BOOKS.
A LIFE OF LISZT.*
Or Liszt it has been truly said by a recent writer (Herr Niecks, in the September issue of the Musical Times) that "the multi- plicity of his claims to fame have had the effect of obscuring it." The world naturally fights shy of Admirable Crichtons, holding that this diffusion of talent is incompatible with enduring achievements in any single line. Forty years of assiduous devotion to higher ideals have not been able to obliterate the vivid and persistent recollections of Liszt, the fabulous virtuoso, the idol of the Parisian salons, the friend, or more than friend, of George Sand; and his appearance amongst us this summer, picturesque and attractive in old age, proved that the strange personal magnetism he exercised in the zenith of his powers had lost hardly any of its compelling force. So great, indeed, was the desire to see Liszt, that hundreds of people were drawn as far as the Crystal Palace whom neither Mr. Manus could capture nor Beethoven attract,— not ten years of Richter nor a thousand Popular Concerts. There was, no doubt, a great deal of healthy admiration and respect in all this, mingled with the desire to make honourable amends for the coldness and jealousy with which he was treated when he last visited our shores. But in these enthusiastic manifestations not a little unhealthy and ill-bred curiosity concerning the personality of the artist was mixed up, and we cannot entirely acquit Mr. De Beaufort of having, albeit unconsciously, aimed at gratifying these feelings. He does not condone the irregularities of Liszt's career, but be is needlessly diffuse in regard to details connected with his liaisons, the existence of one of which, as he somewhat complacently tells us on p. 186, he and only one other amongst Liszt's numerous biographers have discovered. Eight pages are devoted to an account of the life of the Comtesse d'Agoult after she finally severed her intimacy with Liszt, while the history of her parents and her own antecedents are related at a length out of all pro- portion to the dimensions of the memoir, thirty-three consecu- tive pages of which, by the way, are borrowed from Miss Amy Fay's Music Study in Germany, already noticed in these columns. The author frankly acknowledges this loan ; but in view of the recent publication and wide circulation of the English reprint of Miss Fay's charming volume, not to mention the very extensive quotations from it that have appeared in the English Press, we are not prepared to accept his candour as a sufficient justification for such a process. The last forty years of Liszt's life occupy some sixty odd pages, fully one-half of which are, as we have stated, bodily transcribed from another book. On the other hand, of the valuable materials recently placed at the disposal of the intending biographer of Liszt by, for example, the publication of such works as the Jugendbriefe of Schumann and the memoir of Ole Bull, Mr. Do Beaufort has made no use whatsoever. Schumann's name occurs just once, and once only, in these pages, Ole Bull's not at all,—although the intimate relations existing between Schumann and Liszt about the year 1840, their criticisms upon each other, and Liszt's services in bringing forward Schumann's works, are matters of extreme interest in the annals of music ; while it was the now historic performance of the " Kreutzer " sonata by Ole Bull and Liszt at the Philharmonic Society's concert which stirred up the odium musicum of the critics against the latter in 1840. Of
this well-known incident, Mr. De Beaufort does not speak a word. Considering his special opportunities as the translator of George Sand's letters, he has made singularly sparing use of them. Heine's writings abound in frequent allusions and brilliant tributes, half-enthusiastic, half-whimsical, to the mar- vellous enchantment of Liszt's playing, some of the most characteristic of which have been quoted by Herr Niecks in the excellent paper already alluded to. But Heine is only mentioned as the recipient of a letter from Liszt, while Mendelssohn at least deserves more than the passing and misleading notice accorded him on p. 153. The facto of such friendships, episodes, and criticisms, however briefly recorded, would, we feel
• The Abbe Lint: the Story of hie Life. By RaphaSt Ledo' de Beaufort. London : Ward and Downey.
convinced, have enabled the reader to form a truer picture of Liszt than the descriptions of his mawkish philandering with Caroline de Saint-Cricq, whose epitaph is thus written by Mr. De Beaufort :—" Slender in form, pure and beautiful as an angel, Caroline was at the same time talented, and although deeply religious, of a lively disposition ; her mind was ,esthetic, and she was especially fond of music." Indeed, Mr. De Beau- fort has a genius for the unexpected in his collocations of epithets. Liszt's mother, we read on p. 9, was " somewhat tall and slenderly built, quite free from affectation, and rather simple and unassuming ;" while " the Bohemians [i.e., gipsies], those swarthy sons of Pusta " (sic) are further described as "copper- coloured, impulsive, and weather-beaten with dark, passionate, and at the same time melancholy eyes." Generally effusive, the style of this book is at times very slipshod. Thus, it is stated (p. 155) that " when the fickle Parisians tried to oppose Thalberg to his rival, Berlioz grew quite wild, and used to assert that Liszt was the greatest pianist of past, present, and future times,—a proceeding which the Hungarian fully reciprocated?' Mr. De Beaufort is as unfortunate in his choice of single epithets as in his combination of them. Chopin is called a "meek Pole," in contradistinction to Liszt, while the latter is elsewhere styled a "dashing musician." Worse still is the passage in which he tells us that the Comtesse d'Agoult " wrote an esteemed History of the Republic of the. Confederate States of the Low Countries. She also composed some capital pieces of poetry."
We have already dwelt on the faults of omission noticeable in this memoir. Those of commission are at least as grave and numerous. For instance, there is a wholly unpardonable in- accuracy on p. 241 in the statement that Liszt's elder daughter, Cosima, was the widow of Hans von Billow, " when she married the then unknown Richard Wagner." The vagueness of the allusions to Liszt's compositions may be illustrated by reference to a passage on p. 178, where we read :—" To that period—[viz., 1830 to 1840, during which Mr. De Beaufort makes the rather large statement that Liszt was present at every concert Berlioz gave]—belong Liszt's transfers from the following works of
Berlioz L'Idee Fixo,' from a melody ; La Marche an Supplice ' and ' Un Bal,' from the Symphonic Fautastique? " Now, as everyone knows, the " Id6e Fixe " is the air which occurs throughout the whole of the symphony in question, and not a separate melody, as the passage would lead one to suppose. Again, it is difficult to avoid suspecting a writer of gross ignorance of musical matters when he speaks of a per- formance of Liszt's Graner Meese fully maintaining " the claims of the Hungarian as one of the most powerful composers and the best pianist of our day," after expressly stating that he conducted the work in person. In another passage, relating to a recital given by Liszt, he introduces a reference to his " instrumentation " which is hardly legitimate, though, indeed, Liszt spoke of his own method as " the orchestration of the pianoforte." We have spoken above of the solitary mention of Mendelssohn in these pages as misleading, and it may be as well to quote the passage as it stands. After stating that Liszt made the acquaintance of young Berlioz in Rome in 1830, the author adds :—" They used to meet at the Villa Medici and at the Caf6 Greco, in the company of Mendelssohn and other distin- guished artistes, with whom they founded a club known tinder the facetious name of ' Societe de l'Indiff6rence en Matii,re Universelle ' (the Association of Universal Indifference). The time used to be pleasantly spent in excursions to Subiaco, Alatri, Il Monte Cassino, &c. ; and the works of Beethoven, Schiller, Goethe, Haydn, and Mozart used to furnish the sub- jects of their conversations." The natural inference to be drawn from this is that the three musicians were on intimate terms, that their literary and philosophical tastes lay on the same plane, and that they made these excursions in each other's com- pany. Now, it is a carious fact that Berlioz, who treats this period fully in his memoirs, makes no mention—unless we are greatly mistaken—of Liszt in connection with it. On the other hand, he makes it quite clear that he differed widely on art and religion from Mendelssohn, and took a somewhat malicious pleasure in trying to shock his feelings. Mendelssohn, on his side, has re- corded in his letters the antipathy that Berlioz awoke in him by his extravagances. This did not stand in the way of much friendly intercourse a decade later, when Berlioz could not speak too highly of Mendelssohn's unwearied courtesy and sweetness of temper But we assert that the passage quoted above conveys a radically incorrect impression of the relations which prevailed between
these great artists at a particular time. Berlioz has described these long rambles in chapters full of a singular charm, but has never once mentioned either Liszt or Mendelssohn as having been his companions. Two other statements in Mr. De Beaufort's book are rather hard to accept literally. The first is that between 1810 and 1820, Liszt's " native tongue was only used by the peasantry in like manner as Welsh or Gaelic are now used in Wales and in some parts of Scotland." The second is that Liszt spoke German with difficulty. (p. 261.) Mr. De Beaufort certainly quotes it with difficulty, as the habitual mis-spelling of such words as " Kapelltneister " and " Tannhauser " prove. Before taking leave of his book, we may further illustrate his unfortunate talent for laying himself open to the suspicion of ignorance and confusion by the following curious summary of Liszt's achievements :—" Though for nearly the last thirty years of his life it had been Liszt's ambition to exchange his unique reputation as a pianist for the title of com- poser, it is highly probable that he will only live in men's memory as a wonderful executant, whose chief claim to the gratitude of posterity will have been his incomparable rendering of Wagner's compositions, by which he enabled the public to become acquainted with one of the greatest masters, if not the greatest, of our century." It will, we think, be conceded that this is hardly a lucid way of stating the fact that Liszt rendered signal services to Wagner by producing his operas on the stage,—not on the pianoforte. Mr. De Beaufort says very truly of Liszt,—" We are too near to the artist to judge his work with impartiality. The final verdict rests with posterity." The time has not yet come for a complete biography of Liszt. But pending the arrival of such a work, a memoir of great interest might well be compiled out of the innumerable allusions to and criticisms upon him which have occurred in the writings of nearly all the great musicians, and a great many of the fore- most men and women of letters, of this century. Such a com- pilation, even if it had been a mere mosaic and nothing more, would, apart from its literary importance, have furnished a far better picture of Liszt, the man and the musician, than the meagre and distorted sketch furnished by Mr. De Beaufort, in which the sentimental and sensuous features are magnified, as in a badly focussed photograph, to the prejudice and eclipse of the nobler and more intellectual traits of a great though irregular character.
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