"Nothing is easier than to estimate Liszt the pianist, nothing more
difficult than to estimate Liszt the composer. As to Liszt the pianist,
old and young, conservatives and progressives, not excepting the
keyboard specialists, are perfectly agreed that he was unique,
unsurpassed, and unsurpassable," says Professor Niecks. "As to
Liszt the composer, on the other hand, opinions differ widely and
multifariously--from the attribution of superlative genius to the
denial of the least talent. This diversity arises from partisanship,
individuality of taste, and the various conceptions formed of the
nature of creative power. Those, however, who call Liszt a composer
without talent confess themselves either ignorant of his achievements,
or incapable of distinguishing good from bad and of duly apportioning
praise and blame. Those, on the other hand, who call Liszt a creative
genius should not omit to observe and state that his genius was
qualitatively unlike the genius of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn,
and Schumann. With him the creative impulse was, in the main, and, as
a rule, an intellectual impulse. With the great masters mentioned, the
impulse was of a general origin, all the faculties co-operating. While
with them the composition was always spontaneous, being, however
great the travail, a birth, not a making; with Liszt it was often
reflective, the solution of a problem, an experiment, a caprice,
a defiance of conventional respectability, or a device for the
dumfounding and electrification of the gaping multitude. In short,
Liszt was to a larger extent inventive than creative. The foregoing
remarks do not pretend to be more than a suggestive attempt at
explaining the inexplicable differences of creative power. That Liszt
could be spontaneous and in the best sense creative, he has proved by
whole compositions, and more frequently by parts of compositions. That
has to be noted; as well as that his love of experimenting and scorn
for the familiar, not to mention the commonplace, led him often to
turn his back on the beautiful and to embrace the ugly.
"As a composer of pianoforte music, Liszt's merits are more generally
acknowledged than as a composer of any other kind. Here indeed his
position is a commanding one. We should be obliged to regard him with
respect, admiration, and gratitude, even if his compositions were
aesthetically altogether a failure. For they incorporate an original
pianoforte style, a style that won new resources from the instrument,
and opened new possibilities to the composer for it, and the player on
it. The French Revolution of 1830 aroused Liszt from a state of
lethargy. A year after this political revolution, there occurred an
event that brought about in him an artistic revolution. This event was
the appearance of Paganini in Paris. The wonderful performances of the
unique violin virtuoso revealed to him new ideas. He now began to form
that pianoforte style which combined, as it were, the excellences of all
the other instruments, individually and collectively. Liszt himself
called the process "the orchestration of the pianoforte." But before the
transformation could be consummated, other influences had to be brought
to bear on the architect. The influence of Chopin, who appeared in Paris
soon after Paganini, must have been great, but was too subtle and
partial to be easily gauged. It is different with Berlioz, whose
influence on Liszt was palpable and general, affecting every branch of
his art-practice. Thalberg has at least the merit of having by his
enormous success in 1836 stimulated Liszt to put forth his whole
strength.
"The vast mass of Liszt's pianoforte compositions is divisible first
into two classes--the entirely original compositions, and the
compositions based to a more or less extent on foreign matter. The
latter class consist of transcriptions of songs (Schubert, Beethoven,
Mendelssohn, Franz, etc.), symphonies and overtures (Berlioz, Beethoven,
Rossini, Wagner, etc.), and operatic themes (from Rossini and Bellini
to Wagner and Verdi), and of fifteen Hungarian rhapsodies; the former
consists of studies, brilliant virtuosic pieces, musical poems, secular
and sacred, picturesque, lyrical, etc. (such as Annees de Pelerinage,
Harmonies, poetiques et religieuses, Consolations, the legends, St.
Francois d'Assise: La Predication aux oiseaux, and St. Francois de Paule
marchant sur les flots, etc.), and one work in sonata form, but not the
conventional sonata form. Although not unfrequently leaving something to
be desired in the matter of discretion, his transcriptions of songs are
justly famous masterpieces. Marvellous in the reproduction of orchestral
effects are the transcriptions of symphonies and overtures. The operatic
transcriptions (Illustrations, Fantasies), into which the _geistreiche_
Liszt put a great deal of his own, do not now enjoy the popularity they
once enjoyed; the present age has lost some of its love for musical
fireworks and the tricking-out and transmogrification by an artist of
other artists' ideas. The Hungarian Rhapsodies, on the other hand, which
are still more fantasias on the adopted matter than the operatic
transcriptions, continue to be favourites of the _virtuosi_ and the
public.
"As to the original compositions, they are very unequal in artistic
value. Many of them, however, are undoubtedly of the greatest beauty,
and stand whatever test may be applied to them. No one would think of
numbering with these exquisite perfect things the imposing sonata. It
cannot be placed by the side of the sonatas of Beethoven, whose ideal
and formative power Liszt lacked. Nevertheless it is impossible for the
unprejudiced not to recognise in it a noble effort of a highly-gifted
and ardently-striving mind. Technically, instead of three or four
self-contained separate movements, we have there a long uninterrupted
series of continuous movements, in which, however, we can distinguish
three complexes corresponding to the three movements of the orthodox
sonata. The Andante Sostenuto and Quasi Adagio form the simpler middle
complex. Although some of the features of the orthodox sonata structure
are discernible in Liszt's works, most of them are absent from it or
irrecognisably veiled. The most novel and characteristic features
are the unity and the evolution by metamorphosis of the thematic
material--that is to say, the motives of the first complex reappear in
the following ones, and are metamorphosed not only in the later but also
in the first. Nothing could characterise the inequality of Liszt's
compositions better than the fact that it is possible to draw up a
programme of them wholly irreproachable, admirable, and delightful, and
equally possible to draw up one wholly objectionable, abhorrent, and
distressful. All in all, Liszt is a most remarkable and interesting and,
at the same time, an epoch-making personality, one that will remain for
long yet a living force in music, and for ever a striking figure in the
history of the art."