Leaving San Rossore the artist began his public life in earnest. It was the beginning of his virtuoso period and Vienna was the starting-point of his triumphal tournée across Europe. This period was an important one for development of piano playing, placing the latter on a much higher artistic plane than it had been; in it Liszt also inaugurated a new phase of the possibilities of concert giving. It was the time in which he fought both friend and enemy, fought without quarter for the cause of art.
As a composer Liszt, during his first stay in Italy, 1837-40, was far from active. The Fantaisie quasi Sonata après une lecture de Dante and the twelve Etudes d'exécution transcendante both came to life at Lake Como. There were besides the Chromatic Galop and the pieces Sposalizio, Il Penseroso and Tre Sonetti di Petrarca, which became part of the Années de Pèlerinage (Italie). His first song, with piano accompaniment, Angiolin dal biondo crin, dates from these days. The balance of this time was devoted to making arrangements of melodies by Mercadante, Donizetti, and Rossini, and to finishing the piano transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies. These and a few others about cover his list of compositions and arrangements.
II
Immediately after Liszt's separation from the Countess d'Agoult began a period of restless activity for him. The eight nomadic years during which he wandered up and down Europe, playing constantly in public, are the ones in which his virtuosity flourished. To-day we are inclined to mock at the mere mention of Liszt the virtuoso—we have heard far too much of his achievements, achievements behind which the real Liszt has become a warped and unrecognizable personality. But it was a remarkable tour nevertheless, and so wholesale a lesson in musical interpretation as Europe had never had before. Whenever and wherever he smote the keyboard the old-fashioned clay idols of piano playing were shattered, and however much it was attempted to patch them the pieces would not quite fit. Liszt struck the death-blow to unemotional playing, but he destroyed only to create anew: he erected ideals of interpretation which are still honored.
When he accepted the Weimar post of Hofkapellmeister in 1847—he had en passant in a term, lasting from December, 1843, to February of the following year, conducted eight successful concerts in Weimar—it looked as if his wild spirit of travel had dissipated itself: ausgetobt, as the Germans say.
With scarcely any time modulation this versatile genius began his career of Hofkapellmeister, in which he topsy-turvied traditions and roused Weimar from the lethargy into which it had fallen with the fading of that wonderful Goethe circle. At this point the influence of woman is again made manifest.
Gregorovius, the great antiquarian, gives us a few glimpses of her in his Römischen Tagebüchern. He admits that her personality was repulsive to him, but that she fairly sputtered spirituality. Also that she wrote an article about the Sixtine Chapel for the Revue du Monde Catholique—"a brilliant article: all fireworks, like her speech"; finally, that "she is writing an essay on friendship."
When the possibility of marriage with the Princess went up into thin air Liszt began contemplating a permanent residence in Rome. Here he could live more independently and privately than in Germany, and this was desirable, since he still had some musical problems to solve. First of all, he turned to his legend of the Holy Elizabeth, completing that; then Der Sonnen-Hymnus des heiligen Franziskus von Assisi was written, to say nothing of a composition for organ and trombone composed for one of his Weimar adherents. Frequent excursions and work so consumed his hours that soon we find him complaining as bitterly about the lack of time in Rome as in Weimar.
Rome of this time was still "outside of Italy": the reverse side of the Papal medallions showed Daniel in the lion's den and Pope Pio Nono immersed in mysticism. The social features were important. Segnitz mentions "die Kölnische Patrizierin Frau Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen, Peter Cornelius, die Dame Schopenhauer," the Ottilie of Goethe. Besides the artists Catel and Nerenz there was Frau von Schwarz, who attracted Liszt. She boasted friendship with Garibaldi, and her salon was a meeting-place of the intellectual multitude. Liszt seems to have been king pin everywhere, and it is refreshing to read the curt, unsentimental impression of him retailed by Gregorovius: "I have met Liszt," wrote the latter; "remarkable, demoniac appearance; tall, slender, long hair. Frau von Schwarz believes he is burned out, that only the walls of him remain, wherein a small ghostly flame flits." To add to the list of notables: the painter Lindemann-Frommel; the Prussian representatives, Graf Arnim and Kurt von Schlözer; King Louis I, of Bavaria, and the artists Riedel, Schweinfurt, Passini, and Feuerbach the philosopher.
Naturally Liszt participated in the prominent church festivals and was affected by their glamour; it even roused him to sentimental utterance.