HEINE ON LISZT.
“That such a restless head, driven and perplexed by all the needs and doctrines of his time, feeling the necessity of troubling himself about all the necessities of humanity, and eagerly sticking his nose into all the pots in which the good God brews the future, that Franz Liszt can be no still piano-forte player for tranquil townsfolks and good-natured nightcaps is self-evident. When he sits down at the piano, and has stroked his hair back over his forehead several times, and begins to improvise, he often storms away right madly over the ivory keys, and there rings out a wilderness of heaven-high thoughts, amid which, here and there, the sweetest flowers diffuse their fragrance, so that one is at once troubled and beatified, but troubled most.
“I confess to you, much as I love Liszt, his music does not operate agreeably upon my mind; the more so that I am a Sunday child and also see the specters which others only hear; since, as you know, at every tone which the hand strikes upon the key-board the corresponding tone-figure rises in my mind; in short, since music becomes visible to my inward eye. My brain still reels at the recollection of the concert in which I last heard Liszt play. It was in a concert for the unfortunate Italians, in the hotel of that beautiful, noble and suffering princess who so beautifully represents her material and her spiritual fatherland, to wit, Italy and Heaven. * * * * (You surely have seen her in Paris, that ideal form which yet is but the prison in which the holiest angel soul has been imprisoned. * * But this prison is so beautiful that every one lingers before it as if enchanted, and gazes at it with astonishment.) * * It was in a concert for the benefit of the unhappy Italians when I last heard Liszt, last winter, play, I know not what, but I could swear he varied upon themes from the Apocalypse. At first I could not quite distinctly see them, the four mystical beasts; I only heard their voices, especially the roaring of the lion and the screaming of the eagle. The ox with the book in his hand I saw clearly enough. Best of all he played the Valley of Jehosaphat. There were lists as at a tournament, and for spectators, the risen people, pale as the grave and trembling, crowded round the immense space. First galloped Satan into the lists, in black harness, on a milk-white steed. Slowly rode behind him, Death on his pale horse. At last Christ appeared, in golden armor, on a black horse, and with His holy lance He first thrust Satan to the ground, and then Death, and the spectators shouted.”
Heinrich Heine.