The incident itself—the Pope's visit to Liszt—caused much gossip at the time. It was even reported that Pio Nono had called Liszt "his Palestrina."
M. Louis also makes a point which most Wagner biographers seem to have overlooked in their hurry to make Richard appear a very moral man, namely, that the little Von Bülow-Cosima-Wagner affair did not please Papa Liszt at all. Truce was patched up only in 1873, when Liszt's "Christus" performance at Weimar was witnessed by Wagner. Bayreuth of '76 cemented the friendship once more.
Read this paragraph from the pen of the cynical Gregorovius; it refers to the Roman performance of the Dante Symphony in the Galleria Dantesca when the Abbé reaped an aftermath of homage: "The Ladies of Paradise (?!) poured flowers on him from above; Frau L. almost murdered him with a big laurel wreath! But the Romans criticised the music severely as being formless. There is inspiration in it, but it does not reach(?!). Liszt left for Paris. The day before his departure I breakfasted with him at Tolstoy's; he played for a solid hour and allowed himself to be persuaded to do this by the young Princess Nadine Hellbig—Princess Shahawskoy—a woman of remarkably colossal figure, but also of remarkable intelligence."
V
AS COMPOSER
Richard Wagner wrote to Liszt July 20, 1856, concerning his symphonic poems:
"With your symphonic poems I am now quite familiar. They are the only music I have anything to do with at present, as I cannot think of doing any work of my own while undergoing medical treatment. Every day I read one or the other of your scores, just as I would read a poem, easily and without hindrance. Then I feel every time as if I had dived into a crystalline depth, there to be all alone by myself, having left all the world behind, to live for an hour my own proper life. Refreshed and invigorated, I then come to the surface again, full of longing for your personal presence. Yes, my friend, you have the power! You have the power!"
And later (December 6, 1856): "I feel thoroughly contemptible as a musician, whereas you, as I have now convinced myself, are the greatest musician of all times." Wagner, too, could be generous and flattering. He had praised the piano sonata; Mazeppa and Orpheus were his favourites among the symphonic poems.
Camille Saint-Saëns was more discriminating in his admiration; he said: