Franz Liszt Part 20

"Yes, Father Liszt, because the piano is not in the scheme of Nature.

Even in Society the fewer the pianos the greater the merriment. If the piano were really a thing in Nature the good Lord would have taken at least ten minutes of the seven days and designed a model. But the piano never occurred to Him. Now, as everything, existing or to exist, was foreseen by him, and a part of Him (that is, according to the dogma), I am inclined to think He was afraid of the piano. He recoiled at the responsibility of creating it. And yet the machine exists!

"A syllogism leads us to declare that the piano is an after-thought. Of whom? Why, Satan of course. A grim joke of Satan. The piano is the enemy of man. Liszt finally discovered this, though he was just a little late.

So he will only go to Purgatory, and in Purgatory there are no dumb pianos. But there are organs without pipes, without bellows, and many have pulled the stops in vain for centuries. I earnestly beseech you, my Father, to acc.u.mulate indulgences.

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

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

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

Liszt went to the studio, saw the clay, and turned green.

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

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

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

"The sculptor smiled. 'I can subst.i.tute an upright.'

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

"Homeward he fled. In his own room he arranged the mirrors so that he could see himself in all positions while he was plying his h.e.l.lish trade. And then salvation came to him. He saw that the machine was demoniacal, that it recalled nothing in the fauna or the flora of the good Lord, that the sculptor was right, that the piano had the appearance of the sure box, in which occurs vague metempsychosis, that is if the box only had a jaw. He was horror-stricken at his past life.

Frightened, his soul tormented by doubt, it seemed to him that from under the eighty-five molars, which he s.n.a.t.c.hed hurriedly from the shrieking piano, Astaroth darted his tongue. He ran to Rome and threw himself at the Pope's feet, imploring exorcism.

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

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

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

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

"Then Liszt accused himself:

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Overcome with shame, he wished to finish his confession at the piano.

But Pius IX had antic.i.p.ated him. There was no piano in the Vatican. In all Christendom, the Pope was the only one without a boxed harp.

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

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

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

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

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

VII

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF LISZT

I

WEIMAR

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

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pauline Apel

Liszt's housekeeper at Weimar]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great impetus has been given to manufacturing interests, and the city is near enough to Berlin to benefit by both its distance and proximity.

Naturally, the older and conservative inhabitants are horrified by the swift invasion of unsightly chimneys, of country disappearing before the steady encroachment of railroads, mills, foundries, and other unpicturesque but very useful buildings. And the country about Weimar is famed for its picturesque quality--Jena, Tiefurt, Upper Weimar, Erfurt, museums, castles, monuments, belvideres, wayside inns, wonderful roads overhung by great aged trees. But other days, other ways.

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

But emburgessed prejudices were too much for Wagner, and a stuffy Bavarian village won his preference, thereby becoming historical.