It is a thrice-told tale that several estimable Hungarian magnates
raised a purse for the boy, sent him with his father to Vienna, where he
studied the piano with the pedagogue Carl Czerny, that indefatigable
fabricator of finger-studies, and in theory with Salieri. He was
kissed by the aged Beethoven on the forehead--Wotan saluting young
Siegfried--though Schindler, _ami de_ Beethoven, as he dubbed himself,
denied this significant historical fact. But later Schindler pitched
into Liszt for his Beethoven interpretations, hotly swearing that they
were the epitome of unmusical taste. The old order changeth, though not
old prejudices. Liszt waxed in size, technique, wisdom. Soon he was
given up as hopelessly in advance of his teachers. Wherever he appeared
they hailed him as a second Hummel, a second Beethoven. And he
improvised. That settled his fate. He would surely become a composer. He
went to Paris, was known as _le petit Litz_, and received everywhere. He
became the rage, though he was refused admission to the Conservatoire,
probably because he displayed too much talent for a boy. He composed an
opera, Don Sancho, the score of which has luckily disappeared. Then an
event big with consequences was experienced by the youth--he lost his
father in 1827. (His mother survived her husband until 1866.) He gave up
concert performances as too precarious, and manfully began teaching in
Paris. The revolution started his pulse to beating, and he composed a
revolutionary symphony. He became a lover of humanity, a socialist, a
follower of Saint-Simon, even of the impossible Pere Prosper Enfantin.
His friend and adviser was Lamenais, whose Paroles d'un Croyant had
estranged him from Rome. A wonderful, unhappy man. Liszt read poetry and
philosophy, absorbed all the fashionable frenzied formulas and
associated with the Romanticists. He met Chopin, and they became as twin
brethren. Francois Mignet, author of A History of the French Revolution,
said to the Princess Cristina Belgiojoso of Liszt: "In the brain of this
young man reigns great confusion." No wonder. He was playing the piano,
composing, teaching, studying the philosophers, and mingling with
enthusiastic idealists who burnt their straw before they moulded their
bricks. As Francis Hackett wrote of the late Lord Acton, Liszt suffered
from "intellectual log-jam." But the current of events soon released
him.
[Illustration: Adam Liszt