"The remembrance of his playing consoles me for being no longer young."
This sentence, charmingly phrased, as it is charming in sentiment, could
have been written by no other than Camille Saint-Saens. He refers to
Liszt, and he is perhaps better qualified to speak of Liszt than most
musicians or critics. His adoration is perfectly comprehensible; to him
Liszt is the protagonist of the school that threw off the fetters of the
classical form (only to hamper itself with the extravagances of the
romantics). They all come from Berlioz, the violent protestation of
Saint-Saens to the contrary notwithstanding. However this much may be
urged in the favour of the Parisian composer; a great movement like the
romantic in music, painting, and literature simultaneously appeared in a
half dozen countries. It was in the air and evidently catching. Goethe
summed up the literary revolution in his accustomed Olympian manner,
saying to Eckermann: "They all come from Chateaubriand." This is sound
criticism; for in the writings of the author of Atala, and The Genius of
Christianity may be found the germ-plasm of all the later artistic
disorder; the fierce colour, bizarrerie, morbid extravagance,
introspective analysis--which in the case of Amiel touched a brooding
melancholy. Stendhal was the unwilling forerunner of the movement that
captivated the sensitive imagination of Franz Liszt, as it later
undoubtedly prompted the orphic impulses of Richard Wagner.
Saint-Saens sets great store on Liszt's original compositions, and I am
sure when the empty operatic paraphrases and rhapsodies are forgotten
the true Liszt will shine the brighter. How tinkling are the Hungarian
rhapsodies--now become cafe entertainment. And how the old bones do
rattle. We smile at the generation that could adore The Battle of
Prague, the Herz Variations, the Kalkbrenner Fantasias, but the next
generation will wonder at us for having so long tolerated this drunken
gipsy, who dances to fiddle and cymbalom accompaniment. He is too loud
for polite nerves. Technically, the Liszt arrangements are brilliant and
effective for dinner music. One may show off with them, make much noise
and a reputation for virtuosity, that would be quickly shattered if a
Bach fugue were selected as a text. One Chopin Mazurka contains more
music than all of the rhapsodies, which I firmly contend are but
overdressed pretenders to Magyar blood. Liszt's pompous introductions,
spun-out scales, and transcendental technical feats are not precisely in
key with the native wood-note wild of genuine Hungarian folk-music. A
visit to Hungary will prove this statement. Gustav Mahler was right in
affirming that too much gipsy has blurred the outlines of real Magyar
music.
I need not speak of Liszt's admirable transcriptions of songs by
Schubert, Schumann, Franz, Mendelssohn, and others; they served their
purpose in making publicly known these compositions and are witnesses to
the man's geniality, cleverness and charm. I wish only to speak of the
compositions for solo piano 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 Etudes--those wonderful continuations of the Chopin
studies--of his acquaintance with the Annees de Pelerinage, of the Valse
Oubliee, of the Valse Impromptu, of the Sonnets after Petrarch, of the
Nocturnes, of the F-sharp Impromptu of Ab-Irato--that etude of which
most pianists never heard; of the Apparitions, the Legends, the
Ballades, the brilliant Mazurka, the Elegier, the Harmonies Pestiques et
Religieuses, or the Concerto Patetico _a la_ Burmeister, and of numerous
other pieces that contain enough music to float into glory--as Philip
Hale would say--a dozen composers in this decade of the new century. [It
was Max Bendix who so wittily characterised the A-major concerto as
"Donizetti with Orchestra." Liszt was very often Italianate.]
[Illustration: _After a lithograph by Kriehuber in the N. Y. Public
Library_