The pianist, of course, was very much disconcerted. Finally he said, as if to console himself: "Well, he can't play it through like that, and that's why he stopped after half a page."
This sonata is the only one which the composer himself metronomized, and his direction is M.M.
= 138. A less rapid tempo,
= 100 or thereabouts, would seem to be more nearly correct, but the pianist took it at a much slower rate than even this.
When the young man left I went out with him, partly because I felt sorry for him, he had made such a fiasco, and partly because I wished to impress upon him the fact that Liszt could play the whole movement in the tempo in which he began it. As I was walking along with him, he said, "I'm out of money; won't you lend me three louis d'or?"
A day or two later I told Liszt by the merest chance that the hero of the Op. 106 fiasco had tried to borrow money of me. "B-r-r-r! What?" exclaimed Liszt. Then he jumped up, walked across the room, seized a long pipe that hung from a nail on the wall, and brandishing it as if it were a stick, stamped up and down the room in almost childish indignation, exclaiming, "Drei louis d'or! Drei louis d'or!" The point is, however, that Liszt regarded the man as an artistic impostor. He had sent word to Liszt that he could play the great Beethoven sonata, not an inconsiderable feat in those days. He had been received on that basis. He had failed miserably. To this artistic imposition he had added the effrontery of endeavoring to borrow money from some one whom he had met under Liszt's roof.
OBJECTS TO MY EYE-GLASSES
I HAVE mentioned that Liszt was careful in his dress. He was also particular about the appearance of his pupils. I remember two instances which show how particular he was in little matters. I have been near-sighted all my life, and when I went to Weimar I wore eye-glasses, much preferring them to spectacles. Eye-glasses were not much worn in Germany at that time, and were considered about as affected as the mode of wearing a monocle. The Germans wore spectacles. I had not been in Weimar long when Liszt said to me: "Mason, I don't like to see you wearing those glasses. I shall send my optician to fit your eyes with spectacles."