In the autumn of 1840 Liszt went from Paris, at which city he had been
playing for some time, to the north of Germany, where he at first found
the people colder than he had been wont to experience. But this soon
disappeared before the magic of his playing, and even the Hamburgers,
notorious for a callous, bovine temperament, gave wild demonstrations
of pleasure at his concerts. He specially pleased the worthy citizens
by his willingness to play off-hand, without notes, any work which they
called for, a feat justly regarded as a stupendous exercise of memory.
From Hamburg he went to London, where he gave nine concerts in a
fortnight, and stormed the affections and admiration of the English
public as he had already conquered the heart of Continental Europe.
While in London a calamity befell him. A rascally agent in whom he
implicitly trusted disappeared with the proceeds of three hundred
concerts, an enormous sum, amounting to nearly fifty thousand pounds
sterling. Liszt bore this reverse with cheerful spirits and scorned
the condolences with which his friends sought to comfort him, saying he
could easily make the money again, that his wealth was not in money, but
in the power of making money.
The artist's musical wanderings were nearly without ceasing. His
restless journeying carried him from Italy to Denmark, and from the
British Islands to Russia, and everywhere the art and social world bowed
at his feet in recognition of a genius which in its way could only be
designated by the term "colossal." It seems cumbersome and monotonous to
repeat the details of successive triumphs; but some of them are attended
by features of peculiar interest. He offered, in the summer of 1841,
to give the proceeds of a concert to the completion of the Cathedral
of Cologne (who that loves music does not remember Liszt's setting of
Heine's song "Im Rhein," where he translates the glory of the Cathedral
into music?). Liszt was then staying at the island of Nonneworth, near
Bonn, and a musical society, the Liedertafel, resolved to escort him
up to Cologne with due pomp, and so made a grand excursion with a great
company of invited guests on a steamboat hired for the purpose. A fine
band of music greeted Liszt on landing, and an extensive banquet was
then served, at which Liszt made an eloquent speech, full of wit and
feeling. The artist acceded to the desire of the great congregation of
people who had gathered to hear him play; and his piano was brought
into the ruined old chapel of the ancient nunnery, about which so many
romantic Rhenish legends cluster. Liszt gave a display of his wonderful
powers to the delighted multitude, and the long-deserted hall of
Nonneworth chapel, which for many years had only heard the melancholy
call of the owl, resounded with the most magnificent music. Finally
the procession with Liszt at the head marched to the steamboat, and the
vessel glided over the bosom of the Rhine amid the dazzling glare of
fireworks and to the music of singing and instruments. All Cologne was
assembled to meet them, and Liszt was carried on the shoulders of his
frantic admirers to his hotel.
In common with all other great musicians, Liszt has throughout life been
a reverential admirer of the genius of Beethoven, an isolated force
in music without peer or parallel. In his later years Liszt bitterly
reproached himself because, in the vanity and impetuosity of his youth,
he had dared to take liberties with the text of the Beethoven sonatas.
Many interesting facts in Liszt's life connect themselves, directly
or indirectly, with Beethoven. Among these is worthy of mention our
artist's part in the Beethoven festival at Bonn in 1845, organized to
celebrate the erection of a colossal bronze statue. The enterprise had
been languishing for a long time, when Liszt promptly declared he
would make up the deficiency single-handed, and this he did with great
celerity. In an incredibly short time the money was raised, and the
commission put in the hands of the sculptor Hilbnel, of Dresden, one of
the foremost artists of Germany.
The programme for the celebration was drawn up by Liszt and Dr. Spohr,
who were to be the joint conductors of the festival music. A thousand
difficulties intervened to embarrass the organization of the affair,
the jealousies of prominent singers, who revolted against the
self-effacement they would needs undergo, a certain truly German
parsimony in raising the money for the expenses, and the envious
littleness of certain great composers and musicians, who feared that
Liszt would reap too much glory from the prominence of the part he
had taken in the affair, But Liszt's energy had surmounted all these
obstacles, when finally, only a month before the festival, which was
to take place in August, it was discovered that there was no suitable
Pesthalle in Bonn. The committee said, "What if the affair should not
pay expenses? would they not be personally saddled with the debt?" Liszt
promptly answered that, if the proceeds were not sufficient, he himself
would pay the cost of the building. The architect of the Cologne
Cathedral was placed at the head of the work, a waste plot of ground
selected, the trees grubbed up, timber fished up from one of the great
Rhine rafts, and the Festhalle rose with the swiftness of Aladdin's
palace. The erection of the statue of Beethoven at his birthplace,
and the musical celebration thereof in August, 1845, one of the most
interesting events of its kind that ever occurred, must be, for the most
part, attributed to the energy and munificence of Franz Liszt. Great
personages were present from all parts of Europe, among them King
William of Prussia and Queen Victoria of England. Henry Chorley, who
has given a pretty full description of the festival, says that Liszt's
performance of Beethoven's concerto in E flat was the crowning glory
of the festival, in spite of the richness and beauty of the rest of the
programme. "I must lastly commemorate, as the most magnificent piece of
piano-forte playing I ever heard, Dr. Liszt's delivery of the concerto
in E flat.... Whereas its deliverer restrained himself within all the
limits that the most sober classicist could have prescribed, he still
rose to a loftiness, in part ascribable to the enthusiasm of time and
place, in part referable to a nature chivalresque, proud, and poetic in
no common degree, which I have heard no other instrumentalist attain....
The triumph in the mind of the executant sustained the triumph in the
idea of the compositions without strain, without spasm, but with a
breadth and depth and height such as made the genius of the executant
approach the genius of the inventor.... There are players, there are
poets; and as a poet Liszt was possibly never so sublimely or genuinely
inspired as in that performance, which remains a bright and precious
thing in the midst of all the curiously parti-colored recollections of
the Beethoven festival at Bonn."
In 1846, among Liszt's other musical experiences, he played in concerts
with Berlioz throughout Austria and Southern Germany. The impetuous
Osechs and Magyars showed their hot Tartar blood in the passion of
enthusiasm they displayed. Berlioz relates that, at his first concert at
Pesth, he performed his celebrated version of the "Rákóczy March," and
there was such a furious explosion of excitement that it wellnigh put an
end to the concert. At the end of the performance Berlioz was wiping the
perspiration from his face in the little room off the stage, when the
door burst open, and a shabbily dressed man, his face glowing with a
strange fire, rushed in, throwing himself at Berlioz's feet, his eyes
brimming with tears. He kissed the composer over and over again, and
sobbed out brokenly: "Ah, sir! Me Hungarian... poor devil... not
speak French... _un, poco l'taliano_.... Pardon... my ecstasy... Ah!
understand your cannon... Yes! yes! the great battle... Germans, dogs!"
Then, striking great blows with his fists on his chest, "In my heart I
carry you... A Frenchman, revolutionist... know how to write music for
revolutions." At a supper given after the performance, Berlioz tells
us Liszt made an inimitable speech, and got so gloriously be-champagned
that it was with great difficulty that he could be restrained from
pistolling a Bohemian nobleman, at two o'clock in the morning, who
insisted that he could carry off more bottles under his belt than Liszt.
But the latter played at a concert next day at noon "assuredly as he had
never played before," says Berlioz.
Before passing from that period of Liszt's career which was distinctly
that of the virtuoso, it is proper to refer to the unique character of
the enthusiasm which everywhere followed his track like the turmoil of
a stormy sea. Europe had been familiar with other great players, many of
them consummate artists, like Hummel, Henri Herz, Czerny, Kalkbrenner,
Field, Moscheles, and Thalberg, the most brilliant name of them all. But
the feeling which these performers aroused was pale and passionless
in comparison with that evoked by Franz Liszt. This was not merely the
outcome of Liszt as a player and musician, but of Liszt as a man. The
man always impressed people as immeasurably bigger than what he did,
great as that was. His nature had a lavishness that knew no bounds. He
lived for every distinguished man and beautiful woman, and with every
joyous thing. He had wit and sympathy to spare for gentle and simple,
and his kindliness was lavished with royal profusion on the scum as well
as the salt of the earth. This atmosphere of personal grandeur radiated
from him, and invested his doings, musical and otherwise, with something
peculiarly fine and fascinating. And then as a player Liszt rose above
his mates as something of a different genius, a different race, a
different world, to every one else who has ever handled a piano. He is
not to be considered among the great composers, also pianists, who have
merely treated their instrument as an interpreting medium, but as a
poet, who executively employed the piano as his means of utterance and
material for creation. In mere mechanical skill, after every one else
has ended, Liszt had still something to add, carrying every man's
discovery further. If he was surpassed by Thalberg in richness of sound,
he surpassed Thalberg by a variety of tone of which the redoubtable
Viennese player had no dream. He had his delicate, light, freakish
moods in which he might stand for another Chopin in qualities of fancy,
sentiment, and faëry brilliancy. In sweep of hand and rapidity of
finger, in fire and fineness of execution, in that interweaving of
exquisite momentary fancies where the work admits, in a memory so vast
as to seem almost superhuman; in that lightning quickness of view,
enabling him to penetrate instantaneously the meaning of a new
composition, and to light it up properly with its own inner spirit (some
touch of his own brilliancy added); briefly, in a mastery, complete,
spontaneous, enjoying and giving enjoyment, over every style and school
of music, all those who have heard Liszt assert that he is unapproached
among players and the traditions of players.
In a letter from Berlioz to Liszt, the writer gives us a vivid idea of
the great virtuoso's playing and its effects. Berlioz is complaining of
the difficulties which hamper the giving of orchestral concerts.
After rehearsing his mishaps, he says: "After all, of what use is such
information to you? You can say with confidence, changing the mot of
Louis XIV, '_L'orchestre, c'est moi; le chour, c'est moi; le chef
c'est encore moi_.' My piano-forte sings, dreams, explodes, resounds;
it defies the flight of the most skillful forms; it has, like the
orchestra, its brazen harmonies; like it, and without the least
preparation, it can give to the evening breeze its cloud of fairy chords
and vague melodies. I need neither theatre, nor box scene, nor much
staging. I have not to tire myself out at long rehearsals. I want
neither a hundred, fifty, nor twenty players. I do not even need any
music. A grand hall, a grand pianoforte, and I am master of a grand
audience. I show myself and am applauded; my memory awakens, dazzling
fantasies grow beneath my fingers. Enthusiastic acclamations answer
them. I sing Schubert's "Ave Maria," or Beethoven's "Adelaida" on the
piano, and all hearts tend toward me, all breasts hold their breath....
Then come luminous bombs, the banquet of this grand firework, and the
cries of the public, and the flowers and the crowns that rain around
the priest of harmony, shuddering on his tripod; and the young beauties,
who, all in tears, in their divine confusion kiss the hem of his
cloak; and the sincere homage drawn from serious minds and the feverish
applause torn from many; the lofty brows that bow down, and the narrow
hearts, marveling to find themselves expanding '.... It is a dream, one
of those golden dreams one has when one is called Liszt or Paganini."
That such a man as this, brilliant in wit, extravagant in habit and
opinion, courted for his personal fascination by every one greatest in
rank and choicest in intellect from his prodigious youth to his ripe
manhood, should suddenly cease from display at the moment when his
popularity was at its highest, when no rival was in being, is a
remarkable trait in Dr. Franz Liszt's remarkable life. But this he did
in 1849, by settling in Weimar as conductor of the court theatre, his
age then being thirty-eight years.