Franz Liszt Part 21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Later, down in the low-ceilinged cafe of the Hotel zum Elephant, I overheard a group of citizens, officers, merchants--all cronies--discussing Weimar. Nietzsche's name was mentioned, and one knight of this round table--a gigantic officer with a b.u.t.ton head--contemptuously exclaimed:--"Nietzsche Rauch!" (smoke). Yes, but what a world-compelling vapour is his that now winds in fantastic spirals over the romantic hills and valleys of the new Weimar and thence about the entire civilised globe! Friedrich Nietzsche, because of his fiery poetic spirit and ecstatic pantheism, might be called the Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley of philosophers.

II

BUDAPEST

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Paris the cakewalk is a thing of misunderstood, misapplied accents.

The Budapest version of the Rakoczy march is a revelation. No wonder Berlioz borrowed it. The tempo is a wild quickstep; there is no majestic breadth, so suggestive of military pomp or the grandeur of a warlike race. Instead, the music defiled by in crazy squads, men breathlessly clinging to the saddles of their maddened steeds; above them hung the haze of battle, and the hoa.r.s.e shouting of the warriors was heard. Five minutes more of this excitement and heart disease might have supervened.

Five minutes later I saw the band grinning over their tips, drinking and looking absolutely incapable of ever playing such stirring and hyperbolical music.

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

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

It would seem that even for a munic.i.p.ality of New York's magnitude the erection of such a Hall of Justice and such a Parliament building would be a tax beyond its purse. Budapest is not a rich city, but these two public buildings, veritable palaces, gorgeously decorated, proclaim her as a highly civilised centre. The opera-house, which seats only 1,100, is the most perfectly appointed in the world; its stage apparatus is better than Bayreuth's. And the natural position of the place is unique.

From the ramparts of the royal palace in Buda--old Ofen--your eye, promise-crammed, sweeps a series of fascinating facades, churches, palaces, generous embankments, while between its walls the Danube flows torrentially down to the mysterious lands where murder is admired and thrones are playthings.

In the Liszt museum is the old, bucolic pianino upon which his childish hands first rested at Raiding (Dobrjan), his birthplace. His baton; the cast of his hand and of Chopin's and the famous piano of Beethoven, at which most of the immortal sonatas were composed, and upon which Liszt Ferencz played for the great composer shortly before his death in 1827.

The little piano has no string, but the Beethoven--a Broadwood & Sons, Golden Square, London, so the fall-board reads--is full of jangling wires, the keys black with age. Liszt presented it to his countrymen--he greatly loved Budapest and taught several months every winter at the Academy of Music in the s.p.a.cious Andra.s.sy stra.s.se.

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

III

ROME

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

I wandered disconsolately through the rain, my mood splenetic. So much for fame. I bitterly reflected in the melancholy, weedy, moss-infested walks of the garden.

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

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

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

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

Perhaps Rome, at a superficial glance, still affects the American as it did Taine a half century ago, as a provincial city, sprawled to unnecessary lengths over its seven hills, and, despite the smartness of its new quarters, far from suggesting a Weltstadt, as does, for example, bustling, shining Berlin or mundane Paris. But not for her superb and imperial indifference are the seductive spells of operatic Venice or the romantic glamour of Florence. She can proudly say "La ville c'est moi!"

She is not a city, but the city of cities, and it needs but twenty-four hours' submergence in her atmosphere to make one a slave at her eternal chariot wheels. The New York c.o.c.kney, devoted to his cult of the modern--hotels, baths, cafes and luxurious theatres--soon wearies of Rome. He prefers Paris or Naples. Hasn't some one said, "See Naples and die--of its smells?" As an inexperienced traveller I know of no city on the globe where you formulate an expression of like or dislike so quickly. You are Rome's foe or friend within five minutes after you leave its dingy railway station. And it is hardly necessary to add that its newer quarters, pretentious, cold, hard and showy, are quite negligible. One does not go to Rome to seek the glazed comforts of Brooklyn.

The usual manner of approaching the Holy Father is to go around to the American Emba.s.sy and harry the good-tempered secretary into a promise of an invitation card, that is, if you are not acquainted in clerical circles. I was not long in Rome before I discovered that both Mgr.

Kennedy and Mgr. Merry del Val were at Frascati enjoying a hard-earned vacation. So I dismissed the ghost of the idea and pursued my pagan worship at the Museo Vaticano. Then the heavy hoofs of three hundred pilgrims invaded the peace of the quiet Hotel Fischer up in the Via Sall.u.s.tiana. They had come from Cologne and the vicinity of the Upper Rhine, bearing Peter's pence, wearing queer clothes and good-natured smiles. They tramped the streets and churches of Rome, did these commonplace, pious folk. They burrowed in the Catacombs and ate their meals, men and women alike, with such a hearty gnashing of teeth, such a rude appet.i.te, that one envied their vitality, their faith, their wholesale air of having accomplished the conquest of Rome.

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

"Of course," responded the wily Fischer, "anything is possible in Rome."

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

Carriages blocked the streets and almost stretched four square around the Palazzo Margherita. There was noise. There were explosive sounds when bargains were driven. Then, after the vendors of saints' pictures, crosses, rosary beads--chiefly gentlemen of Oriental persuasion, comical as it may seem--we drove off in high feather nearly four hundred strong.

I had secured from Monsignor Pick through the offices of my amiable host a parti-hued badge with a cross and the motto, "Coeln--Rom., 1905,"

which, interpreted, meant "Cologne--Rome." I felt like singing "Nach Rom," after the fashion of the Wagnerians in act II of Tannhauser, but contented myself with abusing my coachman for his slow driving. It was all as exciting as a first night at the opera.

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

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

We mounted innumerable staircases. We entered the Sala Regia, our destination--I had hoped for the more n.o.ble and s.p.a.cious Sala Ducale.

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

We were ranged on either side, the women to the right, the men to the left of the throne, which was an ordinary looking tribune. It must be confessed that later the fair s.e.x were vigorously elbowed to the rear.

In America the women would have been well to the front, but the dear old Fatherland indulges in no such new fangled ideas of s.e.x equality. So the polite male pilgrims by superior strength usurped all the good places. A tall, handsome man in evening clothes--solitary in this respect, with the exception of the Pope's body suite--patrolled the floor, obsequiously followed by the Suiss in their hideous garb--a murrain on Michelangelo's taste if he designed such hideous uniforms! I fancied that he was no less than a prince of the royal blood, so masterly was his bearing. When I discovered that he was the Roman correspondent of a well-known North German gazette my respect for the newspaper man abroad was vastly increased. The power of the press----!

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

He was attired in pure white, even to the sash that compa.s.sed his plump little figure. A cross depended from his neck. He immediately and in the most matter of fact fashion held out his hand to be kissed. I noted the whiteness of the nervous hand tendered me, bearing the ring of Peter, a large, square emerald surrounded by diamonds. Though seventy, the Pope looks ten years younger. He is slightly under medium height.