence of one of those women who were his evil genius. Just ten years
later I revisited Weimar, and my first inquiry of common friends was
after my sweet young music mistress. 'Fräulein Marie! Alas!' replied my
informant, 'the poor girl has long been in a maison de santé.' Her love
for Liszt ended in loss of reason."


LADY BLANCHE MURPHY

Lady Blanche gives an interesting account of Liszt's sojourn at the
Monastery on Monte Mario in 1862, shortly after he became an abbé of the
Roman Catholic Church. After describing the scenery of the place she
says: "Here Liszt had taken up his abode, renting two bare white-walled
rooms for the summer, where he looked far more at home than among the
splendours of the prelate's reception room or the feminine elegancies of
the princess' boudoir. He seemed happier, too--more cheerful, and
light-hearted. He said he meant to be a hermit this summer, and the good
Dominican lay brother attended to all his creature comforts, while he
could solace himself by hearing the daily mass said in the early
morning in the little chapel, into which he could step at any moment.
His piano stood in one corner of his little cell, his writing table was
piled with books and music, and besides these there was nothing of
interest in the room. The window looked out upon one of the most
glorious views of the world. Here Liszt seemed quite another being. He
talked gaily, and suddenly started up, volunteering to play for us--a
thing, many of his best friends said, they had not known him do for
years.

"It was all his own, yet, though peculiar, the sound did not resemble
the sobbing music, the weird chords, his fingers had drawn forth from
the keys as he played among conventional people in conventional evening
gatherings. There was a freshness, a springiness, in to-day's
performance which suited the place and hour, and that visit to the
hermit-artist was indeed a fitting leave-taking for us who were so
entranced with his pure, strong genius. Still, the artist had not
forgotten to initiate us into one of the secrets of his simple retreat.
The Dominicans of some remote mountain convent had kindly sent him a
present of some wonderful liqueur--one of those impossible beverages
associated in one's mind with Hebe's golden cups of flowing nectar,
rather than with any commonplace drink. Liszt insisted upon our tasting
this: green Chartreuse was nothing to it and we scarcely did more than
taste. And this was the last time we saw him, this king-artist. It was a
great privilege, and perhaps he, of all living artists we had come
across, is the only one who could not disappoint one's ideal of him."


KARL KIRKENBUHL

This author, in his Federzeichnungen aus Rom, describes a visit to Liszt
in 1867:

"The building in which Liszt resides in Rome is of unpretending
appearance; it is, and fancy may have pictured such a place as Liszt's
'Sans Souci,' a melancholy, plain little monastery. But by its position
this quiet abode is so favoured that probably few homes in the wide
world can be compared to it. Situated upon the old Via Sacra, it is the
nearest neighbour of the Forum Romanum, while its windows look toward
the Capitol, the ruins of the Palatine Palace and the Colosseum. In such
a situation a life of contemplation is forced upon one. I mounted a few
steps leading to the open door of the monastery, and all at once grew
uncertain what to do, for I saw before me a handsome staircase adorned
with pillars, such as I should not have expected from the poor exterior
of the building. Had not a notice in the form of a visiting-card over
the large door at the top of the stairs met my eye, I should have
considered it necessary to make further inquiries. As it was, however, I
was able to gain from the card itself the information I needed. I
approached and read: 'L'Abbé Franz Liszt.' So, really an Abbé! A
visiting-card half supplies the place of an autopsy. After I arranged
my necktie and pulled on my gloves more tightly, I courageously grasped
the green cord that summoned the porter. Two servants, not in tail coat,
it is true, but clad in irreproachable black, received me; one hastened
to carry in my card, while the other helped me off with my topcoat.

"My ideas of a genuine monkish life suffered a rude shock. Wherefore two
servants before the cell of a monk; or if attendant spirits, why were
they not, according to monastic rules, simply lay brothers?

"But I had not long to puzzle my brains with these obtrusive questions,
for I was presently plunged into still greater mental confusion. The
messenger who had gone to announce me returned and ushered me in with a
notification that Signor Abbate requested me to await a moment in--the
drawing-room! Yes, actually a drawing-room, in the most elegant
acceptation of the word. It wanted nothing either of the requisites for
northern comfort or of the contrivances demanded by the climate of Rome,
though glaring luxury appeared scrupulously avoided.

"I stood then in the saloon of the Commendatore Liszt! Abbé and
Commander! The correct employment of the domestic titles rendered the
first interview much more easy than it otherwise would have been. I was
by no means so inquisitorial in my survey as to be able to give a Walter
Scott-like description of Liszt's salon. Darkness, moreover, prevailed
in the large apartment, as, according to Italian usage and necessity,
the window shutters were closed against the rays of the morning sun. I
was attracted by the album table in the middle of the apartment more
than aught else. Upon it lay chiefly Italian works of a religious nature
in votive bindings. That Liszt here, too, as Abbate, lives in the midst
of creative spirits is proved by these dedicatory offerings.

"The door was opened and the well-known artistic figure advanced in a
friendly manner toward me. That the skilful fingers of the great pianist
pressed the hand of me, a simple writer, is a fact, which, for the
completeness of my narrative, must not remain unmentioned. The first and
most immediate impression produced on me by Liszt's appearance was that
of surprising youthfulness. Even the unmistakably grizzling, though
still thick, long, flowing hair, which the scissors of the tonsure have
not dared to touch, detracts but little from the heart entrancing charm
of his unusual individuality. Of fretfulness, satiety, monkish
abnegation, and so on, there is not a trace to be detected in the
feature of Liszt's interesting and characteristic head. And just as
little as we find Liszt in a monk's cell do we find him in a monk's
cowl. The black soutane sits no less elegantly on him than, in its time,
the dress coat. Those who look upon Liszt as a riddle will most
decidedly not find the solution of it in his outward appearance.

"After interchanging a few words of greeting, we proceeded to the
workroom. After compelling me to take an arm-chair, Liszt seated himself
at the large writing-table, apologising to me by stating that he had a
letter to despatch in a hurry. Upon this, too, lay a great many things,
nearly all pertaining more to the Abbé than the artist. But neatly
written sheets of music showed that musical production formed part of
the master's daily occupations. The comfortable room bore generally the
unmistakable stamp of a room for study, of an artist's workshop. The
letter and the address were quickly finished, and handed to the
attendant to seal and transmit. I mentioned the report connecting his
approaching journey with the grand festival of joy and peace, the
Coronation in Hungary. The popular maestro took this opportunity of
giving me a detailed history of his Coronation Mass. He said that in the
Prince-Primate Scitovsky he had possessed a most kind patron. In course
of a joyous repast, as on many other occasions, the Prelate had given
lively and hopeful utterance to the wish of his heart that he might yet
be able to place the crown upon the head of his beloved king, and at the
same time he called upon Liszt, in an unusually flattering and cordial
manner, to compose the Coronation Mass, but it must be short, very
short, as the entire ceremony would take about six hours.

"Liszt was unable to resist this amiable request, he said, and, drinking
a glass of fiery Tokay, gave a promise that he would endeavour to
produce some 'Essence of Tokay.' After his return to Rome he immediately
set about the sketch. But the prospect of the desired agreement between
the Emperor and the Hungarians had, meanwhile, become overcast, and his
work remained a mere sketch. Some months ago, however, he was pressed by
his Hungarian friends to proceed, and so he finished the mass. It was a
question whether it would be performed on the day of the Coronation,
since there was a condition that the monarch should bring his own
orchestra with him. Liszt said he was perfectly neutral, and in no way
wished to run counter to the just ambition of others; for, however the
Abbé might be decried as ambitious, he added, with a smile, he was not
so after all."

       *       *       *       *       *

In course of this open-hearted statement Liszt touched upon his
relations to the present Prince-Primate of Hungary, and let fall a
remark which is the more interesting because it throws a light upon his
position in and toward Rome. The Abbé-Maestro said then that he had
entered on a correspondence regarding his retirement from the diocese of
the Prince of the Church, who had in the interim been raised to the
dignity of Primate, and had every reason to believe that he enjoyed the
Prelate's favour. He needed, however, a special letter of dismissal in
order to be received into the personal lists of the Roman clergy; to
this Liszt remarked, parenthetically, were limited all his clerical
qualities.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I do not know more exactly what rights and duties are connected with
the insertion of his name in the catalogue of the Roman clergy, though
it appears that the nexus into which Liszt has entered toward the
clerical world is rather an outward than a deep and inward one.

"The cigar, which did not look, between the lips of the great musician,
as if it had been treated with particular gentleness or care, had gone
out. Liszt got up to reach the matches. While he was again lighting the
narcotic weed he directed my attention to the pretty statuette of St.
Elisabeth, which had attracted my gaze when I entered the room. It
represents the kind-hearted Landgravine at the moment the miracle of
roses is taking place. It required no great power of combination to
connect this graceful form, as an ovational gift, with Liszt's oratorio
of St. Elisabeth. The popular master named the German hand which had
fashioned the marble and offered it to him. He was thus led to speak of
his oratorio, and of the Wartburg Festival, for which it was originally
intended, and at which it was given, but not until after Hungary had
enjoyed the first performance. He spoke also of what he had done at the
Grand Ducal Court. I was peculiarly touched by his reminiscences, how he
had entered the service of a German prince, how he had 'knocked about'
for several years at Weimar, 'without doing anything worth naming.' how
his Prince had respected and distinguished him, and had probably never
suspected that a permanent sojourn could result from Liszt's trip to
Rome.

"Here, where he moved in only a small circle--said Liszt, with marked
emphasis, and again referring to the importance Rome possessed for
him--here he found the long desired leisure for work. His Elisabeth, he
said, had here sprung into existence, and also his oratorio of Petrus.
He had, moreover, he remarked, notions which it would take him three
years of thorough hard work to carry out.

"He certainly knew, the Abbé-Maestro continued, referring to his
art-gospel, that here and there things which in other places had met
with some response had been hissed, but he had no more hope for applause
than he feared censure. He followed, he said, the path he considered the
right one, and could say that he had consistently pursued the direction
he had once taken. The only rule he adopted in the production of his
works, as far as he had full power, was that of not compromising his
friends or of exposing them to the disfavour of the public. Solely for
this reason he had thought it incumbent on him, for instance, to refuse
to send a highly esteemed colleague the score of his Elisabeth, in spite
of two applications.

"I expressed to my friendly host my delight at his good health and
vigour, prognosticating a long continuance of fruitful activity. 'Oh!
yes, I am quite satisfied with my state of health,' answered the master,
'though my legs will no longer render me their old service.' At the same
time, in an access of boisterous merriment, he gave the upper part of
his right thigh so hard a slap that I could not consider his regret
particularly sincere.

"Another of my remarks was directed to the incomparable site of his
abode, which alone might make a middling poet produce great epic or
elegiac poetry. 'I live quietly and agreeably,' was the reply, 'both
here and at Monte Mario, where there are a few rooms at my service, with
a splendid view over the city, the Tiber and the hills.' And not to
remain my debtor for the ocular proof of what he said, at least as far
as regarded his town residence, he opened a window and gazed silently
with me on the overpowering seriousness of the ruined site.

"The amiable maestro then conducted me rapidly through two smaller
rooms, one of which was his simple bed-chamber, to a wooden outhouse
with a small window, through which were to be seen the Colosseum, in all
its gigantic proportions, and the triumphal arch of Constantine close
by, overtowered by Mount Coelius, now silent.

"'A splendid balcony might be erected here,' observed Liszt, 'but the
poor Franciscan monk has no money for such a purpose!'

"Having returned to his study, I thought the time had arrived for
bringing my first visit to a termination. The thanks conveyed in my
words on taking leave were warm and sincere. I carried with me out of
that quiet dwelling the conviction that in Liszt the true artist far
outweighs the virtuoso and the monk, and that only such persons as
formerly snobbishly shook their heads because Winkelmann took service
and found an asylum with a cardinal, can scoff and make small jokes on
Liszt's cell and monkish cowl."


B. W. H.

An American lady who signs herself "B. W. H.," and wrote some
reminiscences of the great musician at Weimar in 1877, calls her
contribution An Hour Passed with Liszt:

"How much more some of us get than we deserve! A pleasure has come to us
unsought. It came knocking at our door seeking entrance and we simply
did not turn it away. It happened in this fashion: A friend had been
visiting Liszt in Weimar and happened to mention us to the great master,
who promised us a gracious reception should we ever appear there. To
Weimar then we came, and the gracious reception we certainly had, to our
satisfaction and lasting remembrance.

"After sending our cards, and receiving permission to present ourselves
at an appointed and early hour, we drove to the small, cosy house
occupied by Liszt when here, on the outskirts of the garden of
the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and were ushered by his Italian valet into a
comfortable, cosy, home-like apartment, where we sat awaiting the great
man's appearance. Wide casements opened upon a stretch of lawn and noble
old trees; easy-chairs and writing-tables; MS. music, with the pen lying
carelessly beside it; masses of music piled up on the floor, a row of
books there, too; a grand piano and an upright one; a low dish of roses
on the table; a carpet, which is not taken for granted here as with
us--altogether the easy, friendly look of a cottage drawing-room at
home, where people have a happy use of pleasant things.

"He entered the room after a few minutes and greeted us with a charming
amiability, for which we inwardly blessed the absent friend. Of course
everybody knows how he looks--tall, thin, with long white hair; a long,
black, robe-like coat, being an abbé; long, slight, sensitive hands; a
manner used to courts, and a smile and grace rare in a man approaching
seventy. He spoke of Anna Mehlig, and of several young artists just
beginning their career, whom we personally know. Very graciously he
mentioned Miss Cecilia Gaul, of Baltimore; spoke kindly of Miss Anna
Bock, one of the youngest and most diligent of artists, and most
forcibly perhaps of Carl Hermann, like Anna Mehlig, a pupil in the
Stuttgart Conservatory, 'There is something in the young man,' he said
with emphasis. So he chatted in the most genial way of things great and
small, as if he were not one of the world's geniuses, and we two little
insignificant nobodies sitting before him, overcome with a consciousness
of his greatness and our nothingness, yet quite happy and at ease, as
every one must be who comes within the sphere of his gracious
kindliness.

"Suddenly he rose and went to his writing-table, and, with one of his
long, sweet smiles, so attractive in a man of his age--but why shouldn't
a man know how to smile long, sweet smiles who has had innumerable
thrilling romantic experiences with the sex that has always adored
him?--he took a bunch of roses from a glass on his table and brought it
to us. Whether to kiss his hand or fall on our knees we did not quite
know; but, America being less given than many lands to emotional
demonstration, we smiled back with composure, and appeared, no doubt, as
if we were accustomed from earliest youth to distinguished marks of
favour from the world's great ones.

"But the truth is we were not. And these roses which stood on Liszt's
writing-table by his MS. music, presented by the hand that has made him
famous, are already pressing and will be kept among our penates, except
one, perhaps, that will be distributed leaf by leaf to hero-worshipping
friends, with date and appropriate inscriptions on the sheet where it
rests. How amiable he was, indeed! The roses were much, but something
was to come. The Meister played to us. For this we had not even dared to
hope during our first visit. No one, of course, ever asks him to play,
and whether he does or not depends wholly on his mood. It was beautiful
to sit there close by him, the soft lawns and trees, framed by the open
casement, making a background for the tall figure, the long, peculiar
hands wandering over the keys, the face full of intellect and power. And
how he smiles as he plays! We fancied at first in our own simplicity
that he was smiling at us, but later it seemed merely the music in his
soul illuminating his countenance. His whole face changes and gleams,
and grows majestic, revealing the master-spirit as his hands caress
while they master the keys. With harrowing experiences of the difficulty
of Liszt's compositions, we anticipated, as he began, something that
would thunder and crash and teach us what pigmies we were; but as an
exquisitely soft melody filled the room, and tones came like whispers to
our hearts, and a theme drawn with a tender, magical touch brought
pictures and dreams of the past before us, we actually forgot where we
were, forgot that the white-haired man was the famous Liszt, forgot to
speak as the last faint chord died away, and sat in utter silence, quite
lost to our surroundings, with unseeing eyes gazing out through the
casement.

"At last he rose, took our hands kindly, and said, 'That is how I play
when I am suffering from a cold as at present.' We asked if he had been
improvising, or if what he played was already printed. 'It was only a
little nocturne,' he said. 'It sounded like a sweet remembrance.' 'And
was that,' he replied cordially. Then fearing to disturb him too long,
and feeling we had been crowned with favours, we made our adieux,
receiving a kind invitation to come the following day and hear the young
artists who cluster around him here, some of whom he informed us played
'famos.' And after we had left him he followed us out to the stairway to
repeat his invitation and say another gracious word or two. And we went
off to drive through Weimar, and only half observed its pleasant homely
streets, its flat, uninteresting, yet friendly aspect, its really
charming park--so Lisztified we were, as a friend calls our state of
mind. The place has, indeed, little to charm the stranger now, except
the memories of Goethe and Schiller and all the famous literary stars
who once made it glorious, and the presence of Liszt."

The lives of musicians are, in general, so devoid of extraordinary
incident, that the relation of them is calculated more to instruct than
amuse.

That of Liszt, however, was an exception to the rule. His adventures
seemed to have been so many and so various as almost to encourage a
belief that in describing them his literary admirers often used the pen
of romance.

The last letter that Liszt indited with his own pen is addressed to Frau
Sofie Menter, and is dated Bayreuth, July 3, 1886. What proved to be
almost a death-bed epistle runs as follows:

"To-morrow, after the religious marriage of my granddaughter Daniela von
Bülow to Professor Henry Thode (art-historian), I betake myself to my
excellent friends the Munkacsys, Château Colpach, Grand Duchy of
Luxemburg. On the 20th July I shall be back here again for the first 7-8
performances of the Festspiel; then alas! I must put myself under the,
to me, very disagreeable cure at Kissingen, and in September an
operation for the eyes is impending for me with Gräfe at Halle. For a
month past I have been quite unable to read, and almost unable to write,
with much labour, a couple of lines. Two secretaries kindly help me by
reading to me and writing letters at my dictation. How delightful it
would be to me, dear friend, to visit you at your fairy castle at Itter!
But I do not see any opportunity of doing so at present. Perhaps you
will come to Bayreuth, where, from July 20th to the 7th August, will be
staying your sincere friend F. Liszt."

The master was spared the infliction of the cure he dreaded at
Kissingen, and Frau Menter did not meet him at Bayreuth, for on July
31st Liszt died, what to him must have been a pleasant death, after
witnessing the greatest work of the poet-composer whom he had done so
much to befriend--Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.


ERNEST LEGOUVÉ

"I am about to make a very bold profession of faith--I adore the piano!
All the jests at its expense, all the anathemas that are heaped upon it,
are as revolting to me as so many acts of ingratitude, I might say as so
many absurdities.

"To me the piano is one of the domestic lares, one of our household
gods. It is, thanks to it, and it alone, that we have for ourselves and
in our homes the most poetic and the most personal of all the
arts--music. What is it that brings into our dwellings an echo of the
Conservatory concerts? What is it that gives us the opera at our own
firesides? What is it that unites four, five or six harmonious voices in
the interpretation of a masterpiece of vocal music, as the trio of Don
Juan, the quartet of Moses, or the finale of the Barber of Seville? The
piano, and the piano alone. Were the piano to be abolished how could you
have the exquisite joy of hearing Faure in your own chamber? I say
Faure, but I might say Taffanel, Gillet, all the instrumentalists, for
all instruments are its tributaries. They all have need of it; it alone
needs none.

"Auber said to me one day: 'What I admire, perhaps, most in Beethoven
are some of his sonatas, because in them his thought shows clearly in
all its pure beauty, unencumbered by the ornaments of orchestral
riches.' But for what instrument were the sonatas of Beethoven
composed? For the piano. I cannot forget that the entire work of Chopin
was written for the piano. Besides, it is the confidant of the man of
genius, of all that he does not write. Ah! if the piano of Weber might
repeat what the author of Der Freischütz has spoken to it alone! And,
greatest superiority of all, the piano is of all the instruments the
only one that is progressive.

"A Stradivarius and an Amati remain superior to all the violins of
to-day, and it is not certain that the horn, the flute and the hautbois
have not lost as much as they have gained with all the present
superabundance of keys and pistons. The piano only has always gained in
its transformations, and every one of its enlargements, adding something
to its power of expression, has enabled it to improve even the
interpretation of the old masters.

"One day when Thalberg was playing at my home a sonata of Mozart on a
Pleyel piano, Berlioz said to me: 'Ah! if Mozart were with us, he would
hear his admirable andante as he sung it to himself in his breast!'

"One of my most precious musical memories is, then, to have not only
known but to have associated with and to have enjoyed in intimacy the
three great triumvirs of the piano--Liszt, Thalberg, and Chopin. The
arrival of Thalberg in Paris was a revelation, I could willingly say a
revolution. I know only Paganini, whose appearance produced the same
mélange of enthusiasm and astonishment. Both excited the same feeling
that one experiences in the presence of the unknown, the mysterious, the
unexplainable. I attended Paganini's first concert (it was at the Opera)
in company with De Beriot. De Beriot held in his hand a copy of the
piece that Paganini was to play. 'This man is a charlatan,' he said to
me, 'he cannot execute what is printed here, because it is not
executable.' Paganini began. I listened to the music and watched De
Beriot attentively. All at once he exclaimed to himself, 'Ah! the
rascal, I understand! He has modified the tuning of his instrument.'

"There was a like surprise at Thalberg's first concert. It was at the
Théâtre des Italiens, in the daytime, in the public foyer. I attended in
company with Julius Benedict, who was, it was said, Weber's only piano
pupil. I shall never forget his stupefaction, his amazement. Leaning
feverishly toward the instrument, to which we were very near, his eyes
fastened upon those fingers that seemed to him like so many magicians,
he could hardly believe his eyes or his ears. For him, as De Beriot,
there had been in the printed works of Thalberg something which he could
not explain. Only the secret this time was not in the instrument, but in
the performer. It was not this time the strings that were changed, it
was the fingers.

"A new method of fingering enabled Thalberg to cause the piano to
express what it had never expressed before. Benedict's emotion was all
the more intense that the poor fellow chanced to be in a very unique
frame of mind and heart. His young wife, whom he worshipped, had
departed that morning to join her parents at Naples. The separation was
to last only for less than six months, but he was profoundly sad, and it
was to distract his mind that I had taken him to the concert. But once
there, there took place in him the strangest amalgamation of the husband
and the pianist. At once despairing and enchanted, he reminded me of the
man in Rabelais who, hearing the church bells ring out, at almost the
same moment, the baptism of his son and the funeral service of his wife,
wept with one eye and laughed with the other. Benedict would break forth
into exclamations both comical and touching. He went from his wife to
Thalberg and from Thalberg to his wife. 'Ah! dear Adele, this is
frightful!' he would exclaim in one breath, and with the next, 'Ah! dear
Thalberg, that is delightful!' I have still ringing in my ears the
original duo that he sang that day to himself.

"Thalberg's triumph irritated Liszt profoundly. It was not envy. He was
incapable of any low sentiment. His was the rage of a dethroned king. He
called Thalberg's school disdainfully the Thumb school. But he was not a
man to yield his place without defending himself, and there ensued
between them a strife that was all the more striking that the antithesis
between the two men was as great as the difference in their talents.

"Liszt's attitude at the piano, like that of a pythoness, has been
remarked again and again. Constantly tossing back his long hair, his
lips quivering, his nostrils palpitating, he swept the auditorium with
the glance of a smiling master. He had some little trick of the comedian
in his manner, but he was not that. He was a Hungarian; a Hungarian in
two aspects, at once Magyar and Tzigane. True son of the race that
dances to the clanking of its spurs. His countrymen understood him well
when they sent him as a testimonial of honour an enormous sabre.

"There was nothing of the kind about Thalberg. He was the gentleman
artist, a perfect union of talent and propriety. He seemed to have taken
it for his rule to be the exact opposite of his rival. He entered
noiselessly; I might almost say without displacing the air. After a
dignified greeting that seemed a trifle cold in manner, he seated
himself at the piano as though upon an ordinary chair. The piece began,
not a gesture, not a change of countenance! not a glance toward the
audience! If the applause was enthusiastic, a respectful inclination of
the head was his only response. His emotion, which was very profound, as
I have had more than one proof, betrayed itself only by a violent rush
of blood to the head, colouring his ears, his face and his neck. Liszt
seemed seized with inspiration from the beginning; with the first note
he gave himself up to his talent without reserve, as prodigals throw
their money from the window without counting it, and however long was
the piece his inspired fervour never flagged.

"Thalberg began slowly, quietly, calmly, but with a calm that thrilled.
Under those notes so seemingly tranquil one felt the coming storm.
Little by little the movement quickened, the expression became more
accentuated, and by a series of gradual crescendos he held one
breathless until a final explosion swept the audience with an emotion
indescribable.

"I had the rare good fortune to hear these two great artists on the same
day, in the same salon, at an interval of a quarter of an hour, at a
concert given by the Princess Belgiojoso for the Poles. There was then
revealed to me palpably, clearly, the characteristic difference in their
talent. Liszt was incontestably the more artistic, the more vibrant, the
more electric. He had tones of a delicacy that made one think of the
almost inaudible tinkling of tiny spangles or the faint explosion of
sparks of fire. Never have fingers bounded so lightly over the piano.
But at the same time his nervosity caused him to produce sometimes
effects a trifle hard, a trifle harsh. I shall never forget that, after
a piece in which Liszt, carried away by his fury, had come down very
hard upon the keys, the sweet and charming Pleyel approached the
instrument and gazed with an expression of pity upon the strings. 'What
are you doing, my dear friend?' I asked, laughing. 'I am looking at the
field of battle,' he responded in a melancholy tone; 'I am counting the
wounded and the dead.'

"Thalberg never pounded. What constituted his superiority, what made the
pleasure of hearing him play a luxury to the ear, was pure _tone_. I
have never heard such another, so full, so round, so soft, so velvety,
so sweet, and still so strong! How shall I say it? The voice of Alboni.

"At this concert in hearing Liszt I felt myself in an atmosphere charged
with electricity and quivering with lightning. In hearing Thalberg I
seemed to be floating in a sea of purest light. The contrast between
their characters was not less than between their talent. I had a
striking proof of it with regard to Chopin.

"It is not possible to compare any one with Chopin, because he resembled
no one. Everything about him pertained only to himself. He had his own
tone, his own touch. All the great artists have executed and still
execute the works of Chopin with great ability, but in reality only
Chopin has played Chopin. But he never appeared in public concerts nor
in large halls. He liked only select audiences and limited gatherings,
just as he would use no other piano than a Pleyel, nor have any other
tuner than Frederic. We, fanatics that we were, were indignant at his
reserve; we demanded that the public should hear him; and one day in one
of those fine flights of enthusiasm that have caused me to make more
than one blunder I wrote in Schlesinger's _Gazette Musicale_: 'Let
Chopin plunge boldly into the stream, let him announce a grand soirée
musicale and the next day when the eternal question shall arise, "Who is
the greater pianist to-day, Liszt or Thalberg?" the public will answer
with us, "It is Chopin."'

"To be frank, I had done better not to have written that article. I
should have recalled my friendly relations with the two others. Liszt
would have nothing to do with me for more than two months. But the day
after the one on which my article appeared Thalberg was at my door at
ten in the morning. He stretched out his hand as he entered, saying,
'Bravo! your article is only just.'

"At last their rivalry, which in reality had never been more than
emulation, assumed a more accentuated, a more striking form. Until then
no pianist had ventured to play in the hall of a large theatre with an
auditorium of 1,200 or 1,500. Thalberg, impelled by his successes,
announced a concert in the Théâtre des Italiens, not in the foyer, but
in the main auditorium. He played for the first time his Moses, and his
success was a triumph.

"Liszt, somewhat piqued, saw in Thalberg's triumph a defiance, and he
announced a concert at the Opera. For his battle horse he took Weber's
Concertstück. I was at the concert. He placed a box at my disposal,
requesting that I should give an account of the evening in the _Gazette
Musicale_. I arrived full of hope and joy. A first glance over the hall
checked my ardour a trifle. There were many, very many, present, but
here and there were empty spaces that disquieted me. My fears were not
without reason. It was a half success. Between numbers I encountered
Berlioz, with whom I exchanged my painful impressions, and I returned
home quite tormented over the article I was to write. The next day I had
hardly seated myself at my table when I received a letter from Liszt. I
am happy to reproduce here the principal part of that letter, for it
discloses an unknown Liszt, a modest Liszt. Yes, modest! It only half
astonished me, for a certain circumstance had revealed this Liszt to me
once before. It was at Scheffer's, who was painting his portrait. When
posing Liszt assumed an air of inspiration. Scheffer, with his
surpassing brusqueness, said to him: 'The devil, Liszt! Don't put on the
airs of a man of genius with me. You know well enough that I am not
fooled by it.'

"What response did Liszt make to these rude words? He was silent a
moment, then going up to Scheffer he said: 'You are right, my dear
friend. But pardon me; you do not know how it spoils one to have been an
infant prodigy.' This response seemed to me absolutely delicious in its
sweet simplicity--I might say in its humility. The letter that I give
below has the same character:

"'You have shown me of late an affection so comprehensive that I ask
your permission to speak as a friend to a friend. Yes, my dear Legouvé,
it is as to a friend that I am about to confess to you a weakness. I am
very glad that it is you who are to write of my concert yesterday, and I
venture to ask you to remain silent for this time, and for this time
only, concerning the defective side of my talent.'

"Is it possible, I ask, to make a more difficult avowal with more
delicacy or greater frankness? Do we know many of the great artists
capable of writing 'the defective side of my talent'?

"I sent him immediately the following response:

"'No, my dear friend, I will not do what you ask! No, I will not
maintain silence concerning the defective side of your talent, for the
very simple reason that you never displayed greater talent than
yesterday. Heaven defend me from denying the coldness of the public, or
from proclaiming your triumph when you have not triumphed! That would be
unworthy of you, and, permit me to add, of me. But what was it that
happened? and why this half failure? Ah! blunderer that you were, what a
strategic error you committed! Instead of placing the orchestra back of
you, as at the Conservatory, so as to bring you directly in contact with
your audience, and to establish between you and them an electric
current, you cut the wire; you left this terrible orchestra in its usual
place. You played across I know not how many violins, violoncellos,
horns, and trombones, and the voice of your instrument, to reach us, had
to pass through all that warring orchestra! And you are astonished at
the result! But, my dear friend, how was it two months ago at the
Conservatory that with the same piece you produced such a wonderful
effect? It was because that, in front alone, with the orchestra behind
you, you appeared like a cavalry colonel at the head of his regiment,
his horse in full gallop, his sabre in hand, leading on his soldiers,
whose enthusiasm was only the accompaniment of his own. At the Opera the
colonel abandoned his place at the head of his regiment, and placed
himself at its rear. Fine cause for surprise that your tones did not
reach us resounding and vibrant! This is what happened, my dear friend,
and this is what I shall say, and I shall add that there was no one but
Liszt in the world who could have produced under such conditions the
effect that you produced. For in reality your failure would have been a
great success for any other than you.

"'With this, wretched strategist, I send you a cordial pressure of the
hand, and begin my article.'

"The following Sunday my article appeared, and I had the great pleasure
to have satisfied him."


ROBERT SCHUMANN ON LISZT'S PLAYING

"Liszt is now [1840] probably about thirty years old. Every one knows
well that he was a child phenomenon; how he was early transplanted to
foreign lands; that his name afterward appeared here and there among
the most distinguished; that then the rumour of it occasionally died
away, until Paganini appeared, inciting the youth to new endeavours; and
that he suddenly appeared in Vienna two years ago, rousing the imperial
city to enthusiasm. Thus he appeared among us of late, already honoured,
with the highest honours that can be bestowed on an artist, and his fame
already established.

"The first concert, on the 17th, was a remarkable one. The multitudinous
audience was so crowded together that even the hall looked altered. The
orchestra was also filled with listeners, and among them--Liszt.

"He began with the Scherzo and Finale of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.
The selection was capricious enough, and on many accounts not happy. At
home, in a _tête-à-tête_, a highly careful transcription may lead one
almost to forget the orchestra; but in a large hall, in the same place
where we have been accustomed to hear the symphony played frequently and
perfectly by the orchestra, the weakness of the pianoforte is striking,
and the more so the more an attempt is made to represent masses in their
strength. Let it be understood, with all this, we had heard the master
of the instrument; people were satisfied; they at least, had seen him
shake his mane. To hold to the same illustration, the lion presently
began to show himself more powerful. This was in a fantasia on themes by
Pacini, which he played in a most remarkable manner. But I would
sacrifice all the astonishing, the audacious bravura that he displayed
here for the sake of the magical tenderness that he expressed in the
following étude. With the sole exception of Chopin, as I have already
said, I know not one who equals him in this quality. He closed with the
well-known Chromatic Gallop; and as the applause this elicited was
endless, he also played his equally well-known bravura waltz.

"Fatigue and indisposition prevented the artist from giving the concert
promised for the next day. In the meantime a musical festival was
prepared for him, that will never be forgotten by Liszt himself or the
others present. The giver of the festival (Felix Mendelssohn) had
selected for performance some compositions unknown to his guest: Franz
Schubert's symphony (in C); his own psalm, As the Hart Pants; the
overture, A Calm Sea and a Prosperous Voyage; three choruses from St.
Paul; and, to close with, the D-minor concerto for three pianos by
Sebastian Bach. This was played by Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Hiller. It
seemed as though nothing had been prepared, but all improvised
instantaneously. Those were three such happy musical hours as years do
not always bring. At the end Liszt played alone, and wonderfully.

"Liszt's most genial performance was yet to come--Weber's Concertstück,
which he played at his second concert. Virtuoso and public seemed to be
in the freshest mood possible on that evening, and the enthusiasm before
and after his playing exceeded anything hitherto known here. Although
Liszt grasped the piece, from the beginning, with such force and
grandeur of expression that an attack on a battle-field would seem to be
in question, yet he carried this on with continually increasing power,
until the passage where the player seemed to stand at the summit of the
orchestra, leading it forward in triumph. Here, indeed, he resembled
that great commander to whom he has been compared, and the tempestuous
applause that greeted him was not unlike an adoring "Vive l'Empereur!"
He then played a fantasia on themes from the Huguenots, the Ave Maria
and Serenade, and, at the request of the public, the Erl-King of
Schubert. But the Concertstück was the crown of his performances on this
evening."


LISZT IN RUSSIA

"Liszt visited Russia for the first time in 1842," writes Rose Newmarch.
"I do not know whether this journey was part of the original scheme of
his great two years' tour on the continent (1840-1842), or if he only
yielded to the pressing invitations of several influential Russian
friends. Early in 1839, among the many concerts which he gave in Rome,
none was more brilliant than the recital organised by the famous
Russian amateur, Count Bielgorsky, at the house of Prince Galitsin,
Governor-General of Moscow, who was wintering in the Italian capital.
During the following year, Liszt spent three days at Ems, where he was
presented to the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, to whom he played every
evening during his brief visit. The Empress was fascinated by his
genius, and enjoined him to visit Russia without delay.

"The phenomenal success of the twenty-two concerts which Liszt gave in
Berlin during the winter of 1841-1842, soon became a subject of gossip
in Petersburg, and his arrival was awaited with unprecedented
excitement. He reached the capital early in April, and was almost
immediately presented to Nicholas I. On entering the audience chamber,
the Emperor, ignoring the presence of numerous generals and high
officials who were awaiting an audience, went straight to Liszt saying,
"Monsieur Liszt, I am delighted to see you in Petersburg," and
immediately engaged him in conversation. A day or two later, on the 8th
of April, Liszt gave his first concert in the Salle de la Noblesse,
before an audience of three thousand people. This concert was both a
novel and an important event in Russia. Not only was it the first
recital ever heard there--for before Liszt's day, no single artist had
attempted to hold the public attention by the spell of his own unaided
gifts--but it was also the first tie in a close and lasting bond between
the great virtuoso and the Russian people. In after years, no one was
quicker to discern the attractive qualities of Russian music, nor more
assiduous in its propagation than Franz Liszt.

"In the memoirs of contemporary Russian writers there are many
interesting references to Liszt's first appearance in Petersburg. Not
only do these reminiscences show the extraordinary glamour and interest
which invested the personality of the master; they throw some light upon
social life in Russia during the first half of the century.

"The brilliant audience which flocked to the Salle de la Noblesse to
hear Liszt, numbered no greater enthusiasts than the two young students
of the School of Jurisprudence, Stassov and Serov. Both were destined to
attain celebrity in after-life; the former as a great critic, and the
chief upholder of national art; the latter, as the composer of at least
one popular opera, and the leading exponent of the Wagnerian doctrines
in Russia. Stassov's reminiscences are highly picturesque. We seem
actually to see the familiar figure of the pianist as he entered the
magnificent Hall of the Nobility, leaning on the arm of Count
Bielgorsky, an "elderly Adonis" and typical dandy of the forties.
Bielgorsky was somewhat inclined to obesity, moved slowly, and stared at
the elegant assemblage with prominent, short-sighted eyes. His hair was
brushed back and curled, after the model of the Apollo Belvedere, while
he wore an enormous white cravat. Liszt also wore a white cravat, and
over it the Order of the Golden Spur, bestowed upon him a short time
previously by the Pope. He was further adorned with various other orders
suspended by chains from the lapels of his dress coat. But that which
struck the Russians most was the great mane of fair hair reaching almost
to his shoulders. Outside the priesthood, no Russian would have ventured
on such a style of hair-dressing. Such dishevelment had been sternly
discountenanced since the time of Peter the Great. Stassov, afterward
one of the warmest admirers of Liszt, both as man and musician, was not
altogether favourably impressed by this first sight of the virtuoso. "He
was very thin, stooped a great deal, and though I had read much about
his famous 'Florentine profile' and his likeness to Dante, I did not
find his face beautiful. I was not pleased with his mania for decking
himself with orders, and afterwards I was as little prepossessed by his
somewhat affected demeanour to those who came in contact with him."

"After the first hush of intense curiosity, the entire assembly began to
discuss Liszt in a subdued murmur. Stassov, who sat close to Glinka and
a well-known pianist--Madame Palibin--caught the following conversation.
Madame Palibin inquired if Glinka had already heard Liszt. He replied
that he had met him the night before at Count Bielgorsky's reception.
'Well, what did you think of him?' Glinka answered, without a moment's
hesitation, that sometimes Liszt played divinely--like no one else in
the world; at other times atrociously, with exaggerated emphasis,
dragging the 'tempi,' and adding--even to the music of Chopin,
Beethoven, and Bach--tasteless embellishments of his own. 'I was
horribly scandalised,' says Stassov. 'What! Did our "mediocre" Russian
musician' (this was Stassov's first sight of Glinka, and a short time
before the appearance of Russlane and Lioudmilla) 'venture thus to
criticise the great genius Liszt, who had turned the heads of all
Europe!' Madame Palibin, too, seemed to disapprove of Glinka's
criticism, and said laughingly, 'Allons donc, tout cela, ce n'est que
rivalité de métier!' Glinka smiled urbanely, shrugged his shoulders, and
replied, 'As you please.'

"At this moment Liszt mounted the platform, and, pulling his dog-skin
gloves from his shapely white hands, tossed them carelessly on the
floor. Then, after acknowledging the thunderous applause--such as had
not been heard in Russia for over a century--he seated himself at the
piano. There was a silence as though the whole audience had been turned
to stone, and Liszt, without any prelude, began the opening bars of the
overture to William Tell. Criticism, curiosity, speculation, all were
forgotten in the wonderful enchantment of the performance. Among other
things, he played his fantasia on Don Juan, his arrangements of
Adelaïde, and The Erl King, and wound up the recital with his showy
Galop Chromatique.

"'After the concert,' says Stassov, 'Serov and I were like madmen. We
scarcely exchanged a word, but hurried home, each to write down his
impressions, dreams, and raptures. But we both vowed to keep the
anniversary of this day sacred for ever, and never, while life lasted,
to forget a single incident of it. We were like men in love, or
bewitched. What wonder? Never before had we come face to face with such
a gifted, impassioned, almost demoniacal personality as that of Liszt,
who seemed alternately to let loose the forces of the whirlwind, or to
carry us away on a flood of tenderness, grace, and beauty.'

"Serov felt even more strongly the fascination of Liszt's genius. The
same evening he sent to Stassov the following record of his impressions:
'First, let me congratulate you on your initiation into the great
mysteries of art, and then--let me think a little. It is two hours since
I left the Hall, and I am still beside myself. Where am I? Am I
dreaming, or under a spell? Have I indeed heard Liszt? I expected great
things from all the accounts I had heard, and still more from a kind of
inward conviction--but how far the reality surpassed my expectations!
Happy, indeed, are we to be living in 1842, at the same time as such an
artist! Fortunate, indeed, that we have been privileged to hear him! I
am gushing a great deal--too much for me, but I cannot contain myself.
Bear with me in this lyrical crisis until I can express myself
calmly.... What a festival it has been! How different everything looks
in God's world to-day! And all this is the work of one man and his
playing! What a power is music! I cannot collect my thoughts--my whole
being seems in a state of abnormal tension, of confused rapture!'

"Do we experience this exaltation nowadays? I think not. Rarely do we
partake of the insane root. Are there no more enchanters like Liszt? Or
has the capacity of such enthusiasm and expansion passed away for ever
with the white stocks, the 'coiffure à l'Apollon Belvédère' and the
frank emotionalism of the early Victorian period?"


LISZT IN ENGLAND

"The visits of great musicians to our shores have furnished much
interesting material to the musical historian," wrote the _Musical
Times_. "Those of Mozart and Haydn, for instance, have been fully and
ably treated by the late Carl Ferdinand Pohl, in two volumes which have
never been translated, as they deserve to be, into the English language.
No less interesting are the sojournings in London and the provinces of
Spohr, Weber, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Berlioz, Verdi, and Wagner. 'The King
of Pianists' has not hitherto received the attention due to him in this
respect, and the following chit-chat upon his English experiences is
offered as a small contribution to the existing biographical information
concerning a great man.

"Franz was a boy of twelve years of age, when he made his first
appearance in London in the year 1824. At that time Rossini shone as the
bright particular star in the London musical firmament. The composer of
Il Barbiere actually gave concerts. 'Persons desirous of obtaining
tickets are requested to send their names to Signor Rossini, 90,
Quadrant [Regent Street], 'so the advertisements stated. It was
therefore thought desirable to postpone the appearance of the little
Hungarian pianist until after Rossini had finished his music-makings.

"The first appearance of Liszt in England was of a semi-private nature.
On June 5, 1824, the Annual Festival of the Royal Society of Musicians
took place. The account of the dinner given in the _Morning Post_
contains the following information:

"'Master Liszt (a youth from Hungary) performed on a Grand Pianoforte
with an improved action, invented by Sebastian Erard, the celebrated
Harp-maker, of very great power and brilliancy of tone.

"'To do justice to the performance of Master Liszt is totally out of our
power; his execution, taste, expression, genius, and wonderful
extemporary playing, defy any written description. He must be heard to
be duly appreciated.'

"Among those who heard Master Liszt was a certain Master Wesley (Samuel
Sebastian of that ilk), who, as a Chapel Royal Chorister, took part in
the glees sung at that festive board. The _Quarterly Musical Magazine
and Review_ of 1824 (p. 241) thus referred to the young pianist's
performance:

"'We heard this youth first at the dinner of the Royal Society of
Musicians, where he extemporised for about twenty minutes before that
judgmatical audience of professors and their friends.'

"The announcement of Liszt's concert appeared in the _Morning Post_ in
these terms:

"'NEW ARGYLL ROOMS

"'Master Liszt, aged twelve years, a native of Hungary ... respectfully
informs the Nobility, Gentry, and the Public in general, that his
Benefit Concert will take place this evening, June 21, 1824, to commence
at half-past 8 precisely, when he will perform on Sebastian Erard's new
patent Grand Pianoforte, a Concerto by Hummel, New variations by
Winkhler, and play extempore on a written Thema, which Master Liszt will
request any person of the company to give him....

"'Leader, Mr. Mori. Conductor, Sir George Smart. Tickets, half-a-guinea
each, to be had of Master Liszt, 18, Great Marlborough Street.'

"In an account of the concert the _Morning Post_ said: 'Notwithstanding
the _contrary motions_ which occurred on Monday night of Pasta's benefit
and a Grand Rout given by Prince Leopold, there was a numerous
attendance.' The musicians present included Clementi, J. B. Cramer,
Ries, Neate, Kalkbrenner, and Cipriani Potter, all of whom 'rewarded
Master Liszt with repeated _bravos_.' The programme included an air with
variations by Czerny, played by Liszt, who also took part in Di Tanti
Palpiti, performed 'as a concertante with Signor Vimercati on his little
mandolin with uncommon spirit.' The remainder of the _Morning Post_
notice may be quoted in full:

"'Sir G. Smart (who conducted the Concert) invited any person in the
company to oblige Master Liszt with a Thema, on which he would work (as
the phrase is) extemporaneously. Here an interesting pause took place;
at length a lady named Zitti, Zitti. The little fellow, though not very
well acquainted with the air, sat down and roved about the instrument,
occasionally touching a few bars of the melody, then taking it as a
subject for a transient fugue; but the best part of this performance was
that wherein he introduced the air with his right hand, while the left
swept the keys chromatically; then he crossed over his right hand,
played the subject with the left, while the right hand descended by
semi-tones to the bottom of the instrument! It is needless to add, that
his efforts were crowned with the most brilliant success.'

"Liszt took part in two grand miscellaneous concerts given at the
Theatre Royal, Manchester, on the 2d and 4th of August, the other chief
attraction being The Infant Lyra, a prodigy harpist '_not_ four years
old,' and nine years younger than the juvenile Hungarian pianist. The
programme included 'an extempore fantasia on Erard's new patent grand
pianoforte of seven octaves by Master Liszt, who will respectfully
request a written thema from any person present.' The advertisement of
the second concert included the following:

"'Master Liszt being about to return to the Continent where he is
eagerly expected in consequence of his astonishing talents, and the
Infant Lyra being on his way to London, the only opportunity which can
occur for the inhabitants of Manchester to hear them has been seized by
Mr. Ward; and to afford every possible advantage to the Voices and
Instruments, he has so constructed the Orchestra, that the Harp, and
Piano-Forte will be satisfactorily heard in every part of the house.'

"The young gentleman was honoured with a 'command' to perform before
King George the Fourth at Windsor Castle. In the words of the _Windsor
Express_ of July 31, 1824:

"'On Thursday evening, young Lizt (_sic_), the celebrated juvenile
performer on the pianoforte, was introduced to the King at Windsor by
Prince Esterhazy. In the course of the evening he played several pieces
of Handel's and Mozart's upon the piano, which he executed in a style to
draw forth the plaudits of His Majesty and the company present.'

"In the following year (1825), Master Liszt paid his second visit to
England and again appeared in Manchester.

"At his third visit (in 1827), he made the acquaintance of the late
Charles Salaman, two years his senior, who heard Liszt play Hummel's
Concerto. In his pleasantly-written recollections of pianists of the
past (_Blackwood's Magazine_, September, 1901), Mr. Salaman says:

"'Very shortly afterwards--just before Liszt's morning concert, for
which my father had purchased tickets from his father--we became
acquainted. I visited him and his father at their lodgings in Frith
Street, Soho, and young Liszt came to early family dinner at my home. He
was a very charmingly natural and unaffected boy, and I have never
forgotten his joyful exclamation, 'Oh, gooseberry pie!' when his
favourite dish was put upon the table. We had a good deal of music
together on that memorable afternoon, reading several duets. Liszt
played some of his recently published Etudes, Op. 6, a copy of which he
gave me, and in which he wrote specially for me an amended version of
the sixth study, Molto agitato.'

"Here is the programme of the morning concert above referred to:


    NEW ARGYLL ROOMS

    MASTER LISZT

    Has the honour to inform the Nobility, Gentry, and his
    Friends, that his
    MORNING CONCERT
    will take place at the above rooms on
    SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1827


    PART I

    Overture to _Les Deux Journées_, arranged by
    _Mr. Moscheles_ for four performers on
    two Grand Piano Fortes, Mr. BEALE,
    Master LISZT, Mr. MARTIN, and Mr.
    WIGLEY                                          _Cherubini_

    Aria, Mr. BEGREZ                                _Beethoven_

    Fantasia, Harp, on Irish Airs, Mr. LABARRE        _Labarre_

    Duetto, Miss GRANT (_Pupil of Mr. CRIVELLI
    at the Royal Academy of Music_)
    and Signor TORRI                                  _Rossini_

    Concerto (MS.), Piano Forte, with Orchestral
    Accompaniments, Master LISZT                 _Master Liszt_

    Song, Miss STEPHENS.

    Solo, French Horn, Mr. G. SCHUNKE             _G. Schuncke_

    Aria, Miss BETTS                                  _Rossini_

    Duetto, Miss FANNY AYTON and Mr. BEGREZ,
    "Amor! possente nome"                             _Rossini_

    Fantasia, Violin, Mr. MORI

    Scena, Mr. BRAHAM                              _Zingarelli_

    Extempore Fantasia on a given subject, Master LISZT.


    PART II

    Quartet for Voice, Harp, Piano Forte, and
    Violin, Miss STEPHENS, Mr. LABARRE,
    Master LISZT, and Mr. MORI         _Moscheles and Mayseder_

    Aria, Miss FANNY AYTON, "Una voce poco
    fa"                                               _Rossini_

    Solo, Guitar, Mr. HUERTA                           _Huerta_

    Duet, Miss Stephens and Mr. BRAHAM.

    Song, Miss LOVE, "Had I a heart."

    Fantasia, Flute, Master MINASI              _Master Minasi_

    Song, Miss GRANT, "The Nightingale"              _Crivelli_

    Brilliant Variations on "Rule Britannia,"
    Master LISZT                                 _Master Liszt_


    Leader, MR. MORI      Conductor, Mr. Schuncke


    THE CONCERT WILL COMMENCE AT HALF-PAST ONE O'CLOCK
    PRECISELY


    Tickets, Half-a-Guinea each, to be had of Mr. LISZT, 46,
    Great Marlborough Street, and at all the principal
    Music Shops.

"Thirteen years elapsed before Liszt again favoured us with his
presence. He had in the meantime passed from boyhood to manhood, from
having been a prodigy to becoming a mature artist. The year was 1840--an
important one, as we shall presently see. He appeared, for the
first time, at the Philharmonic Concert of May 11, 1840, which was
conducted by Sir Henry Bishop. Liszt played his own version of Weber's
Concertstück in which, according to a contemporary account, 'passages
were doubled, tripled, inverted, and _transmogrified_ in all sorts of
ways.' Be this as it may, the Philharmonic Directors showed their
appreciation of his performance by a presentation, an account of which
appeared in a snappy and short-lived paper called the _Musical Journal_.
Here is the extract:

"'Liszt has been presented by the Philharmonic Society with an elegant
silver breakfast service, for doing that which would cause every young
student to receive a severe reprimand--viz., thumping and partially
destroying two very fine pianofortes. The Society has given this to Mr.
Liszt as a _compliment_ for performing at two of its concerts
_gratuitously_! Whenever did they present an Englishman with a _silver
breakfast service_ for gratuitous performances?'

"The foregoing is written in the strain which characterised the attitude
of a section of the musical press towards the great pianist. His use of
the word 'Recitals' appears to have been as a red rag to those roaring
bulls. The familiar term owes its origin to Liszt's performances. The
late Willert Beale records that his father, Frederick Beale, invented
the designation, and that it was much discussed before being finally
adopted. The advertisement reads thus:

"'LISZT'S PIANOFORTE RECITALS

"'M. Liszt will give at Two o'clock on Tuesday morning, June 9, 1840,
RECITALS on the PIANOFORTE of the following works:--No. 1. Scherzo and
Finale from Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony. No. 2. Serenade, by
Schubert. No. 3. Ave Maria, by Schubert. No. 4. Hexameron. No. 5.
Neapolitan Tarentelles. No. 6. Grand Galop Chromatique. Tickets 10s. 6d.
each; reserved seats, near the Pianoforte, 21s.'

"The 'Recitals'--the plural form of the term will be noticed--took place
at the Hanover Square Rooms, and the piece entitled Hexameron (a set of
variations on the grand march in I Puritani) was the composition of the
following sextet of pianists: Thalberg, Chopin, Herz, Czerny, Pixis, and
Liszt, not exactly 'a _singular_ production,' as the _Musical World_
remarked, but 'an uncommon one.' In connection with the 'Recitals,' Mr.
Salaman may be quoted:

"'I did not hear Liszt again until his visit to London in 1840, when he
puzzled the musical public by announcing "Pianoforte Recitals." This now
commonly accepted term had never previously been used, and people asked,
"What does he mean? How can any one _recite_ upon the pianoforte?" At
these recitals, Liszt, after performing a piece set down in his
programme, would leave the platform, and, descending into the body of
the room, where the benches were so arranged as to allow free
locomotion, would move about among his auditors and converse with his
friends, with the gracious condescension of a prince, until he felt
disposed to return to the piano.'

"The _Musical World_ referred to the 'Recitals' as 'this curious
exhibition'; that the performance was 'little short of a miracle'; and
that the Hexameron contained 'some difficulties of inconceivable
outrageousness.' Another specimen of critical insight may be quoted--it
refers to Liszt's participation in a concert given by John Parry:

"'On being unanimously recalled, he tore the National Anthem to ribbons,
and thereby fogged the glory he had just achieved. Let him eschew such
hyper-erudite monstrosities--let him stick to the 'recital' of sane and
sanative music, and he will attain a reputation above all contemporary
musical _mono_-facturers--and what is more, deserve it.'

"In the autumn of the same year (1840), Liszt formed one of a
concert-party, organised by Lavenu, in a tour in the south of England.
The party included John Parry, the composer of Wanted, a Governess, and
the comic man of the Lavenu troup. Like Mendelssohn, Liszt seems to have
taken to the jocose Parry, and he quite entered into the fun of the
fair. For instance, at Bath, 'in addition to the pieces announced in the
bills, Liszt played an accompaniment to John Parry's Inchape Bell, sung
by the author, in which he introduced an extemporaneous storm, which had
a most terrific effect.' We can well believe it. This storm was not 'a
local disturbance,' as meteorologists would say, but it followed the
party wherever they went, and it was doubtless received with thunderous
applause.

"In November, a second and more extended tour, also under Lavenu's
auspices, was undertaken, and the journey embraced the great provincial
towns of England, Ireland, and Scotland. The preliminary announcement
was couched in terms more or less pungent:

"'Mr. Lavenu with his corps musicale will enter the _lists_ again on the
23d instant, when it is to be hoped the _list_less provinces will
_list_en with more attention than on his last experiment, or he will
have en_list_ed his talented _list_ to very little purpose.'

"Liszt again appeared in London in 1841, and took the town by storm.
Musical critics of the present day may be glad to enlarge their
vocabulary from the following notice, which appeared in the columns of
the _Musical World_ of sixty years ago:

"'M. Liszt's Recitals.--We walk through this world in the midst of so
many wonders, that our senses become indifferent to the most amazing
things: light and life, the ocean, the forest, the voice and flight of
the pigmy lark, are unheeded commonplaces; and it is only when some
comet, some giant, some tiger-tamer, some new Niagara, some winged being
(mental or bodily, and unclassed in the science of ornithology) appears,
that our obdurate faculties are roused into the consciousness that
miracles do exist. Of the miracle genus is M. Liszt, the Polyphemus of
the pianoforte--the Aurora Borealis of musical effulgence--the Niagara
of thundering harmonies! His rapidity of execution, his power, his
delicacy, his Briareus-handed chords, and the extraordinary volume of
sound he wrests from the instrument, are each and all philosophies in
their way that might well puzzle all but a philosopher to unriddle and
explain.'

"Shortly before the 'recitals' above referred to, Liszt was thrown out
of a carriage, and the accident resulted in a sprained wrist. At the
performance, he apologised in French to the audience 'for his inability
to play all the pieces advertised.'

"It is strange, but true, that no less than _forty-five_ years had come
and gone before Liszt again set foot on Albion's shores. In the year
1886, aged seventy-five, he came again, and charmed everybody with the
geniality of his presence.

"It was at the invitation of the late Mr. Henry Littleton (then head of
the firm of Novello & Co.) that Liszt paid his last visit to England in
1886. The great pianist arrived on May 3, and remained under Mr.
Littleton's hospitable roof at Westwood House, Sydenham, during the
whole of his sojourn in this country. The events of those seventeen days
were a series of triumphs to the grand old man of pianists. A command
visit to Windsor Castle, when he played to Queen Victoria; dining with
the Prince and Princess of Wales at Marlborough House; a visit to the
Baroness Burdett Coutts; attending performances of his oratorio St.
Elisabeth (conducted by Sir, then Mr. A. C. Mackenzie) at St. James's
Hall and the Crystal Palace; concerts of Chev. Leonard E. Bach; the
Royal Amateur Orchestral Society (when he was seated next to the king,
then Prince of Wales); Monday Popular; pianoforte recitals by Mr.
Frederic Lamond and Herr Stavenhagen; a visit to the Royal Academy of
Music; in addition to receptions given by his devoted pupil and attached
friend, the late Walter Bache at the Grosvenor Gallery, and the 'at
homes' of his host and hostess at Westwood House.

"As an indication of the general interest aroused by the coming of
Liszt, _Punch_ burst forth in the following strain:

"'A Brilliant Variation.--Mr. and Mrs. Littleton's reception of the Abbé
Franz Liszt, at Westwood House, Saturday night last, was an event never
to be forgotten. But it was not until all the Great 'uns had left the
Littletons that the Greatest of them all sat at the piano in the midst
of a cosy and select circle, and then, when _Mr. P-nch_ had put on his
Liszt slippers ... but to say more were a breach of hospitality.
Suffice it that on taking up his sharp-and-flat candlestick in a
perfectly natural manner the Abbé, embracing _Mr. P-nch_, sobbed out,
"This is the Abbé'ist evening I've ever had. Au plaisir!"--(_Extract
from a Distinguished Guest's Diary. Privately communicated._)'

"Although he was in his seventy-sixth year at the time of this, his last
sojourn in England, his pianoforte technic astonished those who were
capable to form an opinion, and who were amazed that he did not 'smash
the pianoforte, like his pupils!' He was immensely gratified at his
visit, and in parting with Mr. Alfred and Mr. Augustus Littleton, at
Calais, he said: 'If I should live two years longer I will certainly
visit England again!' But alas! a little more than three months after he
had said 'Good-bye' to these friends, Franz Liszt closed his long,
eventful, and truly artistic career at Bayreuth on July 31, 1886.
Professor Niecks said, 'Liszt has lived a noble life. Let us honour his
memory.'"


EDVARD GRIEG

Grieg himself played his piano concerto at a Leipsic Gewandhaus concert
in 1879, but it had already been heard in the same hall as early as
February 22, 1872, when Miss Erika Lie played it, and the work was
announced as new and "in manuscript." Before this time Grieg had shown
the concerto to Liszt. The story is told in a letter of Grieg quoted in
Henry T. Finck's biography of the composer:

"I had fortunately just received the manuscript of my pianoforte
concerto from Leipsic, and took it with me. Besides myself there were
present Winding, Sgambati, and a German Liszt-ite whose name I do not
know, but who goes so far in the aping of his idol that he even wears
the gown of an abbé; add to these a Chevalier de Concilium and some
young ladies of the kind that would like to eat Liszt, skin, hair, and
all, their adulation is simply comical.... Winding and I were very
anxious to see if he would really play my concerto at sight. I, for my
part, considered it impossible; not so Liszt. 'Will you play?' he asked,
and I made haste to reply: 'No, I cannot' (you know I have never
practised it). Then Liszt took the manuscript, went to the piano, and
said to the assembled guests, with his characteristic smile, 'Very well,
then, I will show you that I also cannot.' With that he began. I admit
that he took the first part of the concerto too fast, and the beginning
consequently sounded helter-skelter; but later on, when I had a chance
to indicate the tempo, he played as only he can play. It is significant
that he played the cadenza, the most difficult part, best of all. His
demeanour is worth any price to see. Not content with playing, he at the
same time converses and makes comments, addressing a bright remark now
to one, now to another of the assembled guests, nodding significantly
to the right or left, particularly when something pleases him. In the
adagio, and still more in the finale, he reached a climax both as to his
playing and the praise he had to bestow.

"A really divine episode I must not forget. Toward the end of the finale
the second theme is, as you may remember, repeated in a mighty
fortissimo. In the very last measures, when in the first triplets the
first tone is changed in the orchestra from G sharp to G, while the
pianoforte, in a mighty scale passage, rushes wildly through the whole
reach of the keyboard, he suddenly stopped, rose up to his full height,
left the piano, and, with big theatric strides and arms uplifted, walked
across the large cloister hall, at the same time literally roaring the
theme. When he got to the G in question, he stretched out his arms
imperiously and exclaimed: 'G, G, not G sharp! Splendid! That is the
real Swedish Banko!' to which he added very softly, as in a parenthesis:
'Smetana sent me a sample the other day.' He went back to the piano,
repeated the whole strophe, and finished. In conclusion, he handed me
the manuscript and said, in a peculiarly cordial tone: 'Fahren Sie fort;
ich sage Ihnen, Sie haben das Zeug dazu, und--lassen Sie sich nicht
abschrecken!' ('Keep steadily on; I tell you, you have the capability,
and--do not let them intimidate you!')

"This final admonition was of tremendous importance to me; there was
something in it that seemed to give it an air of sanctification. At
times when disappointment and bitterness are in store for me, I shall
recall his words, and the remembrance of that hour will have a wonderful
power to uphold me in days of adversity."


RICHARD HOFFMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS

"I think it was in 1840 or 1841, in Manchester, that I first heard
Liszt, then a young man of twenty-eight," wrote the late Richard Hoffman
in _Scribner's Magazine_. "At that time he played only bravura piano
compositions, such as the Hexameron and Hungarian March of Schubert, in
C minor, arranged by himself. I recollect his curious appearance, his
tall, lank figure, buttoned up in a frock coat, very much embroidered
with braid, and his long, light hair brushed straight down below his
collar. He was not at that time a general favourite in England, and I
remember that on this occasion there was rather a poor house. A
criticism of this concert which I have preserved from the _Manchester
Morning Post_ will give an idea of his wonderful playing. After some
introduction it goes on to say: 'He played with velocity and impetuosity
indescribable, and yet with a facile grace and pliancy that made his
efforts seem rather like the flight of thought than the result of
mechanical exertion, thus investing his execution with a character more
mental than physical, and making genius give elevation to art. One of
the most electrifying points of his performance was the introduction of
a sequence of thirds in scales, descending with unexampled rapidity; and
another, the volume of tone which he rolled forth in the execution of a
double shake. The rapture of the audience knew no bounds,' etc. I
fancied I saw the piano shake and tremble under the force of his blows
in the Hungarian March. I regret that I never had an opportunity of
hearing him later in life, when I am sure I should have had more
pleasure both in his playing and his programmes. He had appeared some
sixteen years before in Manchester, in 1824, as a youthful phenomenon,
in an engagement made for him by Mr. Andrew Ward, my father's partner.
He stayed at his house while there, as the following letter specifies;
both letters form part of a correspondence between Mr. Ward and the
elder Liszt on this matter.


    "'LONDON, _July 29, 1824_.

     "'DEAR SIR: In answer to your letter of the 27th inst. I beg to
     inform you that I wish my Son to play as follows: viz:--At the
     first concert, a grand Concerto for the Piano Forte with orchestral
     accompaniment composed by Hummel, and the Fall of Paris also with
     grand orchestral accompaniment composed by Moscheles.

     "'At the 2d Concert--Variations with orchestral accompaniments
     composed by Charles Czerni, and afterwards an Extempore Fantasia on
     a written Thema which Master Liszt will respectfully request any
     person of the Company to give him.

     "'We intend to start to-morrow afternoon at three o'clock by the
     Telegraph Coach from the White Horse Fetter lane, and as we are
     entire strangers to Manchester it will be very agreeable to us if
     you will send some one to meet us.

     "'M. Erard's pianoforte will be in your town on Sunday morning as I
     shall be glad for my son to play upon that instrument.

     "'I remain, Dear Sir,

       "'Yr. very humble Servant,

         "'LISZT.'


       "'15 GT. MARLBOROUGH STREET,

         "'_July 22, 1824._

     "'Mr. Liszt presents his compliments to Mr. Roe and begs to say,
     that the terms upon which he will take his son to Manchester to
     play at the concerts of the second and fourth of August next will
     be as follows:

     "'Mr. Liszt is to receive one hundred pounds and be provided with
     board and lodgings in Mr. Ward's house during his stay in
     Manchester for his son and himself, and Mr. Liszt will pay the
     travelling expenses to and from Manchester.'"


HENRY REEVES

In Henry Reeves's biography I found this about Liszt:

"Liszt had already played a great fantasia of his own, and Beethoven's
Twenty-seventh Sonata in the former part of the concert. After this
latter piece he gasped with emotion as I took his hand and thanked him
for the divine energy he had shed forth. At last I managed to pierce the
crowd, and I sat in the orchestra before the Duchesse de Rauzan's box,
talking to her Grace and Madame de Circourt, who was there. My chair was
on the same board as Liszt's piano when the final piece began. It was a
duet for two instruments, beginning with Mendelssohn's Chants sans
Paroles and proceeding to a work of Liszt's. We had already passed that
delicious chime of the Song Written in a Gondola, and the gay tendrils
of sound in another lighter piece, which always reminded me of an
Italian vine, when Mrs. Handley played it to us. As the closing strains
began I saw Liszt's countenance assume that agony of expression, mingled
with radiant smiles of joy, which I never saw in any other human face
except in the paintings of our Saviour by some of the early masters; his
hands rushed over the keys, the floor on which I sat shook like a wire,
and the whole audience were wrapped in sound, when the hand and frame of
the artist gave way. He fainted in the arms of the friend who was
turning over for him, and we bore him out in a strong fit of hysterics.
The effect of this scene was really dreadful. The whole room sat
breathless with fear, till Hiller came forward and announced that Liszt
was already restored to consciousness and was comparatively well again.
As I handed Madame de Circourt to her carriage we both trembled like
poplar leaves, and I tremble scarcely less as I write."


LISZT'S CONVERSION

"Have you read the story of Liszt's conversion as told by Emile Bergerat
in Le Livre de Caliban?" asks Philip Hale. "I do not remember to have
seen it in English, and in the dearth of musical news the story may
amuse. I shall not attempt to translate it literally, or even English it
with a watchful eye on Bergerat's individuality. This is a paraphrase,
not even a pale, literal translation of a brilliant original.

    THE CONVERSION
    OF
    THE ABBÉ LISZT

"And so he will not play any more.

"Well, a pianist cannot keep on playing forever, and if Liszt had not
promised to stop, the Pope would never have pardoned him--no, never. For
the pianist turned priest because he was remorseful, horror-stricken at
the thought of his abuse of the piano. His conversion is a matter of
history. When one takes Orders, he swears to renounce Satan, his gauds
and his works--that is to say, the piano.

"If he should play he'd be a renegade. Of course he longs to touch the
keys. His daddy-long-legs-fingers itch, and he doesn't know what to do
with them. But an apostate? Perish the thought! And apostasy grins at
him; lurks in the metronome with its flicflac. Here's what I call a
dramatic situation.

"Wretched Abbé! Never more will you smash white or black keys; never
more will you dance on the angry pedals; O never, never more! Do you not
hear the croaking of Poe's raven? Never again, O Father, will you tire
the rosewood! Good-bye to tumbling scales and pyrotechnical arpeggios!
Thus must you do penance. The president of the Immortals does not love
piano playing. He scowls on pianists. He condemns them to thump
throughout eternity. In Dante's hell there is a dumb piano, and Lucifer
sees to it that they practice without ceasing.

"I am naturally tender-hearted, but I approve of this eternal
punishment.

"Yes, Father Liszt, because the piano is not in the scheme of Nature.
Even in Society the fewer the pianos the greater the merriment. If the
piano were really a thing in Nature the good Lord would have taken at
least ten minutes of the seven days and designed a model. But the piano
never occurred to Him. Now, as everything, existing or to exist, was
foreseen by him, and a part of Him (that is, according to the dogma), I
am inclined to think He was afraid of the piano. He recoiled at the
responsibility of creating it. And yet the machine exists!

"A syllogism leads us to declare that the piano is an after-thought. Of
whom? Why, Satan of course. A grim joke of Satan. The piano is the enemy
of man. Liszt finally discovered this, though he was just a little late.
So he will only go to Purgatory, and in Purgatory there are no dumb
pianos. But there are organs without pipes, without bellows, and many
have pulled the stops in vain for centuries. I earnestly beseech you, my
Father, to accumulate indulgences.

"They tell many stories about the conversions of Abbé Liszt, and how he
found out that the piano is the enemy of humanity. Lo, here is the
truth. He once gave a concert in a town where there were many dogs. He
was then exceedingly absent-minded; he mistook the date and appeared the
night before. Extraordinary to relate, there was no one in the hall,
although the concert was announced for the next day! Liszt sat down
nevertheless, and played for his own amusement. The effect was
prodigious, as George Sand told us in her Lettres d'un Voyageur. The
dogs ran to the noise--curs, water spaniels, poodles, greyhounds--all
the dogs, including the yellow outcast. They all howled fearfully, and
they would fain have fleshed their teeth in the pianist.

"Then Liszt reasoned--in his fashion: 'Since the dog is the friend of
man, if he abominates the piano it is because his instinct tells him,
"the piano is my friend's enemy!"' Professor Jevons might not have
approved the conclusion, but Liszt saw no flaw.

"And then a sculptor wished to make a statue of Liszt. He hewed him as
he sat before a piano, and he included the instrument. It was naturally
a grand piano, one lent by Madame Erard expressly for the occasion.
Liszt went to the studio, saw the clay, and turned green.

"'Where did you get such a ghastly idea?' he asked, and his voice
trembled. 'You represent me as playing a music coffin.'

"'What's that? I have copied nature. Is not the shape exact?'

"'Horribly,' said Liszt. 'And thus, thus shall I appear to posterity! I
shall be seen hanging by my nails to this funereal box, a virtuoso,
ferocious, with dishevelled hair, raising the dead and digging a grave
at the same time! The idea puts me in a cold sweat!'

"The sculptor smiled. 'I can substitute an upright.'

"'Then I should seem to be scratching a mummy case. They would take me
for an Egyptologist at his sacrilegious work.'

"Homeward he fled. In his own room he arranged the mirrors so that he
could see himself in all positions while he was plying his hellish
trade. And then salvation came to him. He saw that the machine was
demoniacal, that it recalled nothing in the fauna or the flora of the
good Lord, that the sculptor was right, that the piano had the
appearance of the sure box, in which occurs vague metempsychosis, that
is if the box only had a jaw. He was horror-stricken at his past life.
Frightened, his soul tormented by doubt, it seemed to him that from
under the eighty-five molars, which he snatched hurriedly from the
shrieking piano, Astaroth darted his tongue. He ran to Rome and threw
himself at the Pope's feet, imploring exorcism.

"The confession lasted three days and three nights. The possessed could
not get to an end. There were crimes which the Pope himself knew nothing
about, which he had never heard mentioned, professional crimes, crimes
peculiar to pianists, horrid crimes in keys natural and unnatural! This
confession is still celebrated.

"'Holy Father,' cried the wretch, 'you do not, you cannot know
everything! There are pianists and pianists. You believe that the piano,
as diabolical as it is, whether it be a Pleyel or an Erard, cannot give
out more noise than it holds. You believe that he who makes it exhibit
in full its terrible proportions is the strongest, and that piano
playing has human limitations. Alas, alas! You say to yourself when in
an apartment house of seven stories the seven tenants give notice
simultaneously to the trembling landlord, it makes no difference whether
the cause of the desperate flight is named Saint-Saëns, Pugno or
Chabrier. The tenants run because the piano gives forth all that is
inside of it, and the inanimate is acutely animate. How Your Holiness is
deceived. There's a still lower depth!'

"Liszt smote his breast thrice, and continued: 'I know a man (or is it
indeed a human being?) who never quitted the sonorous coffin until the
entire street in which he raged had emigrated. And yet he had only ten
fingers on his hands, as you and I, and never did he use his toes. This
monster, Holy Father, is at your feet!'

"Pius IX shivered with fright. 'Go on, my son, the mercy of God is
unbounded.'

"Then Liszt accused himself:

"Of having by Sabbatic concerts driven the half of civilised Europe mad,
while the other half returned to Chopin and Thalberg.

"('There's Rubinstein,' said Pius, and he smiled.) Liszt pretended not
to hear him, and he continued:

"'My Father, I have encouraged the trade in shrill mahogany, noisy
rosewood and shrieking ebony in the five parts of the acoustic world, so
that at this very moment there is not a single ajoupa or a single
thatched hut among savages that is without a piano. Even wild men are
beginning to manufacture pianos, and they give them as wedding gifts to
their daughters.'

"('Just as it is in Europe,' said the Pope.)

"'And also,' added Liszt, 'with instructions how to use them. Mea
culpa!'

"Then he confessed that apes unable to scramble through a scale were
rare in virgin forests; that travellers told of elephants who played
with their trunks the Carnival of Venice variations; and it was he,
Franz Liszt, that had served them as a model. The plague of universal
"pianisme" had spread from pole to pole. Mea culpa! Mea culpa!

"Overcome with shame, he wished to finish his confession at the piano.
But Pius IX had anticipated him. There was no piano in the Vatican. In
all Christendom, the Pope was the only one without a boxed harp.

"'Ah! you are indeed the Pope!' cried Liszt as he knelt before him.

"A little after this Liszt took Orders. They that speak without
intelligence started the rumour that it was at La Trappe. But at La
Trappe there is a piano, and Liszt swore to the Holy Father that he
would never touch one.

"To-day the world breathes freely. The monster has been disarmed and
exorcised.

"Now when Liszt sees a piano he approaches it with curiosity and asks
the use of that singular article of furniture.

"It is true there's one in his room, but he keeps his cassocks in it."




VII

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF LISZT


I

WEIMAR

After rambling over Weimar and burrowing in the Liszt museum, one feels
tempted to pronounce Liszt the happiest of composers, as Yeats calls
William Morris the happiest poet. A career without parallel, a
victorious general at the head of his ivory army; a lodestone for men
and women; a poet, diplomat, ecclesiastic, man of the world, with the
sunny nature of a child, loved by all, envious of no one--surely the
fates forgot to spin evil threads at the cradle of Franz Liszt. And he
was not a happy man for all that. He, too, like Friedrich Nietzsche had
dæmonic fantasy; but for him it was a gift, for the other a curse. Music
is a liberation, and Nietzsche of all men would have benefited by its
healing powers.

In Weimar Liszt walked and talked, smoked strong cigars, played,
prayed--for he never missed early mass--and composed. His old
housekeeper, Frau Pauline Apel, still a hale woman, shows, with loving
care, the memorials in the little museum on the first floor of the
Wohnhaus, which stands in the gardens of the beautiful ducal park.

[Illustration: Pauline Apel

Liszt's housekeeper at Weimar]

Here Goethe and Schiller once promenaded in a company that has become
historic. And cannot Weimar lay claim to a Tannhäuser performance as
early as 1849, the Lohengrin production in 1850, and the Flying Dutchman
in 1853? What a collection of musical manuscripts, trophies, jewels,
pictures, orders, letters--I saw one from Charles Baudelaire to
Liszt--and testimonials from all over the globe, which accumulated
during the career of this extraordinary man!

The Steinway grand pianoforte, once so dearly prized by the master, has
been taken away to make room for the many cases containing precious
gifts from sovereigns, the scores of the Christus, Faust Symphony,
Orpheus, Hungaria, Berg Symphony, Totentanz, and Festklänge. But the old
instrument upon which he played years ago still stands in one of the
rooms. Marble casts of Liszt's, Beethoven's, and Chopin's hands are on
view; also Liszt's hand firmly clasping the slender fingers of the
Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein. Like Chopin, Liszt attracted princesses as
sugar buzzing flies.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is a new Weimar--not so wonderful as the two old Weimars--the
Weimar of Anna Amalia and Karl August, of Goethe, Wieland, Herder, and
Schiller, Johanna Schopenhauer and her sullen son Arthur, the
pessimistic philosopher--and not the old Weimar of Franz Liszt and
his brilliant cohort of disciples; nevertheless, a new Weimar, its
intellectual rallying-point the home of Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche,
the tiny and lovable sister of the great dead poet-philosopher,
Friedrich Nietzsche.

To drift into this delightful Thuringian town; to stop at some curious
old inn with an eighteenth century name like the Hotel Zum Elephant; to
walk slowly under the trees of the ducal park, catching on one side a
glimpse of Goethe's garden house, on the other Liszt's summer home,
where gathered the most renowned musicians of the globe--these and
many other sights and reminiscences will interest the passionate
pilgrim--interest and thrill. If he be bent upon exploring the past
glories of the Goethe régime there are bountiful opportunities; the
Goethe residence, the superb Goethe and Schiller archives, the ducal
library, the garden house, the Belvidere--here we may retrace all the
steps of that noble, calm Greek existence from robust young manhood to
the very chamber wherein the octogenarian uttered his last cry of "More
light!" a cry that not only symbolised his entire career, but has served
since as a watchword for poetry, science, and philosophy.

If you are musical, is there not the venerable opera-house wherein more
than a half century ago Lohengrin, thanks to the incredible friendship
and labour of Franz Liszt, was first given a hearing? And this same
opera-house--now no more--is a theatre that fairly exhales memories of
historic performances and unique dramatic artists. Once Goethe resigned
because against his earnest protest a performing dog was allowed to
appear upon the classic boards which first saw the masterpieces of
Goethe and Schiller.

But the new Weimar! During the last decade whether the spot has a
renewed fascination for the artistic Germans or because of its increased
commercial activities, Weimar has worn another and a brighter face. The
young Grand Duke Ernst, while never displaying a marked preference for
intellectual pursuits, is a liberal ruler, as befits his blood.

Great impetus has been given to manufacturing interests, and the city is
near enough to Berlin to benefit by both its distance and proximity.
Naturally, the older and conservative inhabitants are horrified by the
swift invasion of unsightly chimneys, of country disappearing before the
steady encroachment of railroads, mills, foundries, and other
unpicturesque but very useful buildings. And the country about Weimar is
famed for its picturesque quality--Jena, Tiefurt, Upper Weimar, Erfurt,
museums, castles, monuments, belvideres, wayside inns, wonderful roads
overhung by great aged trees. But other days, other ways.

Weimar has awakened and is no longer proud to figure merely as a museum
of antiquities. With this material growth there has arisen a fresh
movement in the stagnant waters of poetic and artistic memories--new
ideas, new faces, new paths, new names. It is a useless, though not
altogether an unpleasant theme, to speculate upon the different Weimar
we would behold if Richard Wagner's original plan had been put into
execution as to the location of his theatre. Most certainly Bayreuth
would be a much duller town than it is to-day--and that is saying much.
But emburgessed prejudices were too much for Wagner, and a stuffy
Bavarian village won his preference, thereby becoming historical.

However, Weimar is not abashed or cast down. A cluster of history-making
names are hers, and who knows, fifty years hence she may be proud to
recall the days when one Richard Strauss was her local Kapellmeister and
that within her municipal precincts died a great poetic soul, the
optimistic philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Now, Weimar is the residence and the resort of a brilliant group of
poets, dramatists, novelists, musicians, painters, sculptors, and
actors. Professor Hans Olde, who presides over the imposing art
galleries and art school, has gathered about him an enthusiastic host of
young painters and art students.

There have been recently two notable exhibitions, respectively devoted
to the works of the sculptor-painter, Max Klinger, and the French
sculptor, Auguste Rodin. Nor is the new artistic leaven confined to the
plastic arts. Ernst von Wildenbruch, a world-known novelist and
dramatist (since dead); Baron Detlev von Liliencron, one of Germany's
most gifted lyric poets; Richard Dehmel, a poet of the revolutionary
order, whose work favourably compares with the productions of the
Parisian symbolists; Paul Ernst, poet; Johannes Schlaf, who a few years
ago with Arno Holz blazoned the way in Berlin for Gerhart Hauptmann and
the young realists--Schlaf is the author of several powerful novels and
plays; Count Kessler, a cultured and ardent patron of the fine arts and
literature, and Professor van de Velde, whose influence on architecture
and the industrial arts has been great, and the American painter Gari
Melchers, are all in the Weimar circle.

In the summer Conrad Ansorge, a man not unknown to the New York musical
public, gathers around him in pious imitation of his former master,
Liszt, a class of ambitious pianists. A former resident of New York, Max
Vogrich, pianist and composer, has taken up his residence at Weimar. In
its opera-house, which boasts an excellent company of singers, actors,
and a good orchestra, the première of Vogrich's opera Buddha occurred in
1903. Gordon Craig, the son of Ellen Terry, often visits the city, where
his scheme for the technical reform of the stage--lighting, scenery,
costumes, and colours--was eagerly appreciated, as it was in Berlin, by
Otto Brahm, director of the Lessing Theatre. Mr. Craig is looked upon as
an advanced spirit in Germany. I wish I could praise without critical
reservation the two new statues of Shakespeare and Liszt which stand in
the park; but neither one is of consummate workmanship or conception.

When I received the amiable "command" of Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche,
bidding me call at a fixed hour on a certain day, I was quite conscious
of the honour; only the true believers set foot within that artistic and
altogether charming Mecca at the top of the Luisenstrasse.

The lofty and richly decorated room where repose the precious mementos
of the dead thinker is a singularly attractive one--it is a true abode
of culture. Here Nietzsche died in 1900; here he was wheeled out upon
the adjacent balcony, from which he had a surprising view of the hilly
and delectable countryside.

His sister and devoted biographer is a comely little lady, vivacious,
intellectual, bright of cheek and eye, a creature of fire and
enthusiasm, more Gallic than German. I could well believe in the legend
of the Polish Nietzskys, from whom the philosopher claimed descent,
after listening to her spirited discussion of matters that pertained to
her dead brother. His memory with her is an abidingly beautiful one. She
says "my poor brother" with the accents of one speaking of the vanished
gods.

His sister showed me all her treasures--many manuscripts of early and
still unpublished studies; his original music, for he composed much
during his intimacy with Richard Wagner; the grand pianoforte with which
he soothed his tortured nerves; the stately bust executed by Max
Klinger; the painful portrait etched by Hans Olde, and many other
souvenirs.

Mrs. Foerster-Nietzsche, who once lived in South America--she speaks
English, French, and Italian fluently--assured me that she sincerely
regretted the premature publication in English of The Case of the
Wagner. This book, so terribly personal, is a record of the
disenchanting experiences of a shattered friendship.

Madame Foerster spoke most feelingly of Cosima Wagner and deplored the
rupture of their intimate relations. "A marvellous woman! a fascinating
woman!" she said several times. What with her correspondence in every
land, the publication of the bulky biography and the constant editing of
unpublished essays, letters and memorabilia, this rare sister of a great
man is, so it seems to me, overtaxing her energies. The Nietzsche
bibliography has assumed formidable proportions, yet she is conversant
with all of it. A second Henrietta Renan, I thought, as I took a
regretful leave of this very remarkable woman, not daring to ask her
when Nietzsche's unpublished autobiography, Ecce Homo, would be given to
the world. (This was written in 1904; Ecce Homo has appeared in the
meantime.)

Later, down in the low-ceilinged café of the Hotel zum Elephant,
I overheard a group of citizens, officers, merchants--all
cronies--discussing Weimar. Nietzsche's name was mentioned, and
one knight of this round table--a gigantic officer with a button
head--contemptuously exclaimed:--"Nietzsche Rauch!" (smoke). Yes, but
what a world-compelling vapour is his that now winds in fantastic
spirals over the romantic hills and valleys of the new Weimar and
thence about the entire civilised globe! Friedrich Nietzsche, because
of his fiery poetic spirit and ecstatic pantheism, might be called the
Percy Bysshe Shelley of philosophers.


II

BUDAPEST

My first evening in Budapest was a cascade of surprises. The ride down
from Vienna is not cheery until the cathedral and palace of the primate
is reached, at Gran, a superb edifice, challenging the valley of the
Danube. Interminable prairies, recalling the traits of our Western
country, swam around the busy little train until this residence of the
spiritual lord of Hungary was passed. After that the scenery as far as
Orsova, Belgrade, and the Iron Gates is legendary in its beauty.

To hear the real Hungarian gipsy on his own heath has been long my
ambition. In New York he is often a domesticated fowl, with aliens in
his company. But in Budapest! My hopes were high. The combination of
that peppery food, paprika gulyas, was also an item not to be
overlooked. I soon found an establishment where the music is the best
in Hungary, the cooking of the hottest. After the usual distracting
tuning the band splashed into a fierce prelude.

Fancy coming thousands of miles to hear the original of all the
cakewalks and eat a preparation that might have been turned out from a
Mexican restaurant! It was too much. It took exactly four Czardas and
the Rakoczy march to convince me that I was not dreaming of Manhattan
Beach.

But this particular band was excellent. Finding that some of the
listeners only wished for gipsy music, the leader played the most
frantically bacchanalian in his repertory. Not more than eight men made
up the ensemble! And such an ensemble. It seemed to be the ideal
definition of anarchy--unity in variety. Not even a Richard Strauss
score gives the idea of vertical and horizontal music--heard at every
point of the compass, issuing from the bowels of the earth, pouring down
upon one's head like a Tyrolean thunderstorm. Every voice was
independent, and syncopated as were the rhythms. There was no raggedness
in attack or cessation.

Like a streak of jagged, blistering lightning, a tone would dart from
the double bass to the very scroll of the fiddles. In mad pursuit, over
a country black as Servian politics went the cymbalom, closely followed
by two clarinets--in B and E flat. The treble pipe was played by a
jeweller in disguise--he must have been a jeweller, so fond was he of
ornamentation and cataracts of pearly tones. He made a trelliswork
behind which he attacked his foes, the string players. In the midst of
all this melodic chaos the leader, cradling his fiddle like something
alive, swayed as sways a tall tree in the gale. Then he left the
podium and hat in hand collected white pieces and _kronen_. It was
disenchanting.

The tone of the band was more resilient, more brilliant than the bands
we hear in America. And there were more heart, fire, swing and dash in
their playing. The sapping melancholy of the Lassan and the diabolic
vigour of the Friska are things that I shall never forget. These gipsies
have an instinctive sense of tempo. Their allegretto is a genuine
allegretto. They play rag-time music with true rhythmic appreciation for
the reason that its metrical structure is grateful to them.

In Paris the cakewalk is a thing of misunderstood, misapplied accents.
The Budapest version of the Rakoczy march is a revelation. No wonder
Berlioz borrowed it. The tempo is a wild quickstep; there is no majestic
breadth, so suggestive of military pomp or the grandeur of a warlike
race. Instead, the music defiled by in crazy squads, men breathlessly
clinging to the saddles of their maddened steeds; above them hung the
haze of battle, and the hoarse shouting of the warriors was heard. Five
minutes more of this excitement and heart disease might have supervened.
Five minutes later I saw the band grinning over their tips, drinking and
looking absolutely incapable of ever playing such stirring and
hyperbolical music.

After these winged enchantments I was glad enough to wander next morning
in the Hungarian Museum, following the history of this proud and
glorious nation, in its armour, its weapons, its trophies of war and its
banners captured from the Saracen. Such mementos re-create a race. In
the picture gallery, a modest one, there are some interesting Munkaczys
and several Makarts; also many specimens of Hungarian art by Kovacs,
Zichy (a member of a noble and talented family), Székely, and Michael
Zichy's cartoon illustrations to Mádach's The Tragedy of Mankind.

Munkaczy's portrait of Franz Liszt is muddy and bituminous. Two original
aquarelles by Doré were presented by Liszt. I was surprised to find in
the modern Saal the Sphynx of Franz Stuck, a sensational and gruesome
canvas, which made a stir at the time of first hanging in the Munich
Secession exhibition. Budapest purchased it; also a very characteristic
Segantini, an excellent Otto Sinding, and Hans Makart's Dejanira. A
beautiful marble of Rodin's marks the progressive taste of this artistic
capital.

It would seem that even for a municipality of New York's magnitude the
erection of such a Hall of Justice and such a Parliament building would
be a tax beyond its purse. Budapest is not a rich city, but these two
public buildings, veritable palaces, gorgeously decorated, proclaim her
as a highly civilised centre. The opera-house, which seats only 1,100,
is the most perfectly appointed in the world; its stage apparatus is
better than Bayreuth's. And the natural position of the place is unique.
From the ramparts of the royal palace in Buda--old Ofen--your eye,
promise-crammed, sweeps a series of fascinating façades, churches,
palaces, generous embankments, while between its walls the Danube flows
torrentially down to the mysterious lands where murder is admired and
thrones are playthings.

In the Liszt museum is the old, bucolic pianino upon which his childish
hands first rested at Raiding (Dobrjàn), his birthplace. His baton; the
cast of his hand and of Chopin's and the famous piano of Beethoven, at
which most of the immortal sonatas were composed, and upon which Liszt
Ferencz played for the great composer shortly before his death in 1827.
The little piano has no string, but the Beethoven--a Broadwood & Sons,
Golden Square, London, so the fall-board reads--is full of jangling
wires, the keys black with age. Liszt presented it to his countrymen--he
greatly loved Budapest and taught several months every winter at the
Academy of Music in the spacious Andrassy strasse.

A harp, said to have been the instrument most affected by Marie
Antoinette, did not give me the thrill historic which all right-minded
Yankees should experience in strange lands. I would rather see a real
live tornado in Kansas than shake hands with the ghost of Napoleon.


III

ROME

The pianoforte virtuoso, Richard Burmeister, and one of Liszt's genuine
"pet" pupils, advised me to look at Liszt's hotel in the Vicolo Alibert,
Rome. It is still there, an old-fashioned place, Hotel Alibert, up an
alley-like street off the Via Babuino, near the Piazza del Popolo. But
it is shorn of its interest for melomaniacs, as the view commanding the
Pincio no longer exists. One night sufficed me, though the manager
smilingly assured me that he could show the room wherein Liszt slept and
studied. A big warehouse blocks the outlook on the Pincio; indeed the
part of the hotel Liszt inhabited no longer stands. But at Tivoli, at
the Villa d'Este, with its glorious vistas of the Campagna and Rome,
there surely would be memories of the master. The Sunday I took the
steam-tramway was a threatening one; before Bagni was reached a solid
sheet of water poured from an implacable leaden sky. It was not a
cheerful prospect for a Liszt-hunter. Arrived at Tivoli, I waited in the
Caffé d'Italia hoping for better weather. An old grand pianoforte, the
veriest rattletrap stood in the eating salle; but upon its keys had
rested many times the magic-breeding fingers of Liszt. Often, with a
band of students or with guests he would walk down from the villa and
while waiting for their carriages he would jestingly sweep the
keyboard. At the Villa d'Este itself the cypresses, cascades, terraces,
and mysterious avenues of green were enveloped in a hopeless fog. It was
the mistiest spot I ever visited. Heaven and earth, seemingly, met in
fluid embrace to give me a watery welcome. Where was Liszt's abode is a
Marianite convent. I was not permitted to visit his old room which is
now the superior's. It was at the top of the old building, for wherever
Liszt lived he enjoyed a vast landscape. I could discover but one person
who remembered the Abbate; the conciêrge. And his memories were scanty.
I wandered disconsolately through the rain, my mood splenetic. So much
for fame. I bitterly reflected in the melancholy, weedy, moss-infested
walks of the garden.

As I attempted to point out to our little party the particular window
from which Liszt saw the miraculous Italian world, I stepped on a slimy
green rock and stretched my length in the humid mud. There was a deep, a
respectful silence as I was helped to my feet--the gravity of the
surroundings, the solemnity of our recollections choked all levity;
though I saw signs of impending apoplexy on several faces. To relieve
the strain I sternly bade our guide retire to an adjacent bosky retreat
and there roar to his heart's content. He did. So did we all. The spell
broken we returned to the "Sirene" opposite the entrance to the famous
Tivoli water-falls and there with Chianti and spaghetti tried to forget
the morning's disappointments. But even there sadness was invoked by the
sight of a plaster bust of Liszt lying forlorn in the wet grass. The
head waiter tried to sell it for twenty liri; but it was too big to
carry; besides its nose was missing. He said that the original was
somewhere in Tivoli.

Sgambati in Rome keeps green the memory of the master in his annual
recitals; but of the churchly compositions no one I encountered had ever
heard. At Santa Francesca Romana, adjoining the Forum, Liszt once took
up his abode; there I saw in the cloister an aged grand pianoforte upon
which he had played in a concert given at the Church of Santa Maria
Maggiore many years ago. About an hour from Rome is the Oratory of the
Madonna del Rosario on Monte Mario. There Liszt lived and composed in
1863. But his sacred music is never sung in any of the churches; the
noble Graner Mass is still unheard in Rome. Even the Holy Father refers
to the dead Hungarian genius as, "il compositore Tedesco!" It was
different in the days of Pius IX, when Liszt's music was favoured at the
Vatican. Is it not related that Pio Nono bestowed upon the great pianist
the honour of hearing his confession at the time he became an abbé? And
did he not after four or five hours of worldly reminiscences, cry out
despairingly to his celebrated penitent:

"Basta, Caro Liszt! Your memory is marvellous. Now go play the remainder
of your sins upon the pianoforte." They say that Liszt's playing on
that occasion was simply enchanting--and he did not cease until far into
the night.

Liszt's various stopping-places in and around Rome were: Vicolo de Greci
(No. 43), Hotel Alibert, Vicolo Alibert, opposite Via del Babuino; Villa
d'Este with Cardinal Hohenlohe, also at the Vatican; in 1866 at Monte
Mario, Kloster Madonna del Rosario, Kloster Santa Francesca Romana, the
Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein first resided in the Via del Babuino, later
(1881) at the Hotel Malaro. Monsignor Kennedy of the American College
shows the grand piano upon which Liszt once played there.

Perhaps Rome, at a superficial glance, still affects the American as it
did Taine a half century ago, as a provincial city, sprawled to
unnecessary lengths over its seven hills, and, despite the smartness of
its new quarters, far from suggesting a Weltstadt, as does, for example,
bustling, shining Berlin or mundane Paris. But not for her superb and
imperial indifference are the seductive spells of operatic Venice or the
romantic glamour of Florence. She can proudly say "La ville c'est moi!"
She is not a city, but the city of cities, and it needs but twenty-four
hours' submergence in her atmosphere to make one a slave at her eternal
chariot wheels. The New York cockney, devoted to his cult of the
modern--hotels, baths, cafés and luxurious theatres--soon wearies of
Rome. He prefers Paris or Naples. Hasn't some one said, "See Naples and
die--of its smells?" As an inexperienced traveller I know of no city on
the globe where you formulate an expression of like or dislike so
quickly. You are Rome's foe or friend within five minutes after you
leave its dingy railway station. And it is hardly necessary to add that
its newer quarters, pretentious, cold, hard and showy, are quite
negligible. One does not go to Rome to seek the glazed comforts of
Brooklyn.

The usual manner of approaching the Holy Father is to go around to the
American Embassy and harry the good-tempered secretary into a promise of
an invitation card, that is, if you are not acquainted in clerical
circles. I was not long in Rome before I discovered that both Mgr.
Kennedy and Mgr. Merry del Val were at Frascati enjoying a hard-earned
vacation. So I dismissed the ghost of the idea and pursued my pagan
worship at the Museo Vaticano. Then the heavy hoofs of three hundred
pilgrims invaded the peace of the quiet Hotel Fischer up in the Via
Sallustiana. They had come from Cologne and the vicinity of the Upper
Rhine, bearing Peter's pence, wearing queer clothes and good-natured
smiles. They tramped the streets and churches of Rome, did these
commonplace, pious folk. They burrowed in the Catacombs and ate their
meals, men and women alike, with such a hearty gnashing of teeth, such a
rude appetite, that one envied their vitality, their faith, their
wholesale air of having accomplished the conquest of Rome.

Their schedule, evidently prepared with great forethought and one that
went absolutely to pieces when put to the test of practical operation,
was wrangled over at each meal, where the Teutonic clans foregathered in
full force. The third day I heard of a projected audience at the
Vatican. These people had come to Rome to see the Pope. Big-boned and
giantlike Monsignor Pick visited the hotel daily, and once after I
saw him in conference with Signor Fischer I asked him if it were
possible----

"Of course," responded the wily Fischer, "anything is possible in Rome."
Wear evening dress? Nonsense! That was in the more exacting days of Leo
XIII. The present Pope is a democrat. He hates vain show. Perhaps he has
absorbed some of the Anglo-Saxon antipathy to seeing evening dress on a
male during daylight. But the ladies wear veils. All the morning of
October 5 the hotel was full of eager Italians selling veils to the
German ladies.

Carriages blocked the streets and almost stretched four square around
the Palazzo Margherita. There was noise. There were explosive sounds
when bargains were driven. Then, after the vendors of saints' pictures,
crosses, rosary beads--chiefly gentlemen of Oriental persuasion, comical
as it may seem--we drove off in high feather nearly four hundred strong.
I had secured from Monsignor Pick through the offices of my amiable host
a parti-hued badge with a cross and the motto, "Coeln--Rom., 1905,"
which, interpreted, meant "Cologne--Rome." I felt like singing "Nach
Rom," after the fashion of the Wagnerians in act II of Tannhäuser, but
contented myself with abusing my coachman for his slow driving. It was
all as exciting as a first night at the opera.

The rendezvous was the Campo Santo dei Tedeschi, which, with its
adjoining church of Santa Maria della Pieta, was donated to the Germans
by Pius VI as a burying-ground. There I met my companions of the
dining-room, and after a stern-looking German priest with the bearing of
an officer interrogated me I was permitted to join the pilgrims. What at
first had been a thing of no value was now become a matter of life and
death.

After standing above the dust and buried bones of illustrious and
forgotten Germans we went into the church and were cooled by an address
in German from a worthy cleric whose name I cannot recall. I remember
that he told us that we were to meet the Vicar of Christ, a man like
ourselves. He emphasised strangely, so it appeared to me, the humanity
of the great prelate before whom we were bidden that gloomy autumnal
afternoon. And then, after intoning a Te Deum, we filed out in pairs,
first the women, then the men, along the naked stones until we reached
the end of the Via delle Fundamenta. The pilgrims wore their everyday
clothes. One even saw the short cloak and the green jägerhut. We left
our umbrellas at a garderobe; its business that day was a thriving one.
We mounted innumerable staircases. We entered the Sala Regia, our
destination--I had hoped for the more noble and spacious Sala Ducale.

Three o'clock was the hour set for the audience; but His Holiness was
closeted with a French ecclesiastical eminence and there was a delay of
nearly an hour. We spent it in staring at the sacred and profane
frescoes of Daniele da Volterra, Vasari, Salviati and Zucchari staring
at each other. The women, despite their Italian veils, looked hopelessly
Teutonic, the men clumsy and ill at ease. There were uncouth and
guttural noises. Conversation proceeded amain. Some boasted of being
heavily laden with rosaries and crucifixes, for all desired the blessing
of the Holy Father. One man, a young German-American priest from the
Middle West, almost staggered beneath a load of pious emblems. The
guilty feelings which had assailed me as I passed the watchful gaze of
the Swiss Guards began to wear off. The Sala Regia bore an unfamiliar
aspect, though I had been haunting it and the adjacent Sistine Chapel
daily for the previous month. An aura, coming I knew not whence,
surrounded us. The awkward pilgrims, with their daily manners, almost
faded away, and when at last a murmur went up, "The Holy Father! the
Holy Father! He approaches!" a vast sigh of relief was exhaled. The
tension had become unpleasant.

We were ranged on either side, the women to the right, the men to the
left of the throne, which was an ordinary looking tribune. It must be
confessed that later the fair sex were vigorously elbowed to the rear.
In America the women would have been well to the front, but the dear old
Fatherland indulges in no such new fangled ideas of sex equality. So the
polite male pilgrims by superior strength usurped all the good places. A
tall, handsome man in evening clothes--solitary in this respect,
with the exception of the Pope's body suite--patrolled the floor,
obsequiously followed by the Suiss in their hideous garb--a murrain on
Michelangelo's taste if he designed such hideous uniforms! I fancied
that he was no less than a prince of the royal blood, so masterly was
his bearing. When I discovered that he was the Roman correspondent of a
well-known North German gazette my respect for the newspaper man abroad
was vastly increased. The power of the press----!

"His Holiness comes!" was announced, and this time it was not a false
alarm. From a gallery facing the Sistine Chapel entered the inevitable
Swiss Guards; followed the officers of the Papal household, grave and
reverend seigniors; a knot of ecclesiastics, all wearing purple;
Monsignor Pick, the Papal prothonotary and a man of might in business
affairs; then a few stragglers--anonymous persons, stout, bald,
officials--and finally Pope Pius X.

He was attired in pure white, even to the sash that compassed his plump
little figure. A cross depended from his neck. He immediately and in
the most matter of fact fashion held out his hand to be kissed. I noted
the whiteness of the nervous hand tendered me, bearing the ring of
Peter, a large, square emerald surrounded by diamonds. Though seventy,
the Pope looks ten years younger. He is slightly under medium height.
His hair is white, his complexion dark red, veined, and not very
healthy. He seems to need fresh air and exercise; the great gardens of
the Vatican are no compensation for this man of sorrows, homesick for
the sultry lagoons and stretches of gleaming waters in his old diocese
of Venice. If the human in him could call out it would voice Venice,
not the Vatican. The flesh of his face is what the painters call
"ecclesiastical flesh," large in grain. His nose broad, unaristocratic,
his brows strong and harmonious. His eyes may be brown, but they seemed
black and brilliant and piercing. He moved with silent alertness. An
active, well-preserved man, though he achieved the Biblical three-score
and ten in June, 1905. I noted, too, with satisfaction, the shapely
ears, artistic ears, musical ears, their lobes freely detached. A
certain resemblance to Pius IX there is; he is not so amiable as was
that good-tempered Pope who was nicknamed by his intimate friend, the
Abbé Liszt, _Pia Nina_, because of his musical proclivities. Altogether,
I found another than the Pope I had expected. This, then, was that
exile--an exile, yet in his native land; a prisoner in sight of the city
of which he is the spiritual ruler; a prince over all principalities
and dominions, yet withal a feeble old man, whose life might be
imperilled if he ventured into the streets of Rome.

The Pope had now finished his circle of pilgrims and stood at the other
end of the Sala. With him stood his chamberlains and ecclesiastics.
Suddenly a voice from the balcony, which I saw for the first time, bade
us come nearer. I was thunder-struck. This was back to the prose of life
with a vengeance. We obeyed instructions. A narrow aisle was made, with
the Pope in the middle perspective. Then the voice, which I discovered
by this time issued from the mouth of a bearded person behind a huge,
glittering camera, cried out in peremptory and true photographer
style:----

"One, two, three! Thank your Holiness."

And so we were photographed. In the Vatican and photographed! Old Rome
has her surprises for the patronising visitors from the New World. It
was too business-like for me, and I would have gone away, but I
couldn't, as the audience had only begun. The Pope went to his throne
and received the heads of the pilgrims. A certain presumptuous American
told him that the church musical revolution was not much appreciated in
America. He also asked, rash person that he was, why an example was not
set at St. Peter's itself, where the previous Sunday he had heard, and
to his horror, a florid mass by Milozzi, as florid and operatic as any
he had been forced to endure in New York before the new order of
things. A discreet poke in the ribs enlightened him to the fact that at
a general audience such questions are not in good taste.

The Pope spoke a few words in a ringing barytone voice. He said that he
loved Germany, loved its Emperor; that every morning his second prayer
was for Germany--his first, was it for the hundredth wandering sheep of
the flock, France? That he did not explain. He blessed us, and his
singing voice proved singularly rich, resonant and pure in intonation
for an old man. Decidedly Pius X is musical; he plays the pianoforte it
is said, with taste. The pilgrims thundered the Te Deum a second time,
with such pious fervour that the venerable walls of the Sala Regia shook
with their lung vibrations. Then the Papal suite followed the sacred
figure out of the chamber and the buzzing began. The women wanted to
know--and indignant were their inflections--why a certain lady attired
in scarlet, hat and all, was permitted within the sacred precincts. The
men hurried, jostling each other, for their precious umbrellas. The
umbrella in Germany is the symbol of the mediæval sword. We broke ranks
and tumbled into the now sunny daylight, many going on the wings of
thirst to the Piazza Santi Apostoli, which, notwithstanding its
venerable name, has amber medicine for parched German gullets.

Pius X is a democratic man. He may be seen by the faithful at any time.
He has organised a number of athletic clubs for young Romans, taking a
keen interest in their doings. He is an impulsive man and has many
enemies in his own household. He has expressed his intention of ridding
Rome of its superfluous monks, those unattached ones who make life a
burden by their importunings and beggaries in Rome.

His personal energy was expressed while I was in Rome by his very
spirited rebuke to some members of the athletic clubs at an audience in
the Vatican. There was some disorder while the Pontiff spoke. He fixed a
noisy group with an angry glance:--"Those who do not wish to hear
me--well, there is the open door!"

Another incident, and one I neglected to relate in its proper place;--As
Pius proceeded along the line of kneeling figures during the German
audience he encountered a little, jolly-looking priest, evidently known
to him. A smile, benign, witty, delicately humourous, appeared on his
lips. For a moment he seemed more Celt than Latin. There was no hint of
the sardonic smile which is said to have crossed the faces of Roman
augurs. It was merely a friendly recognition tempered by humility, as if
he meant to ask:--"Why do you need my blessing, friend?" And it was the
most human smile that I would imagine worn by a Pope. It told me more of
his character than even did his meek and resigned pose when the official
photographer of the Vatican called out his sonorous "Una, due, tre!"




VIII

LISZT PUPILS AND LISZTIANA


Here is a list of the pupils who studied with Liszt. There are doubtless
a thousand more who claim to have been under his tutelage but as he is
dead he can't call them liars. All who played in Weimar were not genuine
pupils. This collection of names has been gleaned from various sources.
It is by no means infallible. Many of them are dead. No attempt is made
to denote their nationalities, only sex and alphabetical order is
employed. _Place aux dames._

Vilma Barga Abranyi, Anderwood, Baronne Angwez, Julia Banholzer, Bartlett,
Stefanie Busch, Alice Bechtel, Berger, Robertine Bersen-Gothenberg,
Ida Bloch, Charlotte Blume-Ahrens, Anna Bock, Bödinghausen, Valerie
Boissier-Gasparin, Marianne Brandt, Antonie Bregenzer, Marie
Breidenstein, Elisabeth Brendel-Trautmann, Ingeborg Bronsart-Stark, Emma
Brückmann, Burmester, Louisa Cognetti, Descy, Wilhelmine Döring,
Victoria Drewing, Pauline Endry, Pauline Fichtner Erdmannsdörfer,
Hermine Esinger, Anna Mehlig-Falk, Amy Fay, Anna Fiebinger, Fischer,
Margarethe Fokke, Stefanie Forster, Hermine Frank, H. von Friedländer,
Vilma von Friedenlieb, Stephanie von Fryderyey, Hirschfeld-Gärtner, Anna
Gáll, Cecilia Gaul, Kathi Gaul, Ida Seelmuyden, Geyser, Gilbreth,
Goodwin, Gower, Amalie Greipel-Golz, Margit Groschmied, Emma Grossfurth,
Ilona Grunn, Emma Guttmann von Hadeln, Adele Hastings, Piroska Hary,
Howard, Heidenreich, Nadine von Helbig (née Princesse Schakovskoy),
Gertrud Herzer, Hippins, Hodoly, Höltze, Aline Hundt, Marie Trautmann
Jaell, Olga Janina (Marquise Cezano), Jeapp, Jeppe, Julia Jerusalem,
Clothilde Jeschke, Helene Kähler, Anna Kastner, Clemence Kautz-Kreutzer,
Kettwitz, Johanna Klinkerfuss-Schulz, Emma Koch, Roza Koderle, Manda Von
Kontsky, Kovnatzka, Emestine Kramer, Klara Krause, Julia Rivé King,
Louisè Krausz, Josefine Krautwald, Isabella Kulissay, Natalie Kupisch,
Marie La Mara (Lipsius), Adèle Laprunarède (Duchesse de Fleury),
Vicomtesse de La Rochefoucauld, Julie Laurier, Leu Ouscher, Elsa
Levinson, Ottilie Lichterfeld, Hedwig von Liszt, Hermine Lüders, Ella
Máday, Sarah Magnus-Heinze, Marie von Majewska-Sokal, Martini, Sofie
Menter, Emilie Merian Genast, Emma Mettler, Olga de Meyendorff (née
Princesse Gortschakoff), Miekleser, Von Milde-Agthe, Henrietta Mildner,
Comtesse de Miramont, Ella Modritzky, Marie Mösner, De Montgolfier,
Eugenie Müller-Katalin, Herminie de Musset, Ida Nagy, Gizella
Neumann, Iren Nobel, Adele Aus der Ohe, Sophie Olsen, Paramanoff,
Gizella Paszthony-Voigt de Leitersberg, Dory Petersen, Sophie
Pflughaupt-Stehepin, Jessie Pinney-Baldwin, Marie Pleyel-Mock,
Pohl-Eyth, Toni Raab, Lina Ramann, Kätchen von Ranuschewitsch, Laura
Rappoldi-Kahrer, Duchesse de Rauzan, Ilonka von Ravacz, Gertrud Remmert,
Martha Remmert, Auguste Rennenbaum, Klara Riess, Anna Rigo, Anna Rilke,
Rosenstock, M. von Sabinin, Comtesse Carolyne Saint-Criq d'Artignan
(Liszt's first love), Gräfin Sauerma, Louise Schärnack, Lina Scheuer,
Lina Schmalhausen, Marie Schnobel, Agnes Schöler, Adelheid von Schorn,
Anna Schuck, Elly Schulze, Irma Schwarz, Arma Senkrah (Harkness),
Caroline Montigny-Remaury (Serres), Siegenfeld, Paula Söckeland, Ella
Solomonson, Sothman, Elsa Sonntag, Spater, Anna Spiering, H. Stärk, Anna
Stahr, Helene Stahr, Margarethe Stern-Herr, Neally Stevens, Von
Stvicowich, Hilda Tegernström, Vera von Timanoff, Iwanka Valeska, Vial,
Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Hortense Voigt, Pauline von Voros, Ida Volkmann,
Josephine Ware, Rosa Wappenhaus, Ella Wassemer, Olga Wein-Vaszilievitz,
Weishemer, Margarethe Wild, Etelka Willheim-Illoffsky, Winslow, Janka
Wohl, Johanna Wenzel-Zarembska.

Among the men were: Cornel Abranyi, Leo d'Ageni, Eugen d'Albert, Isaac
Albeniz, C. B. Alkan, Nikolaus Almasy, F. Altschul, Conrad Ansorge, Emil
Bach, Walter Bache, Carl Baermann, Albert Morris Bagby, Josef Bahnert,
Johann Butka, Antonio Bazzini, J. von Beliczay, Franz Bendel, Rudolf
Bensey, Theodore Ritter, Wilhelm Berger, Arthur Bird, Adolf Blassmann,
Bernhard Boekelmann, Alexander Borodin, Louis Brassin, Frederick
Boscovitz, Franz Brendel, Emil Brodhag, Hans von Bronsart, Hans von
Bülow, Buonamici, Burgmein (Ricordi), Richard Burmeister, Louis Coenen,
Herman Cohen ("Puzzi"), Chop, Peter Cornelius, Bernhard Cossmann,
Leopold Damrosch, William Dayas, Ludwig Dingeldey, D' Ma Sudda-Bey,
Felix Draeseke, Von Dunkirky, Paul Eckhoff, Theodore Eisenhauer, Imre
Elbert, Max Erdsmannsdörfer, Henri Falcke, August Fischer, C. Fischer,
L. A. Fischer, Sandor Forray, Freymond, Arthur Friedheim, W. Fritze,
Ferencz Gaal, Paul Geisler, Josef Gierl, Henri von Gobbi, August
Göllerich, Karl Göpfurt, Edward Götze, Karl Götze, Adalbert von
Goldschmidt, Bela Gosztonyi, A. W. Gottschlag, L. Grünberger, Guglielmi,
Luigi Gulli, Guricks, Arthur Hahn, Ludwig Hartmann, Rudolf Hackert,
Harry Hatch, J. Hatton, Hermann, Carl Hermann, Josef Huber, Augustus
Hyllested, S. Jadassohn, Alfred Jaell, Josef Joachim, Rafael Joseffy,
Ivanow-Ippolitoff, Aladar Jukasz, Louis Jungmann, Emerich Kastner,
Keler, Berthold Kellermann, Baron Von Keudell, Wilhelm Kienzl, Edwin
Klahre, Karl Klindworth, Julius Kniese, Louis Köhler, Martin Krause,
Gustav Krausz, Bela Kristinkovics, Franz Kroll, Karl Von Lachmund,
Alexander Lambert, Frederick Lamond, Siegfried Langaard, Eduard Lassen,
W. Waugh Lauder, Georg Leitert, Graf de Leutze, Wilhelm Von Lenz, Otto
Lessmann, Emil Liebling, Georg Liebling, Saul Liebling, Karlo Lippi,
Louis Lönen, Joseph Lomba, Heinrich Lutter, Louis Mass, Gyula Major,
Hugo Mansfeldt, L. Marek, William Mason, Edward MacDowell, Richard
Metzdortf, Baron Meyendorff, Max Meyer, Meyer-Olbersleben, E. Von
Michalowich, Mihlberg, F. Von Milde, Michael Moszonyi, Moriz Moszkowski,
J. Vianna da Motta, Felix Mottl, Franz Müller, Müller-Hartung, Johann
Müller, Paul Müller, Nikol Nelisoff, Otto Neitzel, Arthur Nikisch,
Ludwig Nohl, John Orth, F. Pezzini, Robert Pflughaupt, Max Pinner,
William Piutti, Richard Pohl, Karl Pohlig, Pollack, Heinrich Porges,
Wilhem Posse, Silas G. Pratt, Dionys Prückner, Graf Pückler, Joachim
Raff, S. Ratzenberger, Karoly Rausch, Alfred Reisenauer, Edward Remenyi,
Alfonso Rendano, Julius Reulke, Edward Reuss, Hermann Richter, Julius
Richter, Karl Riedel, F. W. Riesberg, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Karl Ritter,
Hermann Ritter, Moriz Rosenthal, Bertrand Roth, Louis Rothfeld, Joseph
Rubinstein, Nikolaus Rubinstein, Camille Saint-Saëns, Max van de Sandt,
Emil Sauer, Xaver Scharwenka, Hermann Scholtz, Bruno Schrader, F.
Schreiber, Karl Schroeder, Max Schuler, H. Schwarz, Max Seifriz,
Alexander Seroff, Franz Servais, Giovanni Sgambati, William H. Sherwood,
Rudolf Sieber, Alexander Siloti, Edmund Singer, Otto Singer, Antol
Sipos, Friederich Smetana, Goswin Söckeland, Wilhelm Speidel, F. Spiro,
F. Stade, L. Stark, Ludwig Stasny, Adolph Stange, Bernhard Stavenhagen,
Eduard Stein, August Stradal, Frank Van der Stucken, Arpad Szendy,
Ladislas Tarnowski, Karl Tausig, E. Telbicz, Otto Tiersch, Anton
Urspruch, Baron Vegh, Rudolf Viole, Vital, Jean Voigt, Voss, Henry
Waller, Felix Weingartner, Weissheimer, Westphalen, Joseph Wieniawsky,
Alexander Winterberger, Theador de Witt, Peter Wolf, Jules Zarembsky,
Van Zeyl, Geza Zichy (famous one-armed Hungarian pianist), Hermann
Zopff, Johannes Zschocher, Stephen Thoman, Louis Messemaekers, Robert
Freund. And how many more?

All the names above mentioned were not pianists. Some were composers,
later celebrated, conductors, violinists--Joachim and Remenyi, and Van
Der Stucken, for example--harpists, even musical critics who went to
Liszt for musical advice, advice that he gave with a royal prodigality.
He never received money for his lessons. "Am I a piano teacher?" he
would thunder if a pupil came to him with faulty technic.

[Illustration:

    Frl. Paraninoff  Frau Friedheim  Mannsfeldt
    Rosenthal  Frl. Drewing  Liszt
    Liebling  Silotti  Friedheim  Sauer  Reisenauer  Gottschalg

Liszt and His Scholars, 1884]

What became of Part Third of the Liszt Piano Method? It was spirited
away and has never been heard of since. In his Franz Liszt in Weimar,
the late A. W. Gottschalg discusses the mystery. A pupil, a woman, is
said to have been the delinquent. The Method, as far as it goes is not a
work of supreme importance. Liszt was not a pedagogue, and abhorred
technical drudgery.

As to the legend of his numerous children, we can only repeat Mark
Twain's witticism concerning a false report of his death--the report has
been much exaggerated. At one time or another Alexander Winterberger, a
pupil (since dead), the late Anton Seidl, Servais, Arthur Friedheim,
and many others have been called "sons of Liszt." And I have heard
of several ladies who--possibly thinking it might improve their
technic--made the claim of paternity. At one time in Weimar, Friedheim
smilingly assured me, there was a craze to be suspected an offspring of
the Grand Old Man--who like Wotan had his Valkyrie brood. When Eugen
d'Albert first played for Liszt he was saluted by him as the "Second
Tausig." That settled his paternity. Immediately it was hinted that he
greatly resembled Karl Tausig, and although his real father was a French
dance composer--do you remember the Peri Valse?--everyone stuck to the
Tausig legend. I wonder what the mothers of these young Lisztians
thought of their sons' tact and delicacy?

Liszt denied that Thalberg was the natural son of Prince Dietrichstein
of Vienna, as was commonly believed. To Göllerich he said that his early
rival was the son of an Englishman. Richard Burmeister told me when
Servais visited Weimar the Lisztian circle was agitated because of the
remarkable resemblance the Belgian bore to the venerable Abbé. At the
whist-table--the game was a favourite one with the Master--some
tactless person bluntly put the question to Liszt as to the supposed
relationship. He fell into a rage and growlingly answered: "Ich kenne
seine Mutter nur durch Correspondenz, und so was kann man nicht durch
Correspondenz abmachen." Then the game was resumed.

Liszt admired the brilliant talents of the young Nietzsche, but he
distrusted his future. Nietzsche disliked the pianist and said of him in
one of his aphorisms: "Liszt the first representative of all musicians,
but no musician. He was the prince, not the statesman. The conglomerate
of a hundred musicians' souls, but not enough of a personality to cast
his own shadow upon them." In his Roving Expeditions of an Inopportune
Philosopher, Nietzsche even condescends to a pun on Liszt as a piano
teacher: "Liszt, or the school of running--after women" (Schule der
Geläufigkeit).


TAUSIG

Over a quarter of a century has passed since the death of Karl Tausig, a
time long enough to dim the glory of the mere virtuoso. Many are still
living who have heard him play, and can recall the deep impressions
which his performances made on his hearers. Whoever not only knew Karl
Tausig at the piano, but had studied his genuinely artistic nature,
still retains a living image of him. He stands before us in all his
youth, for he died early, before he had reached the middle point of
life; he counted thirty years at the time of his death, when his great
heart, inspired with a love for all beauty, ceased to beat; when those
hands, _Tes mains de bronze et des diamants_, as Liszt named them in a
letter to his pupil and friend, grew stiff in death.

It was through many wanderings and perplexities that Karl Tausig rose to
the height which he reached in the last years of his life. A friendless
childhood was followed by a period of _Sturm und Drang_, till the dross
had been purged away and the pure gold of his being displayed. The
essence of his playing was warm objectivity; he let every masterpiece
come before us in its own individuality; the most perfect virtuosity,
his incomparable surmounting of all technical means of expression, was
to him only the means, never the end. Paradoxical as it may appear,
there never was, before or since, so great a virtuoso who was less a
virtuoso. Hence the career of a virtuoso did not satisfy him; he strove
for higher ends, and apart from his ceaseless culture of the intellect,
his profound studies in all fields of science and the devotion which he
gave to philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences, what he
achieved in the field of music possesses a special interest, as he
regarded it as merely a preparation for comprehensive creative activity.
Some of these compositions are still found in the programmes of all
celebrated pianists, while the arrangements that he made for pedagogic
purposes occupy a prominent place in the courses of all conservatories.

Karl Tausig came to Berlin in the beginning of the sixties. Alois
Tausig, his father, a distinguished piano teacher at Warsaw, who had
directed the early education of the son, whom he survived by more than a
decade, had already presented him to Liszt at Weimar. Liszt at once took
the liveliest interest in the astonishing talents of the boy and made
him a member of his household at Altenburg, at Weimar, where this prince
in the realm of art kept his court with the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein,
surrounded by a train of young artists, to which Hans von Bülow, Karl
Klindworth, Peter Cornelius (to name only a few) belonged. With all
these Karl Tausig formed intimate friendships, especially with
Cornelius, who was nearest to him in age. An active correspondence was
carried on between them, even when their paths of life separated them.
Tausig next went to Wagner at Zürich, and the meeting confirmed
him in his enthusiasm for the master's creations and developed that
combativeness for the works and artistic struggles of Wagner which
resulted in the arrangement of orchestral concerts in Vienna exclusively
for Wagner's compositions, a very hazardous venture at that period. He
directed them in person, and gave all his savings and all his youthful
power to them without gaining the success that was hoped for. The master
himself, when he came to Vienna for the rehearsals of the first
performances of Tristan und Isolde, had sad experiences; his young
friend stood gallantly by his side, but the performance did not take
place. Vienna was then a sterile soil for Wagner's works and designs.
Tausig returned in anger to Berlin, where he quickly became an important
figure and a life-giving centre of a circle of interesting men. He
founded a conservatory that was sought by pupils from all over the
world, and where teachers like Louis Ehlert and Adolf Jensen gave
instruction. When Richard Wagner came to Berlin in 1870 with a project
for erecting a theatre of his own for the performance of the Nibelungen
Ring it was Tausig who took it up with ardent zeal, to which the master
bore honourable testimony in his account of the performance.

In July, 1871, Tausig visited Liszt at Weimar and accompanied him to
Leipsic, where Liszt's grand mass was performed in St. Thomas' Church by
the Riedle Society. After the performance he fell sick. A cold, it was
said, prostrated him. In truth he had the seeds of death in him, which
Wagner, in his inscription for the tomb of his young friend, expressed
by the words, "Ripe for death!" The Countess Krockow and Frau von
Moukanoff, who on the report of his being attacked by typhus hastened to
discharge the duties of a Samaritan by his sick-bed in the hospital, did
all that careful nursing and devoted love could do, but in vain, and on
July 17 Karl Tausig breathed his last.

His remains were carried from Leipsic to Berlin, and were interred in
the new cemetery in the Belle Alliance Strasse. During the funeral
ceremony a great storm burst forth, and the roll of the thunder mingled
with the strains of the Funeral March from the Eroica which the Symphony
Orchestra performed at his grave. Friends erected a simple memorial. An
obelisk of rough-hewn syenite bears his portrait, modelled in relief by
Gustav Blaesar. Unfortunately wind and weather in the course of years
injured the marble of the relief, so that its destruction at an early
period was probable, and the same friends substituted a bronze casting
for the marble, which on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death was
adorned with flowers by loving hands.

Karl Tausig represents the very opposite pole in "pianism" to Thalberg;
he was fire and flame incarnate, he united all the digital excellencies
of the aristocratic Thalberg, including his supreme and classic calm to
a temperament that, like a comet, traversed artistic Europe and fired it
with enthusiastic ideals. If Karl Tausig had only possessed the creative
gift in any proportion to his genius for reproduction he would have been
a giant composer. As a pianist he has never had his equal. With Liszt's
fire and Bülow's intellectuality he nevertheless transcended them both
in the possession of a subtle something that defied analysis. We see it
in his fugitive compositions that revel on technical heights hitherto
unscaled. Tausig had a force, a virility combined with a mental
insight, that made him peer of all pianists. It is acknowledged by all
who heard him that his technic outshone all others; he had the
whispering and crystalline pianissimo of Joseffy, the liquidity of
Thalberg's touch, with the resistless power of a Rubinstein.

He literally killed himself playing the piano; his vivid nature felt so
keenly in reproducing the beautiful and glorious thoughts of Bach,
Beethoven and Chopin, and, like a sabre that was too keen for its own
scabbard, he wore himself out from nervous exhaustion. Tausig was
many-sided, and the philosophical bent of his mind may be seen in the
few fragments of original music he has vouchsafed us. Take a Thalberg
operatic fantaisie and a paraphrase of Tausig's, say of Tristan and
Isolde, and compare them; then one can readily gauge the vast strides
piano music has taken. Touch pure and singing was the Thalbergian ideal.
Touch dramatic, full of variety, is the Tausig ideal. One is vocal, the
other instrumental, and both seem to fulfill their ideals. Tausig had a
hundred touches; from a feathery murmur to an explosive crash he
commanded the entire orchestra of contrasts. Thalberg was the cultivated
gentleman of the drawing-room, elegiac, but one who never felt
profoundly (glance at his étude on repeated notes). Elegant always,
jocose never. Tausig was a child of the nineteenth century, full of its
ideals, its aimless strivings, its restlessness, its unfaith and
desperately sceptical tone. If he had only lived he would have left an
imprint on our modern musical life as deep as Franz Liszt, whose pupil
he was. Richard Wagner was his god and he strove much for him and his
mighty creations.


ROSENTHAL

"You, I presume, do not wish for biographical details--of my appearances
as a boy in Vienna and later in St. Petersburg, of my early studies with
Joseffy and later with Liszt," asked the great virtuoso. "You would like
to hear something about Liszt? As a man or as an artist? You know I was
with him ten years, and can flatter myself that I have known him
intimately. As a man, I can well say I have never met any one so good
and noble as he. Every one knows of his ever-ready helpfulness toward
struggling artists, of his constant willingness to further the cause of
charity. And when was there ever such a friend? I need only refer you to
the correspondence between him and Wagner, published a year ago, for
proof of his claims to highest distinction in that oft-abused capacity.
One is not only compelled to admire the untiring efforts to assist
Wagner in every way that are evidenced in nearly each one of his
letters, but one is also obliged to appreciate such acts for which no
other documents exist than the history of music in our day. The fact
alone that Liszt, who had every stage of Germany open to him if he had
so wished, never composed an opera, but used his influence rather in
behalf of Wagner's works, speaks fully as eloquently as the many letters
that attest his active friendship. For Liszt the artist, my love and
admiration are equally great. Even in his inferior works can be
discovered the stamp of his genius. Do you know the Polonaise, by
Tschaïkowsky, transcribed by him? Is it not a remarkable effort for an
old gentleman of seventy-two? And the third Mephisto Waltz for piano?
Certain compositions of his, such as Les Prèludes, Die Ideale, Tasso,
the Hungarian Rhapsodies, and some of the songs and transcriptions for
piano, will unquestionably continue to be performed and enjoyed for
many, many years to come.

"You ask how he played? As no one before him, and as no one probably
will ever again. I remember when I first went to him as a boy--he was in
Rome at the time--he used to play for me in the evening by the
hour--nocturnes by Chopin, études of his own--all of a soft, dreamy
nature that caused me to open my eyes in wonder at the marvellous
delicacy and finish of his touch. The embellishments were like a
cobweb--so fine--or like the texture of costliest lace. I thought, after
what I had heard in Vienna, that nothing further would astonish me in
the direction of digital dexterity, having studied with Joseffy, the
greatest master of that art. But Liszt was more wonderful than anybody I
had ever known, and he had further surprises in store for me. I had
never heard him play anything requiring force, and, in view of his
advanced age, took for granted that he had fallen off from what he once
had been."


ARTHUR FRIEDHEIM

Arthur Friedheim was born of German parentage in St. Petersburg, October
26, 1859. He lost his father in early youth, but was carefully reared by
an excellent mother. His musical studies were begun in his eighth year,
and his progress was so rapid that he was enabled to make his artistic
début before the St. Petersburg public in the following year by playing
Field's A-flat major concerto. He created a still greater sensation,
however, after another twelve months had elapsed, with his performance
of Weber's difficult piano concerto, reaping general admiration for his
work. Despite these successes, the youth was then submitted to a
thorough university education, and in 1877 passed his academical
examination with great honours. But now the musical promptings of his
warm artist soul, no longer able to endure this restraint, having
revived, Friedheim with all his energy again devoted himself to his
musical advancement, including the study of composition, and it proved a
severe blow, indeed, to him when his family soon afterward met with
reverses, in losing their estates, thus robbing the young artist of his
cheery home surroundings.

From this time Friedheim's artistic wanderings began, and fulfilling a
long cherished desire, he, with his mother, first paid a visit to that
master of masters, Franz Liszt. Then he went to Dresden, continuing in
the composition of an opera begun at St. Petersburg, entitled The Last
Days of Pompeii. In order to acquire the necessary routine he accepted a
position as conductor of operas for several years, when an irresistible
force once more led his steps toward Weimar, where, after he had
produced the most favourable impression by the performance of his own
piano concerto, with Liszt at a second piano, he took up his permanent
abode with the master, accompanying him to Rome and Naples. Meantime
Friedheim concertised in Cairo, Alexandria, and Paris, also visiting
London in 1882. At the request of Camille Saint-Saëns fragments of his
works were produced during his stay in Paris.

Friedheim next went to Vienna, where his concerts met with brilliant
success, and later on to Northern Germany, where his renown as a great
pianist became firmly established. He enjoyed positive triumphs in
Berlin, Leipsic and Carlsruhe. Friedheim's technic, his tone, touch,
marvellous certainty, unequalled force and endurance, his broad
expression and that rare gift--a style in the grand manner--are the
qualities that have universally received enthusiastic praise. In later
years he travelled extensively, and more particularly in 1884 to 1886,
in Germany. In 1887 he conducted a series of concerts in Leipsic, in
1888 he revisited London, in 1889 he made a tour through Russia and
Poland; a second tour through Russia was made in 1890, including
Bohemia, Austria, and Galicia, while in 1891 he played numerous
engagements in Germany and also in London, whence he came to this
country to fulfil a very short engagement.

Albert Morris Bagby wrote as follows in his article, "Some Pupils of
Liszt," in the _Century_ about twenty years ago:

"Friedheim! What delightful musical memories and happy recollections are
the rare days spent together in Weimar that name excites! D'Albert left
there before my time, and though I met him on his flying visits to
Weimar, I generally think of him as I first saw him, seated at a piano
on the concert platform.

"One late afternoon in August, 1885, Liszt stood before a wide-open
window of his salon on the second floor of the court gardener's
residence in Weimar, and his thoughtful gaze wandered out beyond the
long row of hothouses and narrow beds of rare shrubs to the rich leafy
growth which shaded the glorious park inclosing this modest home. He was
in a serene state of mind after an hour at whist in which he had won the
rubber, and now, while his young companions were putting the card-tables
and chairs back into their accustomed places about the room, he stood
silent and alone. Any one of us would have given more than 'a penny for
his thoughts,' a fact which he probably divined, for, without turning
his head, he said; 'Friedheim did indeed play beautifully!' referring
to the young pianist's performance of his A major concerto that
afternoon in the class lesson.

"'And the accompaniment was magnificently done, too!' added one of the
small party.

"'Ah!' exclaimed the master, with an animated look and gesture which
implied, 'that goes without saying.' 'Friedheim,' said he, and lifted
his hand with a proud sweep to indicate his estimation of his favourite
pupil, who had supplied the orchestral part on a second piano. After
Friedheim's triumphal début at Leipsic in the spring of 1884, Liszt was
so much gratified that he expressed with unwonted warmth his belief that
the young man would yet become the greatest piano virtuoso of the age.
He was then just twenty-four years old, and his career since that event
points toward the fulfilment of the prophecy.

"Arthur Friedheim is the most individual performer I have ever heard. A
very few executants equal him in mere finger dexterity, but he surpasses
them all in his gigantic strength at the instrument and in marvellous
clearness and brilliancy. At times he plays with the unbridled
impetuosity of a cyclone; and even while apparently dealing the piano
mighty blows, which from other hands would sound forced and discordant,
they never cease to be melodious. This musical, penetrating quality of
touch is the chief charm of Friedheim's playing. He makes the piano
sing, but its voice is full and sonorous. If he plays a pianissimo
passage the effect is as clear and sweet as a perfectly attuned silver
bell, and his graduated increase or diminution of tone is the acme of
artistic finish. No living pianist performs Liszt's compositions so well
as Friedheim. This fact was unanimously mentioned by the critics upon
his first appearance in Berlin in a 'Liszt concert,' in conjunction with
the fear that he would not succeed as an interpreter of Beethoven and
Chopin; which, however, the new virtuoso has since proved groundless.
Friedheim is one of the most enjoyable and inspiriting of the great
pianists. His playing of Liszt's second rhapsody produces an electric
shock; and once heard from him La Campanella remains in the memory an
ineffaceable tone poem. To me he has made likewise indelible Chopin's
lovely D-flat major prelude.

"Friedheim is of medium height and weight; has regular, clear-cut
features, dark brown eyes, and hair pushed straight back from a high,
broad forehead and falling over his coat collar, artist fashion. In his
street dress, with a bronze velvet jacket, great soft felt hat and a
gold medallion portrait of Liszt worn as a scarf pin, he is the typical
musician. His resemblance to the early pictures of Liszt is as marked as
that of D'Albert to Tausig. He was born and bred in St. Petersburg,
though his parents are German. I know nothing of his early instructors,
but it is sufficient to say that he was at least nine years with Liszt.
Fortune favoured him with a relative of unusual mental power who has
made his advancement her life work. To these zealous mothers of
musicians the world is indebted for some of the greatest artistic
achievements of every time and period. There are many celebrated
instances where application is almost entirely lacking or fluctuating in
the child of genius, and the mother supplied the deficiency of character
until the artist was fully developed, and steadiness of purpose had
become routine with him. One evening I was sitting with Friedheim and
his mother in one of those charming restaurant gardens which abound in
Weimar when we were joined by two of the Lisztianer, convivial spirits
who led a happy-go-lucky existence. 'Come, Arthur,' said one, 'we will
go to the "Armbrust" for a few minutes--music there to-night. Will be
right back, Mrs. Friedheim.' 'No,' replied the mother, pleasantly,
'Arthur remains with me this evening.' 'But, mother, we will be gone
only a few minutes, and I have already practiced seven hours to-day,'
entreated the son. 'Yes, dear child, and you must practice seven more
to-morrow. I think you had better remain with me,' responded his parent.
Friedheim good-naturedly assented to his mother's speech, for the
nocturnal merry-makings of a certain clique of divers artists at the
'Hotel zum Elephanten' were too well-known to risk denial."


JOSEFFY

Descent counts for much in matters artistic as well as in the breeding
of racehorses. "Tell me who the master is and I will describe for you
the pupil," cry some theorists who might be called extremists. How many
to-day know the name of Anton Rubinstein's master? Yet the pedagogue
Villoing laid the foundation of the great Russian pianist's musical
education, an education completed by the genial Franz Liszt. In the
case, however, of Rafael Joseffy he was a famous pupil of a famous
master. There are some critics who claim that Karl Tausig represents the
highest development of piano playing in this century of piano-playing
heroes. His musical temperament so finely fibred, his muscular system
like steel thrice tempered is duplicated in his pupil, who, at an age
when boys are gazing at the world across the threshold of Toy-land, was
an accredited artist, a virtuoso in knee-breeches!

Rafael Joseffy stands to-day for all that is exquisite and poetic in the
domain of the piano. His touch is original, his manipulation of the
mechanism of the instrument unapproachable, a virtuoso among virtuosi,
and the beauty of his tone, its velvety, aristocratic quality, so free
from any suspicion of harshness or brutality, gives him a unique
position in the music-loving world. There is magic in his attack, magic
and moonlight in his playing of a Chopin nocturne, and brilliancy--a
meteor-like brilliancy--in his performance of a Liszt concerto.

This rare combination of the virtuoso and the poet places Joseffy
outside the pale of popular "pianism." From Tausig he inherited his keen
and severe sense of rhythm; from his native country, Hungary, he
absorbed brilliancy and colour sense. When Joseffy was young he
delighted in the exhibition of his fabulous technic, but he has
mellowed, he has matured, and superimposed upon the brilliancies of his
ardent youth are the thoughtful interpretations of the intellectual
artist. He is a classical pianist par excellence, and his readings of
Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms are authoritative and final. To
the sensitive finish he now unites a breadth of tone and feeling, and
you may gauge the catholicity of the man by his love for both Chopin and
Brahms.

There you have Joseffy, an interpreter of Brahms and Chopin! No need to
expatiate further on his versatility! His style has undergone during the
past five years a thorough purification. He has successfully combated
the temptation of excess in colour, of the too lusty exuberance in the
use of his material, of abuse of the purely decorative side of his art.
Touching the finer rim of the issues of his day Joseffy emulates the
French poet, Paul Verlaine, in his devotion to the nuance, to the shade
within shade that may be expressed on the keyboard of the piano. Yet
his play never lacks the robust ring, the virile accent. He is no mere
pianissimist, striving for effects of the miniaturist; rather in his
grasp of the musical content of a composition does he reveal his acuity
and fine spiritual temper.


OSCAR BERINGER

"To Franz Liszt, who towers high above all his predecessors, must be
given pride of place.

"In 1870 I had the good fortune to go with Tausig to the Beethoven
Festival held at Weimar by the Allgemeiner Musik Verein, and there I met
Liszt for the first time. I had the opportunity of learning to know him
from every point of view, as pianist, conductor, composer, and, in his
private capacity, as a man--and every aspect seemed to me equally
magnificent.

"His remarkable personality had an indescribable fascination, which made
itself felt at once by all who came into contact with him. This
wonderful magnetism and power to charm all sorts and conditions of men
was illustrated in a delightful way. He was walking down Regent Street
one day, on his way to his concert at the St. James' Hall. As he passed
the cab-rank, he was recognised, and the cabbies as one man took off
their hats and gave three rousing cheers for 'The Habby Liszt.' The man
who can evoke the enthusiasm of a London cabby, except by paying him
treble his fare, is indeed unique and inimitable!

"As a Conductor, the musical world owes him an undying debt of gratitude
for having been the first to produce Wagner's Lohengrin, and to revive
Tannhäuser in the face of the opprobrium heaped upon this work by the
whole of the European press. It was he, too, who first produced
Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini and many other works, which, though
neglected and improperly understood at that time, have since come into
their kingdom and received due recognition.

"As a Composer, I do not think that Liszt has hitherto been esteemed as
highly as he deserves. If only for having invented the symphonic poem,
which was an absolutely new form of orchestral composition, he has
merited the highest honours; while his pre-eminence is still undisputed
in the bravura style of pianoforte works, without one or more of which
no pianoforte recital seems complete. The same compliment is not paid
his orchestral works, which are performed far too rarely.

"Words cannot describe him as a Pianist--he was incomparable and
unapproachable."


CLARA NOVELLO

There are interesting anecdotes of great musicians. Rossini was her
intimate friend and adviser for years. In Paris she knew Chopin, who
came to the house often and would only play for them if "la petite Clara
would recite Peter Piper Picked." She remembered waltzing to his and
Thalberg's playing. Later, when she was studying in Milan and knew
Liszt, she sang at one of his concerts when no one else would do so,
because he had offended the Milanese by a pungent newspaper article. He
gave her courage to have a tooth out by playing Weber's Concertstück.
She remembered hearing Paganini play when that arch-trickster took out a
pair of scissors and cut three of the strings of his violin so that they
hung down loose, and on the fourth performed his Witches' Dance, so that
"the lights seemed to turn blue."


BIZET

We are not accustomed to thinking of the composer of Carmen as a
pianist, but the following anecdote from the _London Musical Standard_
throws new light upon the subject:

"It may not be generally known that the French composer, Bizet,
possessed to a very high degree two artistic qualities: a brilliant
technique and an extraordinary skill in score reading. On various
occasions he gave proof of this great ability. One of the most
interesting is the following:

"Bizet's fellow-countryman, the composer Halévy, who filled the position
of secretary to the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, had gathered a few of
his friends at his house for a little supper. In the circle were Liszt
and Bizet. After they had finished their repast, the company went to the
host's music room. Gathered around the fireplace, which increased the
charm or comfort, and with cigars and coffee, the guests gave themselves
up to an animated conversation; finally Liszt seated himself at the
piano. The famous master played one of his compositions which was
unknown to those present. He overcame its tremendous difficulties with
the customary audacity and strength. A storm of applause followed the
brilliant execution. Liszt ended with a brilliant passage which seemed
absolutely impossible to mortal fingers. Every one pressed around the
great pianist, shaking his hands enthusiastically and admiring not only
his unequalled playing, but praising also the clever composition, which
could have been written only by so masterful a composer.

"'Yes,' replied Liszt, 'the piece is difficult, terribly difficult, and
in all Europe I know only two pianists who are able to play it with the
interpretation which belongs to it, and in the tempo which I have used,
Von Bülow and myself!'

"Halévy, with whom Bizet had studied, had also joined the circle around
the piano and complimented the master. Suddenly turning to the young
Bizet, whose fine memory and ability he well knew, he said:

"'Did you notice that passage?' He accompanied the question with a few
chords which sketched the passage in question, which had aroused his
attention. Accepting the implied invitation, Bizet took his place at the
piano, and, without the slightest hesitation, repeated the passage
which had drawn out the admiration of his teacher.

"Liszt observed the clever youngster with astonishment, while Halévy,
smiling slyly, could scarcely suppress his joy over Liszt's surprise.

"'Just wait a moment, young man, just wait!' said Liszt, interrupting.
'I have the manuscript with me. It will help your memory.'

"The manuscript was quickly brought, and placed upon the piano rack.
Bizet, to the general astonishment, immediately took up the difficult
piece, and played it through to the final chord with a verve and
rapidity which no one had expected from him. Not once was there a sign
of weakness or hesitation. An enthusiastic and long clapping of hands
followed the playing. Halévy continued to smile, enjoying to the full
the triumph of his favourite pupil.

"But Liszt, who always rose to an occasion and was never chary of praise
for others, stepped to the young man's side after the wave of applause
had subsided, pressed his hand in a friendly manner, and said with
irresistible kindness, 'My young friend, up to the present time I
believed that there were only two men capable of overcoming the
tremendous difficulties which I wrote in that piece, but I deceived
myself--there are three of us; and I must add, in order to be just, that
the youngest of us is perhaps the cleverest and the most brilliant.'"


SGAMBATI

"One of the pioneers of classical music in Italy, and one of its most
talented composers of chamber music and in symphonic forms, is Giovanni
Sgambati, born in Rome, May 18, 1843," writes Edward Burlingame Hill, in
the _Etude_. "His father was a lawyer; his mother, an Englishwoman, was
the daughter of Joseph Gott, the English sculptor. There had been some
idea of making a lawyer of young Sgambati, but the intensity of his
interest in music and his obvious talent precluded the idea of any other
career. When he was but six years old, his father died, and he went with
his mother to live in Trevii, in Umbria, where she soon married again.
Even at this early age he played in public, sang contralto solos in
church, and also conducted small orchestras. When a little older he
studied the piano, harmony and composition with Natalucci, a pupil of
Zingarelli, a famous teacher at the Naples conservatory. He returned in
1860 to Rome, where he became at once popular as a pianist, in spite of
the severity of his programmes, for he played the works of Beethoven,
Chopin and Schumann, and the fugues of Bach and Handel. Many of these
works were entirely unknown to Italian audiences; he thus became an
ardent propagandist of the best literature of the piano. His next
teacher was Professor Aldega, master of the Capella Liberiana of Santa
Maria Maggiore. He was on the point of leaving for Germany for further
study when Liszt came to Rome, became interested in Sgambati and took
him in charge for special instruction in the mysteries of higher piano
playing. He soon became the leading exponent of the Liszt school of
technic and interpretation. Sgambati was the soloist in a famous series
of classical chamber music concerts inaugurated in Rome by Ramaciotti;
he was (as mentioned before) the first interpreter of the works of
Schumann, who in the years 1862-63 was virtually unknown in Italy. Later
he began to give orchestral concerts at which the symphonies and
concertos of the German masters were given for the first time. In 1866,
when the Dante Gallery was inaugurated, Liszt chose Sgambati to conduct
his Dante symphony. On this occasion Beethoven's Eroica symphony was
given for the first time in Rome.

"In 1869, he travelled in Germany with Liszt, meeting many musicians of
note, among them Wagner, Rubinstein, and Saint-Saëns, hearing The
Rhinegold at Munich. Wagner, in particular, became so much interested in
Sgambati's compositions that he secured a publisher for them by his
emphatic recommendations. On returning to Rome, Sgambati founded a free
piano class at the Academy of St. Cecilia, since adopted as a part of
its regular course of instruction. In 1878, he became professor of the
piano at the Academy, and at present is its director. In 1896, he
founded the Nuova Società Musicale Romana (the Roman New Musical
Society) for increasing interest in Wagnerian opera. Sgambati has been
an occasional visitor to foreign cities, notably London and Paris, both
in the capacity of pianist and as conductor; he has led performances of
his symphonies in various Italian cities, and at concerts where the
presence of royalty lent distinction to the audience.

"Miss Bettina Walker, a pupil of Sgambati in 1879, gives a most
delightful picture of Sgambati in her book, My Musical Experiences. A
few extracts may assist in forming an idea of his personality. 'He then
played three or four pieces of Liszt's, winding up the whole with a
splendid reading of Bach's Chromatic Fantasy. In everything that he
played, Sgambati far exceeded all that I could have anticipated. His
lovely, elastic touch, the weight and yet the softness of his wrist
staccato, the swing and go of his rhythmic beat, the colouring
rich and warm, and yet most exquisitely delicate, and over all the
atmosphere of grace, the charm and the repose which perfect mastery
alone can give'--'But to return to the relation of my studies
with Sgambati. He gave me the scales to practice in thirds, and
arpeggios in the diminished sevenths, for raising the fingers from the
keyboard--recommending these as the best possible daily drills for the
fingers. He also gave me some guidance in the first book of Kullak's
octave-studies and he tried to initiate me into the elastic swing and
movement of the wrist, so important in the octave-playing of modern
compositions. Sgambati's playing of Liszt was, now that I compare him
with many others whom I have since heard, more poetical than any. In the
sudden fortissimi so characteristic of the school his tone was always
rich and full, never wooden or shrill; while his pianissimi were so
subtle and delicate, and the nuances, the touches of beauty, were
fraught with a sighing, lingering, quite inimitable sweetness, which one
could compare to nothing more material than the many hues where sky and
ocean seem to melt and blend, in a dream of tender ecstasy, along the
coast-line between Baia and Naples.'"


BACHE

Walter Bache died April, 1888, and the London _Figaro_ gives the
following sketch of this artist:

"The awfully sudden death of poor Walter Bache on Monday night sent a
shock through the whole of the London world of music. Some of his most
intimate friends were present at the final popular concert on that
evening, but none of them knew anything at all of the death. We have it
on the authority of a member of his family that not even those whom he
held most dear were in the slightest degree aware that he was in any
danger. Only a few days ago he was present at a concert in St. James'
Hall. But it seems he caught a chill. Next day he became worse, the
cold doubtless settled upon his lungs, and the third day he died.
Notification of the death did not reach even the daily papers until
midnight. The obituary writers were then certainly not assisted by Sir
George Grove, who, in the thousands of pages which form the four
gigantic volumes of his so-called Dictionary of Musicians, could not
spare a paragraph to narrate the story of the life of one who for a
quarter of a century has been a central figure of English musical life,
and who from his gentleness, his gifts and his son-like affection for
his master Liszt will shine as a bright picture in the pages of English
musical history.

"We need not go very deeply into the history of Walter Bache's life. He
was born in June, 1842, at Birmingham, and was the son of an Unitarian
minister. From his birth till his death two special points stand out
boldly in his career. Until his 'prodigy' brother Edward died in 1858 he
was taught only by Stimpson, of Birmingham. The death of his brother was
the first great incident of his life. His own education was then more
thoroughly cared for than before, and he was sent to Leipsic, where,
under Plaidy, Moscheles, Richter (not the conductor) and Hauptman, he
was a fellow student of Sullivan, Carl Rosa, J. F. Barnett and Franklin
Taylor. All five boys have since become eminent, but each one in a
totally different line, and, indeed, it may fairly be said that to a
great extent the Leipsic class of that period held the fortunes of
modern musical England. When the class broke up in 1861 Bache travelled
in Italy, and in 1862 at his meeting with Liszt occurred the second
great incident in his career. From that time Liszt and Bache were fast
friends. But Bache to the day of his death never aspired to be more than
the pupil of his master.

"Teach he must do for daily bread, but compose he would not, as he knew
he could not surpass Liszt, although all his savings were devoted to the
Liszt propaganda. It is not for us, standing as we do on the brink of
the grave of a good man, to determine whether he was right or wrong. It
will suffice that Walter Bache's devotion to Liszt was one of the most
beautiful and the most sentimental things of a musically material age.
Liszt rewarded him on his last visit to London by attending a reception
which Bache, at great expense, gave in his honour at the Grosvenor
Gallery. Bache is now dead; a blameless and a useful life cut short in
its very prime."


RUBINSTEIN

"Antoine Rubinstein, of whom no one in Paris had ever heard before, for
this great artist had the coquettish temerity to disdain the assistance
of the press, and no advance notice, none at all, you understand, had
announced his apparition," has written Saint-Saëns, "made his appearance
in his concerto in G major, with orchestra, in the lovely Herz concert
room, so novel in construction and so elegant in aspect, of which one
can no more avail himself to-day. Useless to say, there was not a
single paying hearer in the room, but next morning, nevertheless, the
artist was celebrated, and at the second concert there was a prodigious
jam. I was there at the second concert, and at the first notes I was
overthrown and chained to the car of the conqueror.

"Concerts followed one another, and I did not miss a single one. Some
one proposed to present me to the great artist, but in spite of his
youth (he was then twenty-eight), and in spite of his reputation for
urbanity, he awakened in me a horrible timidity; the idea of being near
him, of addressing a word to him, terrified me profoundly. It was only
at his second coming to Paris, a year later, that I dared to brave his
presence. The ice between us two was quickly broken. I acquired his
friendship in deciphering upon his own piano the orchestral score of his
Ocean Symphony. I read very well then, and his symphonic music, written
large and black, was not very difficult to read.

"From this day a lively sympathy united us; the simplicity and evident
sincerity of my admiration touched him. We were together assiduously,
often played together for four hands, subjected to rude tests the piano
which served as our field of battle, without regard to the ears of our
hearers. It was a good time! We made music with passion simply for the
sake of making it, and we never had enough. I was so happy to have
encountered an artist who was wholly an artist, exempt from the
littleness which sometimes makes so bad a barrier around great talent.
He came back every winter, and always enlarged his success and
consolidated our friendship."


VIARDOT-GARCIA

With the exception of the Bachs, who were noted musicians for six
generations, and the Viennese branch of the Strauss dynasty, there is
perhaps no musical family that affords a more interesting illustration
of heredity in a special talent than the Garcias. The elder Garcia, who
was born in 1775, was not only a great tenor and teacher, but a prolific
composer of operas. His two famous daughters also became composers, as
well as singers. Madame Viardot (who died in 1910) was so lucky as to be
able to base her operettas on librettos written by Turgenev. Liszt said
of her that "in all that concerns method and execution, feeling and
expression, it would be hard to find a name worthy to be mentioned with
that of Malibran's sister," and Wagner was amazed and delighted when she
sang the Isolde music in a whole act of his Tristan at sight. She
studied the piano with Liszt and played brilliantly.


LISZT AS A FREEMASON

Memorial tablets have been placed on each of the two houses at Weimar in
which Liszt used to reside. He first lived at the Altenburg and later on
at the Hofgärtnerei. The act of piety was undertaken by the Allgemeiner
Deutscher Musikverein, of which organisation Liszt was the president up
to the time of his death.

It has been asserted that Liszt was a Freemason after his consecration
as a priest. This has been contradicted, but the following from the
_Freemason's Journal_ appears to settle the question:

"On the 31st of July last one of the greatest artists and men departed
at Bayreuth for the eternal east, who had proved himself a worthy member
of our brotherhood by his deeds through his whole eventful life. It is
Brother Franz Liszt, on whose grave we deposit an acacia branch.
Millions of florins Franz Liszt had earned on his triumphal career--for
others. His art, his time, his life, were given to those who claimed it.
Thus he journeyed, a living embodiment of the St. Simonism to which he
once belonged, through his earthly pilgrimage. Brother Franz Liszt was
admitted into the brotherhood in the year 1844, at the lodge 'Unity'
('Zur Einigkeit'), in Frankfort-on-the-Main, by George Kloss, with the
composer, W. Ch. Speyer as witness, and in the presence of Felix von
Lichnowsky. He was promoted to the second degree in a lodge at Berlin,
and elected master in 1870, as member of the lodge 'Zur Einigkeit,' in
Budapest. Since 1845 he was also honorary member of the L. Modestia cum
Libertate at Zurich. If there ever was a Freemason in favour with Pope
Pius IX it was Franz Liszt, created abbé in 1865 in Rome."


A LISZT SON?

A letter from Paris to the Vienna _Monday Review_ says that in the salon
of the Champ de Mars a picture is on exhibition, called Italian
Bagpiper. While its artistic points are hardly worthy of special mention
the striking resemblance of this work by Michael Vallet to the facial
traits of Franz Liszt puzzled the jury not a little, and will doubtless
create much interest among the visitors of the gallery. The model for
the subject was a boat-hand of Genoa named Angelo Giocati-Buonaventi,
fifty-six years of age. It was while strolling about the Genoese wharves
that Vallet noticed the sparse form of Angelo, whose beardless face
recalled to him at once Franz Liszt's.

Angelo consented willingly to pose for the piper, but all questions as
to his family extraction were answered with a laconic Chi lo sa? Vallet,
by making inquiries in other directions, learned that Angelo came
originally from Albano. He took a trip to that place, and after the
lapse of a few days wrote a friend in Paris: "Found! Found! The surmise
regarding my Angelo is correct. This boathand is without any doubt a
son of Countess d'Agoult, whose relations with Franz Liszt are known
throughout the world, and was born here in the year 1834. I found a
picture of the countess in the home of a sister-in-law of a lately
deceased peasant woman, Giocati-Buonaventi. This latter was the nurse
and later the woman who had the motherly care of my Angelo...."

It happened that at the same time, as if to corroborate Vallet's
statement, the _Review de Paris_ published an interesting correspondence
between Georges Sand and Countess d'Agoult. The latter writes from
Albano under date of June 9, 1839: "It was our intention to present our
respects to the Sultan this summer, but our trip to Constantinople came
to naught. A little fellow that I had the caprice to bring here into the
world prevented the carrying out of the plan. The boy promises to be a
beauty. One of the handsomest women of Palestrina furnishes the milk for
his nourishment. It is to be regretted that Franz has again one of his
fits of melancholy. [She speaks of Liszt repeatedly in this letter,
giving him the pet name _crétin_.] The thought of being father to
_three_ little children seems to depress his mind...."

The three children being accounted for, the story of Vallet regarding
Angelo has no foundation in fact, and we would not even mention it if it
was not making the rounds of the Continental press.


LISZT ON VIRTUOSITY

In these days of virtuosity let us hear what Liszt, the master of all
virtuosi, says:

"What, then, makes the virtuoso on an instrument?" asks the master, and
we gain on this occasion the most comprehensive and the most decisive
information on the point ourselves. Is he really a mere spiritless
machine? Do his hands only attend to the office of a double winch on a
street organ? Has he to dispense with his brain and with his feelings in
his mechanical execution of the prescribed performance? Has he to supply
the ear only with a photograph of the object before him? Such
representations bring him to the somewhat proud remark: "We know too
well how many amongst those who enjoy great praise, unable to translate
even to the letter the original that is on the desk before them, degrade
its sense, carrying on the art as a trade, and not understanding even
the trade itself. However victorious a counterfeit may be, it does not
destroy the power of the real authors and poet virtuosi; they are for
those who are 'called' to an extent of which a degraded public, under an
illegitimate and ignorant 'dominion,' has no idea. You hear the rolling
of the thunder, the roaring of the lion, the far-spreading sound of
man's strength. For the words virtuosity and virtus are derived from the
Latin 'vir'; the execution of both is an act of manly power," says he,
and characterises now his 'artist' as follows: "The virtuoso is not a
mason, who, with the chisel in his hand, faithfully and conscientiously
cuts his stone after the design of the architect. He is not a passive
tool that reproduces feeling and thought without adding himself. He is
not the more or less experienced reader of works that have no margin for
his notes, and which make no paragraph necessary between the lines.
These spiritedly written musical works are in reality for the virtuoso
only the tragic and touching putting-in-scene of feelings; he is called
upon to let these speak, weep, sing, sigh--to render these to his own
consciousness. He creates in this way like the composer himself, for he
must embrace in himself those passions which he, in their complete
brilliancy, has to bring to light. He breathes life into the lethargic
body, infuses it with fire, and enlivens it with the pulse of
gracefulness and charm. He changes the clayey form into a living being,
penetrating it with the spark which Prometheus snatched from the flash
of Jupiter. He must make this form wander in transparent ether; he must
arm it with a thousand winged arms; he must unfold scent and blossom and
breathe into it the breath of life. Of all artists the virtuoso reveals
perhaps most immediately the overpowering forces of the god who, in
glowing embraces of the proud muse, allures every hidden secret."


LISZT'S FAVOURITE PIANO

LETTER FROM DR. FRANZ LISZT

        "WEIMAR, _November, 1883_.

    "MR. STEINWAY:

"_Most Esteemed Sir_: Again I owe you many and special thanks. The new
Steinway Grand is a glorious masterpiece in power, sonority, singing
quality, and perfect harmonic effects, affording delight even to my old
piano-weary fingers. Ever continuing success remains a beautiful
attribute of the world-renowned firm of Steinway & Sons. In your letter,
highly esteemed sir, you mention some new features in the Grand Piano,
_viz._, the vibrating body being bent into form out of one continuous
piece, and that portion of the strings heretofore lying dormant being
now a part of and thus incorporated as partial tones into the foundation
tones. Their utility is emphatically guaranteed by the name of the
inventor. Owing to my ignorance of the mechanism of piano construction I
can but praise the magnificent _result_ in the 'volume and quality of
sound.' In relation to the use of your welcome tone-sustaining pedal I
inclose two examples: Danse des Sylphes, by Berlioz, and No. 3 of my
Consolations. I have to-day noted down only the introductory bars of
both pieces, with this proviso, that, if you desire it, I shall gladly
complete the whole transcription, with exact adaptation of your
tone-sustaining pedal.

    "Very respectfully and gratefully,

        "F. LISZT."


LISZT AS TEACHER

"While Liszt has been immensely written about as pianist and composer,
sufficient stress has not been laid upon what the world owes him as a
teacher of pianoforte playing," writes Amy Fay. "During his life-time
Liszt despised the name of 'piano-teacher,' and never suffered himself
to be regarded as such. 'I am no Professeur du Piano,' he scornfully
remarked one day in the class at Weimar, and if any one approached him
as a 'teacher' he instantly put the unfortunate offender outside of his
door.

"I was once a witness of his haughty treatment of a Leipsic pupil of the
fair sex, who came to him one day and asked him 'to give her a few
lessons.' He instantly drew himself up and replied in the most cutting
tone:

"'I do not give lessons on the piano; and,' he added with a bow, in
which grace and sarcasm were combined, 'you really don't need me as a
teacher.'

"There was a dead silence for a minute, and then the poor girl, not
knowing what to do or say, backed herself out of the room. Liszt,
turning to the class, said:

"'That is the way people fly in my face, by dozens! They seem to think I
am there only to give them lessons on the piano. I have to get rid of
them, for I am no Professor of the Piano. This girl did not play badly,
either,' concluded he, half ashamed of himself for his treatment of
her.

"For my part, I was awfully sorry for the girl, and I was tempted to run
after her and bring her back, and intercede with Liszt to take her; but
I was a new-comer myself, and did not quite dare to brave the lion in
his den. Later, I would have done it, for the girl was really very
talented, and it was a mere want of tact on her part in her manner of
approaching Liszt which precipitated her defeat. She brought him
Chopin's F minor concerto, and played the middle movement of it, Liszt
standing up and thundering out the orchestral accompaniment, tremolo, in
the bass of the piano. I wondered it did not put the girl out, but she
persisted bravely to the end, and did not break down, as I expected she
would.

"She came at an inopportune moment, for there were only five of us in
the room, and we were having a most entertaining time with Liszt, that
lovely June afternoon, and he did not feel disposed to be interrupted by
a stranger. In spite of himself, he could not help doing justice to her
talent, saying: 'She did not play at all badly.' This, however, the poor
girl never knew. She probably wept briny tears of disappointment when
she returned to her hotel.

"While Liszt resented being called a 'piano-teacher,' he nevertheless
_was one_, in the higher sense of the term. It was the difference
between the scientific college professor of genius and the ordinary
school-teacher which distinguished him from the rank and file of musical
instructors.

"Nobody could be more appreciative of talent than Liszt was--even of
talent which was not of the first order--and I was often amazed to see
the trouble he would give himself with some industrious young girl who
had worked hard over big compositions like Schumann's Carnival, or
Chopin's sonatas. At one of the musical gatherings at the Frauleins'
Stahr (music-teachers in Weimar, to whose simple home Liszt liked to
come) I have heard him accompany on a second piano Chopin's E minor
concerto, which was technically well played, by a girl of nineteen from
the Stuttgart Conservatory.

"It was a contrast to see this young girl, with her rosy cheeks, big
brown eyes, and healthy, everyday sort of talent, at one piano, and
Liszt, the colossal artist, at the other.

"He was then sixty-three years old, but the fire of youth burned in him
still. Like his successor, Paderewski, Liszt sat erect, and never bent
his proud head over the 'stupid keys,' as he called them, even
deprecating his pupils' doing so. He was very picturesque, with his
lofty and ideal forehead thrown back, and his magnificent iron-gray hair
falling in thick masses upon his neck. The most divine expression came
over his face when he began to play the opening measures of the
accompaniment, and I shall never forget the concentration and intensity
he put into them if I live to be a hundred! The nobility and absolute
'selflessness' of Liszt's playing had to be heard to be understood.
There was something about his tone that made you weep, it was so apart
from earth and so ethereal!"


VON BÜLOW CRITICISES

"I look forward eagerly," Bülow wrote to a friend, "to your Chopin, that
immortal romanticist par excellence, whose mazurkas alone are a monument
more enduring than metal. Never will this great, deep, sincere, and at
the same time tender and passionate poet become antiquated. On the
contrary, as musical culture increases, he will appear in a much
brighter light than to-day, when only the popular Chopin is in vogue,
whereas the more aristocratic, manly Chopin, the poet of the last two
scherzi, the last two ballads, the barcarole, the polonaise-fantaisie,
the nocturnes, Op. 9, No. 3; Op. 48; Op. 55, No. 2, etc., still awaits
the interpreters who have entered into his spirit and among whom, if God
grants me life, I should like to have the pride of counting myself.

"You know from my introduction to the études how highly I esteem Chopin.
In his pieces we find Lenau, Byron, Musset, Lamartine, and at the same
time all sorts of heathen Apollo priests. You shall learn through me to
love him dearly.

"We must grant Chopin the great distinction of having in his works fixed
the boundaries between piano and orchestral music, which other
romanticists, notably Robert Schumann, confused, to the detriment of
both.

"There are two Chopins--one an aristocrat, the other democratic."

Concerning the mazurka, Op. 50, No. 1, he said: "In this mazurka there
is dancing, singing, gesticulating.

"Chopin's pupils issued in Paris an edition of his works. Chopin's
pupils are, however, as unreliable as the girls who pose as Liszt's
pupils. Use the Klindworth edition.

"Liszt's ballads and polonaises have proved most strikingly that it was
possible after Chopin to write ballads and polonaises. In the polonaises
in particular Liszt opened many new points of view for the widening
and spiritualising of that form, quite apart from the individual
peculiarities of his productions, which put in place of the national
Polish colour an entirely new element, thus making possible the filling
out of this form with new contents."

In one of his essays Bülow indignantly attacks the current notion that
Liszt's pieces are all unplayable except by concert pianists: "Some day
I shall make a list of all of Liszt's pieces for piano which most
amateurs will find much easier to master and digest than the chaff of
Thalberg or the wheat of Henselt or Chopin. But it seems that the name
of Liszt as composer for the piano has become associated inseparably
with the words 'inexecutable,' and making 'colossal demands.' It is a
harmless prejudice of the ignorant, like many others, but for all that
none the less objectionable.

"Liszt does not represent virtuosity as distinguished from music--very
far from it.

"The Liszt ballade in B minor is equal in poetic content to Chopin's
ballades."

Concerning Liszt's Irrlichter and Gnomenreigen, he said: "I wish the
inspired master had written more pieces like these, which are as perfect
as any song without words by Mendelssohn."


WEINGARTNER AND LISZT

Weingartner's reminiscences of Liszt throw many interesting lights on
the personality of that great composer and greatest of teachers. The
gathering of famous artists at his house are well described, and his own
mannerisms excellently portrayed. His playing was always marked by the
ripest perfection of touch. He did not incline to the impetuous power of
his youthful days, but sat almost without motion before the keyboard.
His hands glided quietly over the keys, and produced the warm, magnetic
stream of tone almost without effort.

His criticism of others was short, but always to the point. His praise
would be given heartily, and without reserve, while blame was always
concealed in some kindly circumlocution. Once, when a pretty young lady
played a Chopin ballade in execrable fashion, he could not contain
ejaculations of disgust as he walked excitedly about the room. At the
end, however, he went to her kindly, laid his hand gently on her hair,
kissed her forehead, and murmured, "Marry soon, dear child--adieu."

Another young lady once turned the tables on the composer. It was the
famous Ingeborg von Bronsart, who came to him when eighteen years
old, in the full bloom of her fair Northern beauty. Liszt asked her
to play,inwardly fearing that this was to be one more of the petted
incompetents. But when she played a Bach fugue for him, with the utmost
brilliancy, he could not contain his admiration. "Wonderful," he cried,
"but you certainly didn't look like it." "I should hope I didn't look
like a Bach fugue," was the swift retort, and the two became lifelong
friends.


AS ORGAN COMPOSER

Liszt's importance in this field is not overlooked.

"In Germany, the land of seriousness, organ music had acquired a
character so heavy and so uniformly contrapuntal that, by the middle of
last century, almost any decently trained Capellmeister could produce a
sonata dull enough to be considered first-rate. There were, doubtless,
many protests in the shape of unorthodox works which left no mark; but
two great influences, which are the earliest we need notice, came in the
shape of Liszt's Fantasia on the name of Bach and Julius Reubke's Sonata
on the Ninety-fourth Psalm. Without minute analysis we may say that the
former, though not an entirely great work, was at all events something
entirely new. It showed the possibility of freedom of form without
shapelessness, of fairly good counterpoint without dulness, of the
adaptation of piano technic to the organ in a way never before
attempted; and the whole work, brilliant and effective, never outraged
in the smallest degree the natural dignity of the instrument."


LISZT'S TECHNIC

Rudolf Breithaupt thus wrote of the technical elements in Liszt's
playing in _Die Musik_:

"What we hear of Liszt's technic in his best years, from 1825 to 1850,
resembles a fairy tale. As artists, Liszt and Paganini have almost
become legendary personages. In analysing Liszt's command of the piano
we find that it consists first and foremost in the revelation of a
mighty personality rather than in the achievement of unheard of
technical feats. Though his admirers will not believe it, technic has
advanced since his day. Tausig excelled him in exactness and brilliancy;
Von Bülow was a greater master of interpretation: Rubinstein went beyond
him in power and in richness of tone-colour, through his consummate use
of the pedal. Even contemporary artists, _e.g._, Carreño, d'Albert,
Busoni, and in part, Godowsky, are technically equal to Liszt in his
best days, and in certain details, owing to the improved mechanism of
the piano, even his superior.

"It is time to do away with the fetich of Liszt's technic. It was mighty
as an expression of his potent personality, mighty in its domination of
all instrumental forms, mighty in its full command of all registers and
positions. But I believe that if the Liszt of former days--not the old
man whose fingers did not always obey his will, but the young, vigorous
Titan of the early nineteenth century--were to play for us now, we
should be as little edified as we should probably be by the singing of
Jenny Lind or by the playing of Paganini. Exaggeration finds no more
fruitful field than the chronicling of the feats of noted artists.

"We hear, for instance, much of Liszt's hand, of its vampire-like
clutch, of its uncanny, spidery power of extension--as a child I firmly
believed that he could reach two octaves without difficulty. These
stories are all fables. His fingers were long and regular, the thumb
abnormally long; a more than usual flexibility of muscles and sinews
gave him the power of spanning a twelfth. Klindworth tells us that he
did some things with his left thumb that one was led to believe it twice
the length of an ordinary thumb.

[Illustration: Liszt's Hand]

"What chiefly distinguished Liszt's technic was the absolute freedom of
his arms. The secret lay in the unconstrained swinging movement of the
arm from the raised shoulder, the bringing out of the tone through the
impact of the full elastic mass on the keys, a thorough command and use
of the freely rolling forearm. He had the gift for which all strove, the
rhythmic dance of the members concerned--the springing arm, the
springing hand, the springing finger. He played by weight--by a swinging
and a hurling of weight from a loosened shoulder that had nothing in
common with what is known as finger manipulation. It was by a direct
transfer of strength from back and shoulders to fingers, which explains
the high position of hands and fingers.

"At the time of his most brilliant period as virtuoso he paid no
attention to technic and its means; his temperament was the reverse of
analytical--what he wished to do he did without concerning himself as to
the how or why. Later in life he did attempt to give some practical
suggestions in technic, but these were of but doubtful worth. A genius
is not always to be trusted when it comes to theoretical explanation of
what he does more by instinct than by calculation.

"His power over an audience was such that he had only to place his hands
on the keyboard to awaken storms of applause. Even his pauses had life
and movement, for his hands spoke in animated gesture, while his
Jupiter-like head, with its mane of flowing hair, exercised an almost
hypnotic effect on his entranced listeners.

"From a professional stand-point his execution was not always flawless.
His great rival, Thalberg, had greater equality of touch in scales and
runs; in what was then known as the jeu perle (literally, pearly
playing) his art was also finer. Liszt frequently struck false
notes--but ears were closed to such faults; his hearers appeared not to
notice them. These spots on the sun are mentioned only to put an end
once for all to the foolish stories that are still current about Liszt's
wonderful technic. This greatest of all reproductive artists was but
a man, and often erred, though in a large and characteristic fashion.

"Liszt's technic is the typical technic of the modern grand piano
(Hammerklavier). He knew well the nature of the instrument, its
old-fashioned single-tone effects on the one hand, its full harmonic
power and polyphonic capabilities on the other. While to his predecessors
it was simply a medium for musical purposes, under his hands it was a
means of expression for himself, a revelation of his ardent temperament.
In comparison with the contracted five-finger positions of the classical
technic, its broken chords and arpeggios, Liszt's technic had the
advantage of a fuller, freer flow, of greater fulness of tone and
increased brilliancy. Chopin has discovered more original forms; his
style of writing is far more delicate and graceful; his individual note
is certainly more musical, but his technic is special in its character;
it lacks the broad sweep that gives Liszt's technic its peculiar freedom
and adaptability to the instrument.

"Take Schumann and Brahms also, and compare their manner of writing for
the piano with Liszt's. Both have written much that is noble and
beautiful considered as music, but so clumsily put on the instrument
that it is unduly difficult for the player. With Liszt, however, no
matter what the difficulty of the means may be, they are always
precisely adapted to the end in view, and everything he writes sounds
well. It is no merely theoretical combination, but meant to be played
on the piano, and is in strict accordance with the nature of the
instrument. The player finds nothing laboriously put together and
requiring study for its disentanglement. Liszt considers the structure
of the hand, and assigns it tasks suited to its capabilities.

"Among the distinctively original features of Liszt's technic are the
bold outline, the large form, the imitative effects of organ and
clavier, the orchestral timbre it imparts to the piano. We thank him
also for the use of the thumb in the declamation of pathetic cantilena,
for a breadth of melodic characterisation which resembles that of the
horn and violoncello, for the imitation of brass instruments, for the
great advance in all sorts of tremolos, trills and vibratos, which serve
to give colour and intensity to moments of climax. His finger passages
are not merely empty runs, but are like high lights in a picture; his
cadenzas fairly sparkle like comet trains and are never introduced for
display alone. They are preparatory, transitional or conclusive in
character; they point contrasts, they heighten dramatic climaxes. His
scales and arpeggios have nothing in common with the stiff monotony of
the Czerny school of playing; they express feeling, they give emotional
variety, they embellish a melody with ineffable grace. He often supplies
them with thirds and sixths, which fill out their meagre outlines and
furnish support to hands and fingers.

"In his octave technic Liszt has embodied all the elementary power and
wildness of his nature. His octaves rage in chromatic and diatonic
scales, in broken chords and arpeggios, up and down, hither and thither,
like zigzag flashes of lightning. Here he is seen at his boldest,
_e.g._, in his Orage, Totentanz, Mazeppa, Don Juan fantasia, VI
Rhapsody, etc. In the trill, too, he has given us such novel forms as
the simple trill with single fingers of each hand, the trill in double
thirds in both hands, the octave trill--all serving to intensify the
introduction or close of the salient divisions of a composition.

"From Liszt dates the placing of a melody in the fullest and most
ringing register of the piano--that corresponding to the tenor or
baritone compass of voice; also the division of the accompaniment
between the two hands and the extension of hand-crossing technic. To him
we owe exactness in the fixing of tempo, the careful designation of
signs for dynamics and expression, the use of three staves instead of
two for the sake of greater clearness of notation, as well as the modern
installation of the pedal.

"In short, Liszt is not only the creator of the art of piano playing as
we have it to-day, but his is the strongest musical influence in modern
musical culture. But granting this, those thinkers who declare this
influence not unmixed with harm are not altogether wrong. It is not the
fault of genius, however, that undesirable consequences follow in its
wake. It is also my opinion that it will do no harm to retrace our steps
and revive the more simple times when there was less piano playing and
more music."


BUSONI

Busoni is preparing a complete edition of Liszt's compositions, to be
published by Breitkopf & Härtel. Concerning the studies, which are to
appear in three volumes, he says:

"These études, a work which occupied Franz Liszt from childhood on up to
manhood, we believe should be put at the head of his piano compositions.
There are three reasons for this: the first is the fact that the études
were the first of his works to be published; the second is that in
Liszt's own catalogue of his works (Themat. Verz. Br. H. 1855), he puts
the études at the very beginning; and the third and most patent is that
these works in their entirety reflect as do no others Liszt's pianistic
personality in the bud, shoot, and flower.

"These fifty-eight piano pieces alone would serve to place Liszt in the
ranks of the greatest piano composers since Beethoven--Chopin, Schumann,
Alkan, and Brahms; but proof of his superiority over these is found in
his complete works, of which the études are only a small part.

"They afford a picture of him in manifold lights and poses, giving us an
opportunity to know and observe him in the different phases of his
character: the diabolic as well as the religious--those who acknowledge
God do not make light of the devil--the refined and the animated; now as
an illustrative interpreter of every style and again as a marvellous
transformation artist who can with convincing mimicry don the costume
of any country. This collection consists of a work for piano which
contains within its circumference every phase, nation, and epoch of
musical expression from Palestrina to Parsifal, whereby Liszt shows
himself as a creator of twofold character--both subjective and
objective."


LISZT AS A PIANOFORTE WRITER

"Nothing is easier than to estimate Liszt the pianist, nothing more
difficult than to estimate Liszt the composer. As to Liszt the pianist,
old and young, conservatives and progressives, not excepting the
keyboard specialists, are perfectly agreed that he was unique,
unsurpassed, and unsurpassable," says Professor Niecks. "As to
Liszt the composer, on the other hand, opinions differ widely and
multifariously--from the attribution of superlative genius to the
denial of the least talent. This diversity arises from partisanship,
individuality of taste, and the various conceptions formed of the
nature of creative power. Those, however, who call Liszt a composer
without talent confess themselves either ignorant of his achievements,
or incapable of distinguishing good from bad and of duly apportioning
praise and blame. Those, on the other hand, who call Liszt a creative
genius should not omit to observe and state that his genius was
qualitatively unlike the genius of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn,
and Schumann. With him the creative impulse was, in the main, and, as
a rule, an intellectual impulse. With the great masters mentioned, the
impulse was of a general origin, all the faculties co-operating. While
with them the composition was always spontaneous, being, however
great the travail, a birth, not a making; with Liszt it was often
reflective, the solution of a problem, an experiment, a caprice,
a defiance of conventional respectability, or a device for the
dumfounding and electrification of the gaping multitude. In short,
Liszt was to a larger extent inventive than creative. The foregoing
remarks do not pretend to be more than a suggestive attempt at
explaining the inexplicable differences of creative power. That Liszt
could be spontaneous and in the best sense creative, he has proved by
whole compositions, and more frequently by parts of compositions. That
has to be noted; as well as that his love of experimenting and scorn
for the familiar, not to mention the commonplace, led him often to
turn his back on the beautiful and to embrace the ugly.

"As a composer of pianoforte music, Liszt's merits are more generally
acknowledged than as a composer of any other kind. Here indeed his
position is a commanding one. We should be obliged to regard him with
respect, admiration, and gratitude, even if his compositions were
æsthetically altogether a failure. For they incorporate an original
pianoforte style, a style that won new resources from the instrument,
and opened new possibilities to the composer for it, and the player on
it. The French Revolution of 1830 aroused Liszt from a state of
lethargy. A year after this political revolution, there occurred an
event that brought about in him an artistic revolution. This event was
the appearance of Paganini in Paris. The wonderful performances of the
unique violin virtuoso revealed to him new ideas. He now began to form
that pianoforte style which combined, as it were, the excellences of all
the other instruments, individually and collectively. Liszt himself
called the process "the orchestration of the pianoforte." But before the
transformation could be consummated, other influences had to be brought
to bear on the architect. The influence of Chopin, who appeared in Paris
soon after Paganini, must have been great, but was too subtle and
partial to be easily gauged. It is different with Berlioz, whose
influence on Liszt was palpable and general, affecting every branch of
his art-practice. Thalberg has at least the merit of having by his
enormous success in 1836 stimulated Liszt to put forth his whole
strength.

"The vast mass of Liszt's pianoforte compositions is divisible first
into two classes--the entirely original compositions, and the
compositions based to a more or less extent on foreign matter. The
latter class consist of transcriptions of songs (Schubert, Beethoven,
Mendelssohn, Franz, etc.), symphonies and overtures (Berlioz, Beethoven,
Rossini, Wagner, etc.), and operatic themes (from Rossini and Bellini
to Wagner and Verdi), and of fifteen Hungarian rhapsodies; the former
consists of studies, brilliant virtuosic pieces, musical poems, secular
and sacred, picturesque, lyrical, etc. (such as Années de Pélerinage,
Harmonies, poétiques et religieuses, Consolations, the legends, St.
François d'Assise: La Prédication aux oiseaux, and St. François de Paule
marchant sur les flots, etc.), and one work in sonata form, but not the
conventional sonata form. Although not unfrequently leaving something to
be desired in the matter of discretion, his transcriptions of songs are
justly famous masterpieces. Marvellous in the reproduction of orchestral
effects are the transcriptions of symphonies and overtures. The operatic
transcriptions (Illustrations, Fantasies), into which the _geistreiche_
Liszt put a great deal of his own, do not now enjoy the popularity they
once enjoyed; the present age has lost some of its love for musical
fireworks and the tricking-out and transmogrification by an artist of
other artists' ideas. The Hungarian Rhapsodies, on the other hand, which
are still more fantasias on the adopted matter than the operatic
transcriptions, continue to be favourites of the _virtuosi_ and the
public.

"As to the original compositions, they are very unequal in artistic
value. Many of them, however, are undoubtedly of the greatest beauty,
and stand whatever test may be applied to them. No one would think of
numbering with these exquisite perfect things the imposing sonata. It
cannot be placed by the side of the sonatas of Beethoven, whose ideal
and formative power Liszt lacked. Nevertheless it is impossible for the
unprejudiced not to recognise in it a noble effort of a highly-gifted
and ardently-striving mind. Technically, instead of three or four
self-contained separate movements, we have there a long uninterrupted
series of continuous movements, in which, however, we can distinguish
three complexes corresponding to the three movements of the orthodox
sonata. The Andante Sostenuto and Quasi Adagio form the simpler middle
complex. Although some of the features of the orthodox sonata structure
are discernible in Liszt's works, most of them are absent from it or
irrecognisably veiled. The most novel and characteristic features
are the unity and the evolution by metamorphosis of the thematic
material--that is to say, the motives of the first complex reappear in
the following ones, and are metamorphosed not only in the later but also
in the first. Nothing could characterise the inequality of Liszt's
compositions better than the fact that it is possible to draw up a
programme of them wholly irreproachable, admirable, and delightful, and
equally possible to draw up one wholly objectionable, abhorrent, and
distressful. All in all, Liszt is a most remarkable and interesting and,
at the same time, an epoch-making personality, one that will remain for
long yet a living force in music, and for ever a striking figure in the
history of the art."


SMETANA

Frederick Smetana, the greatest of Bohemian composers, founded in the
year 1848 the institute which he conducted for the teaching of the piano
in Prague. In this year it was that the composition for piano named
Morceaux Caractéristiques, he dedicated to Liszt (which dedication Liszt
accepted with the greatest cordiality, writing him a most complimentary
letter), was the means of his becoming personally acquainted with Liszt,
whom he until this time only knew by report. He obtained for the young
composer an introduction to the publisher Kistner, in Leipsic, who
brought out his six piano pieces called Stammbuchblaetter.


RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF

"Of all the Slav composers Rimsky-Korsakoff is perhaps the most charming,
and as a musician the most remarkable," writes the music-critic of
the _Mercure de France_. "He has not been equalled by any of his
compatriots in the art of handling timbres, and in this art the
Russian school has been long distinguished. In this respect he is
descended directly from Liszt, whose orchestra he adopted and from
whom he borrowed many an old effect. His inspiration is sometimes
exquisite; the inexhaustible transformation of his themes is always
most intelligent or interesting. As all the other Russians, he sins
in the development of ideas through the lack of cohesion, of sustained
enchainment, and especially through the lack of true polyphony. The
influence of Berlioz and of Liszt is not less striking in his manner
of composition. Sadko comes from Liszt's Ce qu'on entend sur la
montagne, Antar and Scheherazade at the same time from Harold and the
Faust symphony. The Oriental monody seems to throw a spell over
Rimsky-Korsakoff which spreads over all his works a sort of 'local
colour,' underlined here by the chosen subjects. In Scheherazade, it
must be said, the benzoin of Arabia sends forth here and there the
sickening empyreuma of the pastilles of the harem. In the second and
the third movements of Antar the composer has approached nearest true
musical superiority. The descriptive, almost dramatic, intention is
realised there with an unusual sureness, and, if the brand of Liszt
remains ineffaceable, the ease of construction, the breadth and the
co-ordinated progressions of combinations mark a mastery and an
originality that are rarely found among the composers of the far
North, and that no one has ever possessed among the 'five.'

       *       *       *       *       *

"Chopin's well-known saying in regard to Liszt, when he heard that the
latter was going to write a notice of his concert, tells more," says
Professor Niecks, "than whole volumes. These are the words: 'Il me
donnera un petit royaume dans son empire,' which were said to Ernest
Legouvé by Chopin. Now here is another side-light on Chopin and his
opinion of the great virtuoso. He is referring to Liszt's notice of some
concert, apparently at Cologne. He is amused at the 'fifteen hundred men
counted, at the president of the Phil [harmonic] and his carriage,
etc.,' and he feels sure that Liszt will 'some day be a deputy, or king
of Abyssinia, or of the Congo; his melodies (themes), however, will rest
alongside the two volumes of German poetry'--two volumes which did not
seem destined, apparently, to achieve immortality."


HIS PORTRAITS

[Illustration: Last Picture of Liszt, 1886, Aged Seventy-five Years]

Many artists have immortalised "that profile of ivory." They are, Ingres
who was a friend of Liszt, and of whom he always had a tender
recollection; in his best days it was Kaulbach and Lenbach. William
Kaulbach's portrait is celebrated for the grand look; the chivalrous and
fine-gentleman character of the artist is expressed in it in a masterly
way. Not less remarkable is a marble bust by the famous Bartolini,
souvenir of the master's visit to Florence in 1838. The painter Leyraud
shows us Liszt at the time when he took orders. He depicts him as a
thin, thoughtful man, leaning against a piano, his arms crossed, and
looking at the world from the height of his wisdom. David d'Angers has
made a very fine medallion of him. "We have several portraits by
Kriehuber, one, among others--Liszt in a travelling cloak--drawn
hurriedly while Liszt, surrounded by friends seeing him off, was shaking
hands all round. Tilgner sculptured a bust of him two years ago at
Vienna; and Baron Joukovsky painted his portrait. Our great Munkàcsy,
who beautified the last moments of the master's life, painted him seated
at the piano. Boehm, the celebrated Hungarian sculptor, has just made
his bust in London. Then we have at Budapest, at the entrance to the
opera house, a splendid statue, chiselled by our young artist Strobl. It
wants finish, but on the other hand admirably renders Liszt's features
and expression. And lastly, we have one by Wolkof, on the stove of a
friend of Liszt's," adds Janka Wohl. There are so many more that they
defy classification. The Munkàcsy is not attractive, but the sketch made
by Ingres at Rome in 1839 is a very happy interpretation of the still
youthful virtuoso. The Kriehuber lithograph is a famous study of
perennial interest. Then there are the portraits by the American Healey
and the Italian Stella, excellent though not master-works. In the
Lenbach portrait the eyes look like incandescent grapes.




IX

MODERN PIANOFORTE VIRTUOSI


Artistic pianoforte playing is no longer rare. The once jealously guarded
secrets of the masters have become the property of conservatories.
Self-playing instruments perform technical miracles, and are valuable
inasmuch as they interest a number of persons who would otherwise
avoid music as an ineluctable mystery. Furthermore, the unerring ease
with which these machines despatch the most appalling difficulties
has turned the current toward what is significant in a musical
performance: touch, phrasing, interpretation. While a child's hand may
set spinning the Don Juan Fantasie of Liszt, no mechanical appliance
yet contrived can play a Chopin ballade or the Schumann concerto as
they should be played.

I mention purposely these cunning inventions because I do not think that
they have harmed the public interest in pianoforte recitals; rather have
they stimulated it. Never before has the standard of execution and
interpretation been so high. The giant wave of virtuosity that broke
over Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century has not yet receded.
A new artist on the keyboard is eagerly heard and discussed. If he be a
Paderewski or a Joseffy, he is the centre of a huge admiration. The
days of Liszt were renewed when Paderewski made his tours in America.
Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that not until now has good
playing been so little of a rarity.

But a hundred years ago matters were different. It was in 1839 that
Franz Liszt gave the first genuine pianoforte recital, and, possessing a
striking profile, he boldly presented it to his audiences; before that
pianists either faced or sat with their backs to the public. No matter
what avenue of music the student travels, he will be sure to encounter
the figure of Liszt. Yet neither Liszt nor Chopin was without artistic
ancestors. That they stemmed from the great central tree of European
music; that they at first were swept down the main current, later
controlled it, are facts that to-day are the commonplaces of the
schools; though a few decades ago those who could see no salvation
outside of German music-making, be it never so conventional, failed to
recognise the real significance of either Liszt or Chopin. Both men gave
Europe new forms, a new harmonic system, and in Liszt's case his
originality was so marked that from Wagner to Tschaïkowsky and the
Russians, from Cornelius to Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and the
still newer men, all helped themselves at his royal banquet; some, like
Wagner, a great genius, taking away all they needed, others glad to
catch the very crumbs that fell. But the innovators in form have not
always proved supreme creators. In the case of Wagner the plumed and
serried phrases of Liszt recall the rôle played by Marlowe in regard to
Shakespeare.

Liszt's very power, muscular, compelling, set pianoforte manufacturers
to experimenting. A new instrument was literally made for him, an
instrument that could thunder like an orchestra, sing like a voice, or
whisper like a harp. Liszt could proudly boast, "le piano--c'est moi!"
With it he needed no orchestra, no singers, no scenery. It was his
stage, and upon its wires he told the stories of the operas, sang the
beautiful, and then novel, lieder of Schubert and Schumann, revealed the
mastery of Beethoven, the poetry of Chopin, and Bach's magical
mathematics. He, too, set Europe ablaze; even Paganini was forgotten,
and the gentlemanly Thalberg with his gentlemanly playing suddenly
became insipid to true music lovers. Liszt was called a charlatan, and
doubtless partially deserved the appellation, in the sense that
he very often played for effect's sake, for the sake of dazzling the
groundlings. His tone was massive, his touch coloured by a thousand
shades of feeling, his technic impeccable, his fire and fury
bewildering.

And if Liszt affected his contemporaries, he also trained his
successors, Tausig, Von Bülow, and Rubinstein--the latter was never an
actual pupil, though he profited by Liszt's advice and regarded him as a
model. Karl Tausig, the greatest virtuoso after Liszt and his equal at
many points, died prematurely. Never had the world heard such
controlled, plastic, and objective interpretations. His iron will had
drilled his Slavic temperament so that his playing was, as Joseffy says,
"a series of perfectly painted pictures." His technic, according to
those who heard him, was perfection. He was the one pianist sans peur et
sans reproche. All schools were at his call. Chopin was revived when he
played; and he was the first to hail the rising star of Brahms--not
critically, as did Schumann, but practically, by putting his name on his
eclectic programmes. Mr. Albert Ross Parsons, the well-known New York
pianist, critic, and pedagogue, once told the present writer that
Tausig's playing evoked the image of some magnificent mountain. "And
Joseffy?" was asked--for Joseffy was Tausig's favourite pupil. "The
lovely mist that enveloped the mountain at dusk," was Mr. Parsons's
happy answer. Since then Joseffy has condensed this mist into something
more solid, while remaining quite as beautiful.

Rubinstein I heard play his series of historical recitals, seven in all;
better still, I heard him perform the feat twice. I regret that it was
not thrice. If ever there was a heaven-storming genius, it was Anton
Rubinstein. Nicolas Rubinstein was a wonderful artist; but the fire that
flickered and flamed in the playing of Anton was not in evidence in the
work of his brother. You felt in listening to Anton that the piece he
happened to be playing was heard by you for the first time--the creative
element in his nature was so strong. It seemed no longer reproductive
art. The same thing has been said of Liszt. Often arbitrary in his very
subjective readings, Rubinstein never failed to interest. He had an
overpowering sort of magnetism that crossed the stage and enveloped his
audience with a gripping power. His touch, to again quote Joseffy, was
like that of a French horn. It sang with a mellow thunder. An
impressionist in the best sense of that misunderstood expression, he was
the reverse of his rival and colleague, Hans von Bülow.

The brother-in-law, à la main gauche, of that Brother of Dragons,
Richard Wagner, Von Bülow was hardly appreciated during his first visit
to America in 1876-77. Rubinstein had preceded him by three seasons and
we were loath to believe that the rather dry, angular touch and
clear-cut phrasing of the little, irritable Hans were revelations from
on high. Nevertheless, Von Bülow, the mighty scholar, opened new views
for us by his Beethoven and Bach playing. The analyst in him ruled. Not
a colourist, but a master of black and white, he exposed the minutest
meanings of the composer that he presented. He was the first to
introduce Tschaïkowsky's brilliant and clangorous B-flat minor concerto.
Of his Chopin performances, I retain only the memory of the D-flat
Nocturne. That was exquisite, and all the more surprising coming from a
man of Von Bülow's pedantic nature. His last visit to this country,
several decades ago, was better appreciated, but I found his playing
almost insupportable. He had withered in tone and style, a mummy of his
former alert self.

The latter-day generation of virtuosi owe as much to Liszt as did the
famous trinity, Tausig, Rubinstein, Von Bülow. Many of them studied with
the old wizard at Rome, Budapest, and Weimar; some with his pupils; all
have absorbed his traditions. It would be as impossible to keep Liszt
out of your playing--out of your fingers, forearms, biceps, and
triceps,--as it would be to return to the naïve manner of an Emmanuel
Bach or a Scarlatti. Modern pianoforte-playing spells Liszt.

After Von Bülow a much more naturally gifted pianist visited the United
States, Rafael Joseffy. It was in 1879 that old Chickering Hall
witnessed his triumph, a triumph many times repeated later in Steinway
Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, and throughout
America. At first Joseffy was called the Patti of the Pianoforte, one of
those facile, alliterative, meaningless titles he never merited. He had
the coloratura, if you will, of a Patti, but he had something
besides--brains and a poetic temperament. Poetic is a vague term that
usually covers a weakness in technic. There are different sorts of
poetry. There is the rich poetry of Paderewski, the antic grace and
delicious poetry of De Pachmann. The Joseffian poetry is something else.
Its quality is more subtle, more recondite than the poetry of the Polish
or the Russian pianist. Such miraculous finish, such crystalline tone
had never before been heard until Joseffy appeared. At first his playing
was the purest pantheism--a transfigured materialism, tone, and technic
raised to heights undreamed of. Years later a new Joseffy was born.
Stern self-discipline, as was the case with Tausig, had won a victory
over his temperament as well as his fingers. More restrained, less lush,
his play is now ruled by the keenest of intellects, while the old
silvery and sensuous charm has not vanished. Some refused to accept the
change. They did not realise that for an artist to remain stationary is
decadence. They longed for graceful trifling, for rose-coloured
patterns, for swallow-like flights across the keyboard, by a pair of the
most beautiful piano hands since Tausig's. In a word, these people did
not care for Brahms and they did care very much for the Chopin Valse in
double notes. But the automatic piano has outpointed every virtuoso
except Rosenthal in the matter of mere technic. So we enjoy our Brahms
from Joseffy, and when he plays Liszt or Chopin, which he does in an
ideal style, far removed from the tumultuous thumpings of the average
virtuoso, we turn out in numbers to enjoy and applaud him. His music has
that indefinable quality which vibrates from a Stradivarius violin. His
touch is like no other in the world, and his readings of the classics
are marked by reverence and authority. In certain Chopin numbers, such
as the Berçeuse, the F-minor ballade, the barcarolle, and the E-minor
concerto, he has no peer. Equally lucid and lovely are his performances
of the B-flat major Brahms concerto and the A-major concerto of Liszt.
Joseffy is unique.

There was an interregnum in the pianoforte arena for a few years.
Joseffy was reported as having been discovered in the wilds above
Tarrytown playing two-voiced inventions of Bach, and writing a new piano
school. Arthur Friedheim appeared and dazzled us with the B-minor Sonata
of Liszt. It was a wonder-breeding, thrilling performance. Alfred
Grünfeld, of Vienna, caracoled across the keys in an amiably dashing
style. Rummel played earnestly. Ansorge also played earnestly. Edmund
Neupert delivered Grieg's Concerto as no one before or since has done.
Pugno came from Paris, Rosenthal thundered; Sauer, Stavenhagen, Siloti,
Slivinski, Mark Hambourg, Burmeister, Hyllested, Faelten, Sherwood,
Godowsky, Gabrilowitsch, Vogrich, Von Sternberg, Jarvis, Richard
Hoffmann, Boscovitz--to go back some years; Alexander Lambert, August
Spanuth, Klahre, Lamond, Dohnanyi, Busoni, Baerman, Saint-Saëns,
Stojowski, Lhévinne, Rudolph Ganz, MacDowell, Otto Hegner, Josef
Hofmann, Reisenauer--none of these artists ever aroused such excitement
as Paderewski, though a more captivating and brilliant Liszt player than
Alfred Reisenauer has been seldom heard.

It was about 1891 that I attended a rehearsal at Carnegie Hall in
which participated Ignace Jan Paderewski. The C-minor concerto of
Saint-Saëns, an effective though musically empty work, was played. There
is nothing in the composition that will test a good pianist; but
Paderewski made much of the music. His tone was noble, his technic
adequate, his single-finger touch singing. Above all, there was a
romantic temperament exposed; not morbid but robust. His strange
appearance, the golden aureoled head, the shy attitude, were rather
puzzling to public and critic at his début. Not too much enthusiasm was
exhibited during the concert or next morning in the newspapers. But the
second performance settled the question. A great artist was revealed.
His diffidence melted in the heat of frantic applause. He played the
Schumann concerto, the F-minor concerto of Chopin, many other concertos,
all of Chopin's music, much of Schumann, Beethoven, and Liszt. His
recitals, first given in the concert hall of Madison Square Garden, so
expanded in attendance that he moved to Carnegie Hall. There, with only
his piano, Paderewski repeated the Liszt miracle. And year after year.
Never in America has a public proved so insatiable in its desire to hear
a virtuoso. It is the same from New Orleans to Seattle. Everywhere
crowded halls, immense enthusiasms. Now to set all this down to an
exotic personality, to occult magnetism, to sensationalism, would be
unfair to Paderewski and to the critical discrimination of his
audiences. Many have gone to gaze upon him, but they remained to
listen. His solid attainments as a musician, his clear, elevated style,
his voluptuous, caressing touch, his sometimes exaggerated sentiment,
his brilliancy, endurance, and dreamy poetry--these qualities are real,
not imaginary.

No more luscious touch has been heard since Rubinstein's. Paderewski
often lets his singing fingers linger on a phrase; but as few pianists
alive, he can spin his tone, and so his yielding to the temptation is a
natural one. He is intellectual and his readings of the classics are
sane. Of poetic temperament, he is at his best in Chopin, not Beethoven.
Eclectic is the best word to apply to his interpretations. He plays
programmes from Bach to Liszt with commendable fidelity and versatility.
He has the power of rousing his audience from a state of calm
indifference to wildest frenzy. How does he accomplish this? He has not
the technic of Rosenthal, nor that pianist's brilliancy and power; he is
not as subtle as Joseffy, nor yet as plastic in his play; the morbid
witchery of De Pachmann is not his; yet no one since Rubinstein--in
America at least--can create such climaxes of enthusiasm. Deny this or
that quality to Paderewski; go and with your own ears and eyes hear and
witness what we all have heard and witnessed.

I once wrote a story in which a pianist figured as a mesmeriser. He sat
at his instrument in a crowded, silent hall and worked his magic upon
the multitude. The scene modulates into madness. People are transported.
And in all the rumour and storm, the master sits at the keyboard but
does _not_ play. I assure you I have been at Paderewski recitals where
my judgments were in abeyance, where my individuality was merged in that
of the mob, where I sat and wondered if I really _heard_; or was
Paderewski only going through the motions and not actually touching the
keys? His is a static as well as a dramatic art. The tone wells up from
the instrument, is not struck. It floats languorously in the air, it
seems to pause, transfixed in the air. The Sarmatian melancholy of
Paderewski, his deep sensibility, his noble nature, are translated into
the music. Then with a smashing chord he sets us, the prisoners of his
tonal circle, free. Is this the art of a hypnotiser? No one has so
mastered the trick, if trick it be.

But he is not all moonshine. The truth is, Paderewski has a tone not as
large as mellow. His fortissimo chords have hitherto lacked the
foundational power and splendour of d'Albert's, Busoni's, and
Rosenthal's. His transition from piano to forte is his best range, not
the extremes at either end of the dynamic scale. A healthy, sunny tone
it is at its best, very warm in colour. In certain things of Chopin he
is unapproachable. He plays the F-minor concerto and the E-flat minor
scherzo--from the second Sonata--beautifully, and if he is not so
convincing in the Beethoven sonatas, his interpretation of the E-flat
Emperor concerto is surprisingly free from morbidezza; it is direct,
manly, and musical. His technic has gained since his advent in New
York. This he proved by the way he juggled with the Brahms-Paganini
variations; though they are still the property of Moritz Rosenthal. He
is more interesting than most pianists because he is more musical; he
has more personal charm; there is the feeling when you hear him that he
is a complete man, a harmonious artist, and this feeling is very
compelling.

The tricky elf that rocked the cradle of Vladimir de Pachmann--a Russian
virtuoso, born in Odessa (1848), of a Jewish father and a Turkish mother
(he once said to me, "My father is a Cantor, my mother a Turkey")--must
have enjoyed--not without a certain malicious peep at the future--the
idea of how much worriment and sorrow it would cause the plump little
black-haired baby when he grew up and played the pianoforte like the imp
of genius he is. It is nearly seventeen years since he paid his first
visit to us. His success, as in London, was achieved after one recital.
Such an exquisite touch, subtlety of phrasing, and a technic that failed
only in broad, dynamic effects, had never before been noted. Yet De
Pachmann is in reality the product of an old-fashioned school. He
belongs to the Hummel-Cramer group, which developed a pure finger
technic and a charming euphony, but neglected the dramatic side of
delivery. Tone for tone's sake; absolute finesse in every figure; scales
that are as hot pearls on velvet; a perfect trill; a cantilena like the
voice; these, and repose of style, are the shibboleth of a tradition
that was best embodied in Thalberg--plus more tonal power in Thalberg's
case. Subjectivity enters largely in this combination, for De Pachmann
is "modern," neurotic. His presentation of some Chopin is positively
morbid. He is, despite his marked restrictions of physique and
mentality, a Chopin player par excellence. His fingers strike the keys
like tiny sweet mallets. His scale passages are liquid, his octave
playing marvellous, but en miniature--like everything he attempts. To
hear him in a Chopin polonaise is to realise his limitations. But in the
larghetto of the F-minor concerto, in the nocturnes and preludes--not of
course the big one in D minor--études, valses, ah! there is then but one
De Pachmann. He can be poetic and capricious and elfish in the mazurkas;
indeed, it has been conceded that he is the master-interpreter of these
soul-dances. The volume of tone that he draws from his instrument is not
large, but it is of a distinguished quality and very musical. He has
paws of velvet, and no matter what the difficulty, he overcomes it
without an effort. I once called him the _pianissimist_ because of his
special gift for filing tones to a whisper. His pianissimo begins where
other pianists end theirs. Enchanting is the effect when he murmurs in
such studies as the F minor of Chopin and the Concert study of Liszt of
the same tonality; or in mounting unisons as he breathlessly weaves the
wind through the last movement of Chopin's B-flat minor sonata. Less
edifying are De Pachmann's mannerisms. They are only tolerated because
of his exotic, lovely, and disquieting music.

Of a different and a gigantic mould is the playing of Moritz Rosenthal.
He is a native of Lemberg, in Galician Poland, a city that has held
among other artists, Marcella Sembrich and Carl Mikuli, a pupil of
Chopin and editor of an edition of his works. When a mere child, twelve
years or so, Moritz walked from Lemberg to Vienna to study with Joseffy.
Even at that age he had the iron will of a superman. He played for
Joseffy the E-minor concerto of Chopin, the same work with which the
youthful Joseffy years before had won the heart of Tausig. Setting aside
Tausig--and this is only hearsay--the world of "pianism" has never
matched Rosenthal for speed, power, endurance; nor is this all. He is
both musical and intellectual. He is a doctor of philosophy, a bachelor
of arts. He has read everything, is a linguist, has travelled the globe
over, and in conversation his unerring memory and brilliant wit set him
as a man apart. To top all these gifts, he plays his instrument
magnificently, overwhelmingly. He is the Napoleon, the conqueror among
virtuosi. His tone is very sonorous, his touch singing, and he commands
the entire range of nuance from the rippling fioritura of the Chopin
barcarolle to the cannon-like thunderings of the A-flat polonaise. His
octaves and chords baffle all critical experience and appraisement. As
others play presto in single notes, so he dashes off double notes,
thirds, sixths, and octaves. His Don Juan fantaisie, part Liszt, part
Mozart, is entirely Rosenthalian in performance. He has composed at his
polyphonic forge a Humoreske. Its interweaving of voices, their
independence, the caprice and audacity of it all are astounding. Tausig
had such a technic; yet surely Tausig had not the brazen, thunderous
climaxes of this broad-shouldered young man! He is the epitome of the
orchestra and in a tonal duel with the orchestra he has never been
worsted. His interpretations of the classics, of the romantics, are of a
superior order. He played the last sonatas of Beethoven or the Schumann
Carneval with equal discrimination. His touch is crystal-like in its
clearness, therefore his tone lacks the sensuousness of Paderewski and
De Pachmann. But it is a mistake to set him down as a mere unemotional
mechanician. He is in reality a Superman among pianists.

Eugen d'Albert has played in America several times, the first time in
company with Sarasate, the Spanish violin virtuoso. Liszt called
d'Albert, of whom he was very fond, the "second Tausig." The Weimar
master declared that the little Eugen looked like, played like, his
former favourite, Karl Tausig. In his youth d'Albert was as impetuous as
a thunderbolt; now he is more reflective than fiery, and he is often
careless in his technical work. Another pianist who has followed the
lure of composition; but a great virtuoso, a great interpreter of the
classics. His music suggests a close study of Brahms, and in his piano
concertos he is both Brahmsian and Lisztian.

The first time I heard Saint-Saëns was in Paris the year 1878. He played
at the Trocadero palace--it was the Exposition year--his clever
variations on a Beethoven theme for two pianos, Madame Montigny-Remaury
being his colleague. In 1896 I attended the fiftieth anniversary of his
first public appearance. The affair took place at a piano hall in Paris.
And several years ago I heard the veteran, full of years and honours, in
New York. He had changed but little. The same supple style, siccant
touch, and technical mastery were present. Not so polished as Planté, so
fiery--or so noisy--as Pugno, Saint-Saëns is a greater musician than
either at the keyboard. His playing is Gallic--which means it is never
sultry, emotional, and seldom poetic. The French pianists make for
clearness, delicacy, symmetry; France never produced a Rubinstein, nor
does she cordially admire such volcanic artists.

Ossip Gabrilowitsch has been for me always a sympathetic pianist. He has
improved measurably since his previous visits here. The poet and the
student still preponderate in his work; he is more reflective than
dramatic, though the fiery Slav in him often peeps out, and if he does
not "drive the horses of Rubinstein," as Oscar Bie once wrote, he is a
virtuoso of high rank. The Bie phrase could be better applied to Mark
Hambourg, who sometimes is like a full-blooded runaway horse with the
bit between its teeth. Hambourg has Slavic blood in his veins and it
courses hotly. He is an attractive player, a younger Tausig--before
Tausig taught himself the value of repose and restraint. Recklessly
Hambourg attacks the instrument in a sort of Rubinsteinian fury. Of late
he has, it is said, learned the lesson of self-control. His polyphony
is clearer, his tone, always big, is more sonorous and individual.
It was the veteran Dr. William Mason who predicted Hambourg's
future. Exuberance and excess of power may be diverted into musical
channels--and these Mark Hambourg has. It is not so easy to reverse the
process and build up a temperament where little naturally exists.

Josef Hofmann, from a wonder child who influenced two continents, has
developed into an artist who has attained perfection--a somewhat cool
perfection, it may be admitted. But what a well-balanced touch, what a
broad, euphonious tone, what care in building climaxes or shading his
tone to mellifluous whisper! Musically he is impregnable. His readings
are free from extravagances, his bearing dignified, and if we miss the
dramatic element in his play we are consoled by the easy sweep, the
intellectual grasp, and the positively pleasure-giving quality of his
touch. Eclectic in style, Hofmann is the "young-old" master of the
pianoforte. And he is Polish in everything but Chopin. But well-bred!
Perhaps Rubinstein was right when he said, so is the report--at Dresden,
"Jozio will never have to change his shirt at a recital as I did."

Harold Bauer is a great favourite in America as well as in Paris. He has
a quiet magnetism, a mastery of technical resources, backed by sound
musicianship. He was a violinist before he became a pianist; this fact
may account for his rich tone-quality--Bauer could even make an
old-fashioned "square" pianoforte discourse eloquently. He, too, is an
eclectic; all schools appeal to him and his range is from Bach to Cæsar
Franck, both of whom he interprets with reverence and authority. Bauer
played Liszt's Dance of Death in this country, creating thereby a
reputation for brilliant "pianism." The new men, Lhévinne, Ganz,
Scriabine, Stojowski, are forging ahead, especially the first two, who
are virtuoso artists. The young Swiss, Ganz, is a very attractive
artist, apart from his technical attainments; he is musical, and that is
two-thirds of the battle. Two men who once resided in America, Ferrucio
Busoni and Leopold Godowsky, went abroad and conquered Europe. Busoni is
called the master-interpreter of Bach and Liszt; the master-miniaturist
is the title bestowed upon the miracle-working Godowsky, whose velvety
touch and sensitive style have been better appreciated in Europe than
America.

The fair unfair sex has not lacked in representative piano artists.
Apart from the million girls busily engaged in manipulating pedals,
slaying music and sleep at one fell moment, there is a band of keyboard
devotees that has earned fame and fortune, and an honourable place in
the Walhalla of pianoforte playing. The modern female pianist does not
greatly vary from her male rival except in muscular power, and even in
that Sofie Menter and Teresa Carreño have vied with their ruder
brethren. Pianists in petticoats go back as far as Nanette Streicher and
come down to Paula Szalit, a girl who, it is said, improvises fugues.
Marie Pleyel, Madame de Szymanowska--Goethe's friend at Marienbad, in
1822--Clara Schumann, Arabella Goddard, Sofie Menter, Annette
Essipoff--once Paderewski's adviser, and a former wife of Leschetitzky;
Marie Krebs, Ingeborg Bronsart, Aline Hundt, Fannie Davies, Madeliene
Schiller, Julia Rivé-King, Helen Hopekirk, Nathalie Janotha, Adele
Margulies, the Douste Sisters, Amy Fay, Dory Petersen, Cecilia Gaul,
Madame Paur, Madame Lhévinne, Antoinette Szumowska, Adele Aus der Ohe,
Cécile Chaminade, Madame Montigny-Remaury, Madame Roger-Miclos, Marie
Torhilon-Buell, Augusta Cottlow, Mrs. Arthur Friedheim, Laura Danzinger
Rosebault, Olga Samaroff, Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler--these are a few
well-known names before the public during the past and in the present.

[Illustration:

    Walter Bache  Solati  Reisenauer  Carl V. Lachmund
          Mrs. Scott-Siddons  Harry Waller

The Final Liszt Circle at Weimar

(Liszt at the upper window)]

It may be assumed that the sex which can boast among its members such
names as Jane Austen, George Sand, George Eliot, novelists; Vigée
Lebrun, Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux, and Berthe Morisot, painters;
Sonia Kovalevsky, mathematician; Madame Curie, science; Elizabeth
Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, poetry, would not fail in the
reproductive art of pianoforte playing. Clara Schumann was an unexcelled
interpreter of her husband's music; Sofie Menter the most masculine of
Liszt's feminine choir; Essipoff unparalleled as a Chopin player;
Carreño has a man's head, man's fingers, and woman's heart; Fannie
Bloomfield Zeisler, an artist of singular intensity and strong
personality--these women have admirably contributed to the history of
their art and need not fear comparisons on the score of sex.

How far will the pursuit of technic go, and what will be the effect upon
the mechanical future of the instrument? It is both a thankless and a
dangerous task to prophesy; but it seems that technic _quâ_ technic has
ventured as far as it dare. Witness the astounding arrangements made by
the ingenious Godowsky, the grafting of two Chopin studies, both hands
autonomous, racing at full speed! The thing is monstrous--yet effective;
but that way musical madness lies. The Janko keyboard, a sort of ivory
toboggan-slide, permitted the performance of incredible difficulties;
glissandi in chromatic tenths! But who in the name of Apollo cares to
hear chromatic tenths sliding pell-mell down-hill! Music is music, and a
man or woman must make it, not alone an instrument. The tendency now is
toward the fabrication of a more sensitive, vibrating sounding-board.
Quality, not brutal quantity, is the desideratum. This, with the more
responsive and elastic keyboard action of the day, which permits all
manner of finger nuance, will tell upon the future of the pianoforte.
Machine music has usurped our virtuosity; but it can never reign in the
stead of the human artist. And therefore we now demand more of the
spiritual and less of the technical from our pianists. Music is the
gainer thereby, and the old-time cacophonous concerto for pianoforte and
orchestra will, we hope, be relegated to the limbo of things inutile.
The pianoforte was originally an _intimate_ instrument, and it will
surely go back, though glorified by experience, to its first, dignified
estate.

I have written more fully of the pianists that I have had the good
fortune to hear with my own ears. This is what is called impressionistic
criticism. Academic criticism may be loosely defined as the expression
of another's opinion. It has decided historic interest. In a word, the
former tells how much _you_ enjoyed a work of art, whether creative or
interpretive; the latter what some other fellow liked. So, accept
these sketches as a mingling of the two methods, with perhaps a
disproportionate stress laid upon the personal element--the most
important factor, after all, in criticism.




INSTEAD OF A PREFACE


This book, projected in 1902, was at that time announced as a biography
of Liszt. However, a few tentative attacks upon the vast amount of raw
material soon convinced me that to write the ideal life of the Hungarian
a man must be plentifully endowed with time and patience. I preferred,
therefore, to study certain aspects of Liszt's art and character; and as
I never heard him play I have summoned here many competent witnesses to
my aid. Hence the numerous contradictions and repetitions, arguments for
and against Liszt in the foregoing volume, frankly sought for, rather
than avoided. The personality, or, strictly speaking, the various
personalities of Liszt are so mystifying that they would require the
professional services of a half-dozen psychologists to untangle their
complex web. As to his art, I have quoted from many conflicting
authorities, hoping that the reader will evolve from the perhaps
confusing pattern an authentic image of the man and his music. And all
the biographies I have seen--Lina Ramann's, despite its violent parti
pris, is the most complete (an urquell for its successors)--read like
glorified time-tables. Now, no man is a hero to his biographer, but the
practice of jotting down unimportant happenings makes your hero very
small potatoes indeed. An appalling number of pages are devoted to the
arrival and departure of the master at or from Weimar, Rome, or
Budapest. "Liszt left Rome for Budapest at 8.30 A. M., accompanied by
his favourite pupil Herr Fingers," etc.; or, "Liszt returned to Weimar
at 9 P. M., and was met at the station by the Baroness W. and Professor
Handgelenk." A more condensed method is better, though it may lack
interest for the passionate Liszt admirers. As for the chronicling of
small-beer, I hope I have provided sufficient anecdotes to satisfy the
most inveterate of scandal-mongers. I may add that for over a quarter of
a century I have been collecting Lisztiana; not to mention the almost
innumerable conversations and interviews I have enjoyed with friends and
pupils of Liszt.

I wish to acknowledge the help and sympathy of: Camille Saint-Saëns,
Frederick Niecks, Rafael Joseffy, the late Anton Seidl, Felix
Weingartner, Arthur Friedheim, Richard Burmeister, Henry T. Finck,
Philip Hale, W. F. Apthorp, the late Edward Dannreuther, Frank Van der
Stucken, August Spanuth, Emil Sauer, Moritz Rosenthal, Eugen d'Albert,
Amy Fay, Rosa Newmarch, Jaroslaw de Zielinski, the late Edward A.
MacDowell, John Kautz, of Albany (who first suggested to me the
magnitude of Liszt's contribution to the art of rhythms), Charles A.
Ellis, of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Edward E. Ziegler. I am
also particularly indebted to the following publications for their
courtesy in the matter of reproduction of various articles: _Scribner's
Magazine_, _New York Sun_, _Evening Post_, _Herald_, _Times_, _The
Etude_, _Everybody's Magazine_, and _The Musical Courier_.

An exhaustive list of the compositions has yet to be made, though
Göllerich in his Franz Liszt consumes fifty-five pages in enumerating
the works--compiled from Lina Ramann, Breitkopf and Härtel, and
Busoni--some of which never saw the light of publication; such as the
opera Don Sancho, the Revolutionary Symphony, _etcetera_; when Breitkopf
and Härtel finish their cataloguing no doubt the result will be more
satisfactory. The fact is that out of the known 1,300 compositions, only
400 are original and of these latter how many are worth remembering?
Liszt wrote too much and too often for money. His best efforts will
survive, of course; but I do not see the use of making a record of
ephemeral pot-boilers. It is the same with the bibliography. I give the
sources whenever I can of my information; impossible, however, is it to
credit the authorship of all the flotsam and jetsam. Kapp in his
ponderous biography actually devotes twenty-seven pages to the books,
magazines, and newspapers which have dealt with the theme, though even
his Teutonic industry has not rendered flawless his drag-net.

Liszt was the most caricatured man in Europe save Wagner and Louis
Napoleon, and he was painted, sculptured, and photographed oftener than
any operatic or circus celebrity who ever sang or swung in the
break-neck trapeze. Naturally the choice of illustrations for this study
was narrowed down to a few types, with here and there a novelty (dug up
from some ancient album); yet sufficient to reveal Liszt as boy, youth,
man; fascinating, dazzling, enigmatic artist, comedian, abbé,
rhapsodist, but ever the great-souled Franz Liszt.

        J. H.




INDEX


  Acton, Lord, 14.

  Adam, Madame Edmond. (See Juliette Lamber.)

  Adelaide (Beethoven's), 216.

  Albano, 79.

  Aldega, Professor, 381.

  Aldrich, Richard, 195.

  Alkan, 63, 408.

  Allegri, 84.

  Allmers, W., 79.

  Altenburg, The (Liszt's house at Weimar), 21, 24, 47, 48, 53, 261,
        362, 389.

  Amalia, Anna, 328.

  Amalie Caroline, Princess of Hesse, 198.

  Amiel, 64.

  Andersen, Hans Christian, account of a Liszt concert, 230-234.

  Anfossi, 80.

  Ansorge, Conrad (pupil), 98, 332, 425.

  Antonelli, Cardinal, 22, 49, 50.

  Apel, Frau Pauline (Liszt's housekeeper), 327.

  "Après une lecture de Dante" (Hugo), 152.

  Apthorp, W. F., 172, 173;
    analysis of the Concerto in A major, 173, 174.

  Arnim, Countess Bettina von, 42, 43, 261;
    Graf von, 89, 261.

  Auber, 172, 204, 281.

  Auerbach, Berthold, 139.

  Aufforderung zum Tanz (Weber), 93, 205, 207, 253.

  Augener & Company, 181.

  August, Karl, 328.

  "Aus der Glanzzeit der Weimaren Altenburg" (La Mara), 44.

  Aus der Ohe, Adèle (pupil), 24, 436.

  Austen, Jane, 436.

  Ave Maria (Schubert's), 216.


  Bach, 32, 62, 185, 375, 381, 425, 435;
    Chevalier Leonard E., 312.

  Bache, Walter (pupil), 196, 312, 384-386.

  Bachez, 226.

  Baerman, 425.

  Bagby, Albert Morris (pupil), 370.

  Baillot, 204, 209.

  Bakounine, 38.

  Ballads (Chopin), 186, 399, 424.

  Ballanche, 78.

  Balzac, 26, 39.

  Barber of Bagdad (Cornelius), 48.

  Barcarolle (Chopin), 424, 431.

  Barna, Michael, 198, 199.

  Barnett, J. F., 385.

  Barry, C. A., 127, 139.

  Bartolini, 416.

  Baudelaire, 19.

  Bauer, Caroline, Reminiscences of, 241-244;
    Harold, 174, 435.

  Beale, Frederick, 308;
   Willert, 308.

  "Béatrix" (Balzac), 39.

  Beato, Fra, 84.

  Beethoven, 4, 5, 6, 10, 13, 30, 31, 32, 52, 54, 55, 62, 67, 84,
        105, 115, 120, 160, 171, 179, 185, 186, 202, 204, 210, 217,
        281, 375, 381, 408, 409, 411, 413, 420, 432;
    festival at Bonn, 225, 376;
    his piano, 262, 339;
    statue of, unveiled, 226.

  "Beethoven et Ses Trois Styles" (von Lenz), 201.

  Belgiojoso, Princess Cristina, 8, 14, 16, 42, 82, 286.

  Belloni, 213, 237.

  Bendix, Max, 66.

  Benedict, Julius, 283, 284.

  Berceuse (Chopin), 186, 424.

  Bergerat, Emile, 320.

  Beringer, Oscar, 376, 377.

  Berlioz, 5, 6, 8, 10, 17, 19, 20, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 36, 47, 53, 55,
        64, 67, 82, 85, 105, 145, 155, 157, 158, 169, 171, 183, 186,
        193, 200, 204, 258, 259, 282, 300, 337, 411, 415;
    account of his friendship with Liszt, 210-217;
    letter to Liszt, 215-217.

  Berne, 81.

  Berta, 91.

  Bethmann, Simon Maritz, 15.

  Bie, Oscar, 433.

  Bielgorsky, Count, 294, 296, 297.

  Birmingham Musical Festival, 195.

  Bishop, Sir Henry, 307.

  Bismarck, 179.

  Bizet, 378-380.

  _Blackwood's Magazine_, 304.

  Blaze de Bury, Baron, article on Liszt, 218, 219.

  Blessington, Countess of, 252.

  Bocella, 165.

  Bock, Anna, 276.

  Borodin, 24, 27.

  Boscovitz, 425.

  Bösendorfer, 171.

  Bossuet, 26.

  Bourget, Paul, 141.

  Bovary, Emma, 16.

  Brahm, Otto, 332.

  Brahms, 9, 19, 53, 57, 153, 185, 187, 375, 405, 408, 421, 424, 425,
        433.
  Brandes, Georg, 5.

  Breidenstein, Professor, 226.

  Breithaupt, Rudolf, 402.

  Breitkopf and Härtel, 94, 197, 408.

  Brendel, Franz (pupil), 194.

  Breughel, 28.

  "Briefe und Schriften" (von Bülow), 179.

  Bright, John, 11.

  Broadwood piano, 339.

  Bronsart, Hans von (pupil), 172;
    Ingeborg von, 401, 436.

  Bulgarin, 124.

  Bülow, Daniela von, 279;
    Hans von (Liszt's favorite pupil), 15, 19, 21, 45, 93, 96, 101,
        136-138, 168, 176, 177, 179, 228, 229, 362, 402, 420, 422, 423;
    Appreciation of Die Ideale, 136;
    Criticism of, 398, 400.

  Bunsen, Von, 83.

  Burmeister, Richard (pupil), 24, 52, 177, 178, 340, 359, 425.

  Burne-Jones, 18.

  Busoni, Ferrucio, 402, 408, 425, 428, 435.

  Byron, 11, 16, 34, 115, 124, 398.


  Cabaner, 29.

  Callot, 28.

  Calvocoressi, 56.

  Campo Santo of Pisa, 175.

  Canterbury, Lord, 252.

  Carolsfield, J. Schnorr von, 79.

  Carreño, Teresa, 402, 436, 437.

  Casanova, 34.

  Catarani, Cardinal, 49.

  Catel, 89.

  Cezano, Marquise. (See Olga Janina.)

  Chamber music, 195.

  Chaminade, Cécile, 436.

  Chantavoine, Jean, 56.

  Charpentier, 10.

  Chateaubriand, 11, 26, 29, 43, 64.

  Chelard, 226.

  Cherubini, 204.

  Chopin, Frédéric François, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 26, 29,
        38, 39, 40, 43, 59, 60, 63, 73-77, 145, 186, 201, 204, 238, 282,
        287, 288, 300, 308, 328, 367, 372, 375, 381, 405, 408, 415, 416,
        418, 419.

  Chorley, 225, 228, 252.

  Christophe, Jean; description of Liszt, 2.

  Church music, 187, 188, 190, 193, 194.

  Cimarosa, 80.

  Circourt, Madame de, 319, 320.

  Clementi, 62, 302.

  Coblentz, Tribute from citizens of, 244.

  Cognetti, Mademoiselle, 98.

  Collin, Von, 115.

  Cologne, cathedral at, 248.

  Colpach (Munkaçzy's castle in Luxemburg), 25, 44, 280.

  Commettant, Oscar, satirical sketch of, 219, 220.

  Concerto (Bach), 293.

  Concerto (Beethoven), 202.

  Concerto (Chopin), 396, 424, 426, 428, 430.

  Concerto (Tschaikowsky), 422.

  Concertstück (Weber's), 212, 219, 288, 293.

  Consalvi, Cardinal, 79.

  Constant, Benjamin, 11.

  "Conversation on Music" (Rubinstein), 156.

  Coriolanus (Beethoven's), 115.

  Cornelius, Peter (pupil), 19, 22, 27, 28, 83, 89, 139, 165, 260, 362,
        419.

  Correggio, 28.

  _Correspondent, The_, 210.

  Cosima von Bülow Wagner, 15, 20, 23, 25, 44, 49, 58, 93, 96, 101, 141,
        228.

  Cottlow, Augusta, 436.

  Coutts, Baroness Burdett, 312.

  Craig, Gordon, 332.

  Cramer, J. B., 62, 184, 225, 302.

  Crux Fidelis (choral), 133.

  Crystal Palace, London, 139.

  Cymbal effects in piano-playing, 161.

  Czaky, Archbishop of, 200.

  Czerny, Carl, 13, 72, 73, 182, 184, 302, 308, 317, 406.

  Czinka, Pauna, a gypsy girl, 199.


  D'Agoult, Comte Charles, 15;
    Countess (Marie Sophie de Flarigny), 3, 14, 15, 25, 37, 39-41, 43,
        80, 85, 86, 87, 246, 247, 259, 391.

  D'Albert, Eugen (pupil), 24, 174, 359, 370, 372, 402, 428, 432.

  Damnation de Faust (Berlioz), 199.

  Damrosch, Leopold (pupil), 118, 138, 139, 174, 197.

  D'Angers, David, 416.

  Dannreuther, 20, 152, 181, 191, 193.

  Dante, 8, 147-152, 155;
    gallery (Rome), 382.

  Danton, 220, 221.

  Danube flood, 81.

  Danzinger-Rosebault, Laura, 436.

  Davies, Fannie, 436.

  Da Vinci, 28.

  _Debats, The_, 211.

  De Beriot, 283.

  Debussy, 10, 31.

  Dehmel, Richard, 332.

  Delacroix, 5.

  Delaroche, 16, 28.

  De Musset, 39.

  De Pachmann, Vladimir, 24, 61, 423, 427, 429-431, 432.

  De Quincy, 27.

  Devrient, Ludwig, 139.

  Dictionary of Musicians, 385.

  Dietrichstein, Prince, 359.

  Dilke, Wentworth, 228.

  Dinglested, 48.

  Diorama, The, 152.

  Dobrjan (Liszt's birthplace). (See Raiding.)

  Doehler, 17.

  Dohnanyi, 425.

  Don Carlos, 241.

  Donizetti, 63, 86.

  Doppler, Franz, 158.

  Doré, Gustave, 28.

  D'Ortigue on Liszt, 217, 218.

  Douste sisters, 436.

  Draeseke, 21.

  Dukas, 10.

  Du Plessis, Marie, 19.

  Dupré, Jules, 11.

  Dwight, John S. (Boston musical critic), interview with Liszt, 228,
        229.

  Eckermann, 64.

  Edict of Louis XII, 80.

  "L'Education Sentimentale" (Flaubert), 26.

  Ehlert, Louis, 17, 363.

  El Greco, 28.

  Eliot, George, 43, 47, 53, 436;
    Weimar recollections of, 258.

  Ellet, Mrs., account of a Liszt concert in Cologne, 248, 249.

  Ellis, Havelock, 12

  Enfantin, Père Prosper, 14.

  Eperjes, 198.

  Erard piano, 59, 301, 318, 323.

  Ernani, 258.

  Ernst, Paul, 332.

  Escudier, Leon, description of Danton's statuette of Liszt, 220, 221;
    incident at one of Henri Herz's concerts, 221, 222.

  Essipoff, Annette, 436, 437.

  Essler, Fanny, 235.

  Esterhazy, Prince, 304;
    estates, 12.

  Etruscan Museum, 83.

  _Etude, The_, 381.

  Etudes (Chopin), 75.

  Euryanthe, Overture to, 181.


  Faelten, 425.

  Fallersleben, Hoffmann von (lyric poet), 165, 260.

  Fantasia (Bach), 383.

  Fantasia (Schumann), 57.

  Faure, 281.

  Faust (Lenau's), 71.

  Faust Ouverture, Eine (Wagner's), 143.

  Fay, Amy, 38, 436.

  Feodorovna, Empress Alexandra, 295.

  Fétis and Moscheles, 185.

  Feuerbach, 89.

  Fichtner, Pauline, 24.

  Field, 368.

  _Figaro, The_ (London), 384.

  Finck, Henry T., 165, 179, 194, 196, 314.

  Fischer, Signor, 345;
    Wilhelm, 147.

  Fischof, 226.

  Flaubert, Gustave, 16, 26.

  Flavigny, Vicomte de, 15.

  Foyatier, 18.

  Francia, 84.

  Francis Joseph, king of Hungary, 96.

  Franck, Caesar, 435.

  Franz, Robert, 19, 66, 229, 411.

  Frederic (piano tuner), 287.

  "Frederick Chopin" (Niecks), 74.

  _Freemason's Journal, The_, 389.

  Freischütz (Weber's), 205, 214.

  Friedheim, Arthur (pupil), 24, 70, 359, 368-373, 425.
    Mrs. Arthur, 436.


  Gabrilowitsch, Ossip, 425, 433.

  Galitsin, Prince (governor-general of Moscow), 294.

  Galleria Dantesca, 102.

  Garcia, Viardot, 388.

  Garibaldi, 89.

  Gaul, Cecilia, 276, 436.

  Gautier, Judith, 17;
    Marguerite, 40;
    Théophile, 5, 11.

  Gauz, Rudolph, 425, 435.

  _Gazette Musicale_ (Paris), 77, 179, 193, 287, 288.

  Geneva, 15, 81.

  Genoa, 81.

  George IV, 304.

  Gericke (conductor), 147, 151.

  Gervais, 359.

  Gille, 21.

  Gillet, 281.

  Giocati-Buonaventi, A., 390.

  Giorgione, 28.

  Glinka, 297, 298.

  Gluck, 30, 84.

  Goddard, Arabella, 436.

  Godowsky, Leopold, 402, 425, 435, 437.

  Goethe, 9, 11, 15, 19, 22, 34, 43, 47, 64, 78, 84, 85, 88, 89, 113,
        145, 146, 155, 165, 167, 196, 211, 223, 279, 328, 329, 330, 436;
    foundation, 48.

  Goethe-Schiller monument, unveiling of, 133.

  Göllerich, August (pupil and biographer), 44, 49, 55, 57, 58, 98,
        118, 359.

  Goncourt, 26.

  Gott, Joseph, 381.

  Gottschalg, A. W. (pupil), 21, 56;
    "Franz Liszt in Weimar," 358.

  Gounod, 217.

  Gradus (Clementi), 59.

  Gräfe, 280.

  Gran (Hungary), Basilica at, 188.

  Gregorovius, 78, 79, 88, 89, 91, 93, 98, 102.

  Gregory VII, 56;
    XIV, 83.

  Grieg, Eduard, 24, 425;
    piano concerto, 313-316.

  Grove, Sir George, 385.

  Grünfeld, Alfred, 425.

  Grünwald, Matthew, 28.

  Guido of Arezzo, 73.

  Gumprecht, 29.


  Habeneck (conductor), 204.

  Hackett, Francis, 14.

  Hagn, Charlotte von, 42.

  Hahn, Arthur, 112.

  Hähnel, Professor, 226.

  Hale, Philip, 5, 66, 127, 135, 151, 171, 174, 320.

  Halévy, 204, 378.

  Hall, Walter (conductor), 192.

  Hambourg, Mark, 425, 434.

  Handel, 31, 120, 304, 381.

  Handley, Mrs., 319.

  Hanslick, Eduard, 53, 139, 171.

  Harold, 106.

  Harmonic system, 419.

  Hauptmann, 385.

  Hayden, 10.

  Haydn, Joseph, 12, 31, 84, 105, 142, 160, 172, 409.

  Healey, 417.

  Hegel, 233.

  Hegner, Otto, 425.

  Heine, 9, 11, 17, 124, 165;
    reminiscences of Liszt, 234-241.

  Helbig, Madame Nadine (Princess Nadine Schakovskoy) (pupil), 42, 102.

  Henderson, W. J., 192;
    on the St. Elisabeth Legend, 192, 193.

  Henselt, 209.

  Herder, Jonathan Gottfried, 130, 328.

  Hermann, Carl (pupil), 276.

  Herwegh, George, 235.

  Herz, Henry, 17, 65, 221, 222, 308.

  Herz-Parisian school, 59.

  Hill, Edward Burlingame, 381.

  Hiller, Ferdinand, 3, 35, 53, 293, 320.

  History of Charles XII (Voltaire), 124;
    of the French Revolution (François Mignet), 14.

  Hoffman, Richard, 425;
    recollections of Liszt, 316-318.

  Hofgärtnerei, The (Liszt's residence in Weimar), 23, 58, 389.

  Hofmann, Josef, 425, 434.

  Hohenlohe, Cardinal Prince, 22, 93, 94, 97.

  Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Prince, 48.

  Hopekirk, Helen, 436.

  Hotel d'Alibert (Liszt's residence in Rome), 98, 340.

  "Hour Passed with Liszt, An" (By B. W. H.), 275-279.

  Hueffer, Dr., 166.

  Hugo, Victor, 5, 108, 124, 152, 165, 204.

  Huguenots (Meyerbeer's), 145.

  Humboldt, 48, 78.

  Hummel, J. N., 12, 13, 73, 202, 224;
    concerto, 304, 317.

  Hundt, Aline, 436.

  Hungarian Diet, debate in, 200;
    Museum (Budapest), 338.

  Hyllested, 425.


  Ideale, Die (Schiller), 133, 134.

  Idealism, 59.

  Ibsen, 71.

  "Inchape Bell" (Parry), 310.

  Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique, 83, 84, 416, 417.

  Irving, Henry, 32.

  Ivanowski, Peter von (father of the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein), 45.


  James, Henry, 27, 141.

  Janin, Jules, 40, 228.

  Janina, Olga (pupil), 41.

  Janko keyboard, 437.

  Janotha, Nathalie, 436.

  Jarvis, 425.

  Jensen, Adolf, 363.

  Joachim, Joseph (pupil), 3, 19, 53, 57, 358.

  Joseffy, Rafael (pupil), 24, 57, 63, 66, 374-376, 418, 421, 425,
        427, 431.

  Jonkovsky, Baron, 417.


  Kahrer, Laura, 24.

  Kalkbrenner, 17, 65, 201, 202, 204, 205-207, 302.

  Kapellmeister, 21.

  Kapp, Julius, 55, 56, 57.

  Karlsruhe (music festival at), 93.

  Kaulbach, Wilhelm von, 9, 28, 84, 132, 416.

  Kemble, Fanny, 244;
    impression of Liszt, 245.

  Kennedy, Mgr., 343, 344.

  Kessler, Count, 332.

  Kieff, 45.

  Kindworth, Karl (pupil), 362, 403.

  Kirkenbuhl, Karl, extracts from his "Federzeichnungen aus Rom,"
        267-275.
  Kissingen, 280.

  Kistner (Leipsic publisher), 414.

  Klahre, Edwin (pupil), 425.

  Kleinmichael's piano score, 142.

  Klindworth, Agnes Street, 42.

  Klinger, Max, 331, 334.

  Klinkerfuss, Johanna, 24.

  Kloss, George, 389.

  Kohler, Louis (pupil), 138.

  Kovacs, 338.

  Kovalensky, Sonia, 437.

  Kraftmayr (Von Wolzogen), 57.

  Krebs, Marie, 436.

  Krehbiel, H. E., 10.

  Kremlin, 29.

  Kriehuber, 417.

  Krockow, Countess, 363.

  Kullak, 383.


  La Mara (Marie Lipsius) (pupil), 35, 39, 41, 44, 49.

  Lamartine, 9, 204, 398.

  Lamb, Charles, 30.

  Lamber, Juliette, criticism of George Sand, 39.

  Lambert, Alexander (pupil), 174, 425.

  Lamenais, 14, 79.

  Lamond, Frederick, 312, 425.

  Landes Musikakademie, 97.

  Lanyi, Joann von, 199.

  Laprunarède, Adèle (Duchesse de Fleury) (pupil), 37.

  Lassen, 19.

  Laussot, Jessie Hillebrand, 42.

  Lavenu, 309, 310.

  Legouvé, Ernest, 214;
    comparison of Liszt and Thalberg's playing, 281-291, 416.

  Lehmann, 259.

  Leipsic school, 52.

  Lenau, 71, 398.

  Lenbach, 416, 417.

  Lenz, Von (pupil), account of his acquaintance with Liszt, 201-210.

  Leonora Overture (Beethoven's), 153.

  Leo XII, 80;
    XIII, 345, 390.

  Leopold I, Emperor, 198.

  Leschetitzky, 436.

  "Lettres d'un Voyageur" (George Sand), 322.

  Leyrand, 416.

  Lewald, Fanny, 79.

  Lewes, George Henry 43, 48.

  Lhévinne, 425, 435;
    Madame, 436.

  Lichnowsky, Prince Felix, 241-243.

  Liedertafel, Rhenish, 248, 249.

  Lie, Erika, 313.

  Liliencron, Baron Detlev von, 331.

  Lind, Jenny, 403.

  Lindemann-Frommel, 89.

  Liondmilla, 298.

  Lipsius, Marie. (See La Mara.)

  Listemann (conductor), 147.

  Liszt, Adam, 12, 317;
    Anna Lager, 12;
    Blandine, 15, 90, 97;
    Cosima (see Cosima von Bülow Wagner);
    Daniel, 15, 16, 97;
    Edward, 169.

  Liszt, Franz, abuse of, in Germany, 3;
    affectation in his work, 157;
    alters harmonic minor scale, 163;
    amiability of, 21;
    amusing story of conversion, 320-326;
    anecdotes, 57, 58, 101, 142, 180, 221, 237, 243, 254, 255, 378;
    appreciation of Saint-Saëns, 104, 105;
    as a teacher, 14, 23;
    as Abbé, 18, 50, 97, 267, 275;
    biographers of, 51, 55, 56, 101;
    birth of, 11, 12;
    birthplace of, 13;
    boyhood of, 13, 14, 300-305;
    in Budapest, 97;
    character of his music, 29, 30, 78;
    children of, 15, 16, 86, 359;
    chivalry of, 11, 34, 56;
    Chopin's obligation to, 6, 73-77;
    comment on his 13th Psalm, 194, 195;
    comparison of established symphonic form with that devised by Liszt,
        140;
    compared with Wagner, 108, 143, 144;
    as composer, 1, 2, 13, 14, 20, 31, 35, 43, 52-56, 86, 90, 103, 144,
        327, 377, 409-413;
    concerts of, 34, 212, 221, 223, 224, 230, 235, 248, 288, 292, 293,
        302, 305, 319;
    as conductor, 2, 87, 135, 258, 377;
    conducts at Aix-la-Chapelle, 135;
    conducts in Berlin, 137;
    conducts at Prague, 136;
    conducts at Pesth, 94, 96;
    conducts in Rome, 94;
    conducts in Weimar, 88;
    conversation of, 258, 259, 276;
    court musical director (Weimar), 22, 46, 47;
    creator of the symphonic poem, 26, 27, 106, 139, 140;
    criticisms regarding, 2, 8, 14, 17, 21, 64, 153-158, 194, 360, 399;
    and the Countess d'Agoult, 14-16, 80, 81, 85, 391;
    daily mode of life, 99, 100;
    death of, 1, 2, 25, 280;
    dedications, 57, 100, 169, 172;
    description of his ideal of romantic religious music, 193;
    in England, 300-313;
    fascinating personality of, 45, 235, 236, 241, 246, 256, 257;
    feminine friendships of, 34-43;
    fingering, 74, 187;
    Freemason, 389;
    friendship with Berlioz, 212;
    friendship with Cardinal Prince Hohenlohe, 22;
    friendship with Chopin, 14, 40;
    friendship with Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 83, 84;
    and Marguerite Gautier, 40;
    generosity of, 24, 101, 257, 258;
    gifts from sovereigns, 328;
    greatest contribution to art, 4;
    hand of, 328, 339;
    illness of, 44, 135;
    impressionability of, 8, 10, 11;
    improvisations of, 82, 180, 181;
    indebtedness to Chopin, 76;
    influence of Berlioz, 17, 55, 411;
    influence of Chopin, 17, 145, 411;
    influence of gipsy music, 160;
    influence of Meyerbeer, 145;
    influence of Paganini, 17;
    influence of Wagner, 191;
    ingratitude of Schumann, 57;
    on instruments of percussion, 170, 171;
    interest in German art, 90;
    interest in Tausig, 362;
    interpretation, 87;
    interview with, 228, 229;
    intimacy with Prince Lichnowsky, 241-243;
    intrigues against, 22;
    introduces interlocking octaves, 77;
    introduces the piano recital, 71, 419;
    and Olga Janina, 41;
    lack of appreciation of, 31, 141, 229;
    and the Countess Adèle Laprunarède, 37;
    letters of, 9, 35, 37, 44, 46, 92, 135, 136, 138, 143, 150, 169, 170,
        171, 179, 194, 195, 197, 219, 279, 280, 289, 290, 394, 414;
    literary work of, 19, 20;
    in London, 300-313;
    loss of Piano Method, Part III, 358;
    love affairs of, 2, 3, 19-23, 36-41, 88;
    and Lola Montez, 40, 41;
    musical style of, 4, 181;
    musical imagination, 8, 146;
    notation, 187;
    number of compositions, 56;
    orchestral form, 194;
    orchestral instrumentation, 157;
    orchestral music of, 32, 123, 190;
    as organ composer, 401, 402;
    original compositions of, 412, 413;
    on origin of his Tasso, 115;
    on origin of his Orpheus, 121;
    parents of, 12, 14, 251;
    in Paris, 13, 24;
    patience of, 27;
    pedalling, 62, 99, 187;
    pen picture of, 57;
    personal appearance, 18, 82, 98, 204, 231, 255, 262, 269, 276, 296,
        297;
    personal characteristics, 2, 3, 17, 66, 71, 327;
    pianoforte virtuoso, 1, 2, 8, 14, 16, 18, 43, 56, 73, 94, 106, 247,
        251, 252, 420;
    piano music of, 10, 11, 53, 66, 123, 168, 187, 409-413;
    piano recitals, 82, 83, 179, 308-311, 419;
    piano reform, 91;
    piano of, 328, 340, 342, 343, 394;
    and the Countess Louis Plater, 37;
    playing of, 17, 60-64, 87, 99, 141, 161, 208, 214, 223, 224, 232,
        233, 238-240, 253, 266, 277, 278, 285, 292, 314, 316, 421;
    plays Weber's Sonatas, 207, 208;
    plays at Berlioz's, 210;
      at Bizet's, 379;
      at court of Wurtemburg, 252;
      at Karlsruhe, 93;
      at Legouvé's, 215;
      at Munkaçzy's, 25;
      at Tolstoy's, 102;
      at Windsor Castle, 304;
    portraits of, 16, 18, 42, 261, 289, 338, 416, 417;
    prediction at birth of, 12;
    predominating artistic influences, 17;
    prophecy of, 100;
    public speaking of, 179, 213, 226, 227;
    pupils of, 24, 36, 42, 51, 52, 57, 91, 98, 185, 263, 353-388;
    alphabetical list of pupils, 353-358;
    reading of, 14;
    realism of, 67;
    reformer of church music, 2;
    religious fervor of, 89-92, 97, 98, 196;
    residences in and around Rome, 343;
    revolutionist, 142;
    romanticism of, 11, 14, 28;
    in Rome, 78-85, 89-97, 102;
    in Russia, 294-300;
    and Caroline de Saint-Criq, 36, 37;
    and George Sand, 39, 40, 247;
    and the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein, 19-24, 43-51;
    Schumann's indebtedness to, 56;
    as song writer, 165-168;
    started new era in Hungarian music, 160;
    statues of, 13, 18, 220, 221, 332;
    success of, 13, 52;
    as teacher, 14, 97, 100, 209, 339, 358, 395-397;
    technique of, 34, 62, 70, 72, 152, 313, 402, 407, 421, 437;
    temperament of, 28, 29;
    tempo, 164, 165, 187;
    testimonials, 328;
    theological studies of, 95;
    theory of gipsy music, 20;
    thought his career a failure, 26;
    tirelessness of, 17;
    tomb of, 25, 58;
    the triangle, 170-172;
    tribute by Wagner, 23;
    variety of rhythms of, 31;
    versatility of, 51, 88, 144;
    on virtuosity, 392, 393;
    Wagner's indebtedness to, 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 31, 55, 141-144;
    Wagner's praise, 9, 103, 142;
    wanderings of, 34, 70, 81, 85, 87, 93, 94-96, 97;
    in Weimar, 19, 23, 46, 47, 87, 88, 96, 169, 329;
    writing for solo and choral voices, 190.

  Liszt, Franz--Works:
    Alleluja, 92.
    Angelus, 195, 196.
    Apparitions, The, 66.
    Ave Maria, 92, 224, 294.
    Ballad in B minor, 399.
    Ballades, 66, 186.
    Bénédiction de Dieu, 143.
    Berceuse, 186.
    Chöre zu Herder's Entfesselte Prometheus, 130, 131.
    Chorus of Angels, 196, 197.
    Concert Study, 430.
    Concertos, 168-174, 187;
      Concerto Pathétique in E minor, 66, 177, 178;
      Concerto for piano and orchestra, No. 1, in E flat, 67, 168-172;
      Concerto for piano, No. 2, in A major (Concert Symphonique), 66,
        172-174.
    Consolations, 187, 412.
    Don Sancho, 14.
    Elegier, The, 66.
    Etudes, 66, 72, 181-185, 305, 408;
      Etude in D flat, 99;
      Etude in F minor, No. 10, 72;
      Etudes de Concert (three), 72, 184;
      Etudes d'execution transcendante (twelve), 72, 86, 181, 182;
      Etudes en douze exercices, Op. 1, 181;
      Etudes, second set of, 182;
      Ab-Irato, 66, 72, 184, 185;
      Au Bord d'une Source, 70, 72;
      Au Lac de Wallenstadt, 72;
      Danse Macabre, 84, 182, 187;
      Feux-follets, 72, 184;
      Gnomenreigen, 72, 92, 184, 400;
      Harmonies du Soir, 72, 183, 184;
      Irrlichter, 400;
      Ricordanza, 72, 184, 187;
      Studies of Storm and Dread, 183;
      Vision, 183;
      Wilde Jagd, 183;
      Waldesrauschen, 72, 92, 184;
      Excelsior, 143.
    Evocatio in der Sixtinischen Kapelle, 90, 143.
    Fantasias, 179-181, 401;
      Années de Pèlerinage, 11, 66, 70, 86, 152, 187, 412;
      Fantasia on Don Juan, 298, 407, 418, 432;
      Fantasia Dramatique, 187;
      Fantasia on Reminiscences of Puritani, 82;
      Fantasia on Themes by Pacini, 292;
      Fantaisie quasi sonata après une lecture de Dante, 86;
      Il Penseroso, 84, 86;
      operatic fantasias, 180, 181;
      Lucia, 63, 180;
      Sonnambula, 180;
      Sposalizio, 84, 86;
      Tre Sonetti di Petrarca, 86, 187.
    Funeral March on occasion of Maximilian of Mexico's death, 96.
    Galop Chromatique, 293, 298.
    Glanes de Woronice, 25.
    Harmonies, 412;
      Harmonies Péstiques et Religieuses, 66.
    Heilige Cäcelia, Die (essay), 84.
    Hungarian gipsy music, book on, 19.
    Hungarian March, 317.
    Legends, 66, 412;
      Legend of St. Elisabeth, 88, 90, 143, 191-193, 272, 273, 312;
      St. Francis of Assisi's Hymn to the Sun, 88;
      St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds, 92, 186, 412;
      St. Francis de Paula Stepping on the Waves, 92, 186, 412.
    Masses, 4, 54, 187-194;
      Graner Festmesse, 29, 30, 53, 92, 95, 188, 190, 191, 193, 342;
      Hungarian Coronation Mass, 95, 96, 189, 190, 270, 271.
    Mazurkas, 66, 186.
    Mephisto, Waltz, 71, 178, 231.
    Nocturnes, 66.
    Oratorios, 4, 54;
      Oratorio of Christus, 54, 90, 95, 101, 104, 193, 194, 328;
      Oratorio of Petrus, 273.
    Organ variations on Bach themes, 92, 93;
      organ and trombone composition, 88.
    Piano arrangements, 86;
      Adelaide, 294, 298;
      Beethoven symphonies, 87, 90;
      Beethoven quartets, 93, 95;
      Erlkönig, 93, 224, 294, 298.
    Polonaises, 25, 70, 186.
    Psalms, 13, 18, 23, 90, 92, 137, 194, 195;
      Thirteenth Psalm, 92, 194, 195.
    Rakoczy March, 94, 189, 198-200, 337.
    Requiem, 97.
    Rhapsodies Hongroises, 53, 65, 100, 157, 158-165, 178, 187, 189, 367,
        407, 412;
      list of, 158, 159.
    Scherzo und Marsch in D minor, 186.
    Serenade, 294.
    Soirées de Vienne, 25.
    Sonata in B minor, 29, 57, 59-70, 186, 187, 425.
    Songs, 165-168.
    Sonnets after Petrarch, 66.
    Studies and fragments, 82.
    Study of Chopin, 19.
    Symphonic poems, 4, 9, 10, 26, 27, 52, 53, 54, 72, 103, 104, 106-158,
        168, 172, 377;
      La bataille des Huns, after Kaulbach (Hunnenschlacht), 84, 107,
        132, 133, 143, 153;
      Ce qu'on Entend sur la montagne (Berg Symphony), 107, 108-112, 153,
        328, 415;
      Fest-klänge, 107, 126-129, 136, 153, 328;
      From the Cradle to the Grave, 132;
      Hamlet, 107, 132, 153;
      Héroïde funèbre, 107, 131, 153, 178;
      Hungaria, 132, 153, 328;
      L'Idéal, after Schiller, 107, 133-139, 143, 153, 367;
      Mazeppa, 72, 103, 107, 123-126, 183, 407;
      Orphée, 103, 107, 121, 122, 143, 328;
      Les Préludes, after Lamartine, 107, 119-121, 136, 153, 367;
      Prométhée, 107,122, 123, 130, 131;
      Tasso, Lamento and Trionfo, 107, 113-118, 136, 153, 367;
      Le Triomphe funèbre du Tasse (epilogue), 97, 118, 197.
    Symphonies:
      Dante Symphony, 11, 19, 38, 53, 94, 102, 104, 143, 146-155;
      Faust Symphony, 22, 38, 53, 58, 141-146, 154, 155, 328, 415;
      Revolutionary Symphony, 14, 38, 132, 142.
    Todtentanz, 174-177, 238, 407, 435.
    Transcriptions, 65, 66, 86, 90, 93, 95, 96, 97, 211, 253, 412;
      Isolde's Liebestod, 96;
      Paganini studies, 184, 185, 223;
      Symphonie Fantastique, 211.
    Valse-impromptu, 186;
      Valse Oubliée, 66.

  Liszt fund, 257.

  "Liszt und die Frauen" (La Mara), 35, 42.

  Litolff, Henri, 19, 169.

  Littleton, Alfred, 311;
    Augustus, 313;
    Henry, 311, 312.

  "Le Livre de Caliban" (Bergerat), 320.

  Lohengrin (Wagner), 19, 47, 54, 137, 188, 329, 377.

  Lorenzetti, Pietro and Ambrogio, 175.

  Lotto, Lorenzo, 18.

  Louis I, of Bavaria, 89.

  Louis, Rudolf (Liszt biographer), 101.

  Lytton, Lord, 133.


  MacColl, D. S., tribute to music, 32, 33.

  MacDowell, Edward (pupil), 24, 425.

  Mackenzie, Sir A. C., 195, 312.

  Macready (tragedian), notes from diary of, 252.

  Madach, "The Tragedy of Mankind," 338.

  Madonna del Rosario (cloister), 90.

  Maeterlinck, 71.

  Mahler, Gustav, 65.

  Mai, Cardinal, 83.

  Maiden's Lament, The (Schubert's), 167.

  Makart, Hans, 338.

  Malibran, 82, 204.

  Manet, Edouard, 32.

  Manns, August, 139.

  Marcello, 84.

  Margulies, Adele, 436.

  Marschner, 6.

  Mason, Dr. William (pupil), 19, 143, 434.

  Massocia, 79.

  Matisse, 28.

  Maupassant, Guy de, 26.

  Maximilian of Mexico, 96.

  Mazurka (Chopin), 65, 186.

  Meditations Poétiques (Lamartine's), 119, 204.

  Mees, Arthur (conductor), 191.

  Mehlig, Anna, 276.

  Meistersinger, Die (Wagner), 7.

  Melchers, Gari, 332.

  Melena, Elpis, 42.

  "Memories of a Musical Life" (William Mason), 143.

  Mendelssohn, Felix, 3, 31, 53, 66, 73, 85, 105, 293, 300, 309, 400,
        409, 411;
    Psalm, As the Hart Pants, 293;
    Songs without Words, 319.

  Menter, Sofie (pupil), 24, 42, 171, 279, 280, 436, 437.

  Mercadante, 86.

  Merian-Genast, Emilie, 42.

  Merry del Val, Mgr., 344.

  Mertens-Schaaffhausen, Frau Sibylle, 89.

  Méthode des Méthodes, 185.

  Metternich, Prince, 244.

  Metternich Princess, 243, 244.

  Meyendorff, Baroness Olga de (pupil), 42.

  Meyerbeer, 129, 145, 180, 236.

  Mezzofanti, Cardinal, 83.

  Michelangelo, 9, 28, 84.

  Michetti's Beethoven Album, 225.

  Mignet, François, 14.

  Mildner, 212.

  Milnes, Monckton (Lord Houghton), 252.

  Milozzi, 350.

  Minasi, account of conversation with Liszt, 250-252.

  Minghetti, Princess, 100.

  Mischka (Liszt's servant), 101.

  Mock, Camille. (See Madame Pleyel.)

  _Monday Review, The_ (Vienna), 390.

  Montauban, 84.

  Monte Mario, Dominican cloister of, 50, 90, 91, 93, 94, 100, 197,
        265, 274, 342.

  Montez, Lola, 19, 40, 226;
    extracts from "Wits and Women of Paris," 246, 247.

  Montigny-Remaury, Madame, 433, 436.

  Moore, George, 26, 29.

  Mori, 302.

  _Morning Post_ (Manchester), 301-303, 316.

  Morris, William, 327.

  Moscheles, 185, 221, 317, 385;
    extracts from diary of, 223-228.

  Mosenthal, comments on Liszt, 222.

  Mouchanoff-Kalergis, Marie von, 42, 363.

  Mozart, 10, 31, 32, 62, 84, 105, 142, 282, 304, 409, 432;
    his piano, 262.

  Müllerlieder (Schubert's), 167.

  Munch, Edward, 28.

  Munkaczy, 25, 44, 280, 417;
    portrait of Liszt, 338.

  Murphy, Lady Blanche, account of Liszt's sojourn at Monte Mario in
        1862, 265-267.

  _Musenalmanach, The_, 133.

  _Musical Journal_ (London), 307;
    _Standard, The_, 378;
    _Times_ (London), 300;
    _World_ (London), 308-310.

  Musset, Alfred de, 5, 398.

  "My Literary Life" (Madame Edmond Adam), 39.


  Nachtigall (director), 242.

  Natalucci, 381.

  Neate, 302.

  "Nélida" (by Countess d'Agoult), 41, 259.

  Neo-German school, 53.

  Nerenz, 89.

  _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, 92.

  Neupert, Edmund, 425.

  Newmarch, Rose, on Liszt in Russia, 293-300.

  New museum, Berlin, 132.

  Newman, Ernest, 7, 10.

  Nicholas I, Emperor, 295.

  Niecks, Dr. Frederick, 40, 73, 74, 77, 134, 313, 409, 414.

  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 21, 38, 144, 327, 329, 331, 333-335, 360;
   Elisabeth Foerster, 329, 333, 334.

  Nohant, 81.

  Norma (Thalberg's), 63

  Normanby, Lord, 252.

  Novello, Clara, 377, 378.


  Obermann, 9.

  Odescalchi, Princess, 49.

  Olde, Professor Hans, 331.

  Ollivier, Emile, 15;
    Madame Emile. (See Blandine Liszt.)

  Onslow, 201.

  Orcagna, Andrea, 28, 84, 175.

  Order of the Golden Spur, 296.

  Orpheus (Gluck's), 121.

  Overbeck, 80, 83.

  "Oxford History of Music," 187.


  Pacini, 292.

  Paderewski, 16, 17, 418, 419, 423, 425-428, 432, 436.

  Paer, 80.

  Paganini, 2, 17, 73, 76, 282-284, 292, 378, 402, 403, 411;
    caprices, 185.

  Paganini Studies (Schumann's), 73.

  Paisiello, 80.

  Palestrina, 84.

  Palibin, Madame, 297, 298.

  Paroles d'un Croyant (Lamenais), 14.

  Parry, John, 309, 310.

  Parsons, Albert Ross, 421.

  Passini, 89.

  Paur, 144;
    Madame, 436.

  Pavlovna, Grand Duchess Maria, 3, 42, 46, 47, 128.

  Pavlovna, Princess Maria, 22.

  Petersen, Dory, 436.

  Petrarca, 165.

  Philharmonic Society, London, 171, 223, 224, 307.

  Pianoforte music, notation of, 186, 187.

  Piano-playing, 60-66, 423.

  Picasso, 28.

  Piccini, 80.

  Pick, Mgr., 345.

  Pietagrua, Angela, 36.

  Pisa, Giovanni da, 84.

  Pius IX, 45, 48, 50, 91, 92, 101, 342, 349, 390;
    Pius X, 50;
    an audience with, 345-352.

  Pixis, 82, 308.

  Pixis-Göhringer, Francilla, 82.

  Plaidy, 385.

  Planché, Gustave, 39.

  Planté, 433.

  Plater, Countess Louis (Gräfin Brzostowska), witticism of, 35, 37.

  Pleyel, 286;
    piano, 282;
    Marie Camille, 17, 42, 201, 436.

  Podoska, M. Calm, 49;
    Pauline (mother of the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein), 45.

  Pohl, Carl Ferdinand, 300;
    Richard (pupil), 126, 127, 130, 149, 151.

  Polonaise (Chopin), 70, 75, 186, 430.

  Porges, Heinrich (pupil), 92.

  Potter, Cipriani, 302.

  Prätorius, Michael, 172.

  Préludes (Chopin), 75.

  Programme music, 106, 115, 156, 186.

  Prückner, Dionys (pupil), 19, 171.

  Pückler, Prince (pupil), 242.

  Pugna, 425, 433.

  _Punch_ (London), 312.


  _Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review_ (London), 301.


  Raab, Toni, 24.

  Raff Joachim (pupil), 19, 27, 67, 260.

  Raiding (or Reiding), Liszt's birthplace, 13, 60, 66, 339.

  Rakoczy, Prince Franz, 198, 200.

  Ramaciotti, 382.

  Ramann, Lina (pupil and biographer), 49, 50, 74-76, 128, 168, 171,
        191, 200.

  Raphael, 9, 28, 80, 84, 233.

  Rauzan, Duchesse de, 319.

  Ravel, 10.

  Realism, 61, 62.

  Récamier, Madame de, 43.

  "Records of Later Life" (Kemble), 244.

  Reeves, Henry, extract from his biography, 319, 320.

  Reger, 10, 30.

  Reichstadt, Duc de, 11.

  Reisenauer, Alfred (pupil), 24, 425.

  Rembrandt, 28.

  Remenyi, Edward (pupil), 19, 358.

  Reminiscences of Liszt:
    Andersen, Hans Christian, 230-234.
    Anonymous German Admirer, 252-258.
    Anonymous Lady Admirer, 262-265.
    B. W. H., 275-280.
    Bauer, Caroline, 241-244.
    Beringer, Oscar, 376, 377.
    Berlioz, 210-217.
    Commettant, Oscar, 219, 220.
    De Bury, Blaze, 218, 219.
    D'Ortigue, 217, 218.
    Dwight, 228, 229.
    Eliot, George, 258-262.
    Ellet, Mrs., 248, 249.
    Escudier, Leon, 220-222.
    Grieg, Eduard, 313-316.
    Heine, 234-241.
    Hoffman, Richard, 316-318.
    Kemble, Fanny, 244, 245.
    Kirkenbuhl, Karl, 267-275.
    Legouvé, Ernest, 281-291.
    Macready, 252.
    Minasi, 250-252.
    Montez, Lola, 246, 247.
    Moscheles, 223-228.
    Mosenthal, 222, 223.
    Murphy, Lady Blanche, 265-267.
    Novello, Clara, 377, 378.
    Reeves, Henry, 319-320.
    Rosenthal, 366-368.
    Schumann, Robert, 291-294.
    Von Lenz, 201-210.
    Weingartner, 400, 401.

  Renan, Henrietta, 334.

  Requiem (Berlioz), 193.

  Reulke, Julius (pupil), 401.

  Reviczy, Countess, 100.

  Revolutionary Study (Chopin's), 6.

  _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 218;
    _Européenne_, 211;
    _du Monde Catholique_, 88;
    _de Paris_, 391.

  Richter, 385;
    Jean Paul, 134.

  Riedel, Karl (pupil), 89.

  Riedle Society, The, 363.

  Ries, 302.

  Rietschl, 261.

  Righini, 80.

  Rimsky-Korsakoff (pupil), 27, 414-416.

  Ring, Nibelungen (Wagner), 7, 142-144, 188, 245, 363.

  Rivé-King, Julia, 436.

  Robert (Meyerbeer's), 231

  Rodin, Auguste, 331, 338.

  Roger-Miclos, Madame, 436.

  Roman New Musical Society, 382.

  Romantic school, 5, 28, 63.

  Romeo and Juliet (Berlioz), 212.

  "Römischen Tagebüchern" (Gregorovius), 88.

  Roquette, Otto, 191.

  Rosa, Carl, 385; Salvator, 28.

  Rosenthal, Moriz (pupil), 24, 57, 366, 367, 424, 425, 427-429, 431.

  Rospigliosi, Fanny, Princess, 42.

  Rossetti, Christina, 437.

  Rossini, 63, 80, 84, 86, 101, 204, 300, 377, 411, 412.

  Rougon-Macquart series, 26.

  Rousseau, J. J., 11.

  Royal Amateur Orchestral Society (London), 312;
    Society of Musicians (London), 301.

  Rubini, 237, 252.

  Rubinstein, 17, 19, 24, 63, 145, 156, 171, 222, 223, 262, 374, 382,
        386-388, 402, 420-423, 427, 433, 435;
    Nicolas (pupil), 421.

  Rückert, 165.

  Rummel, Franz, 174, 425.

  Runciman, John F., 21.

  Russlane, 298.

  Ruzsitska, 199.


  Sacchini, 80.

  Sainte-Beuve, 9, 11.

  Saint-Criq, Comtesse Caroline de (pupil), 36, 37.

  St. Matthew's Passion (Bach), 195.

  Saint-Saëns, Camille (pupil), 24, 27, 54, 64, 65, 67, 104, 176, 177,
        181, 369, 382, 386, 425, 426, 433.

  Saint-Simon, 14.

  Salaman, Charles, 304, 308.

  Salieri, 13.

  Salviati, 347.

  Samaroff, Olga, 436.

  Sand, George, 15, 16, 19, 39, 40, 43, 81, 204, 246, 247, 391, 436.

  Santa Francesca Romana, cloister, 95.

  Sarasate, 432.

  Sarti, 80.

  Sauer, Emil (pupil), 24, 57, 425.

  Sauerma, Countess, Rosalie (pupil), 42.

  Sayn-Wittgenstein, Princess, 8, 19, 20, 22-24, 39, 42-45, 47-50, 53,
        56, 99, 100, 127, 128, 135-138, 146, 260, 328, 362.

  Scarlatti, 423.

  Schade, Dr., 260.

  Schadow, 28.

  Schakovskoy, Princess Nadine. (See Helbig.)

  Scheffer, Ary, 16, 28, 260, 261, 289.

  Scherzo (Chopin), 75, 76, 428.

  Schiller, 47, 165, 167, 223, 279, 328-330;
    Madeleine, 436.

  Schindler, 13.

  Schlaf, Johannes, 332.

  _Schlesinger's Gazette Musicale_, 203, 287.

  Schlözer, Kurt von, 89, 94.

  Schmidt, Dr. Leopold, 190.

  Schoenberg, Arnold, 419.

  Scholl (band master), 200.

  Schopenhauer, Arthur, 328;
    Madame Johanna, 89, 328.

  Schorn, Adelheid von (pupil), 44.

  Schubert, 66, 105, 160, 166, 167, 293, 411, 420.

  Schule der Geläufigkeit, (Czerny), 182.

  Schumann, Robert, 5, 19, 53, 56, 57, 60, 62, 66, 73, 105, 172, 182,
        183, 185, 375, 381, 397, 398, 405, 408, 409, 418, 420, 421, 432;
    on Liszt's playing, 201-294;
    Clara, 53, 56, 57, 436, 437.

  Schwanthaler, 261.

  Schwarz, Frau von, 89.

  Schweinfurt, 89.

  Schwindt, Moritz v., 191.

  Scriabine, 435.

  Scribe, 217.

  Scudo, 17.

  Segantini, 338.

  Segnitz, Eugene, 49, 79, 84, 85, 89, 92.

  Seidl, Anton, 359.

  Sembrich, Marcella, 431.

  Serassi, Pier Antonio, 197.

  Serov, 296, 298, 299.

  Servais, Franz (pupil), 359.

  Sgambati, Giovanni (pupil), 91, 314, 342, 381-384.

  Sherwood, William H. (pupil), 425.

  Siloti, Alexander (pupil), 24, 174, 415.

  Simpson, Palgrave, 252.

  Sinding, Otto, 338.

  Slivinski, 425.

  Smart, Sir G., 302, 303.

  Smetana, Frederick (pupil), 414.

  Society of Music Friends, 139.

  Solfanelli, Abbé, 96.

  Sonata (Beethoven), 6, 38, 59, 214, 215, 319, 428.

  Sonata (Wagner), 142.

  Sonata (Weber), 207-210.

  "Songs and Song Writers" (H. T. Finck), 165.

  Sonntag, 82, 204.

  Sophie, Princess, of Holland, 46.

  "Souvenirs d'une Cosaque" (Olga Janina), 41.

  Sowinski, 75.

  Spanuth, August (analysis of the Hungarian Rhapsodies), 160-165, 425.

  Speyeras, W. C., 389.

  Spohr, 42, 226, 300.

  Spontini, 258, 259.

  Stahr, Ad., 79.

  Stahr, Fräuleins, 397.

  Stassor (Russian critic), 296-298.

  Stavenhagen, Bernhard (pupil), 24, 98, 312, 425.

  Steinway & Sons, 394.

  Stella, 417.

  Stendhal, 4, 5, 11, 34, 35, 64, 141.

  Stern, Daniel (pen name of the Countess d'Agoult), 16.

  Sternberg, von, 425.

  Stimson, 385.

  Stojowski, 425, 435.

  Stradal, August (pupil), 98-100.

  Strauss, Richard, 8, 27, 29, 31, 52, 54, 145, 146, 168, 331, 419.

  Streicher, Nanette, 436.

  Strobl, 417.

  Studies (Chopin), 75, 437.

  Sullivan, 385.

  Symphony (Beethoven), 105, 171, 292, 382.

  Symphony (Berlioz), 106.

  Symphony (Haydn), 172.

  Symphony (Herold), 106.

  Symphony (Schubert), 293.

  Symphony (Schumann), 172.

  "Symphony Since Beethoven" (Weingartner), 153.

  Szalit, Paula, 436.

  Székely, 338.

  Szumowska, Antoinette, 436.

  Szymanowska, Madame de, 436.


  Tadema, Alma, 100.

  Taffanel, 281.

  _Tageblatt, The_, 190.

  Tagel (Wurtemburg counsellor of court), 254, 255.

  Taglioni, Marie, 204.

  Taine, 343.

  Taj Mahal, 29.

  Tancredi, Tournament duet in, 204.

  Tannhäuser (Wagner), 181, 188, 377.

  Tasso, 100.

  "Tasso" (Byron's), 115.

  "Tasso" (Goethe's), 113, 115.

  Tausig, Alois, 362;
    Karl (pupil), 17, 19, 58, 62, 63, 73, 95, 138, 359-366, 374, 376,
        402, 420, 421, 423, 424, 431, 432, 434.

  Taylor, Franklin, 385.

  Thackeray, W. M., 11, 28, 47.

  Thalberg, 16, 17, 60, 63, 81, 211, 221, 247, 250, 251, 282-285, 287,
        288, 308, 359, 378, 399, 411, 420, 430.

  Théâtre des Italiens (Paris), 104, 223, 285, 288.

  Theatre Royal (Manchester), 303.

  Theiner, Pater, 91.

  Thiers, 104.

  Thode, Professor Henry, 280.

  Thomas, Theodore, 132, 133.

  Thorwaldsen, 78, 80.

  Tilgner, 417.

  Tintoretto, 28.

  Tisza, 200.

  Titian, 28, 84.

  Tolstoy, Countess, 98.

  Torhilon-Buell, Marie, 436.

  Trémont, Baron, 201.

  Tristan and Isolde (Wagner), 6, 7, 25, 55, 143, 280, 363.

  Triumph of Death (fresco), 175.

  Tschaikowsky, 27, 145, 146, 367, 419, 422.

  Turgenev, 388.


  Uhland, 165.

  Ungarische Tänze (Brahms'), 190.

  Unger-Sabatier, Caroline, 42.

  Urspruch, Anton (pupil), 24.


  Vaczek, Carl, 198, 199.

  Valle dell' Inferno, 100.

  Vallet, Michael, 390, 391.

  Valse-impromptu (Chopin), 186.

  Van der Stucken (pupil), 24, 358.

  Vasari, 347.

  Vatican, The, 49, 79, 83, 92, 93, 94, 342, 352.

  Veit, 83.

  Velde, Professor van de, 332.

  Verdi, 96, 180, 300, 412.

  Verlaine, Paul, 10, 62, 63, 375.

  Vernet, Horace, 124.

  Veronese, 28.

  Vesque, 226.

  Viardot-Garcia, Pauline, 42.

  Victoria, Queen, 24, 312.

  Viennese pianos, 62, 182.

  Villa d'Este, 9, 96, 341.

  Villa Medici, 83.

  Vimercati, 302.

  Vivier, 227.

  Vogrich, Max, 332, 425;
    Opera Buddha, 332.

  Voltaire, 124.

  Volterra, Daniele da, 347.

  Wagner, Richard, 1, 2, 5-10, 18-21, 23, 27, 29-32, 38, 43, 45, 47,
        53-55, 57, 58, 63, 65, 67, 96, 101, 103, 108, 119, 140-144,
        146, 147, 150, 151, 157, 158, 167, 171, 180, 186, 188, 189,
        191, 280, 300, 333, 362, 363, 382, 411, 412, 419, 420, 422;
    Madame Richard (see Cosima von Bülow Wagner);
    Siegfried, 26.

  "Wagnerfrage" (Raff), 260.

  Wales, Prince and Princess of, 312.

  Walker, Bettina, 383;
    "My Musical Experiences," 383.

  Ward, Andrew, 304, 317, 319.

  Wartburg festival, 96, 272.

  Watteau, 120.

  Weber, 6, 105, 205-207, 215, 282, 283, 300, 368.

  Wehrstaedt, 206, 207.

  Weimar, Duchess of, (see Pavlovna);
    Ernst, Grand Duke, 330;
    Grand Duke Carl Alexander of, 3, 42, 44, 46.

  Weingartner, Felix (pupil), 153, 400, 401;
    on Liszt's symphonic works, 153-156.

  Wesendonck, Mathilde, 20, 43.

  Wesley, Samuel Sebastian, 301.

  Wieland, 328.

  Wiertz, 28.

  Wild, Jonathan, 79.

  Wildenbruch, Ernst von, 331.

  William Tell, Overture to, 82, 298.

  Winckelmann, 78, 275.

  Winding, 314.

  _Windsor Express_ (London), 304.

  Winterberger, Alex. (pupil), 359.

  Wiseman, Cardinal, 79.

  Wittgenstein, Princess, (see Sayn-Wittgenstein);
    Prince Nikolaus, 46, 47, 50.

  Wohl, Janka, (pupil), 56, 417.

  Wolff, Dr., 226, 227.

  Wolffenbüttel, 172.

  Wolkenstein, Countess, 42.

  Wolkof, 417.

  Wolzogen, Von, 57.

  Worcester festival, 191.

  Woronice (estate of Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein), 45-47.

  Wortley, Stuart, 252.

  Wurtemburg, King of, 252, 254, 255.


  Yeats, 327.


  Zampa, Overture to, 181.

  Zeisler, Fannie Bloomfield, 431, 436, 437.

  Zichy, Geza (pupil), 24;
    Michael, 338.

  Zingarelli, 381.

  Zoellner, 196.

  Zucchari, 347.




BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS


    =Franz Liszt.= Illustrated. 12mo. (_Postage extra_)   _net_, $2.00

    =Promenades of an Impressionist.= 12mo.               _net_, $1.50

    =Egoists: A Book of Supermen.= 12mo,                  _net_, $1.50

    =Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists.= 12mo,            _net_, $1.50

    =Overtones: A Book of Temperaments.= 12mo,            _net_, $1.50

    =Mezzotints in Modern Music.= 12mo,                          $1.50

    =Chopin: The Man and His Music.= With Portrait. 12mo,        $2.00

    =Visionaries.= 12mo,                                         $1.50

    =Melomaniacs.= 12mo,                                         $1.50


PROMENADES

_of an_

IMPRESSIONIST

$1.50 net

     CONTENTS: Paul Cézanne--Rops the Etcher--Monticelli--Rodin--Eugene
     Carrière--Degas--Botticelli--Six Spaniards--Chardin--Black and
     White--Impressionism--A New Study of Watteau--Gauguin and
     Toulouse-Lautrec--Literature and Art--Museum Promenades.

"The vivacity of Mr. Huneker's style sometimes tends to conceal the
judiciousness of his matter. His justly great reputation as a journalist
critic most people would attribute to his salient phrase. To the present
writer, the phrase goes for what it is worth--generally it is eloquent
and interpretative, again merely decorative--what really counts is an
experienced and unbiassed mind at ease with its material. The criticism
that can pass from Goya, the tempestuous, that endless fount of facile
enthusiasms, and do justice to the serene talent of Fortuny is certainly
catholic. In fact, Mr. Huneker is an impressionist only in his aversion
to the literary approach, and in a somewhat wilful lack of system. This,
too, often seems less temperamental than a result of journalistic
conditions, and of the dire need of being entertaining.

"We like best such sober essays as those which analyze for us the
technical contributions of Cézanne and Rodin. Here, Mr. Huneker is a
real interpreter, and here his long experience of men and ways in art
counts for much. Charming, in the slighter vein, are such appreciations
as the Monticelli, and Chardin. Seasoned readers of Mr. Huneker's
earlier essays in musical and dramatic criticism will naturally turn to
the fantastic titles in this book. Such border-line geniuses as Greco,
Rops, Meryon, Gustave Moreau, John Martin, are treated with especial
gusto. We should like to have an appreciation of Blake from this ardent
searcher of fine eccentricities. In the main the book is devoted to
artists who have come into prominence since 1870, the French naturally
predominating, but such precursors of modern tendencies or influential
spirits as Botticelli, Watteau, Piranesi are included. Eleven 'Museum
promenades,' chiefly in the Low Countries and in Spain, are on the whole
less interesting than the individual appreciations--necessarily so, but
this category embraces a capital sketch of Franz Hals at Haarlem, while
the three Spanish studies on the Prado Museum, Velasquez, and Greco at
Toledo, are quite of the best. From the Velasquez, we transcribe one of
many fine passages:

     "'His art is not correlated to the other arts. One does not dream
     of music or poetry or sculpture or drama in front of his pictures.
     One thinks of life and then of the beauty of the paint. Velasquez
     is never rhetorical, nor does he paint for the sake of making
     beautiful surfaces as often does Titian. His practice is not art
     for art as much as art for life. As a portraitist, Titian's is the
     only name to be coupled with that of Velasquez. He neither
     flattered his sitters, as did Van Dyck, nor mocked them like Goya.
     And consider the mediocrities, the dull, ugly, royal persons he was
     forced to paint! He has wrung the neck of banal eloquence, and his
     prose, sober, rich, noble, sonorous, rhythmic, is, to my taste,
     preferable to the exalted, versatile volubility and lofty poetic
     tumblings in the azure of any school of painting.'

"Here we see how winning Mr. Huneker's manner is and how insidious.
Unless you immediately react against that apparently innocent word
'tumblings,' your faith in the grand style will begin to disintegrate.
It is this very sense of walking among pitfalls that will make the book
fascinating to a veteran reader. The young are advised to temper it with
an infusion of Sir Joshua Reynolds's 'Discourses,' _quantum
sufficit_."--FRANK JEWETT MATHER, JR., in _New York Nation_ and _Evening
Post_.


EGOISTS

_A BOOK OF SUPERMEN_

_With Portrait and Fac-simile Reproductions_

12mo. $1.50 net; _Postpaid_ $1.65

     CONTENTS: Stendhal--Baudelaire--Flaubert--Anatole
     France--Huysmans--Barrès--Hello--Blake--Nietzsche--Ibsen--Max
     Stirner.

"The work of a man who knows his subject thoroughly and who writes
frankly and unconventionally."--_The Outlook._

"Stimulating, provocative of thought."--_The Forum._


ICONOCLASTS:

A Book of Dramatists

12mo. $1.50 net

     CONTENTS: Henrik Ibsen--August Strindberg--Henry Becque--Gerhart
     Hauptmann--Paul Hervieu--The Quintessence of Shaw--Maxim Gorky's
     Nachtasyl--Hermann Sudermann--Princess Mathilde's Play--Duse and
     D'Annunzio--Villiers de l'Isle Adam--Maurice Maeterlinck.

"His style is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in
which we are led to expect some significance, if not wit, in every
sentence."--G. K. CHESTERTON, in _London Daily News_.

"No other book in English has surveyed the whole field so
comprehensively."--_The Outlook._

"A capital book, lively, informing, suggestive."--_London Times Saturday
Review._

"Eye-opening and mind-clarifying is Mr. Huneker's criticism; ... no one
having read that opening essay in this volume will lay it down until the
final judgment upon Maurice Maeterlinck is reached."--_Boston
Transcript._


OVERTONES:

A Book of Temperaments

_WITH FRONTISPIECE PORTRAIT OF RICHARD STRAUSS_

12mo. $1.25 net

     CONTENTS: Richard Strauss--Parsifal: A Mystical Melodrama--Literary
     Men who loved Music (Balzac, Turgenieff, Daudet, etc.)--The Eternal
     Feminine--The Beethoven of French Prose--Nietzsche the
     Rhapsodist--Anarchs of Art--After Wagner, What?--Verdi and Boito.

"The whole book is highly refreshing with its breadth of knowledge, its
catholicity of taste, and its inexhaustible energy."--_Saturday Review,
London._

"In some respects Mr. Huneker must be reckoned the most brilliant of all
living writers on matters musical."--_Academy, London._

"No modern musical critic has shown greater ingenuity in the attempt to
correlate the literary and musical tendencies of the nineteenth
century."--_Spectator, London._


MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC

BRAHMS, TSCHAÏKOWSKY, CHOPIN, RICHARD STRAUSS, LISZT AND WAGNER

12mo. $1.50

"Mr. Huneker is, in the best sense, a critic; he listens to the music
and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few words as
possible; or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping strokes
with a magnificent disregard for unimportant details. And as Mr. Huneker
is, as I have said, a powerful personality, a man of quick brain and an
energetic imagination, a man of moods and temperament--a string that
vibrates and sings in response to music--we get in these essays of his a
distinctly original and very valuable contribution to the world's tiny
musical literature."--J. F. RUNCIMAN, in _London Saturday Review_.


MELOMANIACS

12mo. $1.50.

     CONTENTS: The Lord's Prayer in B--A Son of Liszt--A Chopin of the
     Gutter--The Piper of Dreams--An Emotional Acrobat--Isolde's
     Mother--The Rim of Finer Issues--An Ibsen Girl--Tannhäuser's
     Choice--The Red-Headed Piano Player--Brynhild's Immolation--The
     Quest of the Elusive--An Involuntary Insurgent--Hunding's Wife--The
     Corridor of Time--Avatar--The Wegstaffes give a Musicale--The Iron
     Virgin--Dusk of the Gods--Siegfried's Death--Intermezzo--A Spinner
     of Silence--The Disenchanted Symphony--Music the Conqueror.

"It would be difficult to sum up 'Melomaniacs' in a phrase. Never did a
book, in my opinion at any rate, exhibit greater contrasts, not,
perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of clearness and obscurity. It is
inexplicably uneven, as if the writer were perpetually playing on the
boundary line that divides sanity of thought from intellectual chaos.
There is method in the madness, but it is a method of intangible ideas.
Nevertheless, there is genius written over a large portion of it, and to
a musician the wealth of musical imagination is a living spring of
thought."--HAROLD E. GORST, in _London Saturday Review_ (Dec. 8, 1906).


VISIONARIES

12mo. $1.50 net

     CONTENTS: A Master of Cobwebs--The Eighth Deadly Sin--The Purse of
     Aholibah--Rebels of the Moon--The Spiral Road--A Mock
     Sun--Antichrist--The Eternal Duel--The Enchanted Yodler--The Third
     Kingdom--The Haunted Harpsichord--The Tragic Wall--A Sentimental
     Rebellion--Hall of the Missing Footsteps--The Cursory Light--An
     Iron Fan--The Woman Who Loved Chopin--The Tune of Time--Nada--Pan.

"The author's style is sometimes grotesque in its desire both to startle
and to find true expression. He has not followed those great novelists
who write French a child may read and understand. He calls the moon 'a
spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truth beats at the
bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-colored cymbal'; a man
moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant.' But even these
oddities are significant and to be placed high above the slipshod
sequences of words that have done duty till they are as meaningless as
the imprint on a worn-out coin.

"Besides, in nearly every story the reader is arrested by the idea, and
only a little troubled now and then by an over-elaborate style. If most
of us are sane, the ideas cherished by these visionaries are insane; but
the imagination of the author so illuminates them that we follow
wondering and spellbound. In 'The Spiral Road' and in some of the other
stories both fantasy and narrative may be compared with Hawthorne in his
most unearthly moods. The younger man has read his Nietzsche and has
cast off his heritage of simple morals. Hawthorne's Puritanism finds no
echo in these modern souls, all sceptical, wavering and unblessed. But
Hawthorne's splendor of vision and his power of sympathy with a
tormented mind do live again in the best of Mr. Huneker's
stories."--_London Academy_ (Feb. 3, 1906).


CHOPIN:

The Man and His Music

_WITH ETCHED PORTRAIT_

12mo. $2.00

"No pianist, amateur or professional, can rise from the perusal of his
pages without a deeper appreciation of the new forms of beauty which
Chopin has added, like so many species of orchids, to the musical flora
of the nineteenth century."--_The Nation._

"I think it not too much to predict that Mr. Huneker's estimate of
Chopin and his works is destined to be the permanent one. He gives the
reader the cream of the cream of all noteworthy previous commentators,
besides much that is wholly his own. He speaks at once with modesty and
authority, always with personal charm."--_Boston Transcript._


CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK


       *       *       *       *       *


Transcriber's Notes

The illustrations (and captions in the text version) have been moved
so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to
the text they illustrate. Thus the page number of an illustration might
not match the page number in the List of Illustrations, and the order
of illustrations may not be the same in the List of Illustrations and
in the book.

An advertisement listing books available from the author has been
moved from the front of the book to the end, where it precedes full
advertisements for the books; a heading thus duplicated ("BOOKS BY
JAMES HUNEKER") has been removed.


The text contains many inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation,
which have been left unchanged. In particular, Liszt's works are
referred to inconsistently by their titles in various languages, and
names of keys are inconsistently hyphenated (e.g. "A-flat" and "A
flat").

Words in other languages were sometimes printed without their
diacritics, e.g. "Fraulein" for "Fräulein", and "czardas" for "czárdás".
On page 13, "Dobrjan" appears to have been printed with a diaeresis on
the "j"; this has been omitted, while the two other spellings used
("Dobrjàn" and "Dobrjan") have been retained.


Other inconsistencies include:

  Suiss and Swiss
  Medæival and mediæval
  Graner Messe and Graner-messe
  Préludes and Preludes
  Tschaikowski and Tschaikowsky
  Belvédère and Belvedere
  Berçeuse and Berceuse
  d'exécution and d'execution
  Débats and Debats
  Fräuleins and Frauleins
  Köhler and Kohler
  Méditations and Meditations
  Müllerlieder and Mullerlieder
  leitmotive and Leitmotive
  Prückner and Pruckner
  Rákóczy and Rakoczy
  Zürich and  Zurich
  Mickelangelo and Michelangelo
  Nadine Hellbig and Nadine Helbig
  Munkácsy is spelled as Munkacsy, Munkaczy, Munkaçzy, Munkacszy,
      and Munkàcsy
  any one and anyone
  benefit concerts and benefit-concerts
  boat-hand and boathand
  Czerny and Czerni
  concert room and concert-room
  d' Este and d'Este
  Danziger Rosebault and Danziger-Rosebault
  e 'l and e'l
  Erl King and Erl-King
  ever ready and ever-ready
  every one and everyone
  Fest-klänge and Festklänge
  Feux-follets and Feux follets
  for ever and forever
  half dozen and half-dozen
  iron gray and iron-gray
  key-note and keynote
  Maria-Pawlowna, Maria Pawlowna, and Maria Paulowna
  Merian-Genast and Merian Genast
  music loving and music-loving
  octave playing and octave-playing
  opera house and opera-house
  piano concerto and piano-concerto
  Piano-Forte, Piano Forte, and pianoforte
  piano player and piano-player
  piano playing and piano-playing
  piano recital and piano-recital
  piano teacher and piano-teacher
  pianoforte playing and pianoforte-playing
  programme music and programme-music
  puzta and putzta
  quasi-sonata and quasi sonata
  Ramann and Ramagn
  rewritten and re-written
  Rivé-King and Rivé King
  three quarters and three-quarters
  well known and well-known
  what ever and whatever
  wood-wind and woodwind
  writing table and writing-table


Inconsistent punctuation in the sentence beginning "Masterpieces,
besides those already" on p. 153 has been retained.

Some apparent errors have been retained:

  p. 17 extra comma ("Paganini, had set")
  p. 34 extra comma ("a man who, accomplished")
  p. 58 mis-spelling ("Hoffgartnerei")
  p. 83 extra comma ("Gregory XIV, had opened")
  p. 111 mis-spelling ("Bestandig")
  p. 123 extra comma ("the god, believing in his own")
  p. 144 mis-spelling ("Gotterdämmerung")
  p. 204 mis-spelling ("infinitively")
  p. 309 mis-spelling ("troup")
  p. 341 full stop instead of comma ("much for fame. I bitterly")


Obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected as follows:

  p. 27, comma changed to full stop (winds and murmurs.")
  p. 74 "though" changed to "through" ("through his pupils continued")
  p. 74 comma added to text ("whose fiery passions, indomitable energy")
  p. 89, quotation mark added to text (outside of Italy":)
  p. 98, "Madamoiselle" changed to "Mademoiselle" (Mademoiselle Cognetti)
  p. 108, quotation mark removed from text ("same school.")
  p. 149, "pentinent" changed to "penitent"
  p. 152, "philsophical" changed to "philosophical"
  p. 169, quotation mark removed from text ("a spirited march.")
  p. 174, quotation mark removed from text ("wonders by black art.'")
  p. 177, full stop changed to comma ("dispensed with,")
  p. 199, "talent as a violonist" changed to "talent as a violinist"
  p. 205, single quotation mark added to text ("'Freischütz,'")
  p. 209, "Bailot's" changed to "Baillot's"
  p. 212, "Liszt's and Berlioz intimacy" changed to "Liszt's and
      Berlioz's intimacy"
  p. 214, "Listz was playing" changed to "Liszt was playing"
  p. 219, "ooms:" changed to "rooms:"
  p. 236, "genuis" changed to "genius"
  p. 299, double quotation mark changed to single quotation mark
      ("grace, and beauty.'")
  p. 299, "genuis" changed to "genius"
  p. 302, double quotation mark changed to single quotation mark
      ("'as a concertante wit")
  p. 351, full stop changed to comma ("he loved Germany,")
  p. 356, comma added to text ("Adolf Blassmann,")
  p. 358, full stop changed to comma ("Johannes Zschocher,")
  p. 359, comma changed to full stop (""Second Tausig."")
  p. 372, quotation mark added to text (""Friedheim is of medium height")
  p. 422, "à la main gouche" changed to "à la main gauche"
  p. 424, full stop changed to comma ("no other in the world,")
  p. 441, "When" changed to "when" (when Breitkopf and Härtel finish)
  p. 447, closing brackets added to text ("(Princess Nadine Schakovskoy)"
  p. 447, "Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst" changed to
      "Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst"
  p. 447, semi-colon changed to full stop ("Museum (Budapest), 338.")
  p. 451, full stop changed to semi-colon ("Piano arrangements, 86;")
  p. 451, comma added to text ("to the Grave, 132;")
  p. 452, comma added to text ("Sofie (pupil), 24, 42,")
  p. 453, comma added to text ("Paderewski, 16, 17, 418, 419,")
  p. 455, "Niebelungen" changed to "Nibelungen"
  p. 455, comma added to text ("Rosenthal, Moriz (pupil)")
  p. 457, "Veldi" changed to "Velde"
  p. 457, comma added to text ("Tristan and Isolde (Wagner),")
  (Unnumbered advertisement) quotation mark added to text (""Here we see
      how winning")







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