Life of Liszt

by Ludwig Nohl

His father took him at this time to Prince Esterhazy, in whose family musical patronage was hereditary. “I believe that female influence alone succeeds with him,” wrote the great Beethoven two years later, when he proffered the “Missa Solemnis” to him, as he had to another prince, for a subscription. He did not anticipate much kindly feeling on his part towards himself. Of what use, then, for a mere young beginner in art to expect anything? The Prince made him a gift of a few hundred francs. That was little for the heir of Haydn’s patron. In contrast with this, the boy met with a merited reception in the larger and more cultivated city of Presburg. Six noblemen, among them Counts Amadee and Szapary, settled upon him for six years an annuity of six hundred gulden, which satisfied the father’s desire to give the boy a fitting education.

Soon afterward, in the year 1821, he resolved to give up his position and settle in Vienna with his wife and child. He was met with the anxious misgivings of his wife (born in Upper Austria), who could not bear to see her darling exposed to the vicissitudes of an artistic career, and who tremblingly asked what would become of them, if, at the expiration of the time, their hopes were disappointed. “What God wills,” cried the boy of nine, who had listened to the conversation with a quiet timidity. The objections and solicitude of the mother were dispelled, all the more readily, as she was of a deeply and genuinely religious nature.

It was estimated that six hundred francs was a fair price for their household effects. On their arrival in Vienna the father selected the distinguished and unassuming Carl Czerny for the boy’s teacher, for Czerny had been Beethoven’s pupil a short time and played nearly all his compositions by heart. It was only the wonderful endowment of the boy that induced the overburdened teacher to accept him, and when he had finished playing to him he won his complete affection, as he did Beethoven’s. How could a boy of such a fiery musical spirit, who had enjoyed such a free and overflowing life in this art of his youth, play the dry, pedantic Clementi, which Czerny at first selected as the pedagogical groundwork? “If he visited a music store he never found a piece difficult enough to suit him,” says our informant. Once a publisher showed him the B minor concerto of Hummel. The boy turned over the leaves and intimated that it was nothing, and that he could play it at sight, making the assertion in the presence of the first piano-players of the city. The gentleman, astonished at the self-confidence of the boy, took him at his word and led him into the hall where there was a piano. He performed the concerto with equal skill and ease. It was the same composition which he played before Beethoven a year afterwards. Nothing could now restrain him from giving himself entirely to the public. “There is no greater pleasure for me than to practice and display my art,” Beethoven also wrote in his earlier years, and should not a genius who had acquired to his own thorough satisfaction the utmost freedom and highest success by such characteristic performances in public, seek its own free course, the open sea of the great public? “I still remember to have seen and heard this virtuoso whose manly, beautiful personnel displayed all the characteristics of his race,” writes Liszt at the time he first heard Bihary in Vienna. “I can still recall the absolute fascination which he exercised when with an absorbed and at the same time melancholy listlessness, in striking contrast with the apparent buoyancy of his temperament and the flashing glances which, as it were, fathomed the souls of his hearers, he took his violin in his hands and for hours, forgetful that time was also flying, unloosed cascades of tones which streamed on in their wild plunges, anon rippling away as over velvety moss.” On the 18th of December of the same year, 1822, the “Young Hercules” in that concert when he “thundered out” the Hummel composition, so united and as it were kneaded into one whole, the andante of Beethoven’s A major symphony with an aria of Rossini’s, who was at that time idolized in Vienna, that the relator excitedly cries out—“Est deus in nobis.” Verily a god directed the creative and executive power of this little one, with his open brow, his haughty nose, and his countenance lit up by his large, deep eyes, which seemed set in the streaming hair, appearing as it were, like emanations of his power. All this it was that may have urged our serious Beethoven, who could so unerringly distinguish between the true and the false, the great and the little, to go up to the boy at the close of that concert of April 13, 1823, embrace and kiss him.

It was a difficult matter to get the old master out to such a concert. His ill health, deafness and many other troubles had kept him from the public many years. He was moreover restrained by his aversion to prodigies, who were all the rage at that time, and by his fixed displeasure with Czerny, some of whose works were certainly noble, and yet they had not kept him from the faults of a frivolous virtuosity. At last the persuasion of his friends, his own good-heartedness and interest in art prevailed, as they wrote to him the boy and himself were in the same situation which he and Mozart had occupied in their youth. “The presence of the renowned composer, far from intimidating the boy, increased his imaginative power,” says the account. It also expressly mentions that Beethoven encouraged him, but in that reserved manner which was characteristic of him in his last years, and which was ascribed either to his personal circumstances or to his great sorrow about his deafness. Beethoven’s life is to-day fully revealed to us in the firm assurance of his spiritual condition in these last years, when the Ninth Symphony begins with its “Ode to Joy.” It may be found set forth in its historical connection in the book: “Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner.” Thus the young Liszt started upon his way in the great world, consecrated by the kiss of the freest poetical spirit in his art.

The next move was to Paris, which at that time, indeed, was the most important place in the world for artistic, and above all musical productivity. Besides, as the opportunity for full musical development was wanting in Vienna, since Beethoven himself was no longer active in such matters, it seemed best to apply to the Paris Conservatory, at that time under the world-renowned Cherubini. “The boy was pleased with the excellent receipts,” says our last concert report, and their means for the journey were soon increased in Munich, where he succeeded in rivaling the very eminent Moscheles, and heard himself called “the second Mozart.” It was the same also at Stuttgart. Then they went to Paris.

“The two strangers made application to Cherubini, with letters of recommendation from Prince Metternich,” says a Parisian sketch. He met them with the reply: “A foreigner can not enter the Conservatory!” The Director forgot that he himself was an Italian. The disappointed father fell into despair. Had he then risked his very existence on the hope of the complete artistic development of his son?

Meanwhile his hope for the success and artistic perfection of the boy was at last gratified. The public and the friends of the noble art itself supplied the place of a narrow-minded and envious clique and became father and godfather alike to this true “wonder-child” of the nineteenth century, of whom one account aptly says: “We believe that no other contemporary has created so profusely or reflected so faithfully his varied acquirements as he.” They were next summoned to the Palais Royal. It was on New Year’s, 1824. The boy charmed every one. The Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis Philippe, in his delight bade him ask for any gift he liked. “This harlequin,” cried the boy, and pointed to a beautiful automaton hanging on the wall.

This incident, as in the case of Mozart, illustrates the utter unselfishness of the real artist, who continually gave and desired nothing for himself. These frank, manly traits, like the incomparable genius of the boy, who was no longer a boy, powerfully affected every one within his circle. The biography of his youth tells us his sensibility was as perceptible as it was attractive to every one.

A year passed, and the young Liszt became in the mean time, so to speak, the plaything of all the ladies of Paris. Everywhere he was caressed and fondled. His roguish tricks and pranks, his whims and caprices were all observed and told over and over. Every one was delighted. Scarcely thirteen years of age, he had awakened love, aroused envy, kindled enmity. All were attracted to him and were completely infatuated with him.

This sudden conquest of the leading society of the Europe of that day, which was noted in the public prints, may be found more amply detailed in the volume, “Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner.” Heaven must have remarkably endowed that extraordinary child, who at the age of twelve was without a rival, and that too in an art in which he accomplished and understood what no mortal could boast to have produced of himself. The “genius for performance,” whose sources we have sought to locate, without, however, the skill to disclose their lowest depths, since they lie in that combination of the freest and most individual power, as applied to universal individuality and to the artistic, which we call “genius”—this unsurpassed skill of performance was so irresistibly overwhelming at that time, for example upon an actor like Talma, that one evening in the Italian theatre, while they rushed around the boy from all the boxes, he threw his arms about him and embraced him so closely, that the poor little fellow had great difficulty in releasing himself so that he could see his enthusiastic friends. It was developed to its ultimate perfection by the continuous and hearty recognition of his gifts by a great and sympathetic public in France and England. His face more and more assumed the likeness of an Apollo, with the types of the two royal animals, the lion and the eagle, as we observe in an excellent picture of him in his youth. In his playing he also resembled that Pythian deity, who in the glowing embrace of the proud Muse disclosed her hidden secret and threw the world into rapturous amazement.