Liszt linked himself with Berlioz when he heard the Symphonie fantastique. He took up the cause of Berlioz and became his champion. But independently of Berlioz, Liszt was imbued with the Romantic Movement of 1830. To such a genius and man of the world who came in contact with all the great intellects of the day, it soon became natural to him to make art human and emotional.
Therefore in both his playing and his composition Liszt departed from the Classic ideals of an earlier period and became an expression of his own time. In his endeavor to depict and express emotions, ideas, scenes of nature and even events, he felt that the old Classic forms were suited only to music that was purely music and nothing else. In the new paths that the “Music of the Future” had made for itself a new form was needed to express sensations and ideas of a new age of keener observation, intense sentiment and passionate enthusiasm. Consequently Liszt invented the Symphonic Poem, in which the movements are not divided as in the regular Symphony but lead into one another.
In his orchestration Liszt followed Beethoven, Berlioz and Wagner. It is always rich and heavy and full of color. Liszt makes great use of the harp and his Hungarian blood shows itself in his marvellous and stirring rhythms.
“Concerning so prodigious an activity, so far-seeing an intelligence, so all-embracing a mind, so complete a musical organization, so ardent an imagination, so enthusiastic a nature, so unselfish a character, anything that may be said must seem inadequate.
“The spirit of Franz Liszt soared far above the petty meannesses of life. His influence has been great and far-reaching, and if he has left a priceless artistic legacy to the world, he has also given it a magnificent and unique example of benevolence and self-abnegation and realised to the fullest extent his own motto, Génie oblige!”
The third and greatest member of this remarkable trio, Richard Wagner, seems to have gathered up all that was best in the music that preceded him and having assimilated it in the crucible of his mind, gave it forth again, fresh, new and vital.
Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1803 and died in Venice, in 1883. His career as a musician began in 1833, after he had taken part in the Revolutionary politics of 1830.
His early life was spent in struggling with poverty and composing operas, which were not successful. He acquired greater fame as a conductor than as a composer. Called to be conductor of the Dresden Orchestra in 1842, he began his work by conducting works of Berlioz, who was then making a tour in Germany. (See page [251].) Berlioz speaks gratefully of Wagner’s “zeal and good will” in this matter and also of the success of Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman in Dresden.
The active part he took in Revolutionary politics offended the Court; and Wagner, compelled to flee, hastened to Liszt in Weimar. Liszt got him a passport under a fictitious name; and Wagner hurried to Paris and thence to Zürich, where he finished Lohengrin and sent it to Liszt to produce in Weimar.