IV — At Rome, Weimar, Budapest
I Rome
The Roman candle has attracted many spiritual moths. Goethe, Humboldt, Platen, Winckelmann, Thorwaldsen, Gregorovius and Liszt—to mention only the first at hand—fluttered to Rome and ascribe to it much of their finer productivity. For Franz Liszt it was a loadstone of double power—the ideality of the place attracted him and its religion anchored his spiritual restlessness.
Liszt liked a broad soul-margin to his life. Heine touched on this side of Liszt’s character when he wrote of him: “Speculation has the greatest fascination for him; and still more than with the interests of his art is he engrossed with all manner of rival philosophical investigations which are occupied with the solution of all great questions of heaven and earth. For long he was an ardent upholder of the beautiful Saint-Simonian idea of the world. Later the spiritualistic or rather vaporous thoughts of Ballanche enveloped him in their midst; now he is enthusiastic over the Republican-Catholic dogmas of a Lamennais who has hoisted his Jacobin cap on the cross.... Heaven knows in what mental stall he will find his next hobby-horse!” This was written in 1837, and only two years afterward Liszt paid his first visit to Rome.
Based on letters and diaries of Liszt, Gregorovius, Ad. Stahr, Fanny Lewald, W. Allmers, Cardinal Wiseman, Jul. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and Eugen Segnitz, a study of Franz Liszt in Rome may be made.
The time spent in the Eternal City was unquestionably an important one in Liszt’s life and worthy of the detailed attention given it. Rome in 1839 presented a contradictory picture. Contrasted to the pomp of the Vatican were the unprincipled conditions of the city itself. Bands of robbers infested it and the surroundings, making it as unsafe as an English highway during the glorious but rather frisky times of Jonathan Wild and his agile confrères. So, for instance, Massocia and his band kidnapped the pupils of the seminary in Albano, and when the demanded ransom was not forthcoming defiantly strung up these innocents on trees flanking the gateways of Rome. So, too, the political freedom of the city found a concession in the privilege of Cardinal Consalvi, who permitted foreign papers of every political party to be read openly; while the papal edict declared null and void all contracts closed between Christian and Hebrew.
In matters of art things were not much better. The censor swung his axe in a most irresponsible and, now to us, laughable manner. Overbeck’s Holy Family was condemned because the feet of the Madonna in it were too bare; Thorwaldsen’s Day and Night was offensive in its nudeness; Raphael’s art was an eyesore, and the same discriminating mind, Padre Piazza, would have liked to consign to the flames all philosophical books.
The musical taste and standard was not elevating at this time. Piccini, Paisiello, Cimarosa, Sacchini, Anfossi, Sarti, Righini, Paer, and Rossini wrote purely for the sensual enjoyment of the people.
Even the behaviour of the masses in theatres was defined by an edict issued by Leo XII. Any poor devil caught wearing his hat in the theatre was shown the door; if an actor interpolated either gesture or word not provided for in the prompt-book he was sent to the galleys for five years; the carrying of weapons in places of amusement was punishable with life sentence in the galleys, and wounding another during a row earned a death verdict for the unfortunate one; applause and hisses were rewarded by a prison term from two months to half a year.
Liszt’s first visit to Rome occurred in 1839, and in company with the Countess d’Agoult. A strange mating this had been. Her salon was the meeting-place where enthusiastic persons foregathered—æsthetes, artists, and politicians. Liszt became a member of this circle, and the impressionable young man of twenty-three was as so much wax in the hands of this sensation-mongering woman six years his senior. Against Liszt’s wishes she had followed him to Berne, and there is plenty of evidence at hand that he assumed the inevitable responsibilities with good grace and treated her as his wife, but evidently not entirely to her satisfaction. She fancied herself the muse of the young genius; but the wings of the young eagle she had patronized soon out-stripped her.
Their years of wandering were noteworthy. From Paris to Berne and Geneva; then two trips back to Paris, where Liszt fought his keyboard duel with Thalberg. They rested awhile at Nohant, entertained by George Sand, which they forsook for Lake Como, some flying trips to Milan and eventually Venice. It happened to be the year of the Danube flood—1837—and the call for help sent Liszt to Vienna where he gave benefit concerts for the sufferers. This accomplished, the pair returned to Venice and threaded their way to Rome by way of Lugano, Genoa, and Florence.
Originally Liszt had no intention of concertising on this trip; but he excused his appearances on the concert platforms in the Italian cities: “I did not wish to forget my trade entirely.”
The condition of music of the day in Italy held out no inducements or illusions to him. He writes Berlioz that he wished to make the acquaintance of the principal Italian cities and really could hope for no benefiting influence from these flighty stops. But there was another reason why he was so little influenced, and it was simply that Italy of the day had nothing of great musical interest to offer Liszt.
His first public appearance in Rome was in January, 1839. Francilla Pixis-Göhringer, adopted daughter of his friend Pixis and pupil of Sonntag and Malibran, gave a concert at this time, and it was here that Liszt assisted. After that the Romans did what ever so many had done before them—threw wide their doors to the artist Liszt. Thus encouraged he dared give serious recitals in face of all the Roman musical flippancy. He defied public taste and craving and gave a series of what he called in a letter to the Princess Belgiojoso “soliloques musicaux”; in these he assumed the rôle of a musical Louis XIV, and politely said: “le concert c’est moi!” He quotes one of his programmes:
1. Overture to William Tell, performed by Mr. Liszt.
2. Fantaisie on reminiscences of Puritani, composed and performed by the above named.
3. Studies and Fragments, composed and performed by the same.
4. Improvisation on a given theme—still by the same. That is all.
This was really nothing more than a forerunner of the present piano-recital. Liszt was the first one who ventured an evening of piano compositions without fearing the disgust of an audience. From his accounts they behaved very well indeed, and applauded and chatted only at the proper time.
Liszt, realising that he had nothing to learn from the living Italians, turned to their dead; and for such studies his first visit to Rome was especially propitious. Gregory XIV, had opened the Etruscan Museum but two years before and was stocking it with the treasures which were being unearthed in the old cities of Etruria. The same pope also enlarged the Vatican library and took active interest in the mural decorations of these newly added ten rooms. The painters Overbeck, Cornelius, and Veit were kept actively employed in this city, and the influence of their work was not a trifling one on the painter colony. The diplomat Von Bunsen and the Cardinals Mezzofanti and Mai exerted their influences to spread general culture.
An interesting one of Liszt’s friendships, dating from this time, is that with Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, director of the French Académie. Strolling under the oaks of the Villa Medici, Ingres would disentangle for his younger friend the confusion of impressions gathered in his wanderings among Rome’s art treasures. Himself a music lover and a musician—he played the violin in the theatre orchestra of his native place, Montauban, at some performances of Gluck’s operas—Ingres admired Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and above all Gluck, upon whom he looked as the musical successor to Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Under such sympathetic and intelligent guidance Liszt’s admiration for the other arts became ordered. After a day among the forest of statues he would coax his friend to take up the violin, and Liszt writes almost enthusiastically of his Beethoven interpretations.
It is entirely within reason to argue that we owe to this new viewpoint such of Liszt’s compositions as were inspired by works of the other arts. Such, to name a few, were the Sposalizio and Il Penseroso—by Raphael and Michelangelo—Die Hunnenschlacht—Kaulbach—and Danse Macabre—after Andrea Orcagna. That Liszt was susceptible to such impressions, even before, is proven by his essay Die Heilige Cäcelia by Raphael, written earlier than this Roman trip; but under Ingres’ hints his width of vision was extended, and he began to find alluring parallels between the fine arts—his comprehension of Mozart and Beethoven grew with his acquaintance of the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. He compared Giovanni da Pisa, Fra Beato, and Francia with Allegri, Marcello, and Palestrina; Titian with Rossini!
What attracted Liszt principally during his first stay at Rome was the religion of art, as it had attracted Goethe before him. Segnitz quotes against this attitude the one of Berlioz, whom the ruins of Rome touched slightly, as did Palestrina’s church music. He found the latter devoid of religious sentiment, and in this verdict he was joined by none less than Mendelssohn.
The surroundings, the atmosphere of Rome, appealed to Liszt, and under them his individuality thrived and asserted itself. The scattered and often hurried impressions of this first visit ordered themselves gradually, but the composite whole deflected his life’s currents into the one steady and broad stream of art. Like Goethe, he might have regarded his first day at Rome as the one of his second birth, as the one on which his true self came to light. The Via Sacra by which he left Rome led him into the forum of the art world.
In June, 1839, after a stay of five months, Liszt, accompanied by the Countess d’Agoult, left Rome for the baths at Lucca. The elusive peace he was tracking escaped him here, and he wandered to the little fishing village San Rossore. In November of the same year he parted company with Italy—and also with the countess. The D’Agoult had romantic ideas of their union, in which the inevitable responsibilities of this sort of thing played no part. Segnitz regards the entire affair as having been a most unfortunate one for Liszt, and believes that the latter only saved himself and his entire artistic future by separating from the countess. The years of contact had formed no spiritual ties between them and the rupture was inevitable.
With her three children d’Agoult started for Paris there to visit Liszt’s mother; later, through Liszt’s intervention, a complete reconciliation with her family was effected. Although after the death of her mother the countess inherited a fortune, Liszt continued to support the children.
Leaving San Rossore the artist began his public life in earnest. It was the beginning of his virtuoso period and Vienna was the starting-point of his triumphal tournée across Europe. This period was an important one for development of piano playing, placing the latter on a much higher artistic plane than it had been; in it Liszt also inaugurated a new phase of the possibilities of concert giving. It was the time in which he fought both friend and enemy, fought without quarter for the cause of art.
As a composer Liszt, during his first stay in Italy, 1837-40, was far from active. The Fantaisie quasi Sonata après une lecture de Dante and the twelve Etudes d’exécution transcendante both came to life at Lake Como. There were besides the Chromatic Galop and the pieces Sposalizio, Il Penseroso and Tre Sonetti di Petrarca, which became part of the Années de Pèlerinage (Italie). His first song, with piano accompaniment, Angiolin dal biondo crin, dates from these days. The balance of this time was devoted to making arrangements of melodies by Mercadante, Donizetti, and Rossini, and to finishing the piano transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies. These and a few others about cover his list of compositions and arrangements.