II

“The remembrance of his playing consoles me for being no longer young.”

This sentence, charmingly phrased as it is charming in sentiment,

could be uttered by no other than Camille Saint-Saëns. He wrote of

Liszt and, as the natural son of the Hungarian composer, musically

speaking, he is perhaps better qualified to speak of Liszt than most

critics; his adoration is perfectly excusable, for to him Liszt is

the protagonist of the school that threw off the fetters of classical

form only to hamper itself with the extravagances of the romantic.

They all came from Berlioz; Saint-Saëns’ violent protest to the

contrary; only this much may be urged in the latter’s favor: a great

movement like the romantic movement in music, painting and literature

appeared simultaneously in a half dozen places. It was in the air,

and catching. Goethe dismissed the whole movement in his usual Jovian

fashion, saying to Eckermann: “They all come from Châteaubriand,” and

this is a sound criticism for, in the writings of the author of The

Genius of Christianity and Atala may be found the germ-plasm of all

the artistic disorder; the fierce color, the bizarrerie, the morbid

extravagance, the introspective analysis--which in Amiel’s case

amounted almost to mania. Stendhal was the unwilling St. John of the

movement that captivated the powerful imagination of Franz Liszt, as it

later caused the orphic utterances of Richard Wagner.

Saint-Saëns sets great store on Liszt’s original compositions, and I am

sure when all the brilliant, empty operatic paraphrases and Hungarian

rhapsodies are forgotten, the true Liszt will shine more brightly. How

cheap and tinkling are these piano rhapsodies, and how the old bones

do rattle! We smile at the generation that could adore The Battle of

Prague, the Herz variations and Kalkbrenner’s fantasias but the next

generation will laugh at us for tolerating Liszt’s rhapsodies when

Brahms has written three such wonderful examples. Technically the

Liszt arrangements are excellent finger pieces. You may “show off”

with them and make much noise and a reputation for virtuosity that

would be shattered if a Bach fugue were selected as a test. One Chopin

mazourka contains more music than all of Liszt’s rhapsodies, which are

but overdressed pretenders to Magyar blood. Liszt’s pompous, affected

introductions, spun-out scales and transcendental technical feats are

all foreign to the wild, native simplicity of Hungarian folk-music.

I need not speak of Liszt’s admirable transcriptions of songs of

Schubert, Schumann and Franz, nor of his own original songs nor yet

of his three concertos for piano. All these are witnesses to the

man’s geniality, cleverness and charm. I wish to speak only of the

compositions for piano solo composed by Liszt, Ferencz of Raiding,

Hungaria. Many I salute with the Eljen of patriotic enthusiasm, and I

particularly delight in quizzing the Liszt-rhapsody fanatic as to his

knowledge of the études--those wonderful continuations of the Chopin

études--of his acquaintance with the Années de Pèlerinage, of the Valse

Oubliée, of the Valse Impromptu, of the Sonnets after Petrarch, of the

nocturnes, of the F sharp impromptu, of Ab-Irato--that étude of which

most pianists never heard--of the Apparitions, of the Legendes, of the

Ballades, of the mazourka in A major, of the Elegies, of the Harmonies

Poétiques, of the Concerto Patetico à la Burmeister, of many other

pieces that contain enough music to float into glory--as Philip Hale

would say--a half dozen piano composers at this fag-end of the century.

The eminently pianistic quality of Liszt’s original music commends

it to every pianist. Joseffy once said that the B minor sonata was

one of those compositions that played itself, it lay so beautifully

for the hand; and while I have not encountered many self-playing B

minor sonatas nor even many pianists who can attack the work in a

manner commensurate with its content, I am thoroughly convinced of the

wisdom of the great pianist’s remark. To me no work of Liszt, with

the possible exception of the studies, is as interesting as this same

fantaisie which masquerades in H moll as a sonata. Agreeing with Mr.

Krehbiel and Mr. Henderson, who declare that they cannot find a trace

of a sonata in the organic structure of this composition, and also with

those who declare this work to be an amplification of the old obsolete

form and that Liszt has simply taken Beethoven’s latest sonata period

as a starting point and made a plunge for futurity--agreeing absolutely

with these warring factions, and thus choking off the contingency of an

interesting argument, I repeat that I find the B minor sonata of Liszt

most fascinating music.

What a tremendously dramatic work it is! It certainly stirs the

blood--it is intense and it is complex. The opening bars are so truly

Lisztian.

The gloom, the harmonic haze out of which emerges that bold theme in

octaves, the leap from the G to the A sharp--how Liszt has made this

and the succeeding intervals his own! Power there is--sardonic power,

as in the opening phrase of the E flat concerto which is mocking,

cynical, but tremendous. How incisively the composer taps your

consciousness in the next theme of the sonata, with its four knocking

Ds! What follows is like a drama enacted in the nether-world. Is there

really a composer who paints the infernal, the macabre, better than

Liszt? Berlioz had the gift, so had Raff, so has Saint-Saëns, but thin,

sharp flames hover about the brass, wood and shrieking strings of

Liszt’s orchestra. The chorale, which is usually the meat of a Liszt

composition, soon appears and proclaims the composer’s religious belief

in powerful accents, and we are swept away in conviction until after

that burst in C, when comes the insincerity of it in the following

harmonic sequences. Then it is not real heart-whole belief, and after

the faint return of the opening motive, appears the sigh of sentiment,

of passion, of abandonment which engenders the notion that when Liszt

was not kneeling before a crucifix, he was before a woman. He dearly

loves to blend piety and passion in the most mystically-amorous

fashion, and in this sonata with the cantando espressivo in D, begins

some lovely music, secular in spirit, mayhap intended by its creator

for pyx and reredos.

But the rustle of silken attire is in every bar; sensuous imagery,

faint perfume of femininity lurks in each trill and cadence. Ah,

naughty Abbé, have a care! After all thy chorales and tonsures, thy

credos and sackcloth, wilt thou admit the Evil One in the guise of a

melody and in whose chromatic intervals lie dimpled cheek and sunny

tress; wilt thou allow her to make away with thy resolutions? Vade

retro, Sathanas! and it is done; the bold utterance so triumphantly

proclaimed at the outset is sounded with chordal pomp and power. The

hue and cry of diminished sevenths begins, and so this ruddy, moving

picture with its swirl of intoxicating colors goes kaleidoscopically

on. Again the devil tempts this musical St. Anthony, this time in

octaves and in A major, and he momentarily succumbs, but that good old

family chorale is heard again and if its orthodoxy is in spots faulty,

it serves its purpose, for the Evil One is routed and early piety

breaks forth in an alarming fugue which, like that domestic disease,

is short-winded. Another flank movement of the “ewig Weibliche,” this

time in the seductive key of B major, made mock of by the strong man of

music who, in the stretta quasi presto, views his early disorder with

grim and contrapuntal glee. He shakes it from him and in the triolen of

the bass, frames it as a picture to weep or rage over.

All this leads to a prestissimo finale of startling splendor.

Nothing more exciting is there in the literature of the piano. It

is brilliantly captivating, and Liszt the conqueror, Liszt the

magnificent, is stamped on every octave. What gorgeous swing and

how the very bases of the earth tremble at the sledge-hammer blows

from this cyclopean fist! Then follow a few bars of that very

Beethoven-like andante, a moving return of the early themes, and

silently the first lento descends to the subterranean depths whence it

emerged; then a true Liszt chord-sequence and a stillness in B major.

The sonata in B minor contains all of Liszt’s strength and weakness.

It is rhapsodic, it is too long, it is full of nobility, a drastic

intellectuality and sonorous brilliancy. To deny it a prominent place

in the repertory of piano music, were folly.

It is not my intention to claim your consideration for the rest of

Liszt’s original compositions. In the Années de Pèlerinage, redolent

of Virgilian meadows, with soft summer airs shimmering through every

bar, what is more delicious than the étude Au Bord d’une Source? It is

exquisitely idyllic. Surely in those years of pilgrimage Liszt garnered

much that was good and beautiful and without the taint of the French

salon or Continental concert platform.

Away from the glare of gaslight this extraordinary Hungarian patterned

after the noblest things of nature. In the atmosphere of salons of the

Papal Court and the public, Liszt was hardly so admirable a character.

Oh, I know of certain cries calling to heaven to witness that he was

anointed of the Lord! Pooh! if he had not had to cut and run to

sanctuary to escape two women we should never have heard of Liszt the

Abbé!

One penalty of genius is its pursuit by glossaries and gibes. Liszt

was no exception. Like Maeterlinck and Ibsen, he has had many things

read into his music; mysticism not being forgotten. Perhaps the best

estimate of him is the purely human one. He was made up of the usual

pleasing compound of faults and virtues, as is any distinguished man,

not in a book.

The Mephisto Valse from Lenau’s Faust, in addition to its biting, broad

humor and Satanic suggestiveness, contains one of the most voluptuous

episodes outside of a score by Wagner. That halting languorous

syncopated, valse-like theme in D flat is marvellously expressive, and

the poco allegretto seems to have struck the fancy of Wagner, who did

not hesitate to appropriate from his esteemed father-in-law when the

notion struck him.

He certainly considered Kundry Liszt-wise before fabricating her motif

for Parsifal. In the hands of a capable pianist the Mephisto Valse can

be made very effective. The twelve great études should be on the desk

of every student of advanced technique. So should the Waldesrauschen

and Gnomenreigen and I cannot sufficiently praise the three beautiful

Études de Concert. The ballades and legendes are becoming favorites at

recitals. The polonaise in E, when compared to the less familiar one

in C minor, seems banal. Liszt’s life was a sequence of triumphs, his

sympathies were boundless, he appreciated and even appropriated Chopin,

he unearthed Schumann’s piano music, he materially aided Wagner and

discovered Robert Franz; yet he had time for himself and his spiritual

nature was never quite submerged. I wish however that he had not

manufactured the rhapsodies and the Liszt pupil!