Germany and the thoughts of it could not lure him away from Rome, nor could the summer heat drive him out. The Holy Elizabeth was completed by August 10, 1862, and with it he had finished the greater part of his work as composer. Never did he lose interest in German art movements, and was ever ready with advice and suggestions.
A severe shock, one which sent him to bed, came to him about the middle of September of this year, when his youngest daughter, Blandine Ollivier, the wife of Louis Napoleon's war minister, Emile Ollivier, died. Liszt turned to religion and to his art for consolation; he slaved away at the Christus oratorio and wrote two psalms and the instrumental Evocatio in der Sixtinischen Kapelle. Invitations from London, Weimar, and Budapest could not budge him from Rome; deeper and deeper he became interested in the wonders and beauties of his religion.
The following year—1863—finds him hard at work as ever. His oratorio is not achieving great progress, but he is revising his piano arrangements of the Beethoven Symphonies. In the spring he changes his quarters and moves into the Cloister Madonna del Rosario, in which he had been offered several rooms. These new lodgings enchant him. Situated on the Monte Mario, the site commanded a view of Rome and the Campagna, the Albano Mountains and the River Tiber. So Signor Commendatore Liszt, the friend of Padre Theiner, is living in a cloister and the religious germs begin to sprout in this quiet surrounding. Liszt esteemed the priest highly as an educated man and admired his personality. Gregorovius, on the other hand, could pump up no liking at all for the hermit-like Padre, discovered him dry and judged his writings and philosophy as dry, archaic stuff.
In Italian politics and Italian music Liszt found nothing to attract him. The latter was crude, as regards composition, and generally resolved itself into Drehorgel-Lyrik. The piano was at that time not an Italian object of furniture, and in the churches they still served up operatic music with the thinnest religious varnish. In the salons one seldom heard good music, so that Liszt, through his pupils Sgambati, Berta, and others was able to work some reform in these matters.
On July 11, 1862, the tongue of all Rome was wagging: Pope Pius IX had paid Liszt a visit at the Cloister Santa Maria del Rosario. Liszt recounts that His Holiness had stayed with him about half an hour, during which time the pianist had played for him on the harmonium and on the little working piano. After that the Pope had spoken earnestly to him and begged him to strive for the heavenly, even in earthly matters, and to prepare himself for the eternal sounding harmonies by means of the passing earthly ones.
Liszt was the first artist who had been honored thus. A few days later the Pope granted him an audience in the Vatican, when he presented Liszt with a cameo of the Madonna.
Segnitz quotes from two of Liszt's letters in which he voices his religious sentiments, and hopes that eventually his bones may rest in Roman earth.
Rather a remarkable phase of Liszt now was that he tried with might and main to live down and forget his so-called "Glanzperiode," the one of his virtuosity. An invitation from Cologne and also one from St. Petersburg to play and display once more "that entrancing tone which he could coax out of the keys" aroused his wrath. He asks, is he never to be taken more seriously than as a pianist, is he not worthy of recognition as a musician, a composer? On the other hand, nothing flattered him as much as when an Amsterdam society performed his Graner Messe and sent him a diploma of honorary membership. Furthermore, he derived much encouragement from an article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, written by Heinrich Porges, in which Liszt's compositions were seriously discussed.
Liszt found time to revise the four Psalms, 13—this was his favourite one—18, 23, 137; and during this year he also composed for the piano Alleluja, Ave Maria, Waldesrauschen, Gnomenreigen, the two legends, Die Vogelpredigt and Der heilige Franz von Paula auf den Wogen schreitend; then the organ variations on the Bach theme Weinen, klagen, sorgen, zagen, and the Papsthymus. He again took up his former project of making piano arrangements of the Beethoven quartets.