He had often played at concerts in the towns and villages about, and when there were visitors at the palace this fine, slim son of the bookkeeper was sent for to entertain them.
This attention kept ambition alive in the hearts of his parents, and after many misgivings they decided to hazard all and move to Vienna to give their boy the opportunities they felt he deserved.
The entire household effects being sold, the bookkeeper found he had nearly six hundred francs—one hundred fifty dollars. To this amount Prince Esterhazy added fifty dollars, and Hummel gave his mite, and with tears of regret at breaking up the home-nest, but with high hope, flavored by chill intervals of fear, the father, mother and boy started for Vienna.
Arriving in that city the distinguished Carl Czerny, pupil of Beethoven, was importuned to take the lad. Only the letter from Hummel secured the boy an audience, for Czerny was already overburdened with pupils. But when he had listened to the lad's playing, he consented to take him as a pupil, merely saying that he showed a certain degree of promise. It is sternly true that Czerny did not fully come into the Liszt faith until after that concert of April Thirteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-three, when Beethoven, ripe with years, crowded his way to the front and kissed the player on both cheeks, calling him "my son." Such a greeting from the great Master spoke volumes when we consider the lifelong aversion that Beethoven held toward "prodigies," and his disinclination to attend all concerts but his own.
And thus did Franz Liszt begin his professional pilgrimage, consecrated by the kiss of the Master.
Paris was the next step—to Paris, the musical and artistic center of the world. To win in Paris meant fame and fortune wherever he wished to exhibit his powers. The way the name of Franz Liszt swept through the fashionable salons of Paris is too well known to recount. Scarcely thirteen years of age, he played the most difficult pieces with peculiar precision and power. And his simple, boyish, unaffected manner—his total lack of self-consciousness—won him the affection of every mother-heart. He was fondled, feted, caressed, and took it all as a matter of course. He had not yet reached the age of indiscretion.
usic is a secondary sexual manifestation, just as are the songs of birds, their gay and gaudy plumage, the color and perfume of flowers that so delight us, and the luscious fruits that nourish us—all is sex. And then, do you not remember that expression of Renan's, "The unconscious coquetry of the flowers"? Without love there would be no poetry and no music. All the manifest beauty of earth is only Nature's nuptial decoration.
James Huneker, not always judicious, but a trifle more judicial than others that might be named, declares that two women, making a simultaneous attack upon the great composer, caused him to cut for sanctuary, and hence we have the Abbe Liszt, thus proving again that love and religion are twin sisters.