Great Violinists And Pianists Part 10

V.

In the early months of 1860 the young pianist, Arthur Napoleon, joined Gottschalk at Havana, and the two gave concerts throughout the West Indies, which were highly successful. The early summer had been designed for a tour through Central America and Venezuela, but a severe attack of illness prostrated Gottschalk, and he was not able to sail before August for his new field of musical conquest. Our artist did not return to New York till 1862, after an absence of five years, though his original plan had only contemplated a tour of two years. It must not be supposed that Gottschalk devoted his time continually to concert performances and composition, though he by no means neglected the requirements of musical labor. As he himself confesses, the balmy climate, the glorious landscapes, the languid _dolce far niente_, which tended to enervate all that came under their magic spell, wrought on his susceptible temperament with peculiar effect. A quotation from an article written by Gottschalk, and published in the "Atlantic Monthly," ent.i.tled "Notes of a Pianist," will furnish the reader a graphic idea of the influence of tropical life on such an imaginative and voluptuous character, pa.s.sionately fond of nature and outdoor life: "Thus, in succession, I have visited all the Antilles--Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish; the Guianas, and the coasts of Para. At times, having become the idol of some obscure _pueblo_, whose untutored ears I had charmed with its own simple ballads, I would pitch my tent for five, six, eight months, deferring my departure from day to day, until finally I began seriously to entertain the idea of remaining there for evermore.

Abandoning myself to such influences, I lived without care, as the bird sings, as the flower expands, as the brook flows, oblivious of the past, reckless of the future, and sowed both my heart and my purse with the ardor of a husbandman who hopes to reap a hundred ears for every grain he confides to the earth. But, alas! the fields where is garnered the harvest of expended doubloons, and where vernal loves bloom anew, are yet to be discovered; and the result of my prodigality was that, one fine morning, I found myself a bankrupt in heart, with my purse at ebb-tide. Suddenly disgusted with the world and myself, weary, discouraged, mistrusting men (ay, and women too), I fled to a desert on the extinct volcano of M------, where, for several months, I lived the life of a cen.o.bite, with no companion but a poor lunatic whom I had met on a small island, and who had attached himself to me. He followed me everywhere, and loved me with that absurd and touching constancy of which dogs and madmen alone are capable. My friend, whose insanity was of a mild and harmless character, fancied himself the greatest genius in the world. He was, moreover, under the impression that he suffered from a gigantic, monstrous tooth. Of the two idiosyncrasies, the latter alone made his lunacy discernible, too many individuals being affected with the other symptom to render it an anomalous feature of the human mind.

My friend was in the habit of protesting that this enormous tooth increased periodically, and threatened to encroach upon his entire jaw.

Tormented, at the same time, with the desire of regenerating humanity, he divided his leisure between the study of dentistry, to which he applied himself in order to impede the progress of his hypothetical tyrant, and a voluminous correspondence which he kept up with the Pope, his brother, and the Emperor of the French, his cousin. In the latter occupation he pleaded the interests of humanity, styled himself 'the Prince of Thought,' and exalted me to the dignity of his ill.u.s.trious friend and benefactor. In the midst of the wreck of his intellect, one thing still survived--his love of music. He played the violin; and, strange as it may appear, although insane, he could not understand the so-called _music of the future_.

"My hut, perched on the verge of the crater, at the very summit of the mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock upon which it was built projected over a precipice whose abysses were concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The species of table-rock thus formed had been encircled with a railing, and transformed into a terrace on a level with the sleeping-room, by my predecessor in this hermitage. His last wish had been to be buried there; and from my bed I could see his white tombstone gleaming in the moonlight a few steps from my window. Every evening I rolled my piano out upon the terrace; and there, facing the most incomparably beautiful landscape, all bathed in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I poured forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts with which the scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself a gigantic amphitheatre hewn out of the mountains by an army of t.i.tans; right and left, immense virgin forests full of those subdued and distant harmonies which are, as it were, the voices of Silence; before me, a prospect of twenty leagues marvelously enhanced by the extreme transparency of the air; above, the azure of the sky: beneath, the creviced sides of the mountain sweeping down to the plain; afar, the waving savannas; beyond them, a grayish speck (the distant city); and, encompa.s.sing them all, the immensity of the ocean closing the horizon with its deep-blue line. Behind me was a rock on which a torrent of melted snow dashed its white foam, and there, diverted from its course, rushed with a mad leap and plunged headlong into the gulf that yawned beneath my window.

"Amid such scenes I composed 'Reponds-moi la Marche des Gibaros,'

'Polonia,' 'Columbia,' 'Pastorella e Cavaliere,' 'Jeunesse,' and many other unpublished works. I allowed my fingers to run over the keys, wrapped up in the contemplation of these wonders; while my poor friend, whom I heeded but little, revealed to me with a childish loquacity the lofty destiny he held in reserve for humanity. Can you conceive the contrast produced by this shattered intellect expressing at random its disjointed thoughts, as a disordered clock strikes by chance any hour, and the majestic serenity of the scene around me? I felt it instinctively. My misanthropy gave way. I became indulgent toward myself and mankind, and the wounds of my heart closed once more. My despair was soothed; and soon the sun of the tropics, which tinges all things with gold--dreams as well as fruits--restored me with new confidence and vigor to my wanderings.

"I relapsed into the manners and life of these primitive countries: if not strictly virtuous, they are at all events terribly attractive.

Existence in a tropical wilderness, in the midst of a voluptuous and half-civilized race, bears no resemblance to that of a London c.o.c.kney, a Parisian lounger, or an American Quaker. Times there were, indeed, when a voice was heard within me that spoke of n.o.bler aims. It reminded me of what I once was, of what I yet might be; and commanded imperatively a return to a healthier and more active life. But I had allowed myself to be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidious _far niente_; and my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before a polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. 'Where was the object?' I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas, listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the guava-trees, at nightfall to the chirp of the _grillos_ in the cane-fields, or else smoking my cigar, taking my coffee, rocking myself in a hammock--in short, enjoying all the delights that are the very heart-blood of a _guajiro_, and out of the sphere of which he can see but death, or, what is worse to him, the feverish agitation of our Northern society. Go and talk of the funds, of the landed interest, of stock-jobbing, to this Sybarite lord of the wilderness, who can live all the year round on luscious bananas and delicious cocoa-nuts which he is not even at the trouble of planting; who has the best tobacco in the world to smoke; who replaces today the horse he had yesterday by a better one, chosen from the first _calallada_ he meets; who requires no further protection from the cold than a pair of linen trousers, in that favored clime where the seasons roll on in one perennial summer; who, more than all this, finds at eve, under the rustling palm-trees, pensive beauties, eager to reward with their smiles the one who murmurs in their ears those three words, ever new, ever beautiful, 'Yo te quiero.'"

VI.

Mr. Gottschalk's return to America in February, 1862, was celebrated by a concert in Irving Hall, on the anniversary of his _debut_ in New York.

This was the beginning of another brilliant musical series, in pursuance of which he appeared in every prominent city of the country. While many found fault with Gottschalk for descending to pure "claptrap" and bravura playing, for using his great powers to merely superficial and unworthy ends, he seemed to retain as great a hold as ever over the ma.s.ses of concert-goers. Gottschalk himself, with his epicurean, easy-going nature, laughed at the lectures read him by the critics and connoisseurs, who would have him follow out ideals for which he had no taste. It was like asking the b.u.t.terfly to live the life of the bee.

Great as were the gifts of the artist, it was not to be expected that these would be pursued in lines not consistent with the limitations of his temperament. Gottschalk appears to have had no desire except to amuse and delight the world, and to have been foreign to any loftier musical aspiration, if we may judge by his own recorded words. He pa.s.sed through life as would a splendid wild singing-bird, making music because it was the law of his being, but never directing that talent with conscious energy to some purpose beyond itself.

In 1863 family misfortunes and severe illness of himself cooperated to make the year vacant of musical doings, but instantly he recovered he was engaged by M. Strakosch to give another series of concerts in the leading Eastern cities. Without attempting to linger over his career for the next two years, let us pa.s.s to his second expedition to the tropics in 1865. Four years were spent in South America, each country that he visited vieing with the other in doing him honor. Magnificent gifts were heaped on him by his enthusiastic Spanish-American admirers, and life was one continual ovation. In Peru he gave sixty concerts, and was presented with a costly decoration of gold, diamond, and pearl. In Chili the Government voted him a grand gold medal, which the board of public schools, the board of visitors of the hospitals, and the munic.i.p.al government of Valparaiso supplemented by gold medals, in recognition of Gottschalk's munificence in the benefit concerts he gave for various public and humane inst.i.tutions. The American pianist, through the whole of his career, had shown the traditional benevolence of his cla.s.s in offering his services to the advancement of worthy objects. A similar reception awaited Gottschalk in Montevideo, where the artist became doubly the object of admiration by the substantial additions he made to the popular educational fund. While in this city he organized and conducted a great musical festival in which three hundred musicians engaged, exclusive of the Italian Opera company then at Montevideo.

The spring of 1869 brought Gottschalk to the last scene of his musical triumphs, for the span of his career was about to close over him. Rio Janeiro, the capital of Brazil, gave Gottschalk an ardent reception, which made this city properly the culmination of his toils and triumphs.

Gottschalk wrote that his performances created such a _furore_ that boxes commanded a premium of seventy-five dollars, and single seats fetched twenty-five. He was frequently entertained by Dom Pedro at the palace; in every way the Brazilians testified their lavish admiration of his artistic talents. In the midst of his success Gottschalk was seized with yellow fever, and brought very low. Indeed, the report came back to New York that he was dead, a report, however, which his own letters, written from the bed of convalescence, soon contradicted.

In October of 1869 Gottschalk was appointed by the emperor to take the leaders.h.i.+p of a great festival, in which eight hundred performers in orchestra and chorus would take part. Indefatigable labor, in rehearsing his musicians and organizing the almost innumerable details of such an affair, acted on a frame which had not yet recovered its strength from a severe attack of illness. With difficulty he dragged himself through the tedious preparation, and when he stood up to conduct the first concert of the festival, on the evening of November 26, he was so weak that he could scarcely stand. The next day he was too ill to rise, and, though he forced himself to go to the opera-house in the evening, he was so weak as to be unable to conduct the music, and he had to be driven back to his hotel. The best medical skill watched over him, but his hour had come, and after three weeks of severe suffering he died, December 18, 1869. The funeral solemnities at the Cathedral of Rio were of the most imposing character, and all the indications of really heart-felt sorrow were shown among the vast crowd of spectators, for Gottschalk had quickly endeared himself to the public both as man and artist. At the time of Gott-schalk's death, it was his purpose to set sail for Europe at the earliest practicable moment, to secure the publication of some of his more important works, and the production of his operas, of which he had the finished scores of not less than six.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk was an artist and composer whose gifts were never more than half developed; for his native genius as a musician was of the highest order. Shortly before he died, at the age of forty, he seemed to have ripened into more earnest views and purposes, and, had he lived to fulfill his prime, it is reasonable to hazard the conjecture that he would have richly earned a far loftier niche in the pantheon of music than can now be given him. A rich, pleasure-loving, Oriental temperament, which tended to pour itself forth in dreams instead of action; vivid emotional sensibilities, which enabled him to exhaust all the resources of pleasure where imagination stimulates sense; and a thorough optimism in his theories, which saw everything at its best, tended to blunt the keen ambition which would otherwise inevitably have stirred the possessor of such artistic gifts. Gottschalk fell far short of his possibilities, though he was the greatest piano executant ever produced by our own country. He might have dazzled the world even as he dazzled his own partial countrymen.

His style as a pianist was sparkling, das.h.i.+ng, showy, but, in the judgment of the most judicious, he did not appear to good advantage in comparison with Thalberg, in whom a perfect technique was dominated by a conscious intellectualism, and a high ideal, pa.s.sionless but severely beautiful.

Gottschalk's idiosyncrasy as a composer ran in parallel lines with that of the player. Most of the works of this musician are brilliant, charming, tender, melodious, full of captivating excellence, but bright with the flash of fancy, rather than strong with the power of imagination. We do not find in his piano-forte pieces any of that subtile soul-searching force which penetrates to the deepest roots of thought and feeling. Sundry musical cynics were wont to crush Gottschalk's individuality into the coffin of a single epigram. "A musical bonbon to tickle the palates of sentimental women." But this falls as far short of justice as the enthusiasm of many of his admirers overreaches it. The easy and genial temperament of the man, his ability to seize the things of life on their bright side, and a naive indolence which indisposed the artist to grapple with the severest obligations of an art life, prevented Gottschalk from attaining the greatness possible to him, but they contributed to make him singularly lovable, and to justify the pa.s.sionate attachment which he inspired in most of those who knew him well. But, with all of Gottschalk's limitations, he must be considered the most noticeable and able of pianists and composers for the piano yet produced by the United States.

FRANZ LISZT.

The Spoiled Favorite of Fortune.--His Inherited Genius.--Birth and Early Training.--First Appearance in Concert.--Adam Liszt and his Son in Paris.--Sensation made by the Boy's Playing.--His Morbid Religious Sufferings.--Franz Liszt thrown on his own Resources.--The Artistic Circle in Paris.--Liszt in the Banks of Romanticism.--His Friends and a.s.sociates.--Mme. D'Agoult and her Connection with Franz Liszt.--He retires to Geneva.--Is recalled to Paris by the Thalberg _Furore_.--Rivalry between the Artists, and their Factions.--He commences his Career as Traveling Virtuoso.--The Blaze of Enthusiasm throughout Europe.--Schumann on Liszt as Man and Artist.--He ranks the Hungarian Virtuoso as the Superior of Thalberg.--Liszt's Generosity to his own Countrymen.--The Honors paid to him in Pesth.--Incidents of his Musical Wanderings.--He loses the Proceeds of Three Hundred Concerts.--Contributes to the Completion of the Cologne Cathedral.--His Connection with the Beethoven Statue at Bonn, and the Celebration of the Unveiling.--Chorley on Liszt.--Berlioz and Liszt.--Character of the Enthusiasm called out by Liszt as an Artist.--Remarkable Personality as a Man.--Berlioz characterizes the Great Virtuoso in a Letter.--Liszt erases his Life as a Virtuoso, and becomes Chapel-Master and Court Conductor at Weimar.--Avowed Belief in the New School of Music, and Production of Works of this School.--Wagner's Testimony to Liszt's a.s.sistance.--Liszt's Resignation of his Weimar Post after Ten Years.--His Subsequent Life.--He takes Holy Orders.--Liszt as a Virtuoso and Composer.--Ent.i.tled to be placed among tire most Remarkable Men of his Age.

I.

There are but few names in music more interesting than that of Franz Liszt, the spoiled favorite of Europe for more than half a century, and without question the greatest piano-forte virtuoso that ever lived. His life has pa.s.sed through the sunniest regions of fortune and success, and from his cradle upward the G.o.ds have showered on him their richest gifts. His career as an artist and musician has been most remarkable, his personal life full of romance, and his connection with some of the most vital changes in music which have occurred during the century interesting and significant. From his first appearance in public, at the age of twelve, his genius was acknowledged with enthusiasm throughout the whole republic of art, from Beethoven down to the obscurest _dilletante_, and it may be a.s.serted that the history of music knows no instance of success approaching that achieved by the performances of this great player in every capital of Europe, from Madrid to St.

Petersburg. When he wearied of the fame of the virtuoso, and became a composer, not only for the piano-forte, but for the orchestra, his invincible energy soon overcame all difficulties in his path, and he has lived to see himself accepted as one of the greatest of living musical thinkers and writers.

The life of Liszt is so crowded with important incidents that it is difficult to condense into the brief limits of a sketch any fairly adequate statement of his career. He was born October 22, 1811, in the village of Raiding, in Hungary, and it is said that his father Adam Liszt, who was in the service of the Prince Esterhazy, was firmly convinced that the child would become distinguished on account of the appearance of a remarkable comet during the year. Adam Liszt himself was a fine pianist, gifted indeed with a talent which might have made him eminent had he pursued it. All his ambition and hope, however, centered in his son, in whom musical genius quickly declared itself; and the father found teaching this gifted child not only a labor of love, but a task smoothed by the extraordinary aptness of the pupil. He was accustomed to say to the young Franz: "My son, you are destined to realize the glorious ideal that has shone in vain before my youth. In you that is to reach its fulfillment which I have myself but faintly conceived. In you shall my genius grow up and bear fruit; I shall renew my youth in you even after I am laid in the grave." Such prophetic words recall the vision of the Genoese woman, who foresaw the future greatness of the little Nicolo Paganini, a genius who resembled in many ways the phenomenal musical force embodied in Franz Liszt. When the lad was very young, perhaps not more than six, he read the "Kene" of Chateaubriand, and it made such an indelible impression on his mind that he in after years spoke of it as having been one of the most potent influences of his life, since it stimulated the natural melancholy of his character when his nature was most flexible and impressible.

At the age of nine he made his first appearance in public at Odenburg, playing Bies's concerto in three flats, and improvising a fantasia so full of melodic ideas, striking rhythms, and well-arranged harmony as to strike the audience with surprise and admiration. Among the hearers was Prince Esterhazy, who was so pleased with the precocious talent shown that he put a purse of fifty ducats in the young musician's hand. Soon after this Adam Liszt went to Pres-burg to live, and several n.o.blemen, among whom were Prince Esterhazy, and the Counts Amadee and Szapary, all of them enthusiastic patrons of music, determined to bear the burden of the boy's musical education. To this end they agreed to allow him six hundred florins a year for six years. Young Liszt was placed at Vienna under the tutelage of the celebrated pianist and teacher Czerny, and soon made such progress that he was able to play such works as those even of Beethoven and Hummel at first sight. When Liszt did this for one of Hummel's most difficult concertos, at the rooms of the music publisher one day, it created a great sensation in Vienna, and he quickly became one of the lions of the drawing-rooms of the capital.

Czerny himself was so much delighted with the genius of his charge that he refused to accept the three hundred florins stipulated for his lessons, saying he was but too well repaid by the success of the pupil.

Though toiling with incessant industry in musical study and practice, for the boy was working at composition with Salieri and Randhartinger, as well as the piano-forte with Czerny, he found time to indulge in those strange, mystical, and fantastic dreams which have molded his whole life, oscillating between pietistic delirium, wherein he saw celestial visions and felt the call to a holy life, and the most voluptuous images and aspirations for earthly pleasures. Franz Liszt at this early age had a sensibility so delicate, and an imagination so quickly kindled, that he himself tells us no one can guess the extremes of ecstasy and despair through which he alternately pa.s.sed. These spiritual experiences were perhaps fed by the mysticism of Jacob Boehme, whose works came into his possession, and furnished a most delusive and dangerous guide for the young enthusiast's fancy. But, dream and suffer as he might, nothing was allowed to quench the ardor of his musical studies.

Eighteen months were pa.s.sed in diligent labor under the guidance of the masters, who found teaching almost unnecessary, as the wonderful lad needed but a hint to work out for himself the most difficult problems, and he toiled so incessantly that he often became conscious of the change of day into night only by the failure of the light and the coming of the candles. Finally, by advice of Salieri, after eighteen months of labor, he determined to appear in concert in Vienna. On this occasion the audience was composed of the most distinguished people of Vienna, drawn thither to hear the young musical wonder of whom every one talked.

Among the hearers was Beethoven, who after the concert gave the proud boy the most cordial praise, and prophesied a great career for him.

The elder Liszt was already in Paris, and it was determined that Franz should go to that city, to avail himself of the instructions of Cherubini, at the Conservatoire, who as a teacher of counterpoint had no equal in Europe. The Prince Metternich sent letters of the warmest recommendation, but they were of no avail, for Cherubini, who was singularly whimsical and obstinate in his notions, refused to accept the new candidate, on account of the rule of the Conservatoire excluding pupils of foreign birth, a plea which the famous director did not hesitate to break when he chose. Franz, however, continued his studies under Reicha and Paer, and, while the gates of the Conservatoire were closed, all the salons of Paris opened to receive him. Everywhere he was feted, courted, caressed. This fair-haired, blue-eyed lad, with the seal of genius burning on his face, had made the social world mad over him.

The young adventurer was sailing in a treacherous channel, full of dangerous reefs. Would he, in the homage paid to him, an unmatured youth, by scholars, artists, wealth, beauty, and rank, forgot in mere self-love and vanity his high obligations to his art and the sincere devotion which alone could wrest from art its richest guerdon? This problem seems to have troubled his father, for he determined to take his young Franz away from the palace of Circe. The boy had already made an attempt at composition in the shape of an operetta, in one act, "Don Sanche," which was very well received at the Academie Royale. Adolph Nourrit, the great singer, had led the young composer on the stage, where he was received with thunders of applause by the audience, and was embraced with transport by Rudolph Kreutzer, the director of the orchestra.

Adam Liszt and his son went to England, and spent about six months in giving concerts in London and other cities. Franz was less than fourteen years old, but the pale, fragile, slender boy had, in the deep melancholy which stamped the n.o.ble outline of his face, an appearance of maturity that belied his years. English audiences everywhere received him with admiration, but he seemed to have lost all zest for the intoxicating wine of public favor. A profound gloom stole over him, and we even hear of hints at an attempt to commit suicide. Adam Liszt attributed it to the sad English climate, which Hein-rich Heine cursed with such unlimited bitterness, and took his boy back again to sunnier France. But the dejection darkened and deepened, threatening even to pa.s.s into epilepsy. It a.s.sumed the form of religious enthusiasm, alternating with fits of remorse as of one who had committed the unpardonable sin, and sometimes expressed itself in a species of frenzy for the monastic life. These strange experiences alarmed the father, and, in obedience to medical advice, he took the ailing, half-hysterical lad to Boulogne-sur-Mer, for sea-bathing.

II.

While by the seaside Franz Liszt lost the father who had loved him with the devotion of father and mother combined. This fresh stroke of affliction deepened his dejection, and finally resulted in a fit of severe illness. When he was convalescent new views of life seemed to inspire him. He was now entirely thrown on his own resources for support, for Adam Liszt had left his affairs so deeply involved that there was but little left for his son and widow. A powerful nature, turned awry by unhealthy broodings, is often rescued from its own mental perversities by the sense of some new responsibility suddenly imposed on it. Boy as Liszt was, the t.i.tan in him had already shown itself in the agonies and struggles which he had undergone, and, now that the necessity of hard work suddenly came, the atmosphere of turmoil and gloom began to clear under the imminent practical burden of life. He set resolutely to work composing and giving concerts. The religious mania under which he had rested for a while turned his thoughts to sacred music, and most of his compositions were ma.s.ses. But the very effort of responsible toil set, as it were, a background against which he could appoint the true place and dimensions of his art work. There was another disturbance, however, which now stirred up his excitable mind. He fell madly in love with a lady of high rank, and surrendered his young heart entirely to this new pa.s.sion. The unfortunate issue of this attachment, for the lady was much older than himself, and laughed with a gentle mockery at the infatuation of her young adorer, made Liszt intensely unhappy and misanthropical, but it did not prevent him from steady labor. Indeed, work became all the more welcome, as it served to distract his mind from its amorous pains, and his fantastic musings, instead of feeding on themselves, expressed themselves in his art.

Certainly no healthier sign of one beginning to clothe himself in his right mind again can easily be imagined.

Liszt was now twenty years of age, and had regularly settled in Paris.

He became acquainted intimately with the leaders of French literature, and was an habitue of the brilliant circles which gathered these great minds night after night. Lamartine and Chateaubriand were yielding place to a young and fiery school of writers and thinkers, but cordially clasped hands with the successors whom they themselves had made possible. Mme. George Sand, Balzac, Dumas, Victor Hugo, and others were just then beginning to stir in the mental revolution which they made famous. Liszt felt a deep interest in the literary and scientific interests of the day, and he threw himself into the new movement with great enthusiasm, for its strong wave moved art as well as letters with convulsive throes. The musician found in this fresh impulse something congenial to his own fiery, restless, aspiring nature. He entered eagerly into all the intellectual movements of the day. He became a St. Simonian and such a hot-headed politician that, had he not been an artist, and as such considered a harmless fanatic, he would perhaps have incurred some penalties. Liszt has left us, in his "Life of Chopin," and his letters, some very vivid portraitures of the people and the events, the fascinating literary and artistic reunions, and the personal experiences which made this part of his life so interesting; but, tempting as it is, we can not linger. There can be no question that this section of his career profoundly colored his whole life, and that the influence of Victor Hugo, Balzac, and Mme. George Sand is very perceptible in his compositions not merely in their superficial tone and character, but in the very theory on which they are built. Liszt thenceforward cut loose from all cla.s.sic restraints, and dared to fling rules and canons to the winds, except so far as his artistic taste approved them. The brilliant and daring coterie, defying conventionality and the dull decorum of social law, in which our artist lived, wrought also another change in his character. Liszt had hitherto been almost austere in his self-denial, in restraint of pa.s.sion and license, in a religious purity of life, as if he dwelt in the cold shadow of the monastery, not knowing what moment he should disappear within its gates.

There was now to be a radical change.

One of the brilliant members of the coterie in which he lived a life of such keen mental activity was Countess D'Agoult, who afterward became famous in the literary world as "Daniel Stern." Beautiful, witty, accomplished, imaginative, thoroughly in sympathy with her friend George Sand in her views of love and matrimony, and not less daring in testifying to her opinion by actions, the name of Mme. D'Agoult had already been widely bruited abroad in connection with more than one romantic escapade. In the powerful personality of young Franz Liszt, instinct with an artistic genius which aspired like an eagle, vital with a resolute, reckless will, and full of a magnetic energy that overflowed in everything--looks, movements, talk, playing--the somewhat fickle nature of Mme. D'Agoult was drawn to the artist like steel to a magnet.

Liszt, on the other hand, easily yielded to the refined and delicious sensuousness of one of the most accomplished women of her time, who to every womanly fascination added the rarest mental gifts and high social place.

The mutual pa.s.sion soon culminated in a tie which lasted for many years, and was perhaps as faithfully observed by both parties as could be expected of such an irregular connection. Three children were the offspring of this attachment, a son who died, and two daughters, one of whom became the wife of M. Ollivier, the last imperial prime minister of France, and the other successively Mme. Von Bulow and Mme. Wagner, under which latter t.i.tle she is still known. The _chroniques scandaleuses_ of Paris and other great cities of Europe are full of racy scandals purporting to connect the name of Liszt with well-known charming and beautiful women, but, aside from the uncertainty which goes with such rumors, this is not a feature of Liszt's life on which it is our purpose to dilate. The errors of such a man, exposed by his temperament and surroundings to the fiercest breath of temptation, should be rather veiled than opened to the garish day. Of the connection with Mme.

D'Agoult something has been briefly told, because it had an important influence on his art career. Though the Church had never sanctioned the tie, there is every reason to believe that the lady's power over Liszt was consistently used to restrain his naturally eccentric bias, and to keep his thoughts fixed on the loftiest art ideals.

III.

Soon after Liszt's connection with Mme. D'Agoult began, he retired with his devoted companion to Geneva, Switzerland, a city always celebrated in the annals of European literature and art. In the quiet and charming atmosphere of this city our artist spent two years, busy for the most part in composing. He had already attained a superb rank as a pianist, and of those virtuosos who had then exhibited their talents in Paris no one was considered at all worthy to be compared with Liszt except Chopin. Aside from the great mental grasp, the opulent imagination, the fire and pa.s.sion, the dazzling technical skill of the player, there was a vivid personality in Liszt as a man which captivated audiences. This element dominated his slightest action. He strode over the concert stage with the haughty step of a despot who ruled with a sway not to be contested. Tearing his gloves from his fingers and hurling them on the piano, he would seat himself with a proud gesture, run his fingers through his waving blonde locks, and then attack the piano with the vehemence of a conqueror taking his army into action. Much of this manner was probably the outcome of natural temperament, something the result of affectation; but it helped to add to the glamour with which Liszt always held his audiences captive. When he left Paris for a studious retirement at Geneva, the throne became vacant. By and by there came a contestant for the seat, a player no less remarkable in many respects than Liszt himself, Sigismond Thalberg, whose performances aroused Paris, alert for a new sensation, into an enthusiasm which quickly mounted to boiling heat. Humors of the danger threatened to his. .h.i.therto acknowledged ascendancy reached Liszt in his Swiss retreat. The artist's ambition was stirred to the quick; he could not sleep at night with the thought of this victorious rival who was s.n.a.t.c.hing his laurels, and he hastened back to Paris to meet Thalberg on his own ground.

The latter, however, had already left Paris, and Liszt only felt the ground-swell of the storm he had raised. There was a hot division of opinion among the Parisians, as there had been in the days of Gluck and Piccini. Society was divided into Lisztians and Thalbergians, and to indulge in this strife was the favorite amus.e.m.e.nt of the fas.h.i.+onable world. Liszt proceeded to reestablish his place by a series of remarkable concerts, in which he introduced to the public some of the works wrought out during his retirement, among them transcriptions from the songs of Schubert and the symphonies of Beethoven, in which the most free and pa.s.sionate poetic spirit was expressed through the medium of technical difficulties in the scoring before unknown to the art of the piano-forte. There can be no doubt that the influence of Thalberg's rivalry on Liszt's mind was a strong force, and suggested new combinations. Without having heard Thalberg, our artist had already divined the secret of his effects, and borrowed from them enough to give a new impulse to an inventive faculty which was fertile in expedients and quick to a.s.similate all things of value to the uses of its own insatiable ambition.

Franz Liszt's career as a traveling virtuoso commenced in 1837, and lasted for twelve years. Hitherto he had resisted the impulsion to such a course, all his desires rus.h.i.+ng toward composition, but the extraordinary rewards promised cooperated with the spur of rivalry to overcome all scruples. The first year of these art travels was made memorable by the great inundation of the Danube, which caused so much suffering at Pesth. Thousands of people were rendered homeless, and the scene was one that appealed piteously to the humanitarian mind. The heart of Franz Liszt burned with sympathy, and he devoted the proceeds of his concerts for nearly two months to the alleviation of the woes of his countrymen. A princely sum was contributed by the artist, which went far to a.s.sist the sufferers. The number of occasions on which Liszt gave his services to charity was legion. It is credibly stated that the amount of benefactions contributed by his benefit concerts, added to the immense sums which he directly disbursed, would have made him several times a millionaire.

The blaze of enthusiasm which Liszt kindled made his track luminous throughout the musical centers of Europe. Caesar-like, his very arrival was a victory, for it aroused an indescribable ferment of agitation, which rose at his concerts to wild excesses. Ladies of the highest rank tore their gloves to strips in the ardor of their applause, flung their jewels on the stage instead of bouquets, shrieked in ecstasy and sometimes fainted, and made a wild rush for the stage at the close of the music to see Liszt, and obtain some of the broken strings of the piano, which the artist had ruined in the heat of his play, as precious relics of the occasion. The stories told of the Liszt craze among the ladies of Germany and Russia are highly amusing, and have a value as registering the degree of the effect he produced on impressible minds.

Even sober and judicious critics who knew well whereof they spoke yielded to the contagion. Schumann writes of him, _apropos_ of his Dresden and Leipzig concerts in 1840: "The whole audience greeted his appearance with an enthusiastic storm of applause, and then he began to play. I had heard him before, but an artist is a different thing in the presence of the public compared with what he appears in the presence of a few. The fine open s.p.a.ce, the glitter of light, the elegantly dressed audience--all this elevates the frame of mind in the giver and receiver.

And now the demon's power began to awake; he first played with the public as if to try it, then gave it something more profound, until every single member was enveloped in his art; and then the whole ma.s.s began to rise and fall precisely as he willed it. I never found any artist except Paga-nini to possess in so high a degree this power of subjecting, elevating, and leading the public. It is an instantaneous variety of wildness, tenderness, boldness, and airy grace; the instrument glows under the hand of its master.... It is most easy to speak of his outward appearance. People have often tried to picture this by comparing Liszt's head to Schiller's or Napoleon's; and the comparison so far holds good, in that extraordinary men possess certain traits in common, such as an expression of energy and strength of will in the eyes and mouth. He has some resemblance to the portraits of Napoleon as a young general, pale, thin, with a remarkable profile, the whole significance of his appearance culminating in his head. While listening to Liszt's playing, I have often almost imagined myself as listening to one I heard long before. But this art is scarcely to be described. It is not this or that style of piano-forte playing; it is rather the outward expression of a daring character, to whom Fate has given as instruments of victory and command, not the dangerous weapon of war, but the peaceful ones of art. No matter how many and great artists we possess or have seen pa.s.s before us of recent years, though some of them equal him in single points, all must yield to him in energy and boldness. People have been very fond of placing Thalberg in the lists beside him, and then drawing comparisons. But it is only necessary to look at both heads to come to a conclusion. I remember the remark of a Viennese designer who said, not inaptly, that his countryman's head resembled that of a handsome countess with a man's nose, while of Liszt he observed that he might sit to every painter for a Grecian G.o.d. There is a similar difference in their art. Chopin stands nearer to Liszt as a player, for at least he loses nothing beside him in fairy-like grace and tenderness; next to him Paganini, and, among women, Mme. Malibran; from these Liszt himself says he has learned the most.... Liszt's most genial performance was yet to come, Weber's 'Concert-stuck,' which he played at the second performance. Virtuoso and public seemed to be in the freshest mood possible on that evening, and the enthusiasm during and after his playing almost exceeded anything hitherto known here. Although Liszt grasped the piece from the begin-ing with such force and grandeur that an attack on the battle-field seemed to be in question, yet he carried this on with continually increasing power, until the pa.s.sage where the player seems to stand at the summit of the orchestra, leading it forward in triumph. Here, indeed, he resembled that great commander to whom he has been compared, and the tempestuous applause that greeted him was not unlike an adoring 'Vive l'Empereur.'"

Flattering to his pride, however, as were the universal honors bestowed on the artist, none were so grateful as those from his own countrymen.

The philanthropy of his conduct had made a deep impression on the Hungarians. Two cities, Pesth and Odenburg, created him an honorary citizen; a patent of n.o.bility was solicited for him by the _comitat_ of Odenburg; and the "sword of honor," according to Hungarian custom, was presented to him with due solemnities. A brief account from an Hungarian journal of the time is of interest.

"The national feeling of the Magyars is well known; and proud are they of that star of the first magnitude which arose out of their nation.

Over the countries of Europe the fame of the Hungarian Liszt came to them before they had as yet an opportunity of admiring him. The Danube was swollen by rains, Pesth was inundated, thousands were mourning the loss of friends and relations or of all their property. During his absence in Milan Liszt learned that many of his countrymen were suffering from absolute want. His resolution was taken. The smiling heaven of Italy, the _dolce far niente_ of Southern life, could not detain him. The following morning he had quitted Milan and was on his way to Vienna. He performed for the benefit of those who had suffered by the inundation at Pesth. His art was the horn of plenty from which streamed forth blessings for the afflicted. Eighteen months afterward he came to Pesth, not as the artist in search of pecuniary advantage, but as a Magyar. He played for the Hungarian national theatre, for the musical society, for the poor of Pesth and of Odenburg, always before crowded houses, and the proceeds, fully one hundred thousand francs, were appropriated for these purposes. Who can wonder that admiration and pride should arise to enthusiasm in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his grateful countrymen? He was complimented by serenades, garlands were thrown to him; in short, the whole population of Pesth neglected nothing to manifest their respect, grat.i.tude, and affection. But these honors, which might have been paid to any other artist of high distinction, did not satisfy them. They resolved to bind him for ever to the Hungarian nation from which he sprang. The token of manly honor in Hungary is a sword, for every Magyar has the right to wear a sword, and avails himself of that right. It was determined that their celebrated countryman should be presented with the Hungarian sword of honor. The n.o.blemen appeared at the theatre, in the rich costume they usually wear before the emperor, and presented Liszt, midst thunders of applause from the whole a.s.sembled people, with a costly sword of honor." It was also proposed to erect a bronze statue of him in Pesth, but Liszt persuaded his countrymen to give the money to a struggling young artist instead.