Did Wagner mean it all? At least, he couldn't deny what is simply a matter of dates. Liszt preceded Wagner. Otherwise how explain that yawning chasm between Lohengrin and Tristan? Liszt, an original stylist and a profounder musical nature than Berlioz, had intervened. Nevertheless Liszt learned much from Berlioz, and it is quite beside the mark to question the greater creative power of Wagner over both the Frenchman and the Hungarian. Wagner, like the Roman conquerors, annexed many provinces and made them his own. Let us drop these futile comparisons. Liszt was as supreme in his domain as Wagner in his; only the German had the more popular domain. His culture was intensive, that of Liszt extensive. The tragedy was that Liszt lived to hear himself denounced as an imitator of Wagner; butchered to make a Bayreuth holiday. The day after his death in 1886 the news went abroad in Bayreuth that the "father-in-law of Wagner" had died; that his funeral might disturb the success of the current music festival! Liszt, who had begun his career with a kiss from Beethoven; Liszt, whose name was a flaring meteor in the sky of music when Wagner was starving in Paris; Liszt the path-breaker, meeting the usual fate of such a Moses, who never conquered the soil of the promised land, the initiator, at the last buried in foreign soil (he loathed Bayreuth and the Wagnerians) and known as the father-in-law of the man who eloped with his daughter and had borrowed of him everything from money to musical ideas. The gods must dearly love their sport.
The new books devoted to Liszt, his life and his music, are by Julius Kapp, August Göllerich (in German), Jean Chantavoine and Calvocoressi (in French), and A. W. Gottschalg's Franz Liszt in Weimar, a diary full of reminiscences. These works, ponderous in the case of the Germans, represent the vanguard of the literature that is due the anniversary year. To M. Chantavoine may be awarded the merit of the most symmetrically told tale; however, he need not have repeated Janka Wohl's doubtful mot attributed to Liszt apropos of priestly celibacy: "Gregory VII was a great philanthropist." This reflects on the Princess Wittgenstein, and Liszt, most chivalric of men, would never have said anything that might present her in the light of pursuing him with matrimonial designs. That she did is not to be denied. Dr. Kapp is often severe on his hero. Is any man ever a hero to his biographer? He does not glorify his subject, and for the amiable weakness displayed by Liszt for princesses and other noble dames Dr. Kapp is sharp. The compositions are fairly judged, neither in the superlative key, nor condescendingly, as being of mere historic interest. There are over thirteen hundred, of which about four hundred are original. Liszt wrote too much, although he was a better self-critic than was Rubinstein. New details of the quarrel with the Schumanns are given. The gifted pair do not emerge exactly in an agreeable light. Liszt it was who first made known the piano music of Robert Schumann. Clara Schumann, with the true Wieck provinciality, was jealous of Liszt's influence over Robert. Then came the disturbing spectre of Wagner, and Schumann could not forgive Liszt for helping the music of the future to a hearing at Weimar. The rift widened. Liszt made a joke of it, but he was hurt by Schumann's ingratitude. Alas! he was to be later hurt by Wagner, by Joachim, by Brahms. He dedicated his B-minor sonata to Schumann, and Schumann dedicated to him his noble Fantaisie in C. After Schumann's death his widow brought out an edition of this fantaisie with the dedication omitted. The old-fashioned lady neither forgot nor forgave.
We consider the Kapp biography solid. The best portrait of Liszt may be found in that clever and amusing novel by Von Wolzogen, Kraftmayr. The Göllerich book chiefly consists of a chain of anecdotes in which the author is a prominent figure. Herr Kapp in a footnote attacks Herr Göllerich, denying that he was much with Liszt. How these Liszt pupils love each other! Joseffy—who was with the master two summers at Weimar, though he never relinquished his proud title of Tausig scholar—when the younger brilliant stars Rosenthal, first a Joseffy pupil, Sauer, and others cynically twitted him about his admiration of Liszt's playing—over seventy, at the time Rosenthal was with him—Joseffy answered: "He was the unique pianist." "But you were very young when you heard him" (1869), they retorted. "Yes, and Liszt was ten years younger too," replied the witty Joseffy.
Göllerich relates the story of the American girl who threw stones at the window of the Hoffgartnerei, Liszt's residence in Weimar, and when the master appeared above called out: "I've come all the way from America to hear you play." "Come up," said the aged magician, "I'll play for you." He did so, much to the scandal of the Liszt pupils assembled for daily worship. The anecdotes of Tausig and the stolen score of the Faust symphony (Liszt generously stated that the score was overlooked), are also set forth in the Göllerich book.
But he, the darling of the gods, fortune fairly pursuing him from cradle to grave, nevertheless the existence of this genius was far from happy. His closing years were melancholy. The centre of the new musical life and beloved by all, he was a lonely, homeless, disappointed man. His daughter Cosima, a dweller among memories only, said that the music of her father did not exist for her; Weimar had been swallowed by Bayreuth, and the crowning sorrow for Liszt lovers is the tomb of Liszt at Bayreuth. It should be in his beloved Weimar. He lies in the shadow of his dear friend Wagner, he, the "father-in-law of Wagner." Pascal was right; no matter the comedy, the end of life is always tragic. Perhaps if the tragedy had come to Franz Liszt earlier he might have profited by the uses of adversity, as did Richard Wagner, and thus have achieved the very stars.
III
THE B-MINOR SONATA AND OTHER PIANO PIECES
I
When Franz Liszt nearly three quarters of a century ago made some suggestions to the Erard piano manufacturers on the score of increased sonority in their instruments, he sounded the tocsin of realism. It had been foreshadowed in Clementi's Gradus, and its intellectual resultant, the Beethoven sonata, but the material side had been hardly realised. Chopin, who sang the swan-song of idealism in surpassingly sweet tones, was by nature unfitted to wrestle with the problem. The arpeggio principle had its attractions for the gifted Pole, who used it in the most novel combinations and dared the impossible in extended harmonies. But the rich glow of idealism was over it all—a glow not then sicklied by the impertinences and affectations of the Herz-Parisian school; despite the morbidities and occasional dandyisms of Chopin's style he was, in the main, manly and sincere. Thalberg, who pushed to its limits scale playing and made an embroidered variant the end and not a means of piano playing—Thalberg, aristocratic and refined, lacked dramatic blood. With him the well-sounding took precedence of the eternal verities of expression. Touch, tone, technique, were his trinity of gods.