Franz Liszt

ch has been written. George Eliot and Lewes, Madame de Récamier and Chateaubriand, Goethe and his affinities, Chopin and George Sand, Liszt and the Countess d'Agoult, Wagner and Mathil

bout their friendship. Indeed, in any collection of letters written by Liszt, or to him, the name of the princess is bound to appear. She was the veritable muse of the Hungarian, a

ter the princess left the Athens-on-the-Ilm for Rome and corresponded with her, telling of Liszt's doings, never failing to record new flirtations and making herself generally useful to the venerable composer. When attacked by his last illness at Colpach, where he had gone to visit Munkacszy, the painter, Miss von Schorn went to Bayreuth to look after him. There, at the door of his bed-chamber, she was refused admittance, Madame Cosima Wagner, through a servant, telling her

that is, the Wagner family and the Wittgenstein faction-has said some disagreeable things, not hesitating to insinuate that Liszt himself was more pleased than otherwise when Pope Pius IX forbade the nuptials. Liszt biographers side with t

eppes. She was nevertheless of Polish blood, the daughter of Peter von Iwanowski, a rich landowner, and of Pauline Podoska, an original, eccentric, cultivated woman and a traveller. In 1836 she married the Prince Nikolaus Sayn-Wittgenstein, a Russian millionaire and adjutant to the Czar. It was from the first a miserable failure, this marriage. The bride, intellectual, sensitive, full of the Polish love of art, ab

at after a visit in 1842 Liszt was invited to the office of General Music Director of Weimar. This offer he accepted and in 1844 he began his duties. Carl Alexander had married the Princess Sophie of Holland, and therefore Liszt had a strong party in his favour at court. That he needed royal favour will be seen when we recall that in 1850 he produced an opera by a banished socialist, one Richard Wagner, the opera Lohengrin. He also needed court protection when in 1848 he brought to Weimar the runaway wife of Prince Wittgen

pot where Liszt wrote his symphonic poems, planned new musical forms and the reformation of church music; where came Berlioz, Thackeray, George Eliot, and George Henry Lewes, not to mention a number of distinguished poets, philosophers, dramatists, composers, and aristocratic folk. Carolyne corresponded with all the great men of her day, beginning with Humboldt. The idea of the Goethe Foundation was born at that time. It was a veritable decade of golden years that Weimar lived;

f love, of her husband. Wouldn't his Holiness dissolve the original chains so that she could marry the man of her election? The Pope was amiable. He knew and admired Liszt. He had the matter investigated. After all it was an enforced marriage to a heretic, this odious Wittgenstein union; and then came the desired

y was set in motion at the Vatican, that the Holy Father had rescinded his permission pending a renewed examination of the case. The blow fell at the twelfth hour. The church was decorated and a youth asked the reason for all the candles and bravery of the altars. He was told that Princess Wittgenstein was to marry "her piano player" the

ian hand of Liszt. He was glad, so it was averred, to get rid of the marriage and the princess at the same stroke of the clock. Had she not been nicknamed "Fürstin Hinter-Liszt" because of the way she followed him from town to town when he was giving concerts? But Antonelli was a friend of the princess as well as an intimate of Liszt

had sung in his sweet-toned musical voice. Liszt was called his Palestrina, but alas! in the churchly music of Liszt Rome has never betrayed

r city), and she wrote tirelessly in Rome books on theology, mysticism, and Church history. She was a great and generally good force

ss Sayn-Wi