Letters of Franz Liszt Volume II Part 1

Letters of Franz Liszt.

by Constance Bache.

VOL 2.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The Austrio-Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a pianistic miracle. He could play anything on site and composed over 400 works centered around "his" instrument. Among his key works are his Hungarian Rhapsodies, his Transcendental Etudes, his Concert Etudes, his Etudes based on variations of Paganinini's Violin Caprices and his Sonata, one of the most important of the nineteenth century. He also wrote thousands of letters, of which 399 are translated into English in this second of a 2-volume set of letters (the first volume contains 260 letters).

Those who knew him were struck by his extremely sophisticated personality. He was surely one of the most civilized people of the nineteeth century, internalizing within himself a complex conception of human civility, and attempting to project it in his music and his communications with people. His life was centered around people; he knew them, worked with them, remembered them, thought about them, and wrote about them using an almost poetic language, while pus.h.i.+ng them to reflect the high ideals he believed in. His personality was the embodiment of a refined, idealized form of human civility. He was the consummate musical artist, always looking for ways to communicate a new civilized idea through music, and to work with other musicians in organizing concerts and gatherings to perform the music publicly.

He also did as much as he could to promote and compliment those whose music he believed in.

He was also a superlative musical critic, knowing, with few mistakes, what music of his day was "artistic" and what was not.

But, although he was clearly a musical genius, he insisted on projecting a tonal, romantic "beauty" in his music, confining his music to a narrow range of moral values and ideals. He would have rejected 20th-century music that entertained cynical notions of any kind, or notions that obviated the concept of beauty in any way. There is little of a Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Cage, Adams, and certainly none of a Schoenberg, in Liszt's music. His music has an ideological "ceiling," and that ceiling is "beauty." It never goes beyond that. And perhaps it was never as "beautiful" as the music of Mozart, Bach or Beethoven, nor quite as rational (Are all the emotions in Liszt's music truly "controlled?"). But it certainly was original and instructive, and it certainly will linger.

THE LETTERS OF FRANZ LISZT, VOLUME 2: FROM ROME TO THE END

1. To Dr. Franz Brendel

[Rome,] December 20th, 1861

Dear Friend,

For the New Year I bring you nothing new; my soon ageing attachment and friends.h.i.+p remain unalterably yours. Let me hope that it will be granted to me to give you more proof of it from year to year.

Since the beginning of October I have remained without news from Germany. How are my friends Bronsart, Draseke, Damrosch, Weissheimer? Give them my heartiest greetings, and let me see some notices of the onward endeavors and experiences of these my young friends, as also of the doings of the Redactions-Hohle [Editorial den] and the details of the Euterpe concerts.

Please send the numbers of the paper, from October onwards, to me at the address of the library Spithover-Monaldini, Piazza di Spagna, Rome. Address your letter "Herrn Commandeur Liszt," Via Felice 113. "Signor Commendatore" is my t.i.tle here; but don't be afraid that any Don Juan will stab me--still less that on my return to Germany I shall appear in your Redactions-Hohle as a guest turned to stone!--

Of myself I have really little to tell you. Although my acquaintance here is tolerably extensive and of an attractive kind (if not exactly musical!), I live on the whole more retired than was possible to me in Germany. The morning hours are devoted to my work, and often a couple of hours in the evening also. I hope to have entirely finished the Elizabeth in three months.

Until then I can undertake nothing else, as this work completely absorbs me. Very soon I will decide whether I come to Germany next summer or not. Possibly I shall go to Athens in April-- without thereby forgetting the Athens of the elms! .--.

First send me the paper, that I may not run quite wild in musical matters. At Spithover's, where I regularly read the papers, there are only the Augsburger Allgemeine, the Berlin Stern-Zeitung [Doubtless the Kreusseitung], and several French and English papers, which contain as good as nothing of what I care about in the domain of music.

Julius Schuberth wrote a most friendly letter to me lately, and asks me which of Draseke's works I could recommend to him next for publication. To tell the truth it is very difficult for me in Rome to put myself in any publisher's shoes, even in so genial a man's as Julius Schuberth. In spite of this I shall gladly take an opportunity of answering him, and shall advise him to consult with Draseke himself as to the most advisable opportunity of publis.h.i.+ng this or that Opus of his, if a doubt should actually come over our Julius as to whether his publisher's omniscience were sufficiently enlightened on the matter!--

Remember me most kindly to your wife.

Yours most sincerely,

F. Liszt

Please give my best greetings to Kahnt. Later on I shall beg him for a copy of my songs for a very charming Roman lady.

2. To A.W. Gottschalg, Cantor and Organist in Tieffurt

["Der legendarische Cantor" [the legendary Cantor] the Master jokingly named this faithful friend of his. "I value him as a thoroughly honest, able, earnestly striving and meritorious comrade in Art, and interest myself in the further progress-- which is his due," wrote Liszt to the late Schuberth. Meanwhile Gottschalg was long ago advanced to the post of Court organist in Weimar. He is widely known as the editor of the "Chorgesang"

[chorus singing] and of the "Urania."]

Dear Friend,

Although I cannot think otherwise than that you remain ever equally true to me, yet the living expression of your kindly feelings towards me is always a pleasure and a comfort. First of all then accept my warmest thanks for your two letters, which bring back to me the best impressions of your morning and evening visits to me in my blue room on the Altenburg.

It goes without saying that I have no objection to make to the publication of the Andante from the Berg Symphony in the Jubilee Alb.u.m in honor of Johann Schneider. I only beg, dear friend, that you will look the proof over accurately, and carefully correct any omissions or mistakes in the ma.n.u.script.

I should be very glad if I could send you a new Organ work, but unfortunately all incentive to that sort of work is wanting to me here; and until the Tieffurt Cantor makes a pilgrimage to Rome all my organ wares will certainly remain on the shelf.

Ad vocem of the Tieffurt Cantor, I will tell you that I have been thinking of him very particularly these last few days, whilst I was composing St. Francis's Hymn of Praise ("Cantico di San Francesco"). The song is a development, an offspring as it were, a blossom of the Chorale "in dulci jubilo," for which of course I had to employ Organ. But how could I be writing an Organ work without immediately flying to Tieffurt in imagination?--And lo, at the entrance to the church our excellent Grosse [The trombonist of the Weimar orchestra (died 1874), who was so faithfully devoted to Liszt, and whom the latter remembered in his will] met me with his trombone, and I recollected an old promise--namely, to compose a "piece" for his use on Sundays. I immediately set to work at it, and out of my "Cantico" has now arisen a Concertante piece for Trombone and Organ. I will send you the piece as an Easter egg by the middle of April. [Published by Kahnt in Leipzig] Meanwhile here are the opening chords:--

[Here, Liszt ill.u.s.trates with a musical score excerpt of the opening chords of the Concertante, in F major]

and on a lovely evening in May will you play the whole with Grosse in your church at Tieffurt, and perpetuate me with Organ and Trombone!--

It has struck me that your name is not mentioned among the fellow-workers in the Johann Schneider Jubilee Alb.u.m. If there is still time and s.p.a.ce you might perhaps contribute your arrangement of the Fugue from the "Dante Symphony" (with the ending which I composed to it for you). This proposal is open to amendment, on the supposition that Hartels are willing to agree to it--and, above all, that it suits you.

.--. N.B.--I beg you most particularly to make no further use of the two Psalms "By the waters of Babylon," of which you have a copy, because I have undertaken to make two or three essential alterations in them, and I wish them only to be made known and published in their present form. I send the new ma.n.u.script at the same time as the Cantico di San Francesco.

My best greetings to your wife, and rest a.s.sured always of my sincere thanks, and of the complete harmony of my ideas with your own.

F. Liszt

Rome, March 11th, 1862

When I am sending several ma.n.u.scripts at Easter, I will write a couple of letters to Weimar and thank Jungmann [A pupil of Liszt's in Weimar; died there in September 1892] for his letter.

I feel the want of time almost as much in Rome as in Weimar, and I have observed a strict Fast in correspondence as a rule, so that for three months past I have hardly sent as many as three to four letters to Germany.

Remember me most particularly to Herr Regierungsrath Miller! [A friend of Liszt's, a multifarious writer on music; died 1876]

3. To Dr. Franz Brendel.

[Autograph in the possession of Herr Alexander Meyer Cohn in Berlin.]

Dear Friend,

Your friendly letter has again brought me a whiff of German air, which is all the more welcome to me here as I have not too much of it. One sees extremely few German papers in Rome--also I read them very irregularly--and my correspondents from Germany are limited to two, of whom friend Gottschalg, my legendary Tieffurt Cantor, is the most zealous. His letters flow from his heart--and are therefore always welcome to me.

For all of good news that you tell me I give you twofold thanks.