Life of Liszt

by Ludwig Nohl

There is a notice in the “Journal des Debats,” of 1849, which appeared in Leipsic in 1851, together with a second under the title of “Lohengrin et Tannhauser de Richard Wagner,” with which publication, translated into German, at Cologne, in 1852, Liszt also makes his appearance as a writer.

And yet, not so; for when had he not expressed, pen in hand, the extraordinary activity of his feelings and thoughts? Since 1836, numerous outspoken and generous tributes of his had appeared, as for instance that concerning the position of artists in the “Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris,” and it may be said not one of the artists mentioned, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Paganini, Berlioz, Boieldieu, Meyerbeer, Thalberg, Auber, Schubert, Schumann, Field and Mendelssohn, are left without description. These sketches an delineations made such a great and immediate sensation that Lamartine, who was so renowned at that time, declared he would consider it a crime if Liszt did not exclusively devote himself to this branch of his art. In addition to the writings, “De la Fondation-Goethe a Weimar” (1849), “F. Chopin,” “The Gypsies and their Music in Hungary,” and the numerous essays in the “Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik,” like the more important ones about “The Flying Dutchman” (1854), and “Robert Franz” (1855), Liszt’s literary works, like Wagner’s, form an imposing array of volumes, which are not second in importance to those of any other art-writer and contribute an essential addition to our general literature.

And how is it to-day with this musical authorship? The poet Schubart in his “Esthetics of Music,” had only sounded the first notes of that tone-language which, with the beginning of the opera was incorporated with our art. The Italian language, which was its basis, had reached the highest degree of perfection and the French of the Gluck operas had scarcely increased the “speaking” which melody had acquired by these idioms. All instrumental music speedily assumed this character of personal language. It was as in the simple lyric, the personal world-Ego that spoke in it. But when the German language reached the height of its perfection and pervaded music, entirely new beauties were revealed in our art. In one of his many notes of travel, written at Vienna, in 1838, Liszt says that he has listened to the songs of Franz Schubert with great pleasure and has been often moved to tears by them, and he adds: “Schubert is the most poetical of all musicians who have ever lived. The German language impresses the mind wonderfully and the childlike purity and melancholy shading with which Schubert’s music is permeated can only be fully understood by a German.” This was true. The language of Goethe and Schiller had come to music and bedewed it as with heavenly blessings. It returned a hundred-fold what it had received in the old-time choral. We know the almost extravagant reverence of Gluck for Klopstock’s Odes and particularly for the “Hermannschlacht.” Mozart had written “The Violet” and the spirit of its language pervaded the “Zauberfloete,” notwithstanding the rough verses of the librettist destroyed all its beauty of shading. At first Beethoven averred there was nothing loftier than Klopstock. He preferred the soaring flights of fancy of this ideal, poetical soul, but when he came to know Goethe it was all over. “He has finished Klopstock for me,” he said. Goethe’s friend Bettina heard him declare: “Goethe’s poems exercise a great power over me, not alone by the subject-matter, but also by the rhythm. I should be induced and urged on to composition by these verses, which are constructed upon a higher plane, as if with spiritual help, and bear in themselves the secret of harmony.” So said Beethoven, the purport of his judgment always being: “a musician is also a poet.” In fact, through language, music has completely associated itself with personal speech and what wonder is it that it now, again enkindled with poetry, affected the world? From that time on there have been masters of music who give us information about it and although they are only instructors in the history and dogmas of music, the professors of composition must state the essentially artistic and poetical in words. In the perfection of language as applied to the expression of musical things, these tone-masters have been creatively constructive.

The first of these is C. M. Von Weber, whose famous and almost world-wide critique on the “Eroica” appeared in 1809. In spite of his jealous misunderstanding, he shows a closer conception of Beethoven and particularly of music than any of the purely literary critics of that time and we know that afterwards the composer of “Der Freischuetz” wrote much and very well and commenced to compose an artistic romance. A year later, Bettina wrote that “soulful fantasy about music,” which in Goethe’s “Correspondence with a Child,” made a powerful impression upon musical authors and inspired their better natures. Rochlitz’s “Musikzeitung,” from 1809 to 1812, contains Hoffmann’s analyses of the Beethoven symphonies, which to-day would have secured him the title of “Wagnerian.” He not only gave a wonderful flight and new character to language but he even extended its limits, for he describes in the “Kreisleriana,” with nothing but mere verbal expression, the mysteries of the art, its subject-matter, the keys and their character. He enhanced the possibilities of language, enriched its treasury of words and gave it a new significance. He was enabled to do this as he was both musician and author and in a different style from that Prussian Capellmeister, Reichardt. He also declared that after he had once spoken of music, thenceforth he could only discourse of it as a poet. And yet there is in this still more of brilliancy than fire, more of the extravagant and even fantastic than the striking power of poetry and soaring fancy which Bettina’s simple poetical nature showed, the manifestations of which gave Goethe such presages of the power of musical genius. It was not merely the poetical nature, it was the actual poet, as in Winckelmann’s revelation of the plastic art, that was needed to hit the mark.

Let us be brief. Jean Paul’s deeply musical, poetical nature fired Robert Schumann with the might of his spirit and with the heavenly fire of true poetical perception, and inspiration. For the first time in Germany, in his “Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik,” he collected about him the spirits who lived thoughtfully and contemplatively in their art. In comparison with these poetical writers where are now those theorists, Wendt, in whose writings Beethoven found thoughts full of wisdom, and Thibaut with his “Parity of Music,” a little book certainly expressing with fervor the beauty of music, which even to-day reveals to many a spirit its better self? Added to these the expressions of Mozart, in his letters about music, have come to light, and Beethoven reveals his lofty regard for it in Bettina’s letters to Goethe. The writings of the poet Heine about music are revived again and from France an earnest spirit of art was wafted over to us in the literary productions of that phenomenon, Hector Berlioz. We recognize in this that music is not confined within the bounds of any language and we almost imagine that its spirit and being must actually dwell in the general modern idioms and thus impart to them the distinctive characteristics of the old languages. For Liszt also—and now we come to our subject—wrote in French and only in French, and yet we can say that he has enriched, beautified and extended the German language, for he wrote our modern speech from the inner spirit, because he wrote from the spirit of music, which above all belongs to us.

He thus begins his communication to the “Gazette Musicale” in 1838: “Nearly fifteen years ago my father forsook his peaceful roof to go with me into the world. He settled down in France, for he thought that here was the fittest sphere for the development and perfection of my genius, as he, in his simple pride, called my musical talents. Thus early I forgot my home and learned to recognize France as my fatherland.” He recompensed his new fatherland with his perfect use of its language, which no native Frenchman to-day employs more correctly, accurately or with better constructive ability than he, so that the charge of “neologism and Germanism” which has been laid to him is based for the most part only on a noticeable jealousy of his extraordinary style. It is characterized by a vigor, power, delicacy and richness which are at once surprising and fascinating. “A single glance of his flashing eye” in the incorrect and beggarly translations of him that have thus far appeared, tell us we have to do with a Siegfried. One of his translators rightly asserts: “Liszt is as unprecedented and unapproachable in his playing as he is unparalleled and original in his style. They are his own possessions. In both we feel the same genial inclinations, but even in the highest flights of his inspirations he never mars their beauty. If one were to find any fault it would only be with the exuberance of thought and the riotous luxuriance of his fancy which is inexhaustible in pictures and blending of color. This is only the natural result of the abundant richness of his surroundings. When Englishmen and Germans in their statements about music, especially where Beethoven is concerned, complain of the obscurity and mystery of his meaning, it is because music in its real form is still ‘a book with seven seals’ to them.”

To specify his writings in detail would take too much space. It is enough to state that Liszt was so familiar with the substance of all the modern languages that he was enabled, by merely skimming over them, to catch their general spirit and thus express the corresponding sense and form of music, so that in reality, according to the historical statement that we have given above, whenever these writings have been translated into good German they have broadened and perfected our language. One such translation appeared long since. It is the volume, “Robert Franz.” The historical and technical are certainly the weaker qualities of these writings, for they belong to science and investigation, not to the art and the creative faculty as a special province. And yet, in these respects, the last named volume is very conspicuous. It contains an analysis of what we call the “Lied,” which is more thorough in a historical and theoretical sense than any that have ever been made. The entire volume is characterized by calm consideration rather than by the flight of inspiration.

To show how accurately and delicately Liszt could sketch a subject which up to that time had not been treated, and how fruitful, therefore, the statements are for the history of the art, we give a brief illustration from his sketch of “Lohengrin,” with which, as a further illustration of the style of all his writings, we close. He is speaking of the melody with which the Knight of the Grail takes leave of his marvelous guide, the swan: “Music had not, as yet, acquired those types which the painter and poet have so often endeavored to portray. It had not, as yet, expressed the purity of feeling and the sacred sorrow which the angels and the beings above us, who are better than we, feel, when they are exiled from heaven and sent into our abode of trouble on errands of beneficence. We believe that music, in this respect, need no longer envy the other arts, for we are convinced that no one has yet expressed this feeling with such lofty and even heavenly perfection.”

We may say here, as Goethe said of Winckelmann’s prose: “He must be a poet, whether he realizes it or not.” As this description of the forms of plastic art has enriched our language for a century with illustrations which are familiar to every one, so the description of the creation of these new spiritual forms which music has produced, will give a deeper soul and new wings to language. Liszt’s writings for that reason have done a special work for the German language, for they display the all-pervading spirit of modern culture, and thus help to build up the essential and ultimate form of language. The introduction to his pathetically enthusiastic essay on “The Place of the Artist,” which forms the close of this chapter, shows us that Liszt was as real as he was ideal when he took up his pen in 1835, impelled by his literary activity.

“Truly it were a beautiful and noble duty to establish the definite place of musicians in our social life—to group together their political, individual and religious ideas—to describe their sorrows, their sufferings, their difficulties and their errors—to tear away the coverings from their bleeding wounds, and to raise an energetic protest against the pressing injustice and the shameless prejudice which injures and torments them, and condescends to use them as playthings—to examine their past, to disclose their future, to bring all their titles of honor to light, to teach the public and the thankless materialistic society of men and women whom we entertain and who support us, whence we come, whither we go, the nature of our mission, in a word, who we are—to teach them who those chosen ones are who were ordained of God Himself to bear witness to the highest feelings of humanity and cherish them with noble trust, these divinely anointed ones who strike off the fetters which enshackle men, who have stolen the holy fire from heaven, who invest life with its material and thought with its form, and while they achieve for us the realization of our ideals, draw us up with irresistible power to their spiritual heights, to the heavenly revelations—who they are, these human creators, these evangelists and priests of an irredeemable religion, constantly increasing in mystery and incessantly penetrating every heart—to preach and to prophesy all this, which of itself is so loudly proclaimed, with still louder voice even to the deafest ears, certainly were a beautiful and noble duty.” Who has more nobly fulfilled this duty by the deeds and words of a life-time than he!