Chapter 18

But his visits to Frankfort had a very important result in another way. Mendelssohn there met Mademoiselle Cécile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a pastor of the French Reformed Church, and, though he had frequently indulged in the admiration of beautiful and clever women--which is allowable, and indeed an absolute necessity for a poet!--now for the first time he fell furiously in plain unmistakable and downright love. But it is more characteristic of the staid Teuton than the impulsive musician, that before plighting his troth to her he went away for a month's bathing at Scheveningen, in Holland, for the purpose of testing the strength of his affection by this absence. On his return, finding his amatory pulse still beating satisfactorily, he proposed to the young lady, and, as it must be presumed that she had already made up her own mind without any testing, he was accepted. On March 28, 1837, they were married, and the wedded life that then began was one of pure, unclouded happiness to the very end. Cécile Mendelssohn was a beautiful, gentle-hearted, and loving wife, just the one to give a weary and nervous artist in the home-life, with herself and the children near him, the blessed solace of rest and calm that he so needed. It is thus that Edward Devrient, the great German actor, and one of Mendelssohn's most intimate friends, describes her: "Cécile was one of those sweet womanly natures whose gentle simplicity, whose mere presence, soothed and pleased. She was slight, with features of striking beauty and delicacy; her hair was between brown and gold, but the transcendent lustre of her great blue eyes, and the brilliant roses of her cheeks, were sad harbingers of early death. She spoke little, and never with animation, in a low, soft voice. Shakespeare's words, "My gracious silence," applied to her no less than to the wife of Coriolanus."

After giving up his official position at Düsseldorf, in 1835, Mendelssohn was invited to become the conductor of the now famous Gewandhaus concerts at Leipsic, a post which he gladly accepted, and which, retained by him for many years, was to be one of the greatest delights of his artistic life. Not only was he loved and appreciated in Leipsic--far more than in Berlin, his own city--but he had here an opportunity of assisting many composers and _virtuosi_, who otherwise would have sought in vain for a hearing. Thus, after Liszt, when visiting the town, had been first of all received with great coldness, owing to the usual prices of admission to the concerts having been raised, Mendelssohn set everything straight by having a soirée in his honor at the Gewandhaus, where there were three hundred and fifty people, orchestra, chorus, punch, pastry, Meeresstille Psalm, Bach's Triple Concerto, choruses from St. Paul, Fantasia on Lucia, the Erl King, the Devil and his Grandmother, the latter probably a mild satirical reference to Liszt's stormy and often incoherent playing. It is also pleasant to find how cordially Mendelssohn received Berlioz there, as told in the "Memoirs" of the latter, spending ungrudgingly long days in aiding in rehearsals for his "Romeo et Juliette," though Mendelssohn never sympathized much with Berlioz's eccentric muse.

The "Lobgesang," or "Hymn of Praise," a "symphonie-cantata," as he called it, was his next great work, composed in 1840, together with other music, at the request of the Leipsic Town-Council, for a festival held in that town in commemoration of the invention of printing, on June 25th. None who have heard this work can forget the first impression produced when the grand instrumental movements with which it commences are merged in the majestic chorus, "All men, all things, praise ye the Lord," or the intensely dramatic effect of the repeated tenor cry, "Watchman, will the night soon pass?" answered at last by the clear soprano message of glad tidings, "The night is departing, the day is at hand!" This "watchman" episode was added some time afterward, and, as he told a friend, was suggested to the composer during the weary hours of a long sleepless night, when the words, "Will the night soon pass?" again and again seemed to be repeated to him. But a greater work even than this was now in progress; the "Elijah" had been begun.

In 1841 began a troublesome and harassing connection with Berlin, a city where, except in his home life, Mendelssohn never seems to have been very fortunate. At the urgent entreaty of the king, he went to reside there as head of the new Musical Academy. But disagreements arose, and he did not long take an active part in the management. The king, however, was very anxious to retain his services, and a sort of general office seems to have been created for him, the duties of which were to supply music for any dramatic works which the king took it into his head to have so embellished. And, though it is to this that we owe the noble "Antigone," "Oedipus," "Athalie," "Midsummer Night's Dream," and other music, this work to dictation was very worrying, and one cannot think without impatience of the annoyances to which he was subjected. The king could not understand why he shrank from writing music to the choruses of Æschylus's "Eumenides." Other composers would do it by the yard, why not he?

Passing rapidly over the intervening years filled with busy work, both in composition and as one of the principals of a newly started Conservatorium in Leipsic, we come to 1846, when his great work "Elijah" was at last completed and performed. On August 26th, at the Birmingham Festival, the performance went splendidly. Staudigl took the part of the prophet, and a young tenor, Lockey, sang the air, "Then shall the righteous," in the last part, as Mendelssohn says, "so very beautifully, that I was obliged to collect myself to prevent my being overcome, and to enable me to beat time steadily." Rarely, indeed, has a composer so truly realized his own conception as Mendelssohn did in the great tone-picture which he drew of the Prophet of Carmel and the wilderness.

"I figured to myself," he says, "Elijah as a grand, mighty prophet, such as might again reappear in our own day, energetic and zealous, stern, wrathful, and gloomy, a striking contrast to the court myrmidons and popular rabble--in fact, in opposition to the whole world, and yet borne on angel's wings!" Nothing can be finer than this, with that exquisite touch in the last words, "_in opposition to the whole world, and yet borne on angel's wings_."

After returning to Germany he was soon busily employed in recasting some portions of "Elijah" with which he was not satisfied; he had also another oratorio on even a grander scale, "Christus," already commenced; and at last, after all his life-long seeking in vain for a good libretto for an opera, he had begun to set one written by Geibel, the German poet, "Loreley," to music. But his friends now noticed how worn and weary he used oftentimes to look, and how strangely irritable he frequently was, and there can hardly be a doubt that some form of the cerebral disease from which his father and several of his relations had died, was already, deep-seated and obscure, disquieting him. The sudden announcement of the death of his sister, Fanny Hensel, herself a musical genius, to whom he was very fondly attached, on his return to Frankfort from his last visit to England in May, 1847, terribly affected him. He fell to the ground with a loud shriek, and it was long before he recovered consciousness.

Indeed, it may be said that he never really recovered from this shock. In the summer he went with his wife and children, and in company with his brother Paul and his family, on a tour in Switzerland, where he hoped that complete idleness as regards music, life in the open air, sketching, and intercourse with chosen friends, might once more give strength to his enfeebled nerves. And for a time the beauty of the mountains and the lakes seemed to bring him rest, and again he began to work at his oratorio "Christus;" but still his friends continued anxious about him. He looked broken down and aged, a constant agitation seemed to possess him, and the least thing would often strangely affect and upset him.

In September he returned to Leipsic; he was then more cheerful, and able to talk about music and to write, although he could not resume the conductorship of the Gewandhaus concerts. He again had projects in view. Jenny Lind was to sing in his "Elijah," at Vienna, whither he would go and conduct, and he was about to publish some new songs. One day in October he went to call upon his friend, Madame Frege, a gifted lady who, he said, sang his songs better than anyone else, to consult her about some new songs. She sang them over to him several times, and then, as it was getting dark, she went out of the room for a few minutes to order lights. When she returned he was lying on the sofa, shivering with cold, and in agonizing pain. Leeches were applied, and he partially recovered; but another attack followed, and this was the last.

FRANZ LISZT

By Rev. HUGH R. HAWEIS, M.A.

(1811-1886)

Franz Liszt was born in 1811. He had the hot Hungarian blood of his father, the fervid German spirit of his mother, and he inherited the lofty independence, with none of the class prejudices, of the old Hungarian nobility from which he sprang. Liszt's father, Adam, earned a modest livelihood as agent and accountant in the house of Count Esterhazy. In that great musical family, inseparably associated with the names of Haydn and Schubert, Adam Liszt had frequent opportunities of meeting distinguished musicians. The prince's private band had risen to public fame under the instruction of the venerable Haydn himself. The Liszts, father and son, often went to Eisenstadt, where the count lived; there they rubbed elbows with Cherubini and Hummel, a pupil of Mozart.

Franz took to music from his earliest childhood. When about five years old he was asked what he would like to do. "Learn the piano," said the little fellow. Soon afterward his father asked him what he would like to be; the child pointed to a print of Beethoven hanging on the wall, and said, "Like him." Long before his feet could reach the pedals or his fingers stretch an octave, the boy spent all his spare time strumming, making what he called "clangs," chords and modulations. He mastered scales and exercises without difficulty.

Czerny at once took to Liszt, but refused to take anything for his instruction. Salieri was also fascinated, and instructed him in harmony; and fortunate it was that Liszt began his course under two strict mentors. He soon began to resent Czerny's method--thought he knew better and needed not those dry studies of Clementi and that irksome fingering by rule--he could finger anything in a half-a-dozen different ways. There was a moment when it seemed that master and pupil would have to part, but timely concessions to genius paved the way to dutiful submission, and years afterward the great master dedicated to the rigid disciplinarian of his boyhood his "Vingt-quatre Grandes Études" in affectionate remembrance.

Such a light as Liszt's could not be long hid; all Vienna, in 1822, was talking of the wonderful boy. "_Est deus in nobis_," wrote the papers, profanely. The "little Hercules," the "young giant," the boy "virtuoso from the clouds," were among the epithets coined to celebrate his marvellous renderings of Hummel's "Concerto in A," and a free "Fantasia" of his own. The Vienna Concert Hall was crowded to hear him, and the other illustrious artists--then, as indeed they have been ever since forced to do wherever Liszt appeared--effaced themselves with as good a grace as they could.

It is a remarkable tribute to the generous nature as well as to the consummate ability of Liszt, that, while opposing partisans have fought bitterly over him--Thalbergites, Herzites, Mendelssohnites _versus_ Lisztites--yet few of the great artists who have, one after another, had to yield to him in popularity have denied to him their admiration, while most of them have given him their friendship.

Liszt early wooed, and early won Vienna. He spoke ever of his dear Viennese, and their resounding city. A concert tour on his way to Paris brought him before the critical public of Stuttgart and Munich. Hummel, an old man, and Moscheles, then in his prime, heard him and declared that his playing was equal to theirs. But Liszt was bent upon completing his studies in the celebrated school of the French capital, and at the feet of the old musical dictator, Cherubini. The Erards, who were destined to owe so much to Liszt, and to whom Liszt throughout his career owed so much, at once provided him with a magnificent piano; but Cherubini put in force a certain by-law of the Conservatoire excluding foreigners, and excluded Franz Liszt.

This was a bitter pill to the eager student. He hardly knew how little he required such patronage. In a very short time "_le petit Liszt_" was the great Paris sensation. The old _noblesse_ tried to spoil him with flattery, the Duchesse de Berri drugged him with bonbons, the Duke of Orleans called him the "little Mozart." He gave private concerts, at which Herz, Moscheles, Lafont, and De Beriot, assisted. Rossini would sit by his side at the piano, and applaud. He was a "miracle." The company never tired of extolling his "nerve, fougue et originalité," while the ladies who petted and caressed him after each performance, were delighted at his simple and graceful carriage, the elegance of his language, and the perfect breeding and propriety of his demeanor.

He was only twelve when he played for the first time at the Italian Opera, and one of those singular incidents which remind one of Paganini's triumphs occurred. At the close of a _bravura cadenza_, the band forgot to come in, so absorbed were the musicians in watching the young prodigy. Their failure was worth a dozen successes to Liszt. The ball of the marvellous was fairly set rolling. Gall, the inventor of phrenology, took a cast of the little Liszt's skull; Talma, the tragedian, embraced him openly with effusion; and the misanthropic Marquis de Noailles became his mentor, and initiated him into the art of painting.

In 1824 Liszt, then thirteen years old, came with his father to England; his mother returned to Austria. He went down to Windsor to see George IV., who was delighted with him, and Liszt, speaking of him to me, said: "I was very young at the time, but I remember the king very well--a fine, pompous-looking gentleman." George IV. went to Drury Lane on purpose to hear the boy, and commanded an encore. Liszt was also heard in the theatre at Manchester, and in several private houses.

On his return to France, people noticed a change in him. He was now fourteen, grave, serious, often pre-occupied, already a little tired of praise, and excessively tired of being called "le petit Liszt." His vision began to take a wider sweep. The relation between art and religion exercised him. His mind was naturally devout. Thomas à Kempis was his constant companion. "Rejoice in nothing but a good deed;" "Through labor to rest, through combat to victory;" "The glory which men give and take is transitory," these and like phrases were already deeply engraven on the fleshly tablets of his heart. Amid all his glowing triumphs he was developing a curious disinclination to appear in public; he seemed to yearn for solitude and meditation.

In 1827 he again hurried to England for a short time, but his father's sudden illness drove them to Boulogne, where, in his forty-seventh year, died Adam Liszt, leaving the young Franz for the first time in his life, at the early age of sixteen, unprotected and alone. Rousing himself from the bodily prostration and torpor of grief into which he had been thrown by the death of his father, Franz, with admirable energy and that high sense of honor which always distinguished him, began to set his house in order. He called in all his debts, sold his magnificent grand "Erard," and left Boulogne for Paris with a heavy heart and a light pocket, but not owing a sou.

He sent for his mother, and for the next twelve years, 1828-1840, the two lived together, chiefly in Paris. There, as a child, he had been a nine days' wonder, but the solidity of his reputation was now destined to go hand in hand with his stormy and interrupted mental and moral development. Such a plant could not come to maturity all at once. No drawing-room or concert-room success satisfied a heart for which the world of human emotion seemed too small, and an intellect piercing with intuitive intelligence into the "clear-obscure" depths of religion and philosophy.

But Franz was young, and Franz was poor, and his mother had to be supported. She was his first care. Systematically, he labored to put by a sum which would assure her of a competency, and often with his tender genial smile he would remind her of his own childish words, "God will help me to repay you for all that you have done for me." Still he labored, often woefully against the grain. "Poverty," he writes, "that old mediator between man and evil, tore me from my solitude devoted to meditation, and placed me before a public on whom not only my own but my own mother's existence depended. Young and over-strained, I suffered painfully under the contact with external things which my vocation as a musician brought with it, and which wounded me all the more intensely that my heart at this time was filled entirely with the mystical feelings of love and religion."

Of course the gifted young pianist's connection grew rapidly. He got his twenty francs a lesson at the best houses; he was naturally a welcome guest, and from the first seemed to have the run of high Parisian society. His life was feverish, his activity irregular, his health far from strong; but the vulgar temptations of the gay capital seemed to have little attraction for his noble nature. His heart remained unspoiled. He was most generous to those who could not afford to pay for his lessons, most pitiful to the poor, most dutiful and affectionate to his mother. Coming home late from some grand entertainment, he would sit outside on the staircase till morning, sooner than awaken, or perhaps alarm, her by letting himself in. But in losing his father he seemed to have lost a certain method and order. His meals were irregular, so were his lessons; more so were the hours devoted to sleep.

At this time he was hardly twenty; we are not surprised anon to hear in his own words, of "a female form chaste, and pure as the alabaster of holy vessel," but he adds: "Such was the sacrifice which I offered with tears to the God of Christians!"

I will explain. Mlle. Caroline St. Cricq was just seventeen, lithe, slender, and of "angelic" beauty, with a complexion like a lily flushed with roses, open, "impressionable to beauty, to the world, to religion, to God." The countess, her mother, appears to have been a charming woman, very partial to Liszt, whom she engaged to instruct Mademoiselle in music. The lessons went not by time, but by inclination. The young man's eloquence, varied knowledge, ardent love of literature, and flashing genius won both the mother and daughter. Not one of them seemed to suspect the whirlpool of grief and death to which they were hurrying. The countess fell ill and died, but not before she had recommended Liszt to the Count St. Cricq as a possible suitor for the hand of Mademoiselle.

The haughty diplomat, St. Cricq, at once put his foot down. The funeral over, Liszt's movements were watched. They were innocent enough. He was already an _enfant de la maison_, but one night he lingered reading aloud some favorite author to Mademoiselle a little too late. He was reported by the servants, and received his polite dismissal as music master. In an interview with the count his own pride was deeply wounded. "Difference of rank!" said the count. That was quite enough for Liszt. He rose, pale as death, with quivering lip, but uttered not a word. As a man of honor he had but one course. He and Caroline parted forever. She contracted later an uncongenial marriage; he seems to have turned with intense ardor to religion. His good mother used to complain to those who came to inquire for him that he was all day long in church, and had ceased to occupy himself, as he should, with music.

It was toward the close of 1831 that Liszt met Chopin in Paris. From the first, these two men, so different, became fast friends. Chopin's delicate, retiring soul found a singular delight in Liszt's strong and imposing personality. Liszt's exquisite perception enabled him perfectly to live in the strange dreamland of Chopin's fancies, while his own vigor inspired Chopin with nerve to conceive those mighty Polonaises that he could never properly play himself, and which he so gladly committed to the keeping of his prodigious friend. Liszt undertook the task of interpreting Chopin to the mixed crowds which he revelled in subduing, but from which his fastidious and delicately strung friend shrank with something like aversion.

From Chopin, Liszt and all the world after him got that _tempo rubato_, that playing with the duration of notes without breaking the time, and those arabesque ornaments which are woven like fine embroidery all about the pages of Chopin's nocturnes, and lift what in others are mere casual flourishes into the dignity of interpretative phrases and poetic commentaries on the text.

People were fond of comparing the two young men who so often appeared in the same salons together--Liszt with his finely shaped, long, oval head and _profil d'ivoire_, set proudly on his shoulders, his stiff hair of dark blonde thrown back from the forehead without a parting, and cut in a straight line, his _aplomb_, his magnificent and courtly bearing, his ready tongue, his flashing wit and fine irony, his genial _bonhomie_ and irresistibly winning smile; and Chopin, also, with dark blonde hair, but soft as silk, parted on one side, to use Liszt's own words, "An angel of fair countenance, with brown eyes from which intellect beamed rather than burned; a gentle, refined smile, slightly aquiline nose; a delicious, clear, almost diaphanous complexion, all bearing witness to the harmony of a soul which required no commentary beyond itself."

Nothing can be more generous or more true than Liszt's recognition of Chopin's independent support. "To our endeavors," he says, "to our struggles, just then so much needing certainty, he lent us the support of a calm, unshakable conviction, equally armed against apathy and cajolery." There was only one picture on the walls of Chopin's room; it hung just above his piano. It was a head of Liszt.

It is no part of my present scheme to describe the battle which romanticism in music waged against the prevalent conventionalities. We know the general outcome of the struggle culminating, after the most prodigious artistic convulsions, in the musical supremacy of Richard Wagner, who certainly marks firmly and broadly enough the greatest stride in musical development made since Beethoven.

In 1842 Liszt visited Weimar, Berlin, and then went to Paris; he was meditating a tour in Russia. Pressing invitations reached him from St. Petersburg and Moscow. The most fabulous accounts of his virtuosity had raised expectation to its highest pitch. He was as legendary even among the common people as Paganini. His first concert at St. Petersburg realized the then unheard-of sum of £2,000. The roads were crowded to see him pass, and the corridors and approaches to the Grand Opera blocked to catch a glimpse of him. The same scenes were repeated at Moscow, where he gave six concerts without exhausting the popular excitement.