Franz Liszt

FRANZ LISZT

The Youthful Liszt
BY JAMES HUNEKER
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1911
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published September, 1911
TO HENRY T. FINCK
Génie oblige. —F. Liszt

Franz Liszt remarked to a disciple of his: Once Liszt helped Wagner, but who now will help Liszt? This was said in 1874, when Liszt was well advanced in years, when his fame as piano virtuoso and his name as composer were wellnigh eclipsed by the growing glory of Wagner—truly a glory he had helped to create. In youth, an Orpheus pursued by the musical Maenads of Europe, in old age Liszt was a Merlin dealing in white magic, still followed by the Viviens. The story of his career is as romantic as any by Balzac. And the end of it all—after a half century and more of fire and flowers, of proud, brilliant music-making—was tragical. A gentle King Lear (without the consolation of a Cordelia), following with resignation the conquering chariot of a man, his daughter's husband, who owed him so much, and, despite criticism, bravely acknowledged his debt, thus faithful to the end (he once declared that by Wagner he would stand or fall), Franz Liszt died a quarter of a century ago at Bayreuth, not as Liszt the Conqueror, but a world-weary pilgrim, petted and flattered when young, neglected as the star of Wagner arose on the horizon. If only Liszt could have experienced the success of poverty as did Wagner. But the usual malevolent fairy of the fable endowed him with all the gifts but poverty, and that capricious old Pantaloon, the Time-Spirit, had his joke in the lonesome latter years. As regards his place in the musical pantheon, this erst-while comet is now a fixed star, and his feet set upon the white throne. There is no longer a Liszt case; his music has fallen into critical perspective; but there is still a Liszt case, psychologically speaking. Whether he was an archangel of light, a Bernini of tones, or, as Jean-Christophe describes him, The noble priest, the circus-rider, neo-classical and vagabond, a mixture in equal doses of real and false nobility, is a question that will be answered according to one's temperament. That he was the captain of the new German music, a pianist without equal, a conductor of distinction, one who had helped to make the orchestra and its leaders what they are to-day; that he was a writer, a reformer of church music, a man of the noblest impulses and ideals, generous, selfless, and an artist to his fingertips—these are the commonplaces of musical history. As a personality he was an apparition; only Paganini had so electrified Europe. A charmeur , his love adventures border on the legendary; indeed, are largely legend. As amorous as a guitar, if we are to believe the romancers, the real Liszt was a man of intellect, a deeply religious soul; in middle years contemplative, even ascetic. His youthful extravagances, inseparable from his gipsy-like genius, and without a father to guide him, were remembered in Germany long after he had left the concert-platform. His successes, artistic and social—especially the predilection for him of princesses and noble dames—raised about his ears a nest of pernicious scandal-hornets. Had he not run away with Countess D'Agoult, the wife of a nobleman! Had he not openly lived with a married princess at Weimar, and under the patronage of the Grand Duke and Duchess and the Grand Duchess Maria Pawlowna, sister of the Czar of all the Russias! Besides, he was a Roman Catholic, and that didn't please such prim persons as Mendelssohn and Hiller, not to mention his own fellow-countryman, Joseph Joachim. Germany set the fashion in abusing Liszt. He had too much success for one man, and as a composer he must be made an example of; the services he rendered in defending the music of the insurgent Wagner was but another black mark against his character. And when Wagner did at last succeed, Liszt's share in the triumph was speedily forgotten. The truth is, he paid the penalty for being a cosmopolitan. He was the first cosmopolitan in music. In Germany he was abused as a Magyar, in Hungary for his Teutonic tendencies—he never learned his mother tongue—in Paris for not being French born; here one recalls the Stendhal case.