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Franz Liszt 1811–1886

by Fr. Niecks

On July 31 went from us the last of the eminent musicians, born within the decade 1803-1813, who by their achievements initiated and consummated a new era in music, that of neo-romanticism. Of this glorious band, Mendelssohn, the link between the old and the new, was the first to shuffle off this mortal coil; Chopin, Schumann, and Berlioz followed respectively at intervals of two, seven, and thirteen years; Wagner in 1883. None of those that preceded him to the grave left such a blank in the musical life of the world as Liszt, for none of them influenced it in so many ways and so directly – by playing, teaching, and conducting, by musical and literary composition, by personal character and social intercourse. We look about in vain for one to fill his place. Which of the prominent living musicians can flatter himself with the proud thought of being acknowledged, unanimously, or even by a small majority, the head of the musical republic? We have entered on an interregnum, a masterless and lawless time. May the coming of a heaven-appointed leader be at hand! As yet, undistracted by the heartless if comforting cry, Le roi est mort, vive le roi, we can abandon ourselves to the mournful but elevating contemplation of the life of him whom we have lost.

Franz Liszt was born at Raiding, a village in the Hungarian County of Oedenburg, in the night of October 21-22, 1811, his parents being Adam Liszt, a native of Hungary, and Anna Liszt (née Lager), a native of Austria. Had Adam Liszt been free to choose his profession, he would have become a musician. But pecuniary considerations obliged him to resist a strong natural inclination, which had been increased by opportunities of hearing at Eisenach good music and associating with clever musicians (Joseph Haydn and Nepomuk Hummel, among others), and to confine his cultivation of the art to the hours which he could spare from his labours as a clerk in one of Prince Esterhazy’s offices. His promotion to the stewardship of the Prince’s estates at Raiding enabled him to marry and live in material comfort. As little Franz grew up, he began to pay attention to the music he heard in the house, and at the age of six prevailed on his father by importunate entreaties to teach him the piano. There never was a pupil who learned more rapidly: his fingers showed a marvellous aptitude; his sight, hearing, and memory were extraordinary. Moreover, he pursued his musical studies with the ardour that characterised his activity almost throughout the whole of his life; so great, indeed, was this ardour that it made at this period, and it did so again at a later period, too heavy demands on his bodily frame, which was elastic rather than robust. His prima vista playing and improvisations excited the spreading and swelling of his reputation in the neighbourhood. A concert given at Oedenburg by a blind musician, at which Franz, now nine years of age, played Ries’s E flat major Concerto and an improvisation; a second concert got up in the same town by his father; and, finally, a concert at Pressburg, decided the future of the musical prodigy. Adam Liszt was no longer in doubt about his son’s vocation, and a number of Hungarian magnates, who heard the boy on the last occasion, offered to furnish the means for his education – 600 florins yearly for six years.

When the exorbitant fee demanded by Hummel put his tuition out of the question, the Liszt family went to Vienna, where, after careful consideration, Charles Czerny and Antonio Salieri were chosen for Franz’s teachers. The strict and methodic instruction of the former, though not at all to the taste of the young high-flier, was exactly what he needed: it laid a sound foundation of a correct technique on which afterwards anything might be reared. Salieri’s teaching was, as far as it went, also good, consisting in exercises in harmonic part-writing, mostly in the form of short sacred compositions, and in reading and analysing classical scores. Of the result of his studies under these masters Franz gave proof to the public of Vienna at a concert on December 1, 1822. A correspondent of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported that the young virtuoso transported the audience with admiration; that he executed Hummel’s A minor Concerto not only with incredible vigour, but also with feeling, expression, and delicate shading; and that the free fantasia (more of the nature of a capriccio) on several themes (Andante from Beethoven’s A major Symphony, a Cavatina of Rossini’s, &c.) was very clever. Besides taking part in concerts given by others, he gave a second one himself, at which he performed Hummel’s B minor Concerto and again a free fantasia. On this occasion (April 13, 1823) took place an often described and truly memorable incident – Beethoven, who honoured the concert with his presence, ascending the platform at the end of the improvisation and kissing the boy.

After eighteen months tuition by the above-mentioned masters, Franz was taken by his parents to Paris, to continue his studies there, at the Conservatoire. But their hopes were dashed by the Rhadamanthine Cherubini, who, deaf to their entreaties and blind to the powerful recommendations they brought with them, immovably opposed to their wishes the regulations of the institution, which forbade the admission of foreigners. As regards the piano, Franz was now left to himself, whilst Paër became his teacher in composition. Subsequently (in 1826) Reicha undertook his instruction in counterpoint. How childlike Franz still was at the time he came to Paris may be gathered from the following anecdote. He had been playing to the Duke of Orleans and his family. The Duke, delighted with the boy’s performances, asked him to say what he wished as a present. Our admired virtuoso was not slow in making his choice, but at once begged for the pulcinello with which the little Prince of Joinville was amusing himself. Already a favourite in the Parisians salons, he made his first public appearance on March 8, 1824, and had as unmistakable a success as at Vienna, Munich, Stuttgart, and Strassburg, through which he passed on his way to the French capital, and where he was greeted as a second Mozart. In the same year he visited England, giving his first Concert on June 21, 1824. In 1825 he paid a second visit to England, and in 1827 a third. Between these visits to England he made two concert tours in the French provinces; and on October 17, 1825, there was produced, at the Académie Royale de Musique, a dramatic composition from his pen, entitled ‘Don Sanche ou le Château d’Amour, opéra-féerie en un acte,’ the libretto of which was by Théaulon and De Rancé. The work, which was only three times performed, seems to have found a good reception, perhaps attributable more to the interest the public took in the artist than to the merit of the music. But nothing certain can be said on this head – the little opera perished some years ago in a fire, and the surviving criticisms are contradictory and untrustworthy.

The young musician had composed by this time a good deal for orchestra and chorus as well as for piano. Most of these compositions, however, remained in manuscript, and are now lost; and the two that were printed and are still in existence (an Impromptu on themes by Rossini and Spontini, and the ‘Etudes en douze Exercises,’ Op.1) show that his individuality was as yet undeveloped.[1] The development of the man and artist began at the period of his life we have now reached. It was a misfortune for the youth that his father died (at Boulogne, on August 28, 1827) at this critical juncture. Not that the latter would have been to him an adequate guide and philosopher in all things, but he might have been to him at least a moral stay. Franz’s general education had been neglected, and up to this time his reading had been almost entirely confined to religious books. Now a craving for knowledge and light made itself more and more strongly felt. Miss Ramann[2] says truly that ‘René’s words, un instinct secret me tourmente, became Liszt’s motto for his own, as yet understood, inner life, but also the watchword for contradictions, world-weariness (Weltschmertz), and religious doubt.’ Music, too, no longer satisfied him. His mother told Lenz, in 1828, that her Franz was little at home, being always at church, and did not occupy himself at all with music. A more trustworthy informant than Lenz is Liszt himself, who, in the second letter of a Bachelor of Music, addressed to George Sand, reveals much of his aspirations and soul-struggles. ‘When death had robbed me of my father, and I had returned to Paris alone, and began to have a presentiment of what art might be and what artists ought to be, I was oppressed by the impossibilities which on all sides opposed themselves to the course which my thought had marked out. Moreover, meeting nowhere with a sympathetic word from congenial spirits – not among men of the world, still less among artists, who doze on in easy indifference, who knew nothing of me and the aims I had proposed to myself, nothing of the capacities with which I had been endowed – I conceived a bitter disgust for the art as I saw it before me: degraded to a more or less lucrative trade, moulded into a source of entertainment of the fashionable society. I would have been playing anything in the world rather than a musician in the pay of great gentlemen, patronised and paid by them like a conjuror, or like the clever dog Munito.’ In the same letter Liszt relates that at this time he passed through a two-years’ illness, during which he sought to satisfy the violent need of his faith and devotion in the serious exercises of Catholicism. ‘I bowed my forehead over the humid steps of Saint Vincent-de-Paul. I made my heart bleed, my thoughts prostrate themselves . . . Resignation of all that is earthly was the sole lever, the sole word of my life.’ Indeed, had it not been for the entreaties of his mother, to which he gave way now, as he had done some years before to the advice of his father, Liszt would have entered the priesthood. The ‘thin, pale-looking young man with indescribably attractive features’ whom Lenz found in 1828 lying on a sofa, surrounded by three pianos, profoundly meditative, lost in himself, and smoking a long Turkish pipe, was delivered out of the slough of despond in which he had for years been struggling by the July revolution of 1830. C’est le canon qui l’a guéri, his mother used to say.

Liszt was a man liberally endowed with both intellectual and emotional, both with spiritual and sensual capacities. Now imagine a passionate nature of this kind let loose without a mentor in the mazes of literature and society, especially a literature and society in many respects so unhealthy as those which began to flourish in Paris in the second decade of this century. Was it a wonder that one so ill-prepared to cope with the dangers to be encountered there should jump from one extreme to another, be misled by the moral and philosophical lights of the day, and occasionally give the reins to his passions? Liszt had become an omnivorous reader. He explored the heights and depths of literature. He plodded over the stony roads and wayless wildernesses of science, history, and philosophy, and loitered on the flowery paths of poetry and romance. Chateaubriand was probably the first author (excepting devotional writers) who made a deep impression upon him. ‘René’ (the detached episode of this author’s ‘Le Génie du Christianisme’), which has been called the French Werther, held him for a long time enthralled. Lamartine and Victor Hugo exercised a lasting influence over him, a fact which declares itself openly in his musical works: that of the former in the ‘Harmonies poétiques et religieuses’ and ‘Les Préludes,’ that of the latter in ‘Mazeppa’ and ‘Ce qu-on entend sur la Montagne.’ With these two poets Liszt, who had more or less intercourse with almost all the distinguished authors and artists living at Paris, was also personally acquainted. George Sand became a most intimate friend of his. Very characteristic of the man is the interest with which he studied and the enthusiasm with which he to a great extent adopted the socialistic, religious, philosophical, socio-religious, and socio-philosophical systems of his time, as set forth, for instance, in Saint-Simon’s ‘Nouveau Christianisme,’ Ballanche’s ‘Essai sur les institutions sociales,’ Fourier’s ‘Traité de l’association domestique-agricole,’ and Lamennais’ ‘Paroles d’un croyant.’ George Sand speaks in one of her letters of Liszt as ‘the pupil of Ballanche, Rodrigues, and Sénancour.’ Olinde Rodrigues was a disciple of Saint-Simon, Sénancour the author of ‘Obermann,’ a psychological romance in letters, of which we now and then read in Liszt’s literary writings. But let us see what Heine has to say of Liszt, with whom he was personally acquainted. ‘He is a man of a distorted (verschrobenen) but noble character, unselfish and without guile. His intellectual tendencies are very remarkable. He has great talent for speculation, and, more than even by the concerns of his art, he is interested by the investigations of the different schools which occupy themselves with the solution of the great problem comprehending heaven and earth. He was long enamoured of the beautiful Saint-Simonian view of the world, subsequently the spiritualistic, or rather vaporous, thoughts of Ballanche befogged him, now he raves about the republico-catholic doctrines of Lamennais, who has planted a Jacobin cap on the cross . . . Heaven knows in what intellectual stable he will find his next hobby. This indefatigable thirsting for light and godhead remains nevertheless praiseworthy; it testifies to his sense of the holy, the religious.’

A year after the political revolution in France there occurred an event which brought about an artistic revolution in Liszt. This event was the appearance of Paganini in Paris. The wonderful performances of this virtuoso revealed to Liszt new possibilities and new ideals. He now began to form that pianoforte style which incorporated as it were the excellences of all the other instruments, individually and collectively. Liszt himself called the process ‘the orchestration of the pianoforte.’ But before this transformation could be consummated other influences had to be brought to bear on the architect. The influence of Chopin, who appeared in Paris soon after Paganini, must have been great, but was too subtle and partial to be easily gauged. It is different with Berlioz, whose influence on Liszt was palpable and general, affecting every branch of the art-practice of the latter. Heine’s words, ‘Liszt is the nearest in elective affinity to (der nächste Wahlverwandte von) Berlioz,’ are significant. And Thalberg, the great rival of Liszt? Fétis stultified himself in 1837 by saying in an article, instigated (this may be said in his excuse) by an unfair criticism of some compositions of Thalberg’s by Liszt, that the former was the homme transcendant of a new school, but the latter the homme transcendant of an effete school, one qui n’as plus rien à faire. Nobody needs to be told in our day that Liszt was the first of a new and vital school, and not the last of an effete one. When Thalberg came to the front Liszt’s style was in the main formed. Thalberg did only one thing for Liszt, he stimulated him to exert his powers to the utmost.

Liszt, when at the zenith of his virtuosity, ‘exercised a charm bordering on the fabulous.’ I quote from a report of Heine’s, dated April 4, 1841. ‘Beside him all pianists dwindle – with the exception of one, Chopin, the Raphael of the piano. Indeed, with the exception of this one, all other pianists whom we heard this year at innumerable concerts are just mere pianists – they shine by the dexterity with which they handle the stringed wood. With Liszt, on the other hand, one thinks no longer of difficulties overcome; the piano disappears, and music reveals itself. In this respect Liszt has, since we heard him last, made the most wonderful progress. With this superiority he combines a repose which we formerly missed in him. When, for instance, he then played a thunderstorm on the piano, we saw the lightening flash over his face, his limbs shaken by the storm, and his long locks of hair dripping, as it were, from the heavy shower represented. But when he plays now even the most violent thunderstorm he rises above it, like the traveller who stands on the top of a mountain, whilst the storm rages below; the clouds lie deep below him, the lightening winds like serpents at his feet, and, smiling, he lifts up his head into the pure ether.’ Mendelssohn thought Thalberg a more perfect virtuoso than Liszt, being gratified in his playing by the congenial qualities of repose, self-restraint, and exquisiteness. But he said of Liszt that he was a good, hearty fellow at bottom, and an excellent artist. ‘Liszt possesses a certain flexibility and diversity of the fingers and an out and out musical feeling which is not likely to have anywhere its equal. In one word, I have not seen any musician in whom musical feeling ran, as in Liszt, into the very tips of the fingers and there streamed out immediately.’ Schumann did not know how to express all he felt. ‘How extraordinarily he plays, and how daringly and madly, and again how tenderly and airily – that I have never heard before! . . . Liszt appears to me every day mightier; to-day he has again played in such a manner that we all trembled and jubilated.’ The impression which Liszt made in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and wherever he played, was inexplicable to all who experienced it, incredible to all who did not come within the magician’s circle. Heine, reporting in 1844 the unheard-of furore excited in Paris by the great agitator, the again-risen rat-catcher of Hamelin, the new Faust, the modern Amphion and Homer, Attila, God’s scourge of Erard’s pianos, wondered what the cause of this phenomenon could be. ‘The solution of this question belongs perhaps rather to pathology than to aesthetics. A physician, whose specialty is women’s diseases, and whom I questioned on the fascination which Liszt exercises on his public, smiled very strangely, and at the same time spoke of magnetism, galvanism, and electricity, of contagion in a sultry hall, filled with innumerable wax lights and some hundred perfumed and perspiring people, of histrionic epilepsy, of the phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantharides, and other unmentionable matters, which, I think, have to do with the mysteries of the bona dea; the solution of the question, however, does not lie perhaps so strangely deep, but on a very prosaic surface. I am inclined sometimes to think that the whole witchery might be explained thus – namely, that nobody in this world knows so well how to organise his successes, or rather their mise en scène, as Franz Liszt. In this art he is a genius, a Philadelphia, a Bosco, a Houdin, yea, a Meyerbeer. The most distinguished persons serve him gratis as compères, and his hired enthusiasts are drilled in an exemplary way.’ Heine is not often wholly in earnest, and certainly was not when he wrote this paragraph. Whatever there may be of truth in the insinuation, mise en scène, however elaborate and ingenious, cannot explain the extraordinary enthusiasm Liszt excited. Moreover, Liszt made the same impression where such a mise en scène was impossible. I remind the reader only of the expressions of astonishment and admiration by Mendelssohn and Schumann; and the testimonies of thousands of others,[3] who with equal delight heard him in private without the surroundings and trickeries which no doubt often heighten the effect of public performances; and of the confirmed sceptics in this country who a few months ago were converted by the septuagenary artist into devout believers. Heine indicated the real cause of the phenomenon more correctly in the original reading of one of the above sentences, where he speaks of ‘the electrical effect of a daemonic nature on a closely-packed crowd, the contagious power of ecstasy, and perhaps the magnetism of music itself, the spiritualistic malady of the time, which vibrates in almost all of us,’ and adds, ‘these phenomena have never confronted me so distinctly and alarmingly as at Liszt’s concert.’ Yes, it was the daemonic nature of Liszt gave him the most marvellous power over his fellow men. The daemonic, however, is, as Goethe remarked, not analysable by reason and judgement. The Greeks would have numbered a being thus endowed with the demi-gods. We moderns fall back upon the miserable make-shift appellation, ‘a man of genius,’ one of the most abused phrases imaginable.

Well, this unique virtuoso gave up in the fullness of his strength, at the height of his popularity, his glorious career, and retired in 1849 to the quiet town of Weimar, to devote himself to the pursuit of higher ideals. His activity there was manifold, comprehending musical and literary composition, conducting, and teaching. He gathered around him a numerous band of talented and aspiring disciples; brought to a hearing remarkable works which elsewhere found no acceptance (for instance, Wagner’s ‘Lohengrin’ and Berlioz’s ‘Benvenuto Cellini’); sent forth into the world books and essays interpretive of men and things insufficiently or not at all understood (‘Frédéric Chopin’; ‘Des Bohémiens et de leur Musique’; ‘Lohengrin et Tannhäuser de Richard Wagner’; ‘Berlioz and his Harold-Symphony’; ‘Robert Franz’; ‘ Wagner’s Rheingold,’ &c.); and last, but not least, created a long series of musical works of high aim and original conception.

Before his retirement to Weimar Liszt had composed much, but the great bulk of his writings consisted of transcriptions and fantasias and other virtuosic music. All his grand orchestral and vocal works – his symphonic poems, oratorios, and masses – are the outcome of the second half of his life. It is now time that I should speak of Liszt as a composer. Mendelssohn thought in 1840 that nature had, at least up to that time, denied Liszt original ideas. The more sympathetic Schumann was already in the preceding year convinced that Liszt, with his eminent musical nature, would have become a notable composer if he had given to composition and to himself the time which he had devoted to piano and other masters. Did Liszt become a truly great composer when he devoted more time to composition and him self than to the piano and other masters? His superiority as a pianist, and also as a transcriber and arranger of other men’s thoughts, has almost always been universally acknowledged, certainly it is so now; his position as a composer, on the other hand, remains even to-day an open question. One of the obstacles in the way of justice being done to him is his many-sidedness. Had he been only a pianist, only a transcriber, only a song composer, only a writer of symphonic poems, only an author of sacred music, or only a littérateur, people would have known what to think of him. But the multiplicity of his claims to fame have had the effect of obscuring it. To make matters worse, he displays in each of these classes of composition as much diversity as there is between these classes themselves. And there is not only diversity, but also inequality. A Faust in curiosity as well as in aspiration, prompted by the suggestions of an ever active mind, Liszt loved to make experiments, and to abandon himself to the caprices of the moment. Hence it is not surprising that if anyone wishes to demonstrate the master’s want of melody, harshness of harmony, obscurity, diffuseness, eccentricity, &c., he can find examples to prove each and all of these faults. But this does not settle the question whether Liszt is a great composer. He undoubtedly possessed creativeness, although the constitution of his creativeness differed from that of Haydn, Mozart and Schubert by the presence of less naïveté and more reflectiveness and esprit (a word which does not express, but only suggests, my meaning. ‘Ingenuity’ would be equally inadequate). There are, however, among his compositions not a few wherein also naïveté manifests itself in its highest potency. By many the contents of Liszt’s musical works are not comprehended, perhaps not comprehensible. But this is so because his uncommon personality is not comprehensible, or not comprehended by them. Next to an intimate acquaintance with his life and character, the reading of his literary works will, in this case, be the best remedy. For they reveal unmistakably the nature of the writer – his spiritual aspirations and sensuous appreciations, his delicate feeling and fierce passion, his chivalrous disposition, gorgeous imagination, wide sympathy, power of assimilation, &c. In passing I will yet say that Liszt’s literary style may be characterised as poetic prose, its qualities being rather pictorial and musical than strictly literary. The objection made to programme-music seems to me to rest on a misconception of what it aims at. The same seems to me the case with the charge of formlessness. I admit that Liszt’s form is sometimes wanting in perspicuity and beauty of proportion, but what is called formlessness is only divergence from the old established forms. Lobe, by no means a disparager of the classics, remarks persistently that ‘if the real nature of form consists in being harmonious, musically logical – i.e., thematically-constructed – organism, Liszt’s works are as correct in form as the last quartets of Beethoven, which, to be sure, had formerly the same fault attributed to them.’ A very considerable reduction has to made – and time alone can make it – till we have reached the remainder of Liszt’s piano, orchestral, and vocal works that will live. But this remainder, I firmly believe, will greatly surpass in value the legacy which Berlioz has left us, and be to the musical world things of beauty and joys forever. Liszt, speaking to me some years ago of Walter Bache’s endeavour to popularise his works in England, said it was a pity that his dear friend and pupil had undertaken so hopeless a job. I think the master was mistaken – the job is not hopeless. Indeed the time seems to me at hand when the prejudices, and indolence, will disappear, and the composer receive the tribute of attention and applause due to him.

It is, of course, impossible to discuss in the narrow space of an article all the phases of so rich an individuality, all the incidents of so active a life. There are, however, one or two subjects on which I must say a few words. To Liszt’s ten years’ connection with the Countess d’Agoult, in literature known as Daniel Stern, who in 1835, at the age of twenty-nine, six years after her marriage, left husband and family (two children, a third had shortly before died), I can only allude. Out of this connection came three children – a son who died young, and two daughters, Blanche, who died as the wife of the French statesman Ollivier, and Cosima, who became first the wife of Hans von Bülow and then of Richard Wagner. Liszt is said to have offered to marry the Countess, but to have received the answer: ‘Madame la Comtesse d’Agoult ne sera jamais Madame Liszt.’ Before judging Liszt, readers would do well to read Miss Ramann’s account, which, however, represents the affair in a light unfairly favourable to him. At least it so appears to me, and I am not prepossessed in favour of the Countess, to all appearance a woman as vain, capricious, and haughty as she was beautiful. The other event in Liszt’s life which gave rise to a great deal of gossip and comment, indeed, made quite a sensation, was his entering the priesthood.[4] To the readers of this article the step will not appear in any way extraordinary. Liszt was from his earliest childhood inclined to devotion, and had always a tendency to religious mysticism. ‘That Liszt became a priest,’ writes Lenz, ‘lay in the innermost kernel of his nature. It was thematic. Liszt, the man of the world, is an episode of the theme. Only to the priest are open the entrances of the infinite, the natural home of the mind. Priest is the sequence of prophet, and a prophet Liszt was always, from the beginning of his career.’

Liszt was one of the most interesting and noblest characters the world has ever seen. His wide culture and great experience of the world, combined with the consciousness of his natural powers, gave him a wonderful self-possession, which enabled him to feel equally at ease in the society of a prince and in that of a beggar. This self-possession has often been misunderstood, being confounded with assumption of superiority. Although capable of withering scorn, and rather addicted to irony in its different forms, Liszt was at bottom, as Mendelssohn remarked, ‘a good hearty fellow.’ He could be as playful as a child. I remember a quartet party at his house in Weimar in 1878. He was bubbling over with fun. At last he sat down beside me, and, slapping my knee, exclaimed, ‘Now you see what sort of a fellow I am.’ George Eliot says in her diary (1854), ‘Liszt’s conversation is charming. I never met with a person whose manner of telling a story was so piquant . . . Liszt’s replies were always felicitous and characteristic.’ The fundamental note of Liszt’s character was love. His sympathy knew no bounds, it was a sympathy unto self-abnegation. Instead of producing works for his own glory, he wrote pamphlets and essays to help others to obtain recognition. Ask his pupils – from whom he received no fees – what they think of him? Though he had earned millions he had, in the last years of his life, just enough to live comfortably. Few monarchs have been so magnificent in their charity as he. One of his last acts and sayings deserve to be recorded. Shortly before his death a pupil of his had written to him and asked, as many others had done before him, for pecuniary assistance. This came into his mind in one of his lucid moments, and he requested Madame Wagner to send a sum of money to the applicant. She replied that it should be done shortly. Liszt hereupon said: ‘No, not shortly, send it at once; the man is in want.’

It must be a great satisfaction to the people of England that among them Liszt closed his artistic career, and that he spoke to everybody of the great pleasure which his visit has given him. Another circumstance which will interest Englishmen is that the last notes which Liszt put upon paper were a few lines (alas! only a few lines) of a fantasia on subjects from Mackenzie’s ‘Troubadour,’ which the master had volunteered to write when he was in London.

Enough! Liszt has lived a noble life. It is for us to honour his memory.

Musical Times, September 1886

Notes

1. In connection with the Etudes, Op.1, see E. Dannreuther’s interesting articles (‘Liszt’s Pianoforte Works’) in The Musical Review (1883). [back]

2. To whose ‘Franz Liszt’ I am largely indebted for my facts and dates. [back]

3. See, for instance, George Eliot’s remarks in her Diary of 1854, ‘Life of George Eliot,’ by J. W. Cross. [back]

4. To be more exact, Liszt, as one authority states, had received the minor orders with the title of Abbé. Another informant tells me that Liszt’s status was that of a deacon, which, I think, is one of the ordines majores. [back]