Franz Liszt

other than Camille Saint-Sa?ns. He refers to Liszt, and he is perhaps better qualified to speak of Liszt than most musicians or critics. His adoration is perfectly compr

vidently catching. Goethe summed up the literary revolution in his accustomed Olympian manner, saying to Eckermann: "They all come from Chateaubriand." This is sound criticism; for in the writings of the author of Atala, and The Genius of Christianity may be found the germ-plasm of all the later artistic disorder;

ion will wonder at us for having so long tolerated this drunken gipsy, who dances to fiddle and cymbalom accompaniment. He is too loud for polite nerves. Technically, the Liszt arrangements are brilliant and effective for dinner music. One may show off with them, make much noise and a reputation for virtuosity, that would be quickly shattered if a Bach fugue were selected as a text. One Chopin Mazurka contains more mus

I particularly delight in quizzing the Liszt-rhapsody fanatic as to his knowledge of the Etudes-those wonderful continuations of the Chopin studies-of his acquaintance with the Années de Pèlerinage, of the Valse Oubliée, of the Valse Impromptu, of the Sonnets after Petrarch, of the Nocturnes, of the F-sharp Impromptu of Ab-Irato-that étude of which most pianists never heard; of the Apparitions, the Legends, the

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as interesting as this same fantaisie that masquerades as a sonata in H moll. Agreeing with those who declare that they find few traces of the sonata form in the structure of this composition, and also with those critics who assert the word to be an organic amplification of the old, o

w Liszt has made this and the succeeding intervals his own. Power there is, sardonic power, as in the opening phrase of the E-flat piano concerto, so cynically mocking. How incisively the composer traps your consciousness in the next theme of the sonata, with its four knocking D's. What follows is like a drama enacted

e harmonic sequences. Here it surely is not a whole-heart belief but only a theatrical attitudinising; after the faint return of the opening motive is heard the sigh of sentiment, of passion, of abandonment, which engender the suspicion that when Liszt

The bold theme so eloquently proclaimed at the outset is solemnly sounded with choric pomp and power. Then the hue and cry of diminished sevenths begins, and this tonal panorama with its swirl of intoxicating colours moves kaleidoscopically onward. Again the devil tempts the musical St. Anthony, this time in octaves and in A major; he momentarily succumbs, but that good old family chorale is repeated, and even if its orthodoxy is faulty in spots it serves it

n follow a few bars of that Beethoven-like andante, a moving return to the early themes, and softly the first lento descends to the subterranean caverns whence it emerged, a Magyar Wotan majestically vanishing into the bowels of a Gehenna; then a true Liszt chord-sequence and a stillness in B major. The sonata in B minor displays all of Liszt's power and we

d d'une Source? Is the latter not exquisitely idyllic? Surely in those years of pilgrimage through Switzerland, Italy, France, Liszt garnered much that was good and beautiful and without the taint of the salon or concert platform. The two Polonaises recapture the heroic and sorrowing spirit

as anointed of the Lord (which he was not); that if he had cut and run to sanctuary to escape two or more women we might never have heard of Liszt the Abbé. One penalty undergone by genius is its pursuit by gibes and glossaries. Liszt was no exception to this rule. Like

score. That halting, languourous, syncopated, theme in D flat is marvellously expressive, and the poco allegretto seems to have struck the fancy of Wagner, who did not hesi

ime to work unfalteringly and despite myriad temptations his spiritual nature was never wholl