OSCAR COMMETTANT
Oscar Commettant, in one of his works, gives the following satirical sketch of Liszt in the height of his popularity in the Parisian concert rooms:
"A certain great pianist, who is as clever a manager as he is an admirable executant, pays women at a rate of 25 frs. per concert to pretend to faint away with pleasure in the middle of a fantasia taken at such a rapid pace that it would have been humanly impossible to finish it. The pianist abruptly left his instrument to rush to the assistance of the poor fainting lady, while everybody in the room believed that, but for that accident, the prodigious pianist would have completed the greatest of miracles. It happened one night that a woman paid to faint forgot her cue and fell fast asleep. The pianist was performing Weber's Concertstück. Reckoning on the fainting of this female to interrupt the finale of the piece, he took it in an impossible time. What could he do in such a perplexing cause? Stumble and trip like a vulgar pianist, or pretend to be stopped by a defective memory? No; he simply played the part which the faintress (excuse the word) ought to have acted, and fainted away himself. People crowded around the pianist, who had become doubly phenomenal through his electric execution, and his frail and susceptible organization. They carried him out into the greenroom. The men applauded as if they meant to bring down the ceiling; the women waved their handkerchiefs to manifest their enthusiasm, and the faintress, on waking, fainted, perhaps really, with despair of not having pretended to faint."