Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians — Franz Liszt, Part 1
FRANZ LISZT
Were I to tell you what my feelings were on carefully perusing and reperusing this essay, I could hardly find terms to express myself.
Let this suffice: I feel more than fully rewarded for my trials, my sacrifices and artistic struggles, on noting the impression I have made on you in particular.
To be thus completely understood was my only ambition; and to have been understood is the most ravishing gratification of my longing.
--_Liszt in a Letter to Wagner_ FRANZ LISZT
In writing of Liszt there is a strong temptation to work the superlative to its limit.
In this instance it is well to overcome temptation by succumbing to it.
That word "genius" is much bandied, and often used without warrant; but for those rare beings who leap from the brain of Jove, full-armed, it is the only appellation.
No finespun theory of pedagogics or heredity can account for the marvelous talent of Franz Liszt--he was one sent from God.
Yet we find a few fortuitous circumstances that favored his evolution.
Possibly, on the other hand, there are those who might say the boy attracted to himself the human elements that he required, and thus worked out his freedom, acquiring that wondrous ability to express his inmost emotions.
Art is the beautiful way of doing things.
All art is the expression of sublime emotions; and there seems a strong necessity in every soul to impart the joy and the aspiration that it feels.
And further, art is for the artist first, just as work is for the worker--it is all just a matter of self-development.
And how blessed is it to think that every soul that works out its own freedom gives freedom to others!
Liszt is the inspirer of musicians, just as Shakespeare is the inspirer of writers.
Strong men make it possible for others to be strong.
No man of the century gave the science of music such an impulse for good as this man.
To go no further in way of proof, let the truth be stated yet once again, that it was Franz Liszt who threw a rope to the drowning Wagner.
On October Twenty-second, in the year Eighteen Hundred Eleven, when a man-child was born at the village of Raiding, Hungary, the heavens gave no sign, and no signal-flags nor couriers proclaimed the event, all as had been done a week before when a babe was born to the Prince and Princess Esterhazy at the same place.
Now the child born last was the son of obscure parents, the father being an underling secretary of the Prince, known as Liszt.
The child was very weak and frail, and for some months it was thought hardly possible it could live; but Destiny decreed that the boy should not perish.
The first recollections of Liszt take in, in a happy view, four men playing cards at a square table.
One of these men was the boy's father, another was Mein Herr Joseph Haydn, and the other two players are lost in the fog of obscurity.
Did they ever know what a wonderful game they played, as little Franz Liszt, sitting on a corner of the table, listened to their talk and admired the buttons on the coat of the Kappellmeister?
After the card-game Haydn sat at the piano and played, and the boy, just three years old, thought he could do that, too.
Then there was another Kappellmeister in the employ of Prince Nicholas Esterhazy at Eisenstadt, and his name was Hummel.
He was a pupil of Mozart, and used to tell of it quite often when he came up to Raiding on little visits, after the wine had been sampled.
Liszt the Elder used to help Hummel straighten out his accounts, and where went Liszt the Elder, there, too, went little Franz Liszt, who wasn't very strong and banked on it, and had to be babied.
And so little Franz became acquainted with Hummel and used to sit on his knee at the piano, and together they played funny duets that set the company in a roar--two tunes at a time, harmonious discords and counterpoint, such as no one ever heard before, or since.
At this time there was no piano at the Liszt cottage, but the boy learned to play at the neighbors', and practised at the palace of the Prince.
His father and mother once took him there to hear Hummel.
On this occasion Hummel played the Concerto by Reis in C minor.
At the close of the performance, little Franz climbed up on the piano-stool and very solemnly played the same thing himself, to the immense delight of the listeners.
The father of Liszt has recorded that at this time the child was but three years old, but after taking off the proper per cent for the pride of a fond parent, the probabilities are the boy was five.
This is the better attested when we remember that it was only a few weeks later that, on the request of Prince Esterhazy, the boy played at a concert in Oedenburg.
This launched the boy on that public career which was to continue for just seventy years.
There is good evidence that the boy could read music before he could read writing, and that he threw into his playing such feeling and expression as Ferdinand Reis, who merely imitated his master, Beethoven, had never anticipated.
That is to say, when he played "Reis," he improved on him, with variations all his own--attempts often made with the work of great composers, but which incur risks not advised.
It will be seen that Liszt, although born in poverty, was from the very first in a distinctly musical environment.
He could not remember a time when he did not attend the band-concerts--his parents wanted to go, and took the baby because there were no servants to take charge of him at home.
Music was in the air, and everybody discussed it, just as in Italy you may hear the beggars in the streets criticizing art.
The delightful insouciance of this child-pianist won the heart of every hearer, and his success quite turned the head of his father, the worthy bookkeeper.
To give the child the advantages of an education was now his parents' one ambition.
Having no money of his own, the father importuned his employer, the Prince, who rather smiled at the thought of spending time and money on such an elfin-like child.
His playing was, of course, phenomenal, unaccountable, a sort of bursting out of the sun's rays, and, like the rainbow, a thing not to be seized upon and kept.
It was mere precocity, and precocity is a rareripe fruit, with a worm at the core.
This discouragement of the over-ambitious father was probably wise, for it gave the boy a chance to play I-Spy and leapfrog in the streets of the village, and to roam the fields.
The lad became strong and well, and when ten years of age he had grown into a handsome youngster with already those marks of will and purpose on his beautiful face that were to be his credentials to place and power.
He had often played at concerts in the towns and villages about, and when there were visitors at the palace this fine, slim son of the bookkeeper was sent for to entertain them.
This attention kept ambition alive in the hearts of his parents, and after many misgivings they decided to hazard all and move to Vienna to give their boy the opportunities they felt he deserved.
The entire household effects being sold, the bookkeeper found he had nearly six hundred francs--one hundred fifty dollars.
To this amount Prince Esterhazy added fifty dollars, and Hummel gave his mite, and with tears of regret at breaking up the home-nest, but with high hope, flavored by chill intervals of fear, the father, mother and boy started for Vienna.
Arriving in that city the distinguished Carl Czerny, pupil of Beethoven, was importuned to take the lad.
Only the letter from Hummel secured the boy an audience, for Czerny was already overburdened with pupils.
But when he had listened to the lad's playing, he consented to take him as a pupil, merely saying that he showed a certain degree of promise.
It is sternly true that Czerny did not fully come into the Liszt faith until after that concert of April Thirteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-three, when Beethoven, ripe with years, crowded his way to the front and kissed the player on both cheeks, calling him "my son."
Such a greeting from the great Master spoke volumes when we consider the lifelong aversion that Beethoven held toward "prodigies," and his disinclination to attend all concerts but his own.
And thus did Franz Liszt begin his professional pilgrimage, consecrated by the kiss of the Master.
Paris was the next step--to Paris, the musical and artistic center of the world.
To win in Paris meant fame and fortune wherever he wished to exhibit his powers.
The way the name of Franz Liszt swept through the fashionable salons of Paris is too well known to recount.
Scarcely thirteen years of age, he played the most difficult pieces with peculiar precision and power.
And his simple, boyish, unaffected manner--his total lack of self-consciousness--won him the affection of every mother-heart.
He was fondled, feted, caressed, and took it all as a matter of course.
He had not yet reached the age of indiscretion.
* * * * * Music is a secondary sexual manifestation, just as are the songs of birds, their gay and gaudy plumage, the color and perfume of flowers that so delight us, and the luscious fruits that nourish us--all is sex.
And then, do you not remember that expression of Renan's, "The unconscious coquetry of the flowers"?
Without love there would be no poetry and no music.
All the manifest beauty of earth is only Nature's nuptial decoration.
James Huneker, not always judicious, but a trifle more judicial than others that might be named, declares that two women, making a simultaneous attack upon the great composer, caused him to cut for sanctuary, and hence we have the Abbe Liszt, thus proving again that love and religion are twin sisters.
The old-time biographers can easily be placed in two classes: those who sought to pillory their man, and those who sought to protect him.
Neither one told the truth; but each gave a picture, more or less blurred, of a being conjured forth from their own inner consciousness.
Franz Liszt was naturalized in the Faubourg Saint Germain.
It was here that he was first hailed as the infant prodigy, and proud ladies, at his performances, pressed to the front and struggled for the privilege of imprinting on his fair forehead a chaste and motherly kiss.
* * * * * Eight years had passed: years of work and travel and constant growing fame.
The youth had grown into a man, and his return to the scene of his former triumphs was the signal for a regathering of the clans to note his progress--or decline.
The verdict was that from "Le Petit Prodige," he had evolved into something far more interesting--"Le Grand Prodige."
Tall, handsome, strong, and with a becoming diffidence and a half-shy manner, his name went abroad, and he became the rage of the salons.
His marvelous playing told of his hopes, longings, fears and aspirations--proud, melancholy, imploring, sad, sullen--his tones told all.
Fair votaries followed him from one performance to another.
Leaving out of the equation such mild incidents as the friendship for George Sand, which began with a brave avowal of platonics, and speedily drifted into something more complex; also the equally interesting incident of his being invited to visit the Chateau of the lovely Adele Laprunarede, and the Alpine winter catching the couple and holding them willing captives for three months, blocked there in a castle, with nothing worse than a conscience and an elderly husband to appease, we reach the one, supreme love-passion in the life of Liszt.
The Countess d'Agoult is worthy of much more than a passing note.
At twenty years of age she had been married to a man twenty-one years her senior.
It was a "mariage de convenance"--arranged by her parents and a notary in a powdered wig.
It is somewhat curious to find how many great women have contracted just such marriages.
Grim disillusionment following, true love holding nothing in store for them, they turn to books, politics or art, and endeavor to stifle their woman's nature with the husks of philosophy.
Count d'Agoult was a hard-headed man of affairs--stern, sensible and reasonably amiable--that is to say, he never smashed the furniture, nor beat his wife.
She submitted to his will, and all the fine, girlish, bubbling qualities of her mind and soul were soon held in check through that law of self-protection which causes a woman to give herself unreservedly only to the One who Understands.
Yet the Countess was not miserable--only at rare intervals did there come moods of a sort of dread longing, homesickness and unrest; but calm philosophy soon put these moods to rout.
She had focused her mind on sociology and had written a short history of the Revolution, a volume that yet commands the respect of students.
At intervals she read her essays aloud to invited guests.
She studied art, delved a little in music, became acquainted with the leading thinking men and women of her time, and opened her salon for their entertainment.
Three children had been born to her in six years.
Maternity is a very necessary part of every good woman's education--"this woman's flesh demands its natural pains," says a great writer in a certain play.
A
staid, sensible woman was the Countess d'Agoult--tall, handsome, graceful, and with a flavor of melancholy, reserve and disinterestedness in her make-up that made her friendship sought by men of maturity.
She talked but little, and won through the fine art of listening.
She was neither happy nor unhappy, and if the gaiety of girlhood had given way to subdued philosophy, there were still wit, smiles and gentle irony to take the place of laughter.
"Life," she said, "consists in molting one's illusions."
The Countess was twenty-nine years of age when "Le Grand Prodige," aged twenty-three, arrived in Paris.
She had known him when he was "Le Petit Prodige"--when she was a girl with dreams and he but a child.
She wished to see how he had changed, and so went to hear him play.
He was insincere, affected and artificial, she said--his mannerisms absurd and his playing acrobatic.
At the next concert where he played she sought him out and half-laughingly told him her opinion of his work.
He gravely thanked her, with his hand upon his heart, and said that such honesty and frankness were refreshing.
After the concert Liszt remembered this woman--she was the only one he did remember--she had made her impression.
He did not like her.
Soon Liszt was invited to the salon of the Countess d'Agoult, and he, the plebeian, proudly repulsed the fair aristocrat when her attentions took on the note of patronage.
They mildly tiffed--a very good way to begin a friendship, once said Chateaubriand.
The feminine qualities in the heart of Liszt made a lure of the person who dared affront him.
He needed the flint on which his mind could strike fire--nothing is so depressing as continual, mushy adulation.
He sought out the Countess, and together they traversed the border-land of metaphysics, and surveyed, as the days passed, all that intellectual realm which the dawn of the Twentieth Century thinks it has just discovered.
She taunted him into a defense of George Sand, who had but recently returned from her escapade to Venice with Alfred de Musset.
Liszt defended the author of "Leone Leoni," and read to the Countess from her books to prove his case.
When haughty, proud and religious ladies mix mentalities with sensitive youths of twenty-four, the danger-line is being approached.
The Grand Passions that live in history, such as that of Abelard and Heloise, Petrarch and Laura, Dante and Beatrice, swing in their orbit around world-weariness.
Love does not concern itself with this earth alone--it demands a universe for its free expression.
And the only woman who is capable of the Grand Passion--who stakes all on one throw of the dice--is the melancholy woman, with this fine, religious reserve.
No one suspected the Countess d'Agoult of indiscretion--she was too cold and self-contained for that!
And so is the world deceived by the Eternal Paradox of things--that law of antithesis which makes opposites look alike.
Beneath the calm dignity of matronly demeanor the fires of love were banked.
Probably even the Countess herself did not know of the volcano that was smoldering in her heart.
But there came a day when the flames burst forth, and all the reserve, poise, quiet dignity, caution and discretion were dissolved into nothingness in love's alembic.
Poor Franz Liszt!
Poor Countess d'Agoult!
They were powerless in the coils of such a passion.
It was a mad tumult of wild intoxication, of delicious pain, of burning fears, and vain, tossing unrest.
The woman's nature, stifled by its six years of coaxing marital repression, was asserting itself.
Liszt did not know that a woman could love like this--neither did the woman.
Once they parted, after talking the matter over solemnly and deciding on what was best for both--they parted coldly--with a mere touching of the lips in a last good-by.
The next week they were together again.
Then Liszt fled to the Abbe Lamennais, and in tears sought, at the confessional and in dim retirement, a surcease from the passion that was devouring him.
Here was a pivotal point in the life of Liszt, and the Church came near then, claiming him for her own.
And such would have been the case, were it not for the fact that one of the children of the Countess d'Agoult was sick unto death.
He knew of the sleepless vigils--the weary watching of the fond mother.
The child died, and Franz Liszt went to the parent in her bereavement, to offer the solace of religion and bid her a decent, respectful farewell, ere he left Paris forever.
He thought grief was a cure for passion, and that in the presence of death, love itself was dumb.
How could he understand that, in most strong natures, tears and pain, and hope and love are kin, and that each is in turn the manifestation of a great and welling heart!
Liszt stood by the side of the Countess as the grave closed over the body of her firstborn child.
And as they stood there, under the darkening sky, her hand went groping blindly for his.
She wrote of this, years and years after, when seventy winters had silvered her hair and her steps were feeble--she wrote of this, in her book called, "Souvenirs," and tells how, in that moment of supreme grief, when her life was whitened and purified by the fires of pain, her hand sought his.
The deep current of her love swept the ashes of grief away, and she reached blindly for the hands--those wonderful music-making hands of Liszt--that they might support her.
And standing there, side by side, as the priest intoned the burial service, he whispered to her, "Death shall not divide us, nor is eternity long enough to separate thee from me!"
