Franz Liszt Part 16

"I stood then in the saloon of the Commendatore Liszt! Abbe and Commander! The correct employment of the domestic t.i.tles 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 alb.u.m 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 Abbe 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 Ma.s.s. 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 Ma.s.s, 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 gla.s.s 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 ma.s.s. 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 Abbe 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 Abbe-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 Abbe-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 inc.u.mbent 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 sn.o.bbishly 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 Pa.s.sed 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 cas.e.m.e.nts opened upon a stretch of lawn and n.o.ble old trees; easy-chairs and writing-tables; MS. music, with the pen lying carelessly beside it; ma.s.ses 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 abbe; 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 n.o.bodies 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 s.e.x that has always adored him?--he took a bunch of roses from a gla.s.s 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 cas.e.m.e.nt, 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 cas.e.m.e.nt.

"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 cl.u.s.ter 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 Bulow to Professor Henry Thode (art-historian), I betake myself to my excellent friends the Munkacsys, Chateau 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 Grafe 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 LEGOUVe

"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 ingrat.i.tude, I might say as so many absurdities.

"To me the piano is one of the domestic lares, one of our household G.o.ds. 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, unenc.u.mbered 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 Freischutz 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 a.s.sociated 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 melange 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 Theatre 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 ant.i.thesis between the two men was as great as the difference in their talents.

"Liszt's att.i.tude 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 const.i.tuted 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.