CHAPTER IX.

PROMETHEUS.

Liszt’s Letter to George Sand--Happiness of the Wanderer--Allusions to Wagner--The Artist as an Exile--Sorrowful Character of his lot--His Solitude--His Creative Moments and Inspirations--No Sympathy Between the Artist and Society--Degradation of Art--Artisans not Artists--Letter to Adolf Pictet--Why he Devoted Himself to the Piano--His love for it--Estimate of its Capabilities--Miss Fay’s “Music Study in Germany”--A Critical Notice--The Author’s First Meeting with Liszt--Personal Description--Grace of his Manner--Peculiarities of his Playing--His Home--Pleasant Gatherings--Personal Incidents--Liszt and Tausig--The Loss of “Faust”--Happily Recovered--The final Tribute.

On the 30th of April, 1837, Liszt writes to George Sand:

“Happy, a hundred times happy, the wanderer! Happy he who does not have to traverse the beaten paths and to walk in the old tracks! Restlessly rushing on, he sees things only as they seem, and men only as they show themselves. Happy he who gives up the warm, friendly hand before its pressure grows icily chill; who does not wait for the day on which the affectionate glances of the loved one change to blank indifference! In fine, happy he who breaks with relations before he is broken by them! Of the artist it is specially true that he only pitches his tent for the hour and never settles down in any permanent place.”

Thus declares the youthful storming Apollo and many a Marsyas he flayed on these journeys of investigation, personal as well as social, over all Europe; on many a Midas grew asses’ ears in sight of the world. Read the “Letters of Travel of a Baccalaureate in Music.” There is nothing more spiritedly humorous, more serene in its earnestness.

Scarce ten years later, what was the experience of Richard Wagner, to whom a second supplementing genius was even more indispensable than the tenor Nourrit to Rossini, with “the masterwork which sprang from the brain of the Olympian god,” and still appeals to the multitude to combine art with art, the spirit with spirit, light with light?

During his abode as an exile in Weimar, in May, 1849, he writes: “Wonderful! through the love of this rarest of all friends, I gained at a time when I was homeless, the real home for my art, long looked for, always sought in the wrong places and never found. At the close of my exile, my wandering about led me to a little place which was to make a home for me.” This he did for him and for many another musician, after his change in 1842, for he knew that the artist’s only home is his art.

“Is he not always a stranger among men,” he continues, in his letter to George Sand. “Whatever he may do, wherever he may go, he always feels himself an exile. To him it is as if he had known a purer heaven, a warmer sun, a better existence. What can he do to escape this boundless sorrow, this unvoiced pain? Singing, must the artist rush through the world and in hurrying by scatter his thoughts without inquiring on what soil they fall, whether calumnies stab them, whether laurels mockingly cover them. Sorrowful and great is the destiny of the artist. A sacred predestination affixes its seal upon him at birth. He does not elect his calling but his calling elects him and incessantly urges him forward. However unpropitious his relations, the hostility of family and the world and the pressure of his mournful wretchedness may be, however insuperable the obstacles may seem, his will stands firm and remains unalterably turned to the pole. This pole to him is his art; it is his devotion to the mysterious and the divine in man and nature.

“The artist stands alone. The circumstances of his life force him into society, and so his soul creates in the midst of inharmonious influences an impenetrable solitude in which no voice of man is heard. All the passions which agitate men--vanity, ambition, envy, jealousy, even love itself, are outside the magic circle which incloses his inner world. Withdrawing into this, as into a sanctuary, he contemplates and worships that ideal which it is the object of his life to realize. Here appear to him divine and incomprehensible forms, and colors such as his eyes never beheld on the most beautiful flowers in the brightness of spring. Here he listens to the harmony of the eternal, whose cadence rules the worlds, and in which all the voices of creation join in a marvelous celestial concert. Then an ardent fever seizes him. His blood flows more quickly. A thousand consuming thoughts revolve in his brain from which only the sacred labor of art can release it. He feels as if he were the victim of an unutterable disease. An unknown power urges him to reveal by words, colors or tones, the ideal which dwells in him and fills him with a thirst of desire, with a torment for possession, such as no man has ever experienced for an object of actual passion. But when his work is ended and the whole world applauds, he is not wholly satisfied. In his discontent he would perhaps destroy it, did not some new phenomenon avert his glance from his creations, to throw him anew into those heavenly, painful ecstacies which make his life a constant struggle toward an unattainable goal, a continual effort of all the powers of the spirit to raise itself to the realization of that which he has conceived in those favored hours when the eternal beauty disclosed itself without a cloud.”

Again he describes, with more gloomy tints, the social reception of the artist to-day, in our enlightened century, and the necessity which has been laid upon him, the mighty and high-throned one, at all times, and now more than ever, to associate with the meanest existence, provided it truly longs for the marvels of art, to lavish upon them the water of life.

“The artist dwells these days outside of the social community,” he writes, “for the poetical element, especially the religious agitation of humanity, has disappeared from our modern public. What have they who attempt to solve the problem of human happiness by granting a few privileges, by an unlimited expansion of industry and of egoistic well being--what have they to do with a poet or an artist? Why should they trouble themselves with those who wander about, of no use to the State-machinery of the world, to kindle sacred flames, noble feelings and lofty inspirations, that by their achievements they may satisfy the restless longing for the beautiful and the great which rests more or less securely in the depths of every soul? Such beautiful times are no more as when the blooming verdure of art spread itself and exhaled its perfume over all Greece. Every citizen was then an artist, for law-givers, warriors, philosophers, all were imbued with the idea of moral, spiritual and physical beauty. The majestic astonished no one, and great achievements were as common as those creations which at the same time exhibited and prompted them.

“The strong and mighty art of the Middle Ages which built cathedrals and summoned the enraptured people to them with peal of bells and the sound of the organ, became extinct when faith was animated anew. There is to-day the inward interest which unites art and society, but that which brought power and glory to those other deep agitations, is destroyed. The social art has gone and has not yet returned. Whom do we principally meet in these days? Sculptors? No, the manufacturers of statues. Painters? No, the manufacturers of pictures. Musicians? No, the manufacturers of music. Everywhere artisans, nowhere artists. Hence, there can only be cruel pain to one who was born with the pride and the wild freedom of a genuine child of art. He is surrounded by a swarm of mechanical workers who obsequiously devote their services to the caprices of the populace and the fancies of the uncultivated wealthy, at whose nod they bow themselves down to the earth, as if they could not get close enough to it. The artist must accept them as his brothers and as the multitude confounds them together, must see himself and them rated at the same value and regarded with the same childish, stupid astonishment. It can not be said that these are the complaints of vanity and self-conceit. No, no--they who stand so high that no rivalry can reach them, they know this. The bitter tears which our eyes have shed belong to the worship of the true god, whose temple is defiled with idols for whose sake the silly people have forsaken the worship of the living god and bowed the knee before these degrading divinities of stone.”

Thus speaks this proud and truly noble soul whose best efforts and talents have been sacrificed to the silliness of idle caprice and to the obstinate humors of shallow minds. He knows that the only remedy is the old Grecian one, the personal contemplation of noble forms, of true skill.

“It is a fact that thorough musical culture is confined to a very few,” he says. “The majority are ignorant of the first rudiments of art and in the upper circles nothing is rarer than an earnest study of our masters. They are content with hearing a few good works from time to time, and without choice, amongst a mass of miserable stuff which spoils the taste and accustoms the ear to wretched poverty. In contrast with the poet who speaks all languages and besides only devotes himself to mankind, and whose mind has been cultivated by classical study, the musician reveals himself in a mysterious language, the comprehension of which, if it does not presuppose particular study, shows at least a long accustomed familiarity with it. Besides that, in contrast with the painter and sculptor, he has the disadvantage that they are devoted more to the expression of form, which is more universal than the inward conception of nature and the feeling for the infinite which are the essence of music.”

How firmly also his knowledge was founded upon personal experience is shown by the fact that like photography now-a-days, which represents all and every phase of the treasures of the plastic arts, so the piano for him could “gather the harvest, make use of the garnered treasures, and invest with life again those which conduce to ideas of happiness.”

In his twenty-fifth year, he writes to Adolf Pictet, asking why he was surprised that he devoted himself exclusively to the piano. He hardly realized that he had touched upon the most sensitive point of his very existence. “You do not know,” he says, “that if I should give up my piano, which speaks so much, it would be to me a day of gloom, robbing me of the light which illuminated all my early life and has grown to be inseparable from it. For, look you, my piano is to me what his vessel is to the seaman, his horse is to the Arab--nay, even more, till now it has been myself, my speech, my life. It is the repository of all that stirred my nature in the passionate days of my youth. I confided to it all my desires, my dreams, my joys and sorrows. Its strings vibrated with my emotions and its flexible keys have obeyed my every caprice. Would you have me abandon it and strive for the more brilliant and sounding triumphs of the theater or orchestra? O, no! Even admitting that I were competent for music of that kind, even then my resolution would be firm not to abandon the study and development of piano-playing, until I had accomplished whatever is practicable, whatever it is possible to attain now-a-days.”

In this he discloses those deep aspirations which now have a more lively interest and higher significance for us, since we know that they have not disappointed him.

“Perhaps the mysterious influence which binds me to it so strongly, prejudices me,” he writes, “but I consider the piano as of great consequence. In my estimation it holds the first place in the hierarchy of instruments. It is the most enjoyable and the most common of all. Its importance and popularity are due to the harmonious power which it almost exclusively possesses, in consequence of which it is also capable of compressing the whole art of music in itself. In the compass of its seven octaves it includes the entire scope of the orchestra and the ten fingers suffice for the harmony which is produced by a band of a hundred performers. By its agency it is possible to diffuse works which, owing to the difficulty of collecting an orchestra, would remain unknown to the great majority. Consequently it is to the orchestral composition what the steel engraving is to painting, which it repeats over and over, and though it lacks color yet it can exhibit light and shade.”

In order to reach the goal of an art which has been rightly designated as the idea of the world and the soul of humanity, and to behold it spreading over our age and extending to posterity, he settled down to rest after his career as a virtuoso, and founded “Weimar.” It must be in that Germany of which he wrote to his friend Berlioz, in 1838, “the study of art is universally less superficial here, the feeling is truer, the usages are better. The traditions of Mozart, Beethoven and Weber are not lost. These three geniuses have taken deep root in Germany.” Without this Weimar we should certainly have had no artistic execution to-day which would be worthy of the modern or classic productions. Indeed Munich and Baireuth themselves, how could they have been possible without the master-scholars who by Liszt’s piano instruction displayed in every form the expressive, soaring, flaming revelation of minute details as well as of the whole.

In bringing to a close the review of Liszt’s moral and artistic influence, alike fruitful and far-reaching, we give first of all an animated descriptive sketch by a pupil of this Weimar school and then the list of master-scholars, whom Liszt has educated, and who have continuously assisted in the realization of his ideal wishes and hopes.

“Music Study in Germany,” says the “Allgemeine Deutsche Musikzeitung,” of 1881, “is the name of a very comprehensive, elegant and spiritedly written little American book. It is in the form of letters which the American author, Miss Amy Fay, sent from Germany to her home, during her studies with Tausig, Kullak and Deppe. She manifests not only great musical and artistic intelligence in general, but also an unusual knowledge of human nature. Miss Fay has a feeling for the finest emotions of the soul. With genuine stereoscopic fidelity she points out the grand characteristics and the little peculiarities of the important personages with whom she has had the good fortune to come in contact. Of the many beauties and charms contained in these letters, those which relate to Liszt must naturally awaken the greatest, most universal and lasting interest. We select from them a few brief extracts, because we know that the feelings of reverence, love and intense admiration, which the author cherishes for Liszt, are shared to the full by thousands and thousands of hearts.”

Miss Fay saw the master first at the theater in Weimar, with three ladies, one of whom was very handsome. “He sat,” so she says, “with his back to the stage, not paying the least attention, apparently, to the play, for he kept talking all the while himself, and yet no point of it escaped him, as I could tell by his expression and gestures. Liszt is the most interesting and striking man imaginable, tall and slight, with deep set eyes, shaggy eyebrows and iron-gray hair. His mouth turns up at the corners, which gives him, when he smiles, a most crafty and Mephistophelean expression. His hands are very narrow, with long and slender fingers, which look as if they had twice as many joints as other people’s. They are so flexible and supple that it makes you nervous to look at them. Anything like the polish of his manners I never saw. When he got up to leave his box, for instance, after his adieus to the ladies, he laid his hand on his heart and made his final bow, not with affectation or in mere gallantry, but with a quiet courtliness which made you feel that no other way of bowing to a lady was right or proper. It was most characteristic. But the most extraordinary thing about Liszt is his wonderful variety of expression and play of feature. One moment his face will look dreamy, shadowy, tragic, the next, insinuating, amiable, ironical, sarcastic, but always the same captivating grace of manners. He is a perfect study. He is all spirit, but half the time at least, I should say, a mocking spirit. All Weimar adores him, and people say that women still go perfectly crazy over him. When he goes out every one greets him as if he were a king. Liszt looks as if he had been through everything, and has a face seamed with experience. He wears a long Abbe’s coat, reaching nearly down to his feet. He made me think of an old-time magician and I felt with a touch of his wand he could transform us all.”

The recommendations of the Countess von Schleinitz secured the author’s introduction to Liszt. She continues: “To-morrow I shall present myself, though I don’t know how the lion will act when I beard him in his den. I brought the B minor sonata of Chopin and intended to play only the first movement, for it is extremely difficult and it cost me all the labor I could give to prepare that. But playing to Liszt reminds me of trying to feed the elephant in the Zoological Gardens with lumps of sugar. He disposes of whole movements as if they were nothing and stretches out gravely for more. One of my fingers fortunately began to bleed and that gave me a good excuse for stopping. Liszt sat down and played the whole last three movements himself. It was the first time I had heard him and I don’t know which was the most extraordinary, the Scherzo, with its wonderful lightness and swiftness, the Adagio, with its depth and pathos, or the last movement where the whole key-board seemed to thunder and lighten. There is such a vividness about everything he plays that it does not seem as if it were mere music you were listening to, but it is as if he had called up a real living form and you saw it breathing before your face and eyes. It gives me almost a ghostly feeling to hear him, and it seems as if the air were peopled with spirits. Oh! he is a perfect wizard! It is as interesting to see him as it is to hear him, for his face changes with every modulation of the piece and he looks exactly as he is playing. He has one element that is most captivating and that is a sort of delicate and fitful mirth that keeps peering out at you here and there! It is most peculiar, and when he plays that way the most bewitching little expression comes over his face. It seems as if a little spirit of joy were playing hide and go seek with you.

“On Friday Liszt came and paid me a visit and even played a little on my piano. Only think what an honor! At the same time he invited me to a matinee he was going to give on Sunday for some countess of distinction. * * * He played five times, the last three times duets with Capellmeister Lassen, and made me come and turn the leaves. Gracious! how he does read! It is very difficult to turn for him, for he reads ever so far ahead of what he is playing, and takes in fully five bars at a glance, so you have to guess about where you think he would like to have the page over. Once I turned it too late, and once too early, and he snatched it out of my hand and whirled it back. Not quite the situation for timorous me, was it? At home Liszt doesn’t wear his long Abbe’s coat, but a short one in which he looks much more artistic. It is so delicious in that room of his. It was furnished and put in order for him by the Grand Duchess of Weimar herself. The walls are pale gray with gilded border running round the room, or rather two rooms which are divided, but not separated, by crimson curtains. The furniture is crimson, and everything is so comfortable--such a contrast to German bareness and stiffness generally. A splendid grand piano stands in one window. The other window is always wide open and looks out on the park. There is a dove cote just opposite the window, and the doves promenade up and down on the roof of it and fly about and sometimes whirr down on the sill itself. That pleases Liszt. His writing-table is beautifully fitted up with things that all match. Everything is in bronze--ink-stand, paper-weight, match-box, etc., and there is always a lighted candle standing on it by which the gentlemen can light their cigars.

“There is a carpet on the floor, a rarity in Germany, and Liszt generally walks about, and smokes, talks and calls upon one or other of us to play. From time to time he will sit down and play himself where a passage does not suit him and when he is in good spirits he makes little jests all the time. His playing was a complete revelation to me and has given me an entirely new insight into music. You can not conceive, without hearing him, how poetic he is, or the thousand nuances which he can throw into the simplest thing. He is equally great on all sides. From the zephyr to the tempest the whole scale is equally at his command.

“But Liszt is not at all like a master and can not be treated as one. He is a monarch, and when he extends his royal scepter you can sit down and play to him. You never can ask him to play anything for you no matter how much you are dying to hear it. You can not even offer to play yourself. You lay your notes on the table so he can see that you want to play, and sit down. He takes a turn up and down the room, looks at the music, and if the piece interests him, he will call upon you.

“Yesterday I had prepared for him his ‘Au Bord d’une Source.’ I was nervous and played badly. He was not to be put out, however, but acted as if he thought I had played charmingly, and then he sat down and played the whole piece himself, oh, so exquisitely! It made me feel like a wood-chopper. The notes just seemed to ripple off his fingers’ ends with scarce any perceptible motion. As he neared the close I remarked that the funny little expression came over his face which he always has when he means to surprise you, and he suddenly took an unexpected chord and extemporized a poetical little end, quite different from the written one. Do you wonder that people go distracted over him?”

A talented pupil of Henselt’s arrived and played for Liszt with great success. Miss Fay says: “She played with the greatest aplomb, although her touch had a certain roughness about it to my ear. But all playing sounds barren by the side of Liszt, for his is the living, breathing impersonation of poetry, passion, grace, wit, coquetry, daring, tenderness and every other fascinating attribute that you can think of.

“I’m ready to hang myself half the time when I’ve been to him. Oh! he is the most phenomenal being in every respect! All that you’ve heard of him would never give you an idea of him. In short, he represents the whole scale of human emotions. He is a many-sided person and reflects back the light in all colors, no matter how you look at him. His pupils adore him, as in fact every one else does, but it is impossible to do otherwise with a person whose genius flashes out of him all the time so, and whose character is so winning.

“One day this week, when we were with Liszt, he was in such high spirits that it was as if he had suddenly become twenty years younger. A student from the Stuttgart Conservatory, played a Liszt concerto. His name is V. Liszt kept up a little running fire of satire all the time he was playing, but in a good-natured way. Everything that he says is so striking. In one place where V. was playing the melody rather feebly Liszt suddenly took his place at the piano, and said: ‘When I play, I always play for the people in the gallery so that those persons who pay only five groschen for their seats may also hear something.’ Then he began and I wish you could have heard him. The sound didn’t seem very loud, but it was penetrating and far-reaching. When he had finished he raised one hand in the air, and you seemed to see all the people in the gallery drinking in the sound. That is the way Liszt teaches you. He presents an idea to you and it takes fast hold of your mind, and it sticks there. Music is such a real, visible thing to him that he always has a symbol, instantly, in the material world to express his idea.

“How he can bear to hear us play, I can not imagine. I assure you, no matter how beautifully we play any piece, the minute Liszt plays it, you would scarcely recognize it. His touch and his peculiar use of the pedals are the secrets of his playing, and then he seems to dive down into the most hidden thoughts of the composer, and fetch them to the surface, so they gleam out at you, one by one, like stars.

“The more I see and hear Liszt the more I am lost in amazement. I can neither eat nor sleep on those days that I go to him. I often think of what Tausig said once: ‘Oh! compared with Liszt, we other artists are all blockheads!’ I did not believe it at the time, but I’ve seen the truth of it.

“Liszt does such bewitching little things. The other day, for instance, Fraulein Gaul was playing something to him, and in it were two runs, and after each run two staccato chords. She did them most beautifully and struck the chords immediately after.

“‘No, no,’ said Liszt, ‘after you make a run you must wait a minute before you strike the chords as if in admiration of your own performance. You must pause, as if to say, ‘now nicely I did that.’ Then he sat down and made a run himself, waited a second, and then struck the two chords in the treble, saying as he did so, ‘Bra-_vo_,’ and then he played again, struck the other chord, and said again, ‘Bra-_vo_,’ and positively, it was as if the piano had softly applauded! That is the way he plays everything. It seems as if the piano were speaking with a human tongue.

“You can not conceive anything like Liszt’s playing of Beethoven. When he plays a sonata it is as if the composition rose from the dead and stood transfigured before you. You ask yourself, ‘did I ever play that?’”

Once Miss Fay asked the master to tell her how he produced a certain effect in one of his great passages. He smiled and then immediately played the whole passage. “‘Oh! I’ve invented a great many things,’ he said, indifferently, ‘this for instance,’ and he began playing a double roll of octaves in chromatics in the bass of the piano. It was very grand and made the room reverberate. ‘Magnificent,’ said I. ‘Did you ever hear me do a storm?’ said he. ‘No.’ ‘Ah! you ought to hear me do a storm, storms are my forte.’ Then to himself between his teeth, while a weird look came into his eyes as if he could indeed rule the blast--‘Then crash the trees.’ How ardently I wished he would play a storm, but he did not. Alas, that we poor mortals here below should share so often the fate of Moses and have only a glimpse of the Promised Land, and that without the consolation of being Moses!

“Liszt sometimes strikes wrong notes when he plays, but it does not trouble him in the least, on the contrary he rather enjoys it when he comes down squarely wrong, as it affords him an opportunity of displaying his genius and giving things such a turn that the false note will appear simply a key leading to new and unexpected beauties. An accident of this kind happened to him in one of the Sunday matinees when the room was full of distinguished people and of his pupils. He was rolling up the piano in arpeggios in a very grand manner indeed, when he struck a semi-tone short of the high note upon which he had intended to end. I caught my breath and wondered whether he was going to leave us like that, in mid air, as it were, and the harmony unresolved or whether he would be reduced to the humiliation of correcting himself like ordinary mortals and taking the right chord. A half smile came over his face, as much as to say, ‘don’t fancy that this little thing disturbs me,’ and he instantly went meandering down the piano in harmony with the false note he had struck, and then rolled deliberately up in a second grand sweep, this time striking true. I never saw a more delicious piece of cleverness. It was so quick-witted and so exactly characteristic of Liszt. Instead of giving you a chance to say ‘He has made a mistake,’ he forces you to say, ‘He has shown how to get out of a mistake.’

“Another day I heard him pass from one piece into another by making the finale of the first one play the part of prelude to the second. So exquisitely were the two woven together that you could hardly tell where the one left off and the other began. Ah, me! such a facile grace! Nobody will ever equal him with those rolling basses and those flowing trebles. And then his Adagios! When you hear him in one of those you feel that his playing has got to that point where it is purified from all earthly dross and is an exhalation of the soul that mounts straight to heaven.”

This little book contains many more beautiful passages but we are reluctantly forced to desist. One charming trait of Liszt is related, however, which we can not pass over in closing. Miss Fay says:

“Gottschal, organist in Weimar, told me that one time when Tausig was ‘hard up’ for money, he sold the score of Liszt’s ‘Faust’ for five thalers, to a servant, along with a great pile of his own notes. Gottschal, hearing of it, went to the man and purchased them. Then he went to Liszt and told him that he had the score. As it happened, the publisher had written for it that very day and Liszt was turning the house upside down, looking for it everywhere. He was in an awful state of mind because his score was nowhere to be found. ‘A whole year’s labor lost,’ he cried, and he was in such a rage that when Gottschal asked him for the third time what he was looking for, he turned and stamped his foot at him and said: ‘You confounded fellow, can’t you leave me in peace and not torment me with your stupid questions?’ Gottschal knew perfectly well what was wanting but he wished to have a little fun out of the matter. At last he took pity on Liszt and said: ‘Herr Doctor, I know what you have lost! It is the score to your Faust.’ ‘O,’ said Liszt, changing his tone immediately, ‘do you know anything of it?’ ‘Of course, I do,’ said Gottschal, and proceeded to unfold Master Tausig’s performance and how he had rescued the precious music. Liszt was transported with joy that it was found and cried out: ‘We are saved, Gottschal has rescued us,’ and then Gottschal said that Liszt embraced him in his transport, and could not say or do enough to make up for his having been so rude to him. Well, you would have supposed that it was now all up with Master Tausig, but not at all. A few days after was Tausig’s birth-day. Madame C. took Gottschal aside and begged him to drop the subject of the note-stealing, for Liszt doted so on his Carl that he wished to forget it. Sure enough, Liszt kissed Carl and congratulated him on his birth-day and consoled himself with his same old observation: ‘You’ll either turn out a great blockhead, my little Carl, or a great master.’”

“O, thou amiable grand master Liszt!”

Thus closes our notice of this genial book. Since the “soulful fantasies” of Bettina about Beethoven, nothing comparable with it from a lady’s hand has appeared.

In closing, we append, with the master’s own approval, as the fac-simile in our own little work shows, a list of his principal scholars. We preface it with a sentiment of the master, which shows how much that remark of Beethoven’s to Bettina about music was to him--“The elevated types of the moral sense also constitute its foundations,” or truth and the will combined. It reads:

“It belongs to the higher mission of art, not only to exhibit and celebrate in song the heroic spirit but to inspire it. Hence the artist should feel it, preserve it and diffuse it like a sacred flame.”

APPENDIX.

A LETTER FROM LISZT’S FATHER.

The _Harmonicon_, an English musical journal, of June, 1824, contains the following interesting letter, addressed to its editor by Liszt’s father:

PARIS, 1824.

SIR:--The expressions which you frequently employed in speaking of my son have been so flattering, that I can not but be sensible of your kindness, and therefore take this opportunity of testifying my gratitude. I must say, that I by no means anticipated the high degree of success with which he was honored by the public of Paris, and above all, was not prepared for the comparison, by no means advantageous, which they were pleased to draw between the rising talents of my son, and those of our great Mozart. I recognize in this amiable exaggeration that spirit of French politeness, the boast of which I have all my life been accustomed to hear, and my son will think himself most happy, if hereafter he shall have the good fortune to share some degree of celebrity with the masters of the German school, though he must remain at a very humble distance from him whom it glories in placing at its head.

You must however allow me, Sir, to make a few observations upon the following expression that occurred in one of your journals: “The parents of young Liszt are poor, and he supports them by the product of his talents.”

Fortune, it is true, has not loaded me with her favors, yet I have no reason to complain of her neglect. For the space of twenty-three years I have been in the service of Prince Esterhazy, where I filled the situation of steward of part of his sheep-farms. The immense income of this prince, and the noble and generous manner in which he acts toward those who have the good fortune to belong to any of his establishments, have long since placed me in that _aurea mediocritas_ so happily described by the Latin poet.

Having observed in my only son, from a very early age, a decided predilection for music, and having from my youth cultivated the art as an amateur, I myself, for the space of three years, superintended his first musical education with that constancy and perseverance which form one of the characteristic traits of our nation. I afterward placed him for eighteen months under the instruction of Messrs. Salieri and Czerny, from the first of whom he received lessons in harmony and counter-point, and from the second, instruction on the piano-forte, and to both of whom he is indebted for their kind care and attention. I am happy to be thus able publicly to render them the homage of my grateful acknowledgments.

I came to Paris with the permission of the prince, and by the advice of my friends, in order to perfect my son’s talents, by affording him an opportunity of hearing the numerous artists whom this capital contains, and of cultivating the French language, of which he has already some general idea; a language which justly lays claim to the title of being that of Europe. At the same time, I have not neglected to take advantage of the eagerness testified by the Parisians to hear his performance, in order to indemnify myself for the expenses necessarily attendant upon a long journey, and the removal of my whole family.

Accept my best acknowledgments, and believe me, etc.,

ADAM LISZT.

Accompanying this letter is the following editorial comment:

“The young Francis Liszt, with his father, arrived in London last month, and has exhibited his talents to many people of rank, and to some of the most distinguished professors of this metropolis, who all agree in considering him as a performer that would be ranked very high, even were he arrived at full manhood, and therefore a most surprising instance of precocious talent at so early an age as twelve. He executes the most difficult of the modern piano-forte music without the smallest apparent effort, and plays at sight things that very few masters would venture upon, until they had given to them a little private study. But his extemporaneous performances are the most remarkable. Upon any subject that is proposed to him he improvises with the fancy and method of a deliberating composer, and with the correctness of an experienced contrapuntist. His hand is not unusually large, but is amazingly strong, and his touch has all the vigor of maturity. He has reached the usual growth of boys of his age, and possesses an open, intelligent and agreeable countenance, with a frankness, but at the same time a propriety of manner, that indicates a good temper and a correct understanding.”

LISZT’S ONE OPERA.

A German correspondent of the _Harmonicon_ sent that paper the following account of the performance of Liszt’s Opera, “Don Sancho,” on Oct. 18, 1825, at the Academie Royale de Musique, Paris:

“The extraordinary youth, the composer of this opera, has but just entered his thirteenth year. He has been acknowledged by some of the first connoisseurs of Germany and France to merit a place among the principal pianists of Europe; nay, some have gone so far as to say that he yields the palm to Hummel only, whose immense talent as an improvisatore undoubtedly stands as yet alone and unrivaled. But the youthful Liszt is also a composer and gifted with the talent of improvisation in a high degree. Aware of this, and wishing early--we trust not too soon--to develop his talents, the admirers of the youthful compatriot of Mozart desired him to try his strength on a wider field; they procured a poem adapted, as they supposed, to his powers. He has for some time been diligently engaged upon it, and the present is the result of his labors. * * * *

“The subject of the opera is taken from a tale of Florian, entitled ‘_Don Sancho_,’ one of the feeblest of all this author’s works. It is a kind of allegory, in which Love appears in person, armed with his bow and arrows. The little god is the lord and master of an almost inaccessible castle, the gate of which can be entered only by two and two at a time. The drawbridge is never let down, save to a knight accompanied by his lady. Elvira, persecuted by one whom she detests, and who is attempted to be forced upon her as a husband, disguises herself as a knight, and finding a favorable moment for escape, sallies forth alone from the castle of the King, her father. In the midst of a forest she meets with Don Sancho, who, being in quest of adventures, is desirous of entering into conversation with the unknown. Piqued at being answered only in monosyllables, he finds means to excite a quarrel. A combat ensues. Elvira, as every child could have foreseen, is vanquished. She sinks to the earth and her helmet falling off discovers the features of a beauteous female. The victor is on his knees before his lovely foe; Elvira no longer merits that title. She also is in love with Don Sancho at first sight. But a fearful storm comes on, and they hasten to the Castle of Love (_Le Chateau d’ Amour_) which is seen in the distance. On the way they are encountered by Rostubalde--for such is the name of the odious rival--who wishes to prevent their entrance into the castle. Don Sancho rushes upon him but is wounded; Elvira avenges the wound of her lover by the death of Rostubalde. At length the two lovers are at the gates of the castle. The winged god appears upon one of the towers. ‘Open to us,’ cries Elvira, ‘we are two faithful ones who love, and will love forever.’ At this magic word ‘_ever_,’ the gates fly open. Cupid with a single touch heals the wound of Don Sancho. Elvira returns with him to the court of the good-natured King, her father, who asks not a word of explanation relative to the absence of his blooming daughter from her home, but hastens to unite the two lovers.

“In the outline here given of this dull and insipid pastoral, will, with a very few exceptions, be found the general story of the opera in question. The principal change is that of the person of Rostubalde into an enchanter, of the name of Alidor; but even this resource, such as it is, the authors have turned but to little account. In a word, we consider our young artist as dragged to the earth by the dead weight of this mass, which he has attempted in vain to leaven by his genius.

“But we must now speak of the music. The overture contains many happy motives, and passages of great beauty and effect. If it fails in being strongly characteristic, we should impute the fault in a great measure to the subject. An overture should be the preface to the work, but what must be the preface to a work without interest! Among the airs, the most admired was that of the Magician, and above all, two romances, one sung by Don Sancho and the other by the Page. Many of the orchestral parts are treated with a vigor and intelligence which would do honor to composers long disciplined in their art.

“Upon a cool and dispassionate view of the whole composition, we must remark, that the young Liszt ought to view this, his first dramatic work, only in the light of an experiment on the extent of his powers. Mozart was only twelve years of age when he composed his ‘Finta Semplice’ for the theater of Vienna. The distance is immense indeed between that essay and his ‘Don Giovanni’; but the question is whether he would ever have created the latter wondrous opera, if his first steps in the career of excellence had been inhumanly arrested.”

BIHARY.

A review of Liszt’s “Bohemiens” which appeared in the London _Athenæum_ of 1859 gives the following interesting sketch of Bihary, the gypsy virtuoso:

“Next we come to John Bihary, who seems to have been ‘the highest expression’ of the gypsy virtuoso,--a brilliant player, courted at all the courts and royally repaid for his playing:--a man as impudent as an Italian _tenore_ of the worst class. Bihary lived in our own time, for he gave a performance before Maria Louisa in 1814, and there made himself so remarkable by his undisguised admiration of one of the Imperial Princesses present, that his hostess found it necessary to rebuke his audacious eyes. The violinist was called up and was asked if he was a married man. His answer was ‘Yes;’ and that his wife was with him in Vienna. On this he was bidden to present her forthwith. Bihary’s wife was sent for on the spot. A striking looking and still young woman, magnificently attired in the gypsy dress, was brought. On receiving her, the Empress said to Bihary, that since heaven had given him so beautiful and faithful a helpmate, he was inexcusable in being so sensitive to the beauty of any princess, recommended to him more propriety for the future, and after paying marked compliments to Eve (Bihary’s wife), caused fifty ducats to be given to her, and sent the pair home in one of the court carriages. A second anecdote concerning Bihary is little less characteristic of manners. About the year 1824 a carriage accident disabled him for life. With true gypsy improvidence he had laid by nothing for a rainy day, and could hardly toil through the least important part in the band of which he had been the king. In this fallen estate it chanced that he fell in at a tavern with some Hungarian noblemen, who had known him in his days of court splendor and insolence. He was prevailed on to play slowly one or two of the very easy pieces of national music which he had yet power to master. His arm was soon tired. On his stopping, one of his princely auditors bound it up in bank-notes. Bihary died in 1827.”

THE HUNGARIAN GYPSY MUSIC.

“The Hungarian gypsy merely _plays_ Hungarian; he sings little or not at all; and what is his principal instrument, and at the same time the principal instrument of the Hungarian popular music? It is the dulcimer or cimbalo. This instrument, consisting of a triangular wooden frame, with a bottom and sounding board, over which wires by twos or threes are stretched upon bridges, which are struck with two wooden hammers, covered on the upper part with cloth or leather, is peculiarly fitted to infuse into the little gypsy orchestra that palpitating, feverish, tremulous essence, by which the performance of a _Magyar nota_ gains so much. With this are associated the string quartet, together with the contra-basso and also quite willingly the clarinet. On the contrary all other instruments, as oböes, flutes, fagotti, horns, trumpets, etc., are entirely excluded from a Hungarian gypsy orchestra.

“What does the gypsy produce with these instruments? Is his music, is the popular instrumental music any mere dance music? Essentially, perhaps; but ere the dancing mood begins, ere joy and appetite for pleasure hurry the _Magyar ember_ into dance and play, and make him forget himself, he must first, in the slow, sustained tones of a _Lassu_ (Adagio) in the minor, pour out his complainings, roll away the sighs which hold his soul imprisoned in a melancholy gloom. Not suddenly can his soul plunge into the fresh major tones of his national dances; nay, he often clings to the dear minor mood after his sadness is supposed to have given place to idle joy and pleasure. The kind of music which we would here indicate is called in general _Csardas_. This signifies both the dance itself and the dance music; and as every Hungarian dance is preceded by an introductory _Lassu_, this also is included in the term. The _Lassu_, soaring beyond the possibility of being represented as a dance, is usually followed by a _Frisded_, or Allegretto, of a quicker movement, but usually kept also in the minor, yet shaped already to the dance, but only for the _solo_ dance of men. If the _Magyar ember_ allows himself to be drawn away from his sombre mood into a dance, it is at first only a _solo_ dance; self-satisfied, he spins round in a circle and as yet covets not an object for his love; only when the third part in this psychological economy of the dance, with its quick, strong strokes, has hurried him completely out of himself, does he begin to know no moderation and no goal. His eye sparkles, his feet stamp, like those of an untamed horse. To think, it is good that a man do not remain alone, and to grasp at a maiden, are one act, and he begins with her that wild, unbridled dance, which is called _Csardas_ in the narrower sense of the word, or by way of distinction, _Friss_ (i. e., Allegro, Presto). Already in the _Lassu_, the dull brooding in which the soul of the _Magyar ember_ swims, is crossed by some occasional gleams of enthusiasm; but in the _Frisded_ the dark clouds of sadness begin first to break away, and the _Friss_ tears away entirely the thin veil which yet lay on his soul and left him in a self-contented solitude. Now no repose is longer to be thought of; from melancholy it becomes impetuous passion; from pain unbounded pleasure; in short, his Me, delivered from itself, riots and storms away until his feet refuse their service.”--_Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik._

HEINE ON LISZT.

“That such a restless head, driven and perplexed by all the needs and doctrines of his time, feeling the necessity of troubling 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 still piano-forte player for tranquil townsfolks and good-natured nightcaps 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-high thoughts, amid which, here and there, the sweetest flowers diffuse their fragrance, so that one is at once troubled and beatified, but troubled most.

“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 specters which others only hear; since, as you know, at every tone which the hand strikes upon the key-board 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 in a concert for the benefit of the unhappy Italians when I last heard Liszt, last 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 Jehosaphat. 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 armor, on a black horse, and with His holy lance He first thrust Satan to the ground, and then Death, and the spectators shouted.”

HEINRICH HEINE.

A LETTER FROM BERLIOZ TO LISZT.

The following is an extract from a letter written by Berlioz to Liszt in 1843, as it appears in the former’s “Musical Wandering through Germany:”

“Proudly you can exclaim, like Louis XIV, ‘I am the orchestra! I am the chorus! At my grand piano I sing, dream, rejoice, and it excels in its rapidity the nimblest bows. Like the orchestra, it has its whispering flutes and pealing horns, and without any preparation can, like that, breathe the evening breeze from its silvery clouds of magic chords and tender melodies. It requires no scenes, no decorations, no spacious stage; I need not weary myself with tedious rehearsals; I want neither a hundred, nor fifty, nor twenty assistants; I need not one, and can even do without music. A large hall, a grand piano, and I am master of a whole audience. Applause resounds through the room.’ When his memory awakens brilliant fantasies under his fingers, shouts of enthusiasm welcome them. Then he sings Schubert’s _Ave Maria_, or Beethoven’s _Adelaide_, and every heart bounds to meet him, every breath is hushed in agitated silence, in suppressed amazement. Then, high in air ascend the thundering strife and glittering finale of these mighty fireworks and the acclamations of the admiring public. Now, amid a shower of wreaths and blossoms, the priest of harmony ascends his golden tripod, beautiful maidens approach, to kiss with tears the hem of his garment; to him belongs the sincere admiration of earnest minds, as well as the involuntary homage of the envious; to him bend noble forms, to him bow hearts who do not comprehend their own emotions.

“And the next day, having poured forth the inexhaustible treasure of his inspiration, he hastens away, leaving behind him a glittering train of glory and enthusiasm. It is a dream! One of those golden dreams which one has when he is named Liszt or Paganini.”

HESSE’S CRITICISM OF LISZT.

Hesse, the famous German organist, after hearing Liszt play at Breslau, in 1859, recalls his playing sixteen years previously in the same place. He writes to the Breslauer _Zeitung_:

“On the 9th of May, a grand concert was arranged in the Schiesswerder Hall, by Herr Doctor Leopold Damrosch, in honor of, and with the cooperation of, the Court-Capellmeister Herr Doctor FRANZ LISZT. Liszt, the great, genial master of the piano-forte, who with his achievements on this instrument alarmed the world, gave eleven concerts here in Breslau in the year 1843, with ever increasing success. He electrified his hearers by such playing as _no one_ had shown before. Whoever thought to give himself up to his playing with the calm and comfortable feeling that he would to the performances of Hummel and other masters, was greatly mistaken. Liszt transferred his moods to the piano. He screwed up the feelings of the hearer to a pitch of feverish excitement, but he allowed them also to subside occasionally. We were at that time so fortunate as to be daily in his presence and admire his magical play. His repertoire was multifarious; he played all masters.

“We will not waste words about his gigantic _technique_, his art of singing on the instrument, etc.; these are well-known things; thousands have heard him. But we can not forbear alluding to one composition; we mean his ‘Reminiscences from Don Juan,’ one of the most genial of piano pieces. We lament for any one who has not heard him play these reminiscences. The marble guest on horseback, the insinuating Don Juan with his _La ci darem_, the struggling and at last consenting Zerlina, the Champagne song, etc., all this did Liszt pass before our minds in such a way that we forgot Liszt, concert-hall and all; one awoke from the performance as from a blissful dream. Four times we heard this piece by him, and always with the same emotions.”

LISZT’S PRINCIPAL SCHOLARS.

HANS VON BUELOW, Meiningen. [B]CARL TAUSIG. [B]FRANZ BENDEL. HANS VON BRONSART, Hanover. CARL KLINDWORTH, Moscow. ALEXANDER WINTERBERGER, St. Petersburg. JULIUS REUBKE. [B]THEODORE RATZENBERGER. [B]ROBERT PFLUGHAUPT. FREDERICK ALTSCHUL. [B]NICHOLAS NEILISSOFF. CARL BAERMANN, Munich. DIONYS PRUCKNER, Stuttgart. FERDINAND SCHREIBER. LOUIS ROTHFELD. J. SIPASS, Budapest. GEORGE LEITERT. JULIUS RICHTER. LOUIS JUNGMANN, Weimar. WILLIAM MASON, New York. MAX PINNER, New York. JULES ZAREMBSKY, Brussels. G. SGAMBATI, Rome. CARLO LIPPI, Rome. SIEGFRIED LANGAARD, Denmark. CARL POHLIG. ARTHUR FRIEDHEIM. L. MAREK, Limberg. F. REUSS, Baden-Baden. BERTHRAND ROTH, Frankfort. ---- KOLLERMAN. CARL STASNY. JOSEPH WIENIAWSKY. INGEBORG STARK-BRONSART. SOPHIE MENTER-POPPER. [B]SOPHIE PFLUGHAUPT. [B]ALINE HUNDT. PAULINE FICHTNER-ERDMANNSDOERFER. AHRENDA BLUME. ANNA MEHLIG. VERA TIMANOFF, Russia. MARTHA REMMERT. SARA MAGNUS-HEINZE. DORA PETERSON. ILONKA RAVACZ, Hungary. CECILIA GAUL, America. MARIE BREIDENSTEIN, Erfurt. AMY FAY, America.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Hungarian for “Franz.”

[B] Deceased.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain.