LISZT.
FRANZ LISZT.
Born October 22, 1811, at Raiding, Hungary.
Died July 31, 1886, at Bayreuth.
Unquestionably, Liszt was one of the most interesting personalities of
musical history. This began to show itself in his early childhood.
Born at Raiding in Hungary, the boy had piano lessons at the age of
six, his father having been a good musician himself, playing easily and
well upon the piano and many other instruments. At the age of nine the
boy appeared in concert with such success that, after a repetition of
the concert in a neighboring town, the great Hungarian magnates, Prince
Esterhazy at their head, united in providing a stipend of six hundred
gulden yearly for his proper education. Thereupon Liszt's father
resigned his position and attended scrupulously to his son, removing to
Vienna and placing him under the teaching of the famous writer of
études, Czerny. Liszt was now ten years old, and for two years he
studied in Vienna. At the end of this period a farewell concert was
given, in which the boy played with such astonishing power that
Beethoven, who was present, came upon the stage and embraced and kissed
him at the close of the concert.
[Illustration: Franz Liszt]
Liszt was now taken to Paris, with the intention of entering him at the
Conservatory. But Cherubini, who was then head of the institution, was
not favorable to gifted children, and admission was refused him on the
ground of his being a foreigner. Accordingly Liszt went on by himself,
but entered upon thorough private lessons in counterpoint and
instrumentation from Paer and Reicha. He attracted attention in Paris
at once, his princely letters of introduction giving him admission in
circles where a common person could never enter; once entered, his own
genius and fascinating personality did the rest. Liszt seems to have
been of a very fine and sincere nature, genial, charming in
conversation, having plenty of wit as well as sentiment; entirely free
from jealousy, yet most likely feeling within himself powers which as
yet had not come to expression. He was singularly pure in character
and a universal favorite of women as well as men. In 1824 he made his
first concert journey to England, and he played everywhere in France
and in parts of Germany. In 1827 his father died, and the boy now had
the responsibility of supporting his mother. Accordingly he continued
to make his home in Paris, and occupied a part of his time in teaching.
At this time he was in the habit of playing such concert numbers as the
Weber "Invitation to the Dance,"--with perhaps a few cadenzas of his
own, but mainly in the original form,--the Concertstücke of Weber, and
now and then a sonata of Beethoven. One of his favorite numbers was a
sonata by Czerny, and we find a letter in which he says, substantially
(I quote from memory): "Dear Master: I wish you would write me another
sonata, for nothing pleases so well as the one you formerly wrote for
me."
Liszt does not appear to have entered upon any course as pianist which
could be called original or marking out a new path until after Paganini
came to Paris, in 1831. This wonderful genius performed the most
astonishing and unheard-of things upon the violin. More than a year
before this time Robert Schumann had heard him in Milan, and was
already beginning to try to do for the piano some of the things which
Paganini did upon the violin, in his famous "Studies after Paganini."
Paganini's appearance in Paris set the town on fire, musically, and for
some time all attention was centered upon him, to the neglect even of
such well-tried favorites as Liszt had by this time become. This fact
and the inspiration of his novel playing inspired Liszt to new efforts
on his own behalf, and he now entered upon the career of original
mastery of the pianoforte and the new style which from this time
characterized his works. It is probable that some of his famous
"Studies for Transcendent Execution" date from this period, but as he
rewrote them twice afterward, it is not possible now to say which ones,
or to trace the steps by which he arrived at the many new effects in
piano playing which later came from his pen in such astonishing and
epoch-marking number.
Berlioz, the father of program music, came back from his residence in
Italy in 1833, and brought with him his fantastic symphony, "Episodes
in the Life of an Artist." This work Liszt set for the piano, and, if
I am right, it was the beginning of the enormous number of
transcriptions of orchestral works for piano which are to be found in
his works. Liszt had already made a certain mark as composer, his
operetta of "Don Sancho" having been produced in 1825.
When Liszt turned his serious attention to composition, which he must
have done about this time, he entered earnestly into the path of the
so-called "music of the future," although this term had not then been
invented. Berlioz had shown himself very bold in his modulations, and
the learned Fétis had advocated the closer association of keys which
distinguishes the harmonic practice of Richard Wagner from the rules of
the classic school. So it was with two fixed ideas that Liszt began to
write. First (from Berlioz), that music ought to signify something,
adhere more or less closely to a poetic or imaginative program; and,
second, that in trying to do this, one might go in any direction needed
for the desired tonal effect. Meanwhile, upon the keyboard of the
piano he had the individuality of manner which had been developed much
sooner, and which was now taking on an astonishing range. Add to these
influences the ideas of individuality and human freedom which were in
the air, and we need not wonder that the talent of this great artist
now blossomed out with such luxuriance that its fragrance filled the
world.
It was in 1834 that Liszt's first marriage took place, or as soon after
as circumstances warranted. The young and brilliant Countess D'Agoult,
wearied with a tyrannic and unsympathetic husband, left him and placed
herself under the care of Liszt. They lived during the next three
years in Geneva, in a semi-private manner, and here also Liszt
continued his studies and experiments. Then, in 1836, he entered upon
his great career as performing artist, when he astonished Europe from
one end to the other by playing the piano in a manner previously
unheard of. His art had everything in it. He had enormous facility,
his very long hand giving him the same kind of mastery over technical
difficulties that Paganini had upon the finger-board of the violin;
and, while indulging in long stretches of pianissimo, he diversified
his performances by climaxes of prodigious power, under which for a
long time piano hammers gave way, so that often there were three or
four grand pianos upon the stage, and as soon as one was knocked out in
the melée another was rolled forward to be sacrificed in turn. After a
few years the piano-makers found ways of strengthening the actions, so
that nowadays such a thing as a hammer breaking in a concert never
occurs.
In 1839 Liszt did one of those daring things which hardly any other
musician has ever done. Hearing that the committee in charge of
raising funds for a Beethoven monument at Bonn had found themselves
making little or no headway, Liszt wrote them offering to raise the
entire missing sum himself. This he did, and in 1847, I think it was,
he himself conducted the musical festival with which the monument was
dedicated, himself playing the Fifth Concerto of Beethoven in a manner
which Berlioz characterized gloriously in his letters from Bonn to the
Paris "Journal des Débats."
In this same year Liszt entered upon the restful period of his life in
accepting the position of musical director at Weimar, where he lived
and kept up a sort of musical court until 1861, and at intervals
afterward. In the exercise of his duties here he was able to accept
the manuscript of Wagner's "Lohengrin" when that hot-headed young
musician had gotten himself mixed up in the revolution of 1848 at
Dresden, and Liszt produced the work at Weimar in 1850. From that time
forward Liszt was the mouthpiece of the new school, or rather he was a
sort of godfather to it, ministering to Wagner's impecuniousness often
and again out of resources which were absurdly small when we consider
the rank of genius which the salary covered. Liszt's salary at Weimar
was about $1100 a year.
In order to appreciate Liszt's standpoint as pianoforte writer more
particularly, it is necessary for a moment to glance at his celebrated
contemporary, Thalberg. This artist, born one year later than Liszt,
was taught by Hummel and Sechter at Vienna, and in 1827 he made his
debut as pianist, exciting admiration by the beauty of his tone, his
unexampled equality of running work, and perhaps a little later through
an effect of which he was the inventor (at least for the
pianoforte)--that, namely, in which the melody is carried by the thumbs
in the middle range of the instrument, the long tones being sustained
by the pedal while the hands carry long and light running passages
across the full range of the instrument. The real inventor of this
effect was Parish-Alvars, a great virtuoso of the harp, who was born in
1808. Availing himself of the beautiful melodies of his native Wales,
and later of suitable operatic melodies of the Donizetti and Bellini
school, he created beautiful effects upon the harp, previously unheard,
by means of melodies and surrounding variations or accompanying
arabesques of runs, both arpeggios and scales. When Thalberg began to
be praised for discovering this device in piano playing there ensued a
long and acrimonious correspondence between him and Parish-Alvars, the
latter claiming the prior invention--and rightfully so.
Thalberg arrived in Paris in 1836, and for some time there was quite a
contest between him and Liszt for superiority of art. Thalberg sang a
melody beautifully, and his running work was of the most delightfully
clear and even description. He was entirely reposeful in his work,
never manifesting any uneasiness of bodily position, no matter what the
difficulty of his playing might be. Liszt, on the other hand, being of
an impassioned and nervous temperament, had a great deal more motion,
and in his brilliant climaxes he developed a strength which seemed
excessive to the aristocratic hearers constituting the main portion of
his audiences. Presently, however, the honors of the competition went
to Liszt, where they have ever since remained.
Liszt had the good fortune to divine the future course of piano
development, as also did Schumann. Both took for the strategic center
of the piano the principle of what has been called the "differential
touch," or discrimination in touch, by means of which not only long
passages of different kinds were discriminated from one another, as in
the Thalbergian melodies and their surrounding arabesques, but the
infinitely finer discriminations which take place within the phrase,
and especially in chord playing, where at least one tone of the chord
belongs to the melodic thread, and as such receives an emphasis, or at
least a distinctness of delivery, to which the remainder of the chord
has no claim whatever. Moreover, while Thalberg employed the
pedal,--and it was, in fact, an indispensable condition of the effect
of his pieces,--he did not rightly consider what would be the effect
when the piano should be developed to a sonority and continuance of
vibration which in his time it did not have. Schumann and Liszt
recognized the inner significance of the pedal, and wrote their works
with reference to what we might call perhaps a sort of pianoforte
chiaro-oscuro (luminous-indistinctness), which inevitably follows when
the pedal is rapidly employed in quickly moving chords. In many of the
Schumann pieces this is one of the most notable elements of the tonal
beauty, and it is the underlying condition of the successful
performance of nearly or quite all of the great Liszt transcriptions.
Thus, in the course of the thirty years or more over which his activity
as composer extended, Liszt not only inaugurated new principles of
playing, but brought them to perfection himself, and illustrated them
in a thousand ways in his voluminous works; and, through the charm of
his personality and his pleasure in contact with young and promising
genius, became the master and the forming influence of all the concert
pianists who came upon the stage previous to his death.
No periods can be safely marked in the creative career of Liszt, at
least not in so far as relates to the pianoforte. In his "Studies for
Transcendent Execution," which appear to have been first written about
1836, advanced principles of playing are illustrated as fully as any
that meet us later; and in the first of his serious transcriptions of
orchestral works for piano,--the "Fantastic Symphony" of Berlioz,--he
set himself as carefully to reproduce upon the piano the orchestral
work as he did in his famous transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies
and the later things of Wagner. But, while creative periods can not be
affirmed with certainty, there are differences of style. In some of
his works he indulges in a variety of piano-playing additions having no
essential, or indeed suitable, relation to the musical matter which he
purports to be illustrating. In others, on the contrary, he is
essentially simple, loyal, and scrupulous to the last degree. The
latter is true of his transcriptions of some of the Schubert songs,
especially such as "My Sweet Repose," "The Wanderer," "Hark! Hark! the
Lark," "The Erl King," "The Ave Maria," "Greeting to Spring," etc. In
many of his operatic fantasies, on the contrary, he puts in running
work, effect-cadenzas, and interpolations of various sorts. This is
illustrated, perhaps better than elsewhere, in his enormously difficult
fantasia upon melodies from Bellini's "Sonnambula," which for several
years was one of his own concert pieces. In this there is a very
difficult part where two melodies are going together, and a long and
difficult trill. Other examples of this kind of writing are found in
his "Trovatore" fantasias, his "Rigoletto," and the like.
After the production of "Lohengrin," Liszt seems to have entered upon a
more serious view of his art than he had previously held, and his works
later are generally more confined to musical considerations, and free
from display as such. Nevertheless, the "Rigoletto" fantasia can not
have been written prior to 1851, for it was in this year that the opera
was first produced.
In cataloguing the Liszt works according to the difficulty they present
to the piano player, it must first be noted that such has been the
advance during the fifty years since the early ones were produced, that
compositions which at their first appearance seemed stupendous to
ordinary pianists have now, thanks to education and the general advance
of art, become practicable to players of little beyond ordinary
capacity. In fact, there is a whole world of pieces by Liszt which are
more practicable to young players than most of the serious compositions
of Chopin. The latter composer demands, above everything else,
refinement and delicate finish; Liszt demands musical idea and effect,
and, while refinement adds greatly to the charm of the works, it is not
absolutely a _sine quâ non_. In other words, Liszt always wrote with
an eye to the stage, and with a certain largeness and ample scope of
treatment, in which breadth and genuine musical intention, combined
with a certain freedom upon the keyboard, are the main conditions of
success. From a modern standpoint, the most difficult of all the Liszt
works are, probably, his arrangement of the overture to Wagner's
"Tannhäuser,"--which he himself considered by far the most difficult
piece ever written,--the "Don Juan" fantasia, and perhaps also the
"Sonnambula."
It is, of course, extremely difficult to illustrate powers so varied
and ample as those of Liszt in any single program, unless we were to
confine ourselves to compositions of the most extreme difficulty, since
it is in these that he has shown most fully what he considers possible
upon the pianoforte. The following list, however, will afford a good
idea of his style, without making upon the player any demands which can
not be met by the common run of superior amateurs. At the same time,
in consequence of the variety of composers represented, the program
presents quite a variety.
PROGRAM.
"A Dream of Love." No. 3.
"Waldesrauschen."
"Consolation." No. 5.
Polonaise in E major.
Five Transcriptions from the songs of Schubert.
"The Wanderer."
"Greeting to Spring."
"My Sweet Repose."
"Hark! Hark! the Lark."
"The Erl King."
Four Transcriptions from Wagner and Paganini.
March and Chorus from "Tannhäuser."
Romance of the Evening Star. "Tannhäuser."
Spinning Song from "The Flying Dutchman."
"La Campanella." (Paganini.)
Concerto in E-flat. With second piano. (Optional.)
The first group of these pieces contains four numbers entirely original
with Liszt. The first one, "A Dream of Love," is No. 3 in a series of
nocturne-like compositions which are very melodious, picturesque, and
full of sentiment. At the same time, toward the end of this third
number there is one of those brilliant passages the opportunity for
which Liszt could never forego. The second piece on the list, "Forest
Murmurs," is a little on the line of the "Forest Murmurs" in Wagner's
"Siegfried," except that Liszt operates mainly in the upper range of
the piano, whereas Wagner busies himself for a long time with the lower
ranges of pitch. When this piece is done with sufficient delicacy, and
at the same time with adequate brilliancy and fervor, it produces a
most astonishing and gratifying effect. The next selection is one of a
set of six called "Consolations." These, again, are nocturne-like in
character, and the one here selected is so simple that no explanation
is necessary. The Polonaise in E major is one of the most brilliant
and satisfactory of the original pieces of Liszt for the piano. The
semi-martial chivalry of this style of composition is extremely well
reproduced, and while there is a long passage in A minor which requires
to be played rather discreetly to prevent its becoming tiresome, there
is some lovely cadenza work in the last part in a style thoroughly
original with Liszt.
If the player prefers one of the Hungarian rhapsodies, it might be
substituted for the Polonaise in E in this group. The Hungarian
rhapsodies are written some of them on original melodies in Hungarian
style, but most of them probably on well-known Hungarian Czardas. It
is difficult to speak with certainty on this subject, as Liszt has left
no indications as to which are original and which are quoted. To refer
to a very different composition in the same school, it may be mentioned
that the famous Hungarian dances of Brahms are composed upon melodies
given him by Remenyi, when both were young. These melodies were not
traditional Hungarian themes, but were improvised by Remenyi himself.
The next group of pieces consists entirely of transcriptions from
Schubert's songs. They are very varied in musical spirit and in manner
of treatment, but, with the exception of the long-continued succession
of octaves in "The Erl King,"--for which Schubert is responsible rather
than Liszt,--they are not very difficult for the player, and the
resources of the piano are used with the utmost discretion for
producing a musical effect.
In the third group of pieces we have several selections of the Wagner
transcriptions, beginning with the very brilliant march from
"Tannhäuser," which, however, should not be ended at the first climax,
but the intermezzo should be played, and so to the end. The "Romance
of the Evening Star" is one of those delightful melodies which it is
always a pleasure to hear. These selections conclude with the very
brilliant study after Paganini, "La Campanella." In case this should
not prove practicable for the player, a Liszt rhapsody might be
substituted or the Tarantelle from "Venice and Naples." The program
may be regarded as complete at this point, but if it happens to be
convenient to give one or more movements of the Concerto in E-flat, a
still different idea of Liszt's manner of writing will have been
gained. The Concerto in E-flat is very brilliant, but, excepting the
third movement, is not very difficult. There are few piano pieces in
the repertory which produce so much effect in proportion to the labor
of performing them as this. It would be possible to omit the third
movement and play the first, second, and fourth.