Franz Liszt Part 25

"The Liszt ballade in B minor is equal in poetic content to Chopin's ballades."

Concerning Liszt's Irrlichter and Gnomenreigen, he said: "I wish the inspired master had written more pieces like these, which are as perfect as any song without words by Mendelssohn."

WEINGARTNER AND LISZT

Weingartner's reminiscences of Liszt throw many interesting lights on the personality of that great composer and greatest of teachers. The gathering of famous artists at his house are well described, and his own mannerisms excellently portrayed. His playing was always marked by the ripest perfection of touch. He did not incline to the impetuous power of his youthful days, but sat almost without motion before the keyboard.

His hands glided quietly over the keys, and produced the warm, magnetic stream of tone almost without effort.

His criticism of others was short, but always to the point. His praise would be given heartily, and without reserve, while blame was always concealed in some kindly circ.u.mlocution. Once, when a pretty young lady played a Chopin ballade in execrable fashion, he could not contain e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of disgust as he walked excitedly about the room. At the end, however, he went to her kindly, laid his hand gently on her hair, kissed her forehead, and murmured, "Marry soon, dear child--adieu."

Another young lady once turned the tables on the composer. It was the famous Ingeborg von Bronsart, who came to him when eighteen years old, in the full bloom of her fair Northern beauty. Liszt asked her to play,inwardly fearing that this was to be one more of the petted incompetents. But when she played a Bach fugue for him, with the utmost brilliancy, he could not contain his admiration. "Wonderful," he cried, "but you certainly didn't look like it." "I should hope I didn't look like a Bach fugue," was the swift retort, and the two became lifelong friends.

AS ORGAN COMPOSER

Liszt's importance in this field is not overlooked.

"In Germany, the land of seriousness, organ music had acquired a character so heavy and so uniformly contrapuntal that, by the middle of last century, almost any decently trained Capellmeister could produce a sonata dull enough to be considered first-rate. There were, doubtless, many protests in the shape of unorthodox works which left no mark; but two great influences, which are the earliest we need notice, came in the shape of Liszt's Fantasia on the name of Bach and Julius Reubke's Sonata on the Ninety-fourth Psalm. Without minute a.n.a.lysis we may say that the former, though not an entirely great work, was at all events something entirely new. It showed the possibility of freedom of form without shapelessness, of fairly good counterpoint without dulness, of the adaptation of piano technic to the organ in a way never before attempted; and the whole work, brilliant and effective, never outraged in the smallest degree the natural dignity of the instrument."

LISZT'S TECHNIC

Rudolf Breithaupt thus wrote of the technical elements in Liszt's playing in _Die Musik_:

"What we hear of Liszt's technic in his best years, from 1825 to 1850, resembles a fairy tale. As artists, Liszt and Paganini have almost become legendary personages. In a.n.a.lysing Liszt's command of the piano we find that it consists first and foremost in the revelation of a mighty personality rather than in the achievement of unheard of technical feats. Though his admirers will not believe it, technic has advanced since his day. Tausig excelled him in exactness and brilliancy; Von Bulow was a greater master of interpretation: Rubinstein went beyond him in power and in richness of tone-colour, through his consummate use of the pedal. Even contemporary artists, _e.g._, Carreno, d'Albert, Busoni, and in part, G.o.dowsky, are technically equal to Liszt in his best days, and in certain details, owing to the improved mechanism of the piano, even his superior.

"It is time to do away with the fetich of Liszt's technic. It was mighty as an expression of his potent personality, mighty in its domination of all instrumental forms, mighty in its full command of all registers and positions. But I believe that if the Liszt of former days--not the old man whose fingers did not always obey his will, but the young, vigorous t.i.tan of the early nineteenth century--were to play for us now, we should be as little edified as we should probably be by the singing of Jenny Lind or by the playing of Paganini. Exaggeration finds no more fruitful field than the chronicling of the feats of noted artists.

"We hear, for instance, much of Liszt's hand, of its vampire-like clutch, of its uncanny, spidery power of extension--as a child I firmly believed that he could reach two octaves without difficulty. These stories are all fables. His fingers were long and regular, the thumb abnormally long; a more than usual flexibility of muscles and sinews gave him the power of spanning a twelfth. Klindworth tells us that he did some things with his left thumb that one was led to believe it twice the length of an ordinary thumb.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Liszt's Hand]

"What chiefly distinguished Liszt's technic was the absolute freedom of his arms. The secret lay in the unconstrained swinging movement of the arm from the raised shoulder, the bringing out of the tone through the impact of the full elastic ma.s.s on the keys, a thorough command and use of the freely rolling forearm. He had the gift for which all strove, the rhythmic dance of the members concerned--the springing arm, the springing hand, the springing finger. He played by weight--by a swinging and a hurling of weight from a loosened shoulder that had nothing in common with what is known as finger manipulation. It was by a direct transfer of strength from back and shoulders to fingers, which explains the high position of hands and fingers.

"At the time of his most brilliant period as virtuoso he paid no attention to technic and its means; his temperament was the reverse of a.n.a.lytical--what he wished to do he did without concerning himself as to the how or why. Later in life he did attempt to give some practical suggestions in technic, but these were of but doubtful worth. A genius is not always to be trusted when it comes to theoretical explanation of what he does more by instinct than by calculation.

"His power over an audience was such that he had only to place his hands on the keyboard to awaken storms of applause. Even his pauses had life and movement, for his hands spoke in animated gesture, while his Jupiter-like head, with its mane of flowing hair, exercised an almost hypnotic effect on his entranced listeners.

"From a professional stand-point his execution was not always flawless.

His great rival, Thalberg, had greater equality of touch in scales and runs; in what was then known as the jeu perle (literally, pearly playing) his art was also finer. Liszt frequently struck false notes--but ears were closed to such faults; his hearers appeared not to notice them. These spots on the sun are mentioned only to put an end once for all to the foolish stories that are still current about Liszt's wonderful technic. This greatest of all reproductive artists was but a man, and often erred, though in a large and characteristic fashion.

"Liszt's technic is the typical technic of the modern grand piano (Hammerklavier). He knew well the nature of the instrument, its old-fashioned single-tone effects on the one hand, its full harmonic power and polyphonic capabilities on the other. While to his predecessors it was simply a medium for musical purposes, under his hands it was a means of expression for himself, a revelation of his ardent temperament.

In comparison with the contracted five-finger positions of the cla.s.sical technic, its broken chords and arpeggios, Liszt's technic had the advantage of a fuller, freer flow, of greater fulness of tone and increased brilliancy. Chopin has discovered more original forms; his style of writing is far more delicate and graceful; his individual note is certainly more musical, but his technic is special in its character; it lacks the broad sweep that gives Liszt's technic its peculiar freedom and adaptability to the instrument.

"Take Schumann and Brahms also, and compare their manner of writing for the piano with Liszt's. Both have written much that is n.o.ble and beautiful considered as music, but so clumsily put on the instrument that it is unduly difficult for the player. With Liszt, however, no matter what the difficulty of the means may be, they are always precisely adapted to the end in view, and everything he writes sounds well. It is no merely theoretical combination, but meant to be played on the piano, and is in strict accordance with the nature of the instrument. The player finds nothing laboriously put together and requiring study for its disentanglement. Liszt considers the structure of the hand, and a.s.signs it tasks suited to its capabilities.

"Among the distinctively original features of Liszt's technic are the bold outline, the large form, the imitative effects of organ and clavier, the orchestral timbre it imparts to the piano. We thank him also for the use of the thumb in the declamation of pathetic cantilena, for a breadth of melodic characterisation which resembles that of the horn and violoncello, for the imitation of bra.s.s instruments, for the great advance in all sorts of tremolos, trills and vibratos, which serve to give colour and intensity to moments of climax. His finger pa.s.sages are not merely empty runs, but are like high lights in a picture; his cadenzas fairly sparkle like comet trains and are never introduced for display alone. They are preparatory, transitional or conclusive in character; they point contrasts, they heighten dramatic climaxes. His scales and arpeggios have nothing in common with the stiff monotony of the Czerny school of playing; they express feeling, they give emotional variety, they embellish a melody with ineffable grace. He often supplies them with thirds and sixths, which fill out their meagre outlines and furnish support to hands and fingers.

"In his octave technic Liszt has embodied all the elementary power and wildness of his nature. His octaves rage in chromatic and diatonic scales, in broken chords and arpeggios, up and down, hither and thither, like zigzag flashes of lightning. Here he is seen at his boldest, _e.g._, in his Orage, Totentanz, Mazeppa, Don Juan fantasia, VI Rhapsody, etc. In the trill, too, he has given us such novel forms as the simple trill with single fingers of each hand, the trill in double thirds in both hands, the octave trill--all serving to intensify the introduction or close of the salient divisions of a composition.

"From Liszt dates the placing of a melody in the fullest and most ringing register of the piano--that corresponding to the tenor or baritone compa.s.s of voice; also the division of the accompaniment between the two hands and the extension of hand-crossing technic. To him we owe exactness in the fixing of tempo, the careful designation of signs for dynamics and expression, the use of three staves instead of two for the sake of greater clearness of notation, as well as the modern installation of the pedal.

"In short, Liszt is not only the creator of the art of piano playing as we have it to-day, but his is the strongest musical influence in modern musical culture. But granting this, those thinkers who declare this influence not unmixed with harm are not altogether wrong. It is not the fault of genius, however, that undesirable consequences follow in its wake. It is also my opinion that it will do no harm to retrace our steps and revive the more simple times when there was less piano playing and more music."

BUSONI

Busoni is preparing a complete edition of Liszt's compositions, to be published by Breitkopf & Hartel. Concerning the studies, which are to appear in three volumes, he says:

"These etudes, a work which occupied Franz Liszt from childhood on up to manhood, we believe should be put at the head of his piano compositions.

There are three reasons for this: the first is the fact that the etudes were the first of his works to be published; the second is that in Liszt's own catalogue of his works (Themat. Verz. Br. H. 1855), he puts the etudes at the very beginning; and the third and most patent is that these works in their entirety reflect as do no others Liszt's pianistic personality in the bud, shoot, and flower.

"These fifty-eight piano pieces alone would serve to place Liszt in the ranks of the greatest piano composers since Beethoven--Chopin, Schumann, Alkan, and Brahms; but proof of his superiority over these is found in his complete works, of which the etudes are only a small part.

"They afford a picture of him in manifold lights and poses, giving us an opportunity to know and observe him in the different phases of his character: the diabolic as well as the religious--those who acknowledge G.o.d do not make light of the devil--the refined and the animated; now as an ill.u.s.trative interpreter of every style and again as a marvellous transformation artist who can with convincing mimicry don the costume of any country. This collection consists of a work for piano which contains within its circ.u.mference every phase, nation, and epoch of musical expression from Palestrina to Parsifal, whereby Liszt shows himself as a creator of twofold character--both subjective and objective."

LISZT AS A PIANOFORTE WRITER

"Nothing is easier than to estimate Liszt the pianist, nothing more difficult than to estimate Liszt the composer. As to Liszt the pianist, old and young, conservatives and progressives, not excepting the keyboard specialists, are perfectly agreed that he was unique, unsurpa.s.sed, and unsurpa.s.sable," says Professor Niecks. "As to Liszt the composer, on the other hand, opinions differ widely and multifariously--from the attribution of superlative genius to the denial of the least talent. This diversity arises from partisanship, individuality of taste, and the various conceptions formed of the nature of creative power. Those, however, who call Liszt a composer without talent confess themselves either ignorant of his achievements, or incapable of distinguishing good from bad and of duly apportioning praise and blame. Those, on the other hand, who call Liszt a creative genius should not omit to observe and state that his genius was qualitatively unlike the genius of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. With him the creative impulse was, in the main, and, as a rule, an intellectual impulse. With the great masters mentioned, the impulse was of a general origin, all the faculties co-operating. While with them the composition was always spontaneous, being, however great the travail, a birth, not a making; with Liszt it was often reflective, the solution of a problem, an experiment, a caprice, a defiance of conventional respectability, or a device for the dumfounding and electrification of the gaping mult.i.tude. In short, Liszt was to a larger extent inventive than creative. The foregoing remarks do not pretend to be more than a suggestive attempt at explaining the inexplicable differences of creative power. That Liszt could be spontaneous and in the best sense creative, he has proved by whole compositions, and more frequently by parts of compositions. That has to be noted; as well as that his love of experimenting and scorn for the familiar, not to mention the commonplace, led him often to turn his back on the beautiful and to embrace the ugly.

"As a composer of pianoforte music, Liszt's merits are more generally acknowledged than as a composer of any other kind. Here indeed his position is a commanding one. We should be obliged to regard him with respect, admiration, and grat.i.tude, even if his compositions were aesthetically altogether a failure. For they incorporate an original pianoforte style, a style that won new resources from the instrument, and opened new possibilities to the composer for it, and the player on it. The French Revolution of 1830 aroused Liszt from a state of lethargy. A year after this political revolution, there occurred an event that brought about in him an artistic revolution. This event was the appearance of Paganini in Paris. The wonderful performances of the unique violin virtuoso revealed to him new ideas. He now began to form that pianoforte style which combined, as it were, the excellences of all the other instruments, individually and collectively. Liszt himself called the process "the orchestration of the pianoforte." But before the transformation could be consummated, other influences had to be brought to bear on the architect. The influence of Chopin, who appeared in Paris soon after Paganini, must have been great, but was too subtle and partial to be easily gauged. It is different with Berlioz, whose influence on Liszt was palpable and general, affecting every branch of his art-practice. Thalberg has at least the merit of having by his enormous success in 1836 stimulated Liszt to put forth his whole strength.

"The vast ma.s.s of Liszt's pianoforte compositions is divisible first into two cla.s.ses--the entirely original compositions, and the compositions based to a more or less extent on foreign matter. The latter cla.s.s consist of transcriptions of songs (Schubert, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Franz, etc.), symphonies and overtures (Berlioz, Beethoven, Rossini, Wagner, etc.), and operatic themes (from Rossini and Bellini to Wagner and Verdi), and of fifteen Hungarian rhapsodies; the former consists of studies, brilliant virtuosic pieces, musical poems, secular and sacred, picturesque, lyrical, etc. (such as Annees de Pelerinage, Harmonies, poetiques et religieuses, Consolations, the legends, St.

Francois d'a.s.sise: La Predication aux oiseaux, and St. Francois de Paule marchant sur les flots, etc.), and one work in sonata form, but not the conventional sonata form. Although not unfrequently leaving something to be desired in the matter of discretion, his transcriptions of songs are justly famous masterpieces. Marvellous in the reproduction of orchestral effects are the transcriptions of symphonies and overtures. The operatic transcriptions (Ill.u.s.trations, Fantasies), into which the _geistreiche_ Liszt put a great deal of his own, do not now enjoy the popularity they once enjoyed; the present age has lost some of its love for musical fireworks and the tricking-out and transmogrification by an artist of other artists' ideas. The Hungarian Rhapsodies, on the other hand, which are still more fantasias on the adopted matter than the operatic transcriptions, continue to be favourites of the _virtuosi_ and the public.

"As to the original compositions, they are very unequal in artistic value. Many of them, however, are undoubtedly of the greatest beauty, and stand whatever test may be applied to them. No one would think of numbering with these exquisite perfect things the imposing sonata. It cannot be placed by the side of the sonatas of Beethoven, whose ideal and formative power Liszt lacked. Nevertheless it is impossible for the unprejudiced not to recognise in it a n.o.ble effort of a highly-gifted and ardently-striving mind. Technically, instead of three or four self-contained separate movements, we have there a long uninterrupted series of continuous movements, in which, however, we can distinguish three complexes corresponding to the three movements of the orthodox sonata. The Andante Sostenuto and Quasi Adagio form the simpler middle complex. Although some of the features of the orthodox sonata structure are discernible in Liszt's works, most of them are absent from it or irrecognisably veiled. The most novel and characteristic features are the unity and the evolution by metamorphosis of the thematic material--that is to say, the motives of the first complex reappear in the following ones, and are metamorphosed not only in the later but also in the first. Nothing could characterise the inequality of Liszt's compositions better than the fact that it is possible to draw up a programme of them wholly irreproachable, admirable, and delightful, and equally possible to draw up one wholly objectionable, abhorrent, and distressful. All in all, Liszt is a most remarkable and interesting and, at the same time, an epoch-making personality, one that will remain for long yet a living force in music, and for ever a striking figure in the history of the art."

SMETANA

Frederick Smetana, the greatest of Bohemian composers, founded in the year 1848 the inst.i.tute which he conducted for the teaching of the piano in Prague. In this year it was that the composition for piano named Morceaux Caracteristiques, he dedicated to Liszt (which dedication Liszt accepted with the greatest cordiality, writing him a most complimentary letter), was the means of his becoming personally acquainted with Liszt, whom he until this time only knew by report. He obtained for the young composer an introduction to the publisher Kistner, in Leipsic, who brought out his six piano pieces called Stammbuchblaetter.

RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF

"Of all the Slav composers Rimsky-Korsakoff is perhaps the most charming, and as a musician the most remarkable," writes the music-critic of the _Mercure de France_. "He has not been equalled by any of his compatriots in the art of handling timbres, and in this art the Russian school has been long distinguished. In this respect he is descended directly from Liszt, whose orchestra he adopted and from whom he borrowed many an old effect. His inspiration is sometimes exquisite; the inexhaustible transformation of his themes is always most intelligent or interesting. As all the other Russians, he sins in the development of ideas through the lack of cohesion, of sustained enchainment, and especially through the lack of true polyphony. The influence of Berlioz and of Liszt is not less striking in his manner of composition. Sadko comes from Liszt's Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne, Antar and Scheherazade at the same time from Harold and the Faust symphony. The Oriental monody seems to throw a spell over Rimsky-Korsakoff which spreads over all his works a sort of 'local colour,' underlined here by the chosen subjects. In Scheherazade, it must be said, the benzoin of Arabia sends forth here and there the sickening empyreuma of the pastilles of the harem. In the second and the third movements of Antar the composer has approached nearest true musical superiority. The descriptive, almost dramatic, intention is realised there with an unusual sureness, and, if the brand of Liszt remains ineffaceable, the ease of construction, the breadth and the co-ordinated progressions of combinations mark a mastery and an originality that are rarely found among the composers of the far North, and that no one has ever possessed among the 'five.'

"Chopin's well-known saying in regard to Liszt, when he heard that the latter was going to write a notice of his concert, tells more," says Professor Niecks, "than whole volumes. These are the words: 'Il me donnera un pet.i.t royaume dans son empire,' which were said to Ernest Legouve by Chopin. Now here is another side-light on Chopin and his opinion of the great virtuoso. He is referring to Liszt's notice of some concert, apparently at Cologne. He is amused at the 'fifteen hundred men counted, at the president of the Phil [harmonic] and his carriage, etc.,' and he feels sure that Liszt will 'some day be a deputy, or king of Abyssinia, or of the Congo; his melodies (themes), however, will rest alongside the two volumes of German poetry'--two volumes which did not seem destined, apparently, to achieve immortality."

HIS PORTRAITS

[Ill.u.s.tration: Last Picture of Liszt, 1886, Aged Seventy-five Years]