Franz Liszt was many issues: essentially the most celebrated piano virtuoso of the nineteenth century, a prolific composer, a conductor, a instructor, and a Catholic abbé.

He was additionally a prodigious letter-writer, and his correspondence reveals a thoughts that was stressed, opinionated, and surprisingly self-aware.

The quotes beneath are drawn from his letters and journals throughout six a long time – from a frenetic younger man pushing himself to the sting, to an previous man who had outlived two of his youngsters and most of his contemporaries.

Liszt on Different Composers

Liszt on Beethoven

Beethoven wasn’t simply an affect on Liszt and his contemporaries; he was a compass.

In 1852, Liszt reached for some of the hanging metaphors in his total correspondence to clarify what Beethoven’s music meant to him.

For us musicians, Beethoven’s work is just like the pillar of cloud and hearth which guided the Israelites via the desert – a pillar of cloud to information us by day, a pillar of fireside to information us by evening, “in order that we could progress each day and evening.” His obscurity and his mild hint for us equally the trail we’ve to observe; they’re every of them a perpetual commandment, an infallible revelation.

– Liszt writing to his pal Wilhelm von Lenz, 1852 (age 41)

Liszt’s transcription of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

Liszt on Schumann

Liszt and Schumann each had nice respect for each other. The particular and enthusiastic reward Liszt provided Schumann within the late 1830s is noteworthy.

[Your] Carnaval and the Fantasiestücke have me excessively. I play them actually with delight, and God is aware of that I can’t say as a lot of many issues. To talk frankly and freely, it’s completely solely Chopin’s compositions and yours which have a strong curiosity for me. The remainder don’t deserve the honour of being talked about…

– Liszt to Robert Schumann, 1838 (age 27)

As to the Kinderscenen, I owe to them one of many biggest pleasures of my life. , otherwise you don’t know, that I’ve somewhat woman of three years previous, whom everyone agrees in contemplating angelic (did you ever hear such a commonplace?). Her identify is Blandine-Rachel… [She is] essentially the most silent youngster, essentially the most sweetly grave, essentially the most philosophically homosexual on the earth. I’ve each cause to hope additionally that she won’t be a musician, from which can Heaven protect her!

Nicely, my expensive Monsieur Schumann, two or 3 times per week (on tremendous and good days!) I play your Kinderscenen to her within the night; this enchants her, and me nonetheless extra, as it’s possible you’ll think about, so that usually I am going over the primary repeat twenty occasions with out going any additional.

– Liszt to Robert Schumann, 1839 (age 28)

Robert Schumann: Kinderscenen, Op. 15: VII. Träumerei (Dreaming) (Detlef Kraus, piano)

Liszt on Wagner

When Wagner arrived in Weimar in 1849 – a fugitive from the Dresden rebellion, broke and politically radioactive – Liszt was one of many few folks prepared to obtain him. Liszt’s evaluation of Wagner was characteristically direct.

Richard Wagner, a conductor from Dresden, has been right here since yesterday. That may be a man of fantastic genius, such a brain-splitting genius certainly as beseems this nation, – a brand new and good look in Artwork.

– Liszt writing to his pal Gaetano Belloni, 1849 (age 38)

Liszt’s piano transcription of Wagner’s Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde

Liszt on Berlioz

Liszt was one in all Berlioz‘s most dedicated champions, programming his work at Weimar when nearly nobody else would. However his admiration got here with clear-eyed circumstances, as this letter exhibits.

However it will likely be crucial so that you can have a number of rehearsals – and certainly separate rehearsals for the quartet, and separate rehearsals for the wind devices. The impact of Berlioz’s works can solely be uncommonly good when the efficiency of them is passable. They’re equally unsuited to the abnormal worthy theatre and live performance maker, as a result of they require the next creative standpoint from the musician’s facet.

– Liszt writing to his pal Gustav Schmidt, 1853 (age 42)

Liszt on Craft and Problem

Liszt on What He Practised – and Learn

At twenty-one, Liszt was in the midst of a interval of ferocious self-reinvention – linking his research of literature and music, studying all the pieces, taking part in all the pieces, pushing his pianistic approach to the sting of what was thought of potential. This letter captures that frenetic youthful temper.

Here’s a complete fortnight that my thoughts and fingers have been working like two misplaced spirits, – Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Byron, Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber, are throughout me. I research them, meditate on them, devour them with fury; apart from this I practise 4 to 5 hours of workout routines (3rds, 6ths, 8ths, tremolos, repetition of notes, cadences, and so on., and so on.). Ah! offered I don’t go mad, you can find an artist in me!

– Liszt to his pal Pierre Wolff, Jr., 1832 (age 21)

Liszt on the Variations Between Publishing Music and Literature

Right here Liszt made a quiet however pointed statement concerning the distinction between how writers and composers deal with publishing their very own work.

In literature, the manufacturing of very a lot altered, elevated, and improved editions is not any unusual factor. In works each essential and trivial, alterations, additions, various divisions of intervals, and so on., are a typical expertise of an writer. Within the area of music such a factor is extra minute and tougher – and subsequently it’s seldom executed. Nonetheless, I do think about it very worthwhile to appropriate one’s errors so far as potential and to utilize the experiences one positive factors from the editions of the works themselves.

– Liszt to his pal Alfred Dörffel, 1855 (age 44)

Liszt on Standing on Creative Ideas

That is one in all Liszt’s most candid letters: a frank admission of a mistake he made throughout his live performance touring years, and the lesson he drew from it.

The frequent ill-success of my performances of Schumann’s compositions, each in non-public circles and in public, discouraged me from together with and retaining them within the programmes of my concert events which adopted so quickly on each other – programmes which, partly from need of time and partly from carelessness and satiety of the “Glanz-Periode” [Splendor Period] of my pianoforte-playing, I seldom, besides within the rarest circumstances, deliberate myself, however gave them now into this one’s palms, and now that one, to decide on what they appreciated. That was a mistake, as I found later and deeply regretted, once I had discovered to know that for the artist who needs to be worthy of the identify of artist the hazard of not pleasing the general public is a far much less one than that of permitting oneself to be determined by its humors – and to this hazard each govt artist is particularly uncovered, if he doesn’t take braveness resolutely and on precept to face earnestly and persistently by his conviction, and to provide these works which he is aware of to be one of the best, whether or not folks like them or not.

– Liszt to his pal J.W. von Wasielewski, 1857 (age 45)

Franz Liszt: Schumann — Liebeslied, S566/R253, “Widmung” (Louis Lortie, piano)

Liszt on How A lot Pianists Ought to Program Him

Primarily based on his exuberant, extroverted, virtuosic music, you may assume that Liszt had an enormous ego – however as this wry statement from his previous age signifies, he had a noticeable streak of humility…or not less than self-awareness.

An hour and a half of my pianoforte music, nevertheless admirably performed, is greater than ample.

– Liszt to his pal Jules de Zarembski, 1881 (age 70)

Liszt on Genius

Genius is the company via which the supernatural is revealed to man.

– Liszt, date unknown

Liszt on Individuals and Disappointment

Liszt on His Buddies and Enemies

By 1838 Liszt was well-known sufficient to have amassed a major quantity of people that wished one thing from him. He had taken their measure.

I do know that an awesome most of the individuals who strategy me with a smile on their lips, and protestations of friendship on their tongues, don’t have anything higher to do than to tug me to items as finest they will as quickly as they’re exterior my door. It’s, furthermore, the destiny of all of the world. I resign myself to it willingly, as I do to all of the absurd and odious requirements of this decrease world. There may be, apart from, simply this a lot good in these unhappy experiences of varied relations with males – which is, that one learns to relish and admire higher the devotion of the few buddies whom probability has thrown in your path.

– Liszt to his pal Simon Lowy, 1838 (age 27)

Liszt on Ineffective Individuals

Liszt wrote this grievance to his pal Louis Kohler in 1853. By that point, he’d largely retired from the live performance stage in favour of composing and main the Weimar court docket orchestra, however he nonetheless had points budgeting his time and power.

Suppose I may solely get rid of my time higher! However it’s a wretched distress to must spend one’s time upon so many ineffective issues and other people, when one’s head is kind of stuffed with different issues! – Nicely, it have to be so.

– Liszt to his pal Louis Kohler, 1853 (age 42)

Liszt on Struggling

By the top of his life, Liszt had survived a number of private losses and tragedies. Late in life, he grew to become reflective about methods to grapple with them.

Struggling, ache, and sorrow are the lot of mankind… Since all of us should stay and die, tell us how to take action in noble simplicity.

– Liszt to his pal Olga Von Meyendorff, 1881 (age 70)

Liszt on Making the Most of Life

Two quotes, fifty-nine years aside. The primary comes from his journal at sixteen; the second recorded by his scholar Arthur Friedheim when Liszt was seventy-five. His need to stay life to its fullest by no means modified.

Losing time is without doubt one of the worst faults on the earth. Life is so brief, each second is so valuable; but we stay as if life won’t ever finish.

– Liszt in his journal, 1827 (age 16)

You’re inclined to return too late. Watch out for lacking probabilities; in any other case it might be altogether too late sometime.

– Liszt as quoted by scholar Arthur Friedheim, 1886 (age 75)

Liszt’s Bagatelle sans tonalité, 1885

Conclusion

What strikes you, studying Liszt’s letters throughout the span of his life, is how constant he was.

The twenty-one-year-old devouring Homer and Bach and pushing himself to insanity is recognisably the identical particular person because the seventy-five-year-old warning his scholar to not come too late.

His urge for food for artwork, music, and life by no means dimmed. Neither did his readability about what mattered – and what didn’t.

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