Letters of Franz Liszt Volume II Part 72

F. Liszt

Budapest, February 12th, 1883

Have you had anything to do with a serious and really distinguished composer,--Rendano? He is giving his concert in Vienna one of these next days.

324. To Adelheid Von Schorn

If you were here, dear friend, you would perhaps find means to put into some sort of order the hundreds of letters that rain upon me from everywhere. These bothers and burdens of the amiability with which I am credited are becoming insupportable, and I really long, some fine day, to cry from the housetops that I beg the public to consider me as one of the most disagreeable, whimsical and disobliging of men.

To our cordial meeting at Weimar in the early days of April.

Ever your very affectionate and grateful

F. Liszt

Budapest, February 14th, 1883

325. To Otto Lessmann

Your sad news [After Wagner's death on the 13th February] pierces my heart. Worthily have you said of the great, undying hero of Art, "May the memory of him lead us on the right road to truth!"

I abstained from going at once to Venice and Bayreuth, but no sensible man will on that account doubt my feelings. Until Pa.s.sion Week I remain here; then according to what my daughter arranges I shall either go to Bayreuth or elsewhere, wherever my dearly beloved daughter may be.

Hearty thanks, dear friend, for your satisfactory, truthful adjustment of my position, which is neither a doubtful nor a cowardly one, in the Jewish question.

The watchword and solution of that question is a matter for the perseverance of the Israelites and for the all-ruling Divine Providence.

Yours faithfully and gratefully,

F. Liszt

Budapest, February 18th, 1883

I shall send that number of your weekly paper (16th February) to Cardinal Haynald, my gracious patron of many years' standing--who was also the President of the Liszt-Jubilee Festival in Budapest.

326. To Lina Ramann

My very dear Friend,

Ever since the days of my youth I have considered dying much simpler than living. Even if often there is fearful and protracted suffering before death, yet is death nonetheless the deliverance from our involuntary yoke of existence.

Religion a.s.suages this yoke, yet our heart bleeds under it continually!--

"Sursum corda!"

In my "Requiem" (for men's voices) I endeavored to give expression to the mild, redeeming character of death. It is shown in the "Dies irae," in which the domination of fear could not be avoided; in the three-part strophe

"Qui Mariam absolvisti, Et latronem exaudisti, Mihi autem spem dedisti"

lies the fervent, tender accent, which is not easily attained by ordinary singers...The execution is also made more difficult by the 2 semitones, ascending in the 1st Tenor, and descending in the 2nd Tenor and 1st Ba.s.s. Progressions of this kind are indeed not new, but singers so seldom possess the requisite crystal- clear intonation without which the unhappy composer comes to grief.

Our 3rd Elegie, "The funeral gondola" ("la gondola funebre"), written unawares last December in Venice, is to be brought out this summer by Kahnt, who has already published my 2 earlier Elegies.

Heartfelt greetings to your respected collaborators, and ever yours gratefully,

F. Liszt

Budapest, February 22nd, 1883

327. To Madame Malwine Tardieu

Dear Benevolent One,

To great grief silence is best suited. I will be silent on Wagner, the prototype of an initiatory genius.

Thank you cordially for your telegram of yesterday. [On the success of Saint-Saens' Opera "Henry VIII." at the opera in Paris] No one rejoices more than I in the success of Saint-Saens.

There is no doubt that he deserves it; but fortune, grand sovereign of doubtful manners, is often in no hurry to array herself on the side of merit.

One has to keep on tenaciously pulling her by the ear (as Saint- Saens has done) to make her listen to reason.

Be so good as to send me the number of the Independance with the article on "Henry VIII." I will ask M. Saissy, the director of the Gazette (French) de Hongrie, professor of French literature at the University of Budapest, to reproduce this article in his Gazette. Saissy is one of my friends; consequently he will publish what is favorable to "Henry VIII."

Saint-Saens has sent me the score of his beautiful work "La Lyre et la Harpe." Alas! everything that is not of the theater and does not belong to the repertoire of the old cla.s.sical masters Handel, Bach, Palestrina, etc., does not yet gain any attentive and paying consideration--the decisive criterion--of the public.

Berlioz, during his lifetime, furnished the proof of this.

Please give my love to your husband, and accept my devoted and grateful affection.

F. Liszt

Budapest, March 6th, 1883

With regard to Lagye, I am contrite. Various things which I had to send off with care have prevented me from going on with the revision of the French edition of my Lieder. It shall be done next month.

328. To Ferdinand Taborszky, Music Publisher in Budapest

Dear Taborszky,

As it is uncertain whether I shall still be alive next year, I have just written an Hungarian "Konigslied" [Royal Song]