But you need not fear that I am "giving up American standards" because I reverence Liszt so boundlessly. Everything is topsy-turvy in Europe according to our moral ideas, and they don't have what we call "men" over here. But they do have artists that we cannot approach! It is as a Master in Art that I look at and write of Liszt, and his mere presence is to his pupils such stimulus and joy, that when I leave him I shall feel I have left the best part of my life behind!
CHAPTER XX.
Liszt's Compositions. His Playing and Teaching of Beethoven.
His "Effects" in Piano-playing. Excursion
to Jena. A New Music Master.
WEIMAR, July 24, 1873.
Liszt is going away to-day. He was to have left several days ago, but the Emperor of Austria or Russia (I don't know which), came to visit the Grand Duke, and of course Liszt was obliged to be on hand and to spend a day with them. He is such a grandee himself that kings and emperors are quite matters of course to him. Never was a man so courted and spoiled as he! The Grand Duchess herself frequently visits him. But he never allows anyone to ask him to play, and even she doesn't venture it. That is the only point in which one sees Liszt's sense of his own greatness; otherwise his manner is remarkably unassuming.
Liszt will be gone until the middle of August, and I shall be thankful to have a few weeks of repose, and to be able to study more quietly. With him one is at high pressure all the time, and I have gained a good many more ideas from him than I can work up in a hurry. In fact, Liszt has revealed to me an entirely new idea of piano-playing. He is a wonderful composer, by the way, and that is what I was unprepared for in him. His oratorio of Christus was brought out here this summer, and many strangers and celebrities came to hear it, Wagner among others. It was magnificent, and one of the noblest, and decidedly the grandest oratorio that I ever heard. I've never had time to write home about it, for I felt that it required a dissertation in itself to do it justice. I wish it could be performed in Boston, for his orchestral and choral works, I am sorry to say, make their way very slowly in Germany. "Liszt helped Wagner," said he to me, sadly, "but who will help Liszt? though, compared with Opera it is as much harder for Oratorio to conquer a place as it is for a pianist to achieve success when compared to a singer." So he feels as if things were against him, though his heart and soul are so bound up in sacred music, that he told me it had become to him "the only thing worth living for." He really seems to care almost nothing for his piano-playing or for his piano compositions.
And yet, what beauty is there in those compositions! In Berlin I had always been taught that Liszt was a would-be composer, that he could not write a melody, that he had no originality, and that his compositions were merely glitter to dazzle the eyes of the public. How unjust and untrue have I found all these assertions to be! Here I have an opportunity of hearing his piano works en masse, and day by day (since all the young artists are playing them), and my previous ideas have been entirely reversed. If Liszt is anything, he is original. One can see that at a glance, simply by imagining his music taken out. Where is there anything that would fill its place? When artists wish to make an "effect" and stir up the public—"to fuse the leaden thousands," as Chopin expressed it—what do they play? Liszt!—Not only is his music brilliant—not only does he pour this wealth of pearls and diamonds down the key-board, but his pieces rise to great climaxes, are grandiose in style, overleap all boundaries, and whirl you away with the vehemence of passion. Then what lightness of touch in the lesser morceaux, where he is often the acme of tenderness, grace and fairy-like sportiveness, while in the melancholy ones, what subtle feeling after the emotions curled up in the remote corners of the heart! They are so rich in harmony, so weird, so wild, that when you hear them you are like a sea-weed cast upon the bosom of the ocean. And then what could be more deep and poetic than Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert's and Wagner's songs? They are altogether exquisite. Finally, Liszt's compositions stand the severest test of merit. They wear well. You can play them a long time and never weary of them. In short, they embrace every element except the classic, and the question is, whether these airy or intense ideas that appeal to you through their veils of shimmer and sheen are not a sort of classics in their own way!
Liszt's Christus is arranged for piano for four hands, and I wish I had it, and also Bülow's great edition of Beethoven's sonatas—Oh! you cannot conceive anything like Liszt's playing of Beethoven. When he plays a sonata it is as if the composition rose from the dead and stood transfigured before you. You ask yourself, "Did I ever play that?" But it bores him so dreadfully to hear the sonatas, that though I've heard him teach a good many, I haven't had the courage to bring him one. I suppose he is sick of the sound of them, or perhaps it is because he feels obliged to be conscientious in teaching Beethoven!
When one of the young pianists brings Liszt a sonata, he puts on an expression of resignation and generally begins a half protest which he afterward thinks better of.—"Well, go on," he will say, and then he proceeds to be very strict. He always teaches Beethoven with notes, which shows how scrupulous he is about him, for, of course, he knows all the sonatas by heart. He has Bülow's edition, which he opens and lays on the end of the grand piano. Then as he walks up and down he can stop and refer to it and point out passages, as they are being played, to the rest of the class. Bülow probably got many of his ideas from Liszt. One day when Mr. Orth was playing the Allegro of the Sonata Op. 110, Liszt insisted upon having it done in a particular way, and made him go back and repeat it over and over again. One line of it is particularly hard. Liszt made every one in the class sit down and try it. Most of them failed, which amused him.—"Ah, yes," said he, laughing, "when I once begin to play the pedagogue I am not to be outdone!" and then he related as an illustration of his "pedagogism" a little anecdote of a former pupil of his, now an eminent artist. "I liked young M. very much," said he. "He played beautifully, but he was inclined to be lazy and to take things easily. One morning he brought me Chopin's E minor concerto, and he rather skimmed over that difficult passage in the middle of the first movement as if he hadn't taken the trouble really to study it. His execution was not clean. So I thought I would give him a lesson, and I kept him playing those two pages over and over for an hour or two until he had mastered them. His arms must have been ready to break when he got through! At the next lesson there was no M. I sent to know why he did not appear. He replied that he had been out hunting and had hurt his arm so that he could not play. At the lesson following he accordingly presented himself with his arm in a sling. But I always suspected it was a stratagem on his part to avoid playing, and that nothing really ailed him. He had had enough for one while," added Liszt, with a mischievous smile.
On Monday I had a most delightful tête-à-tête with Liszt, quite by chance. I had occasion to call upon him for something, and, strange to say, he was alone, sitting by his table and writing. Generally all sorts of people are up there. He insisted upon my staying a while, and we had the most amusing and entertaining conversation imaginable. It was the first time I ever heard Liszt really talk, for he contents himself mostly with making little jests. He is full of esprit. We were speaking of the faculty of mimicry, and he told me such a funny little anecdote about Chopin. He said that when he and Chopin were young together, somebody told him that Chopin had a remarkable talent for mimicry, and so he said to Chopin, "Come round to my rooms this evening and show off this talent of yours." So Chopin came. He had purchased a blonde wig ("I was very blonde at that time," said Liszt), which he put on, and got himself up in one of Liszt's suits. Presently an acquaintance of Liszt's came in, Chopin went to meet him instead of Liszt, and took off his voice and manner so perfectly, that the man actually mistook him for Liszt, and made an appointment with him for the next day—"and there I was in the room," said Liszt. Wasn't that remarkable?