Liszt, Franz, 5: Contacts with Parisian society

5. Contacts with Parisian society.

Liszt became acquainted with a number of musical contemporaries at this time, including
Berlioz, Chopin, Alkan, Hiller and others. His first encounter with Berlioz took place a few
months after the July Revolution. He attended the first performance of Berliozs Symphonie
fantastique in the company of the composer (5 December 1830), and shortly afterwards
produced his piano transcription of the unpublished score. (Liszts transcription was published
in 1834, while Berliozs orchestral score did not appear until 1845; Schumanns famous
review of the work in the Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik was based on Liszts piano score.) A
warm friendship developed between the pair which lasted for more than 20 years before
entering a long decline. While Berlioz speaks of Liszt with affection in his Mmoires, and
regarded him as unrivalled as a pianist, he was more cautious of his compositions; with the
passing years his lukewarm attitude to Liszts orchestral works, together with the latters
growing support of Wagner, caused the friendship to languish.

Another meeting was with Chopin, who arrived in Paris as a refugee from Warsaw in the
autumn of 1831. Liszt attended Chopins dbut at the Salle Pleyel on 26 February 1832, and
even appeared on the same platform as Chopin on 3 April and 15 December. Chopin
cemented these early connections by dedicating his set of 12 Etudes op.10 to Liszt.
Nevertheless, the idea of a great friendship between Liszt and Chopin is unsubstantiated.
Chopin soon came to dislike what he perceived to be Liszts theatricality and his striving after
effect. After 1835 Liszt lived mainly abroad and the two composers barely saw one another.
Since Chopin died in 1849, he never lived to appreciate the more mature Liszt of later years.

Paganini made his Paris dbut in March 1831, but Liszt was on a prolonged visit to
Switzerland and did not hear him until his next appearance there in April 1832. In a famous
letter to his pupil Pierre-Etienne Wolff, Liszt recorded some of his impressions: What a man,
what a violin, what an artist! Heavens! What sufferings, what misery, what tortures in those
four strings! (Briefe, C18931905, i, 68). The letter is especially interesting because of the
music examples Liszt includes to indicate those violinistic devices which had particularly
caught his ear. The musical influence of Paganini cannot be overstated. One immediate
outcome was the fantasy on La clochette (1833), the theme of which was used by Paganini in
the finale of his B minor Concerto, and which bristles with difficulties. The six Etudes
dexcution transcendante daprs Paganini followed (183840), based on the Italian
masters formidable caprices for solo violin, and containing pianistic textures of terrifying
complexity.

Liszt, Franz, 12: The War of the Romantics

12. The War of the Romantics.

The Weimar years were notable for the struggle between progressive and conservative
forces in 19th-century music, with Wagner, Berlioz and Liszt on one side, and Brahms,
Schumann and Mendelssohn on the other. The conservatives were associated with Leipzig
(whose conservatory had at one time been directed by Mendelssohn, with Schumann briefly
serving on its staff); the group was championed by the powerful Viennese critic Eduard
Hanslick, and Liszt bore the brunt of many of his criticisms. Liszt, for his part, staged several
great Wagner and Berlioz festivals in Weimar and attracted national attention to these
composers. As a result Leipzig was closed for many years to Liszt and his music. When the
Dante Symphony received its first performance there in 1857 it was greeted with catcalls and
boos.

The War of the Romantics generated much acrimony. The central problem agitating the
world of music in the 1850s was the fate of sonata form. There were two chief alternatives
open to composers: either to perpetuate the forms handed down by the Viennese classics; or to
modify and develop them. Broadly speaking, Mendelssohn and Brahms chose the former;
Liszt chose the latter. His work shows three distinct departures. First he evolved the single-
movement cyclic sonata structure which rolled the separate movements of a sonata into one
and had its final outcome in the symphonic poem Liszts alternative to the Classical
symphony. Secondly, he developed the technique of thematic transformation whereby the
contrasting ideas in a work spring from one or two basic musical thoughts. And thirdly, he
believed that the language of music could be fertilized by the other arts poetry and painting
in particular and so began a controversy which continued throughout the 19th century.
There are still musicians who think that Liszt fostered the notion that music is a
representational art, that it can depict a poem, a flower, a picture, or a storm. What Liszt
actually said (in the General Preface to the symphonic poems) was rather different:It is
obvious that things which can appear only objectively to perception can in no way furnish
connecting-points to music; the poorest of apprentice landscape painters could give with a few
chalk strokes a much more faithful picture than a musician operating with all the resources of
the best orchestra. But if those same things are subjected to dreaming, to contemplation, to
emotional uplift, have they not a peculiar kinship with music; and should not music be able to
translate them into its mysterious language?Hanslicks influential book Vom Musikalisch-
Schnen (1854) challenged the notion that music could represent anything beyond itself a
powerful theoretical position that has retained a lot of support. When the first of Liszts
symphonic poems appeared in 1856, Hanslick disparaged them in a second edition of his
book. Meanwhile, Franz Brendel had turned Robert Schumanns old magazine, the Neue
Zeitschrift fr Musik, into a mouthpiece for Liszt and the new music, a move that troubled
Schumanns friends, and the war spilled over into the columns of the European press. The
crusading impulse in Liszt drove him to form the Neu-Weimar-Verein, an association of
about 30 musicians (including Raff, Cornelius, Blow and Klindworth) which held regular
meetings in Weimar, promoted concerts of new music and generally sought to protect the
interests of younger composers.

In 1859 the Verein was absorbed into the New German School, a term that was formally
adopted at the national gathering of the Tonknstler-Versammlung (Congress of Musical
Artists), held that year in Leipzig. This move drew a powerful protest from Brahms and
Joachim, among others, who circulated a Manifesto across Germany, dissociating
themselves from this organization, and canvassing for signatories willing to object to its
principles as contrary to the innermost spirit of music, strongly to be deplored and
condemned. (The text was in fact written by Brahms, and was leaked to the offices of the
Berliner Musik-Zeitung Echo, which published it prematurely, with only four signatories.)

The Wagner and Berlioz festivals were in keeping with Liszts sense of mission for Weimar,
and his enthusiasm for exploring and proselytizing new works. At the first Berlioz week
(1852), Berlioz himself conducted his Romo et Juliette and La damnation de Faust, while
Liszt directed a performance of the revised version of the opera Benvenuto Cellini (which is
dedicated to Maria Pavlovna, the Grand Duchess of Weimar). During the festivities, the
Grand Duke of Weimar invested Berlioz with the Order of the White Falcon, one of the
Duchys highest honours for which he was nominated by Liszt. A second Berlioz week (1855)
featured Berlioz conducting his Lenfance du Christ. Once again Berlioz was honoured at the
conclusion of the festival when he was made an honorary member of the Neu-Weimar-
Verein.

Liszts support of Wagner was of still more lasting importance. Shortly after Liszt had taken
up residence in Weimar, Wagner had participated in the failed Dresden Uprising, and had fled
Saxony with a price on his head. Wagner made his way to Liszt (the pair had met as early as
1842), who not only sheltered him in the Altenburg (in May 1849) but arranged a loan of
money and a forged passport to get Wagner out of Germany and into the sanctuary of a Swiss
exile. For ten years Liszt supported Wagner with gifts of money, and kept alive his flagging
spirits with personal trips to Switzerland. He also wrote letters to various heads of state to
help Wagner secure a pardon. Above all, he made sure that Wagners music was kept alive in
Germany. He gave the premire of Lohengrin (28 August 1850) after 46 rehearsals, a number
without precedent for an opera (Wagner dedicated the work to Liszt and presented him with
the manuscript of the full score), and he regularly mounted Der fliegende Hollnder and
Tannhuser, as well as orchestral excerpts from all three operas at various German music
festivals. He even tried to persuade the Grand Duke of Weimar to invite Wagner to settle in
the city and build a theatre there for the performance of Tristan, long before Wagner thought
of settling in Bayreuth. These gestures were openly acknowledged by Wagner, and in his
Mein Leben he is often fulsome in his praise of Liszt. Nonetheless, the relationship was
marred by Wagners self-absorption and his constant demands on Liszts purse. When
Wagners pardon came through in 1860 and his fortunes improved, he could have done much
to repay Liszt artistically but failed to do so.

Alan Walker

Chopin

2. New frontiers: 183034.

The intention was to embark on a European tour, with Vienna as first stop. In the end Chopin
stayed for eight months in the Habsburg capital. One week after their arrival, the youths had
news of the Warsaw uprising, which had been sparked off by an ill-judged attempt to
assassinate the Grand Duke Constantin. Tytus immediately returned to play his part, leaving
Chopin to fend for himself in a city where Poles were no longer welcome. Unsurprisingly, he
now found it virtually impossible to arrange a concert of any importance and whiled away his
time rather aimlessly with a small circle of new and old friends, including the Malfatti family
(Dr Malfatti had been a close friend of Beethoven), one of his fellow students from Warsaw,
Tomasz Nidecki, the young Czech violinist Josef Slavk and the cellist Josef Merk. His
nostalgia for Poland is evident in letters to his new confidant Jan Matuszyski, then a medical
student in Warsaw, and, if the language is at times excessive, the sentiments were no doubt
real enough: I curse the moment of my departure. It seems that he had considered returning
with Tytus but had been dissuaded from doing so by his friend, partly on the grounds that his
contribution to the Polish cause could best be made in other ways.

Several of Chopins friends (including his teacher Elsner) were hopeful that he would one day
create a great Polish opera, which might do justice to the national plight. He himself was
aware that his talents lay elsewhere, but it does seem that following the uprising his attitude to
Polishness in music changed in significant ways. It was in Vienna that he wrote the first nine
mazurkas that he himself released for publication, as opp.6 and 7, and it was through these
that the genre was comprehensively defined. Perhaps more significantly, it was in Vienna that
he stopped composing the salon polonaises of his early years, pieces barely distinguishable in
style from the polonaises of Hummel, Weber and other non-Polish virtuosos. When he
returned to the polonaise several years later he was able to redefine it as a genre, allowing it to
take on a quite new, explicitly nationalist, significance. It goes without saying that Chopins
music cannot be confined by a nationalist aesthetic, but that it played a part in the
development of cultural nationalism, and not only in Poland, is beyond question.

On 20 July 1831 Chopin finally left Vienna, following difficulties in securing a passport from
the Russian authorities. He stayed in Munich for a month and then proceeded, by way of
Stuttgart, to Paris. The two weeks spent in Stuttgart were among the darkest of Chopins life,
as his diary entries reveal. Even by Chopins standards, it was a period of agonizing
indecision. He was far from friends and family, and he was painfully conscious that he was
dependent still on funds from his father. As yet he had shown little evidence that he could
establish a reputation beyond Warsaw, though at the same time he was all too well aware of
the limitations of musical life in Poland. It was while in Stuttgart that he learnt of the failure
of the uprising, and he gave vent to his feelings in an extraordinary, barely coherent
outpouring of grief in his album. O God! You are there! You are there and yet you do not
take vengeance! Oh father, so this is how you are rewarded in old age! Mother, sweet
suffering mother, you saw your daughter [the youngest child Emilia] die, and now you watch
the Russian marching in over her grave to oppress you! To return to Poland was now out of
the question, and a few days after the Stuttgart diary he was in Paris.

Programme for Chopins first Paris concert at the Salle Pleyel;Two months later he
was writing home in a very different frame of mind. From the start he felt at home in Paris,
not least because sympathy for the Polish cause was distinctly fashionable there, and Polish
migrs were everywhere to be seen. He was overwhelmed by the cultural life of the capital,
not only by the Opra, naturally, but also by the swarm of pianists who were launching the
new season of concerts just as Chopin arrived. He even considered a course of lessons with
one of the most famous of them, Frdric Kalkbrenner. It was partly through Kaklbrenners
offices that Chopin arranged his first Parisian concert, which took place in the Salle Pleyel on
26 February 1832 (fig.1), and included the E minor Concerto. A supportive and perceptive
review by Ftis clearly did Chopin no harm at all. Nor did his growing acceptance by other
young artists and musicians in the city, including Hiller, Liszt, Berlioz and the cellist Auguste
Franchomme. By the end of 1832 he was in constant demand socially, and it was partly due to
this that an alternative career began to open up for him. His sources of income in the early
days in Paris had come partly from his father, partly from private performances and partly
from modest sales of his published music. From the winter season of 1832 onwards they came
predominantly from teaching, and he was soon in such demand that he could charge
exorbitant fees.

For the next two years his reputation as a teacher of exceptional quality, if somewhat
unconventional method, grew steadily. So too did his fame as a performer. He largely avoided
public concerts, but continued to grace the salons, with their air of intimacy and exclusivity,
and to these occasions his technique as a performer seemed perfectly suited. Descriptions are
colourful: The marvellous charm, the poetry and originality, the perfect freedom and absolute
lucidity of Chopins playing cannot be described. It is perfection in every sense. When he
embellished which he rarely did it was a positive miracle of refinement. Schumann
famously described Chopin, playing the A Etude op.25 no.1, bringing out the inner voices
from the accompaniment figuration. It is noteworthy that as a composer he turned away at this
time from the genres of the concert hall, the variations, rondos and concert pieces which had
occupied so much of his time in Warsaw. Instead we have mazurkas, nocturnes and tudes,
where the achievements of public and salon pianism were distilled and refined into a musical
style of remarkable individuality. Moreover this music was beginning to reach the wider
world. In early 1833 Chopin sold publishing rights to Maurice Schlesinger, and at the end of
the year his music began to appear simultaneously in France (Schlesinger), England (Wessel
& Co) and Germany (Kistner, and later Breitkopf & Hrtel). The music sold, and critical
reception was favourable. Chopin, in short, was doing well in Paris.

http://www.radiochopin.org/episodes/item/526-radio-chopin-episode-67-etudes-op-10-nos-4-6-10

Episode 67: Franz Liszt - Chopin's 'Frenemy'

Etudes, Op. 10, Nos. 4, 6, 10

He was Chopin's agent, collaborator, personal friend, bitter

rival, and ultimately, his first biographer.

Franz Liszt was also Fryderyk Chopins frenemy.

Both Chopin and are Liszt are indelibly linked with the piano. They were born within a year
of each other, and both achieved their greatest fame in Paris. And it was Liszt who claimed to
have been the one to introduce Chopin to his eventual lover George Sand. After that, their
relationship gets complicated.

When Chopin first arrived in Paris, he dismissed Liszt as being "zero beside Kalkbrenner,"
another piano virtuoso. He also remarked that "the themes of his compositions will repose
with the newspapers." Liszt gave as good as he got, however. In the spring of 1841, when
Chopin gave a rare public recital in Paris, Liszt wrote the review. His account of Chopins
recital was, in the words of Chopin biographer Derek Melville, "singularly unpleasant and
vindictive."

At other times, their relationship was cordial. Chopin even dedicated his first set of etudes to
Franz Liszt. Liszt was genuinely flattered, and performed them frequently in his recitals,
although in his own high-flown, Lisztian way which only served to irritate Chopin.
And though it was Liszt who wrote the first biography of Chopin, their testy relationship is
evident throughout the book. Of Chopin, Liszt wrote: His character was indeed not easily
understood. A thousand subtle shades, mingling, crossing, contradicting and disguising each
other, rendered it almost undecipherable at a first view. Like the twisted folds of a serpent
rolled upon itself, their feelings are half hidden, half revealed.

But, as Liszts biography appears to have been written more by his mistresses than by Liszt
himself, the true relationship between the two piano giants remains half hidden, half
revealed. - Benjamin K. Roe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rOOLm3n6GY

Alex Szilasi

LISZT ON CHOPIN, CHOPIN ON LISZT

Given his stature as the composer of a tremendous musical oeuvre, it is perhaps not surprising that
Ferenc Liszt is less often considered as a romantic author, yet his writings reveal an unusual and less
broadly familiar side of the towering figure of music and pianistry. One stumbles across connections
in his writings that are closely intertwined with his compositions and indeed the artistic principles he
championed throughout his life. Liszts book on Chopin is outstanding even among his other written
works in the quality of its poetry and the subtle depictions of mood. While the notion of a close
friendship between the two is indeed little more than a romantic legend, their professional and
personal lives nonetheless often intersected and overlapped. They were both Central Europeans.
Chopin was born on 1st March, 1810 in Zelazowa Wola, a city that had been part of the Polish
Lithuanian Commonwealth before the final partition in 1795, and Liszt was born in Doborjn (today
Dblingen in Austria) on 22 October, 1811. Both children grew up in a supportive milieu. Their
parents quickly realized their sons unusual talents and attentively saw to it that the budding
prodigies receive the appropriate education and training. The two families were also willing to make
sacrifices in order to support the boys callings. The fathers, Adam Liszt and Mikolaij Chopin,
purchased instruments, by no means a small investment under the circumstances in which they lived,
and paid for first-rate private instruction. In search of the finest instructors Chopins family ended up
sending the boy to Warsaw to study with Zywny and later Elsner. The two composers, of whom
Chopin always spoke with the greatest veneration, fundamentally shaped his approach to music and
his relationship to the arts. Liszts parents spared no expense in their strivings to ensure their brilliant
son receive only the finest instruction. Liszt thus became the student of Carl Czerny, from whom he
learned foundations of music and piano technique that were to last him a lifetime. Much as Chopin
held his first instructor in enduring esteem, so Liszts respect for Czerny never waned, as evidence
both by the numerous works dedicated to him and the fact that during the concert organized in Paris
by princess Belgiojoso for the benefit of Italian refugees (for which the famous Herameron was
composed) Liszt parodied all his contemporaries with the exception of Czerny and Chopin.

Yet if one compares the years spent by Liszt and Chopin studying their art, Chopins schooling could
perhaps be said to have been more favorable. Until the age of twenty he was able to learn and
develop in familiar surroundings without interruption or upheaval. Though his father was French, he
always held a passionate attachment to his Polish roots. He had a thorough knowledge of Polish
literature and poetry, as well as Polish folk music. During his period of emigration he endured a
torturous longing for his homeland, and he always communicated with his family and friends in his
mother tongue. Liszt, by contrast, was quickly swept up by the lifestyle of the wunderkind, which
made it impossible for him to study or learn anything (beyond piano performance) systematically or
methodically. He recognized this early on and as began as an autodidact to acquire the erudition
later recognized as impressively broad. From age sixteen he lived in Paris, so it is hardly a surprise
that French literature and culture played a significant role in shaping his interests. French quickly
supplanted German, his mother tongue, as his most natural language of self-expression. As he had no
relatives or friends remaining in Hungary with whom he might have maintained a relationship, the
Hungarian language and any sense of Hungarian cultural identity were pushed into the background
until the floods of 1838, after which he began to rediscover both his own Hungarian identity and
Hungarian folk music.

Chopin and Liszt quickly began to perform in public as child prodigies and the contemporary press
immediately began to compare them. According to a review printed in the January, 1823 issue of the
Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of Leipzig of a concert held by Liszt in Vienna on 1st December,
1822, Again it seems a young virtuoso has fallen from the heavens, as it were, who moves us to the
most profound state of wonder considering his age, this boys performance borders on
unbelievable. A few months later a review printed in the Kuryer dla Peci Pilknej of a concert held by
Chopin in Warsaw on 24th February, 1823 read, After this evening we certainly no longer need envy
Vienna for her Hochwohlgeborener Herr List (sic!), since our capital boasts his equal, or perhaps a
pianist more perfect: the Hochwohlgeborener Herr Chopin.

They later met in Paris, where Liszt attended Chopins concert of 26th February, 1832, Chopins first
performance in the Salle Pleyel. They often appeared together in concerts and as part of events
organized for charity, and their performances were always the center of attention. Reviews refer to
them as the two greatest virtuosos of the day, artists both of whom have attained the same lofty
standard and sense with equal depth the essence of art. Both were frequent guests of the famous
Parisian salons. They performed together for prince Adam Czartorisky, perhaps the most important
figure of circles of Polish emigrs, in the salon of countess Delfina Potocka, and for the Austrian
ambassador to Paris, Antal Apponyi. As their relationship as friends and fellow artists developed they
always held shared admiration for each others talent. The letter written by Liszt, Chopin, and
Auguste Franchomme to Ferdinand Hiller in June 1833 offers a familiar example of this. Chopin at
one point writes, I hardly even know what my pen is scribbling, since at the moment Liszt is playing
one of my etudes and distracting my attention from my respectable thoughts. I would love myself to
acquire from him the manner in which he plays my [etudes]. In another famous letter written
twenty-seven years after Chopins death to Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein Liszt commented, no one
compares to him: he shines lonely, peerless in the firmament of art. In 1835 the relationship
between the two artists suffered a serious blow when, according to anecdote, Liszt used Chopins
lodgings during his friends absence for a tryst with Marie Pleyel. Chopin was a close friend of Camille
Pleyel, Maries mother, so Liszts conduct left him in a very uncomfortable position. After Liszt moved
to Geneva in the summer of 1835 an then to Italy, the friendship between the two grew a bit more
distant. Changes in their personal lives also hardly helped to nurture close ties. A rivalry began to
form between their companions, Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin, better known by her penname
George Sand, and Marie dAgoult, otherwise known by her penname Daniel Stern, and the two
women both used the composers as a kind of trump card against each other. There is an interesting
and almost fateful parallel between the lives of George Sand and Daniel Stern. They each traveled to
an abandoned monastery on a romantic island, Sand to Valldemossa and Stern to Nonnenwerth, with
their young lovers, only later to leave bearing the burdens of their disillusionments. When their
relationships with the composers had ended both women wrote novels about their famous romances
rife with thinly veiled allusions, taking care to deny all responsibility and put themselves in a
favorable light. In Lucrezia Floriani Sand depicts prince Karol as a weak, sickly man, and in Nlida
dAgoult portrays Guermann as artistically untalented and petty. The novels caused scandals on
publication and prompted acrimonious debates, yet neither Chopin nor Liszt was willing to recognize
himself in the figure of Karol or Guermann.

On 26th of April, 1841 Chopin gave another concert in Salle Pleyel in Paris on which Liszt wrote a long
review, published in the Revue et Gazette Muscale, that left itself open to varying interpretations.
While Liszt expressed his unequivocal admiration for his fellow artist, Chopin and his circle of friends,
not to mention his family members, found his remarks cause for offense. They took exception to the
fact that Liszt did not praise Chopin as a composer and failed entirely to mention the opus 38 Ballad
in F major, opus 40 Polonaise in A major, and opus 39 Scherzo in C sharp minor, all of which Chopin
had performed as part of the program. As of the end of the 1830s Chopin had clearly grown
increasingly distant from the works of Liszt and the pyrotechnical elements of many of his
compositions for the piano. In his choice of instrument he favored the Pleyel piano, which was less
dynamic but more subtle and nuanced in its tones, while Liszt preferred the Erard for its rich, full
resonance. By the time, Liszt mania was spreading like wildfire. Whether he was performed in the
concert hall of a big city, the village pub, a factory district, or a harbor, Liszts concerts were never
customary or routine. Awestruck by Liszts breathtaking virtuosity and style, audiences reveled and
raved, quite beside themselves with wonder and enthusiasm. Very few artists are able to achieve
such successes or bathe in the glory of idolization. It seems quite possible that Chopins self-imposed
seclusion was motivated at least in part by jealousy, as he was never able to spellbind an audience in
quite the same way, partly because of his physical condition (he was often sickly), but more
importantly because of his terrible stage fright. He was undoubtedly aware of this when he said to
his fellow artist, I am not suited to give concerts, I, who is made timid by the audience in front of
unfamiliar faces I go mute. But this is your calling, for if you cannot win the audience, you have
something with which to strike it dead.

But Liszt may well also have been jealous of Chopin. He found unbearable the thought that he was
only seen as a virtuoso and his compositions, unlike those of Chopin, were hardly met with a single
word of praise. Furthermore, recent research suggests the existence of an approach to piano
performance, alongside the more familiar style of spectacular, awe-inspiring pyrotechnics. Recent
research suggests the simultaneous presence at the time of two distinctive styles, one favouring the
intimacy of the salon, the other more inclined to sway large audiences with virtuoso performance.
The two artists met for the last time in December 1845. In November 1849, a few weeks after
Chopins death, Liszt had a monument erected in memory of his fellow artist, the first in the world,
and undertook to write the first monograph on Chopins life and work.

In his decision to author a book on Chopin Liszt was motivated by several factors. With the deaths of
Chopin and Mendelssohn the generation of early Romantics lost two of its seminal figures. By the
end of the 1840s the artistic movement and program associated with the names Schumann, Hiller,
Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt seemed to be crumbling. It is hardly surprising that Liszt
slowly came to feel himself increasingly alone, the last remaining representative of a trend.
Recognition of the place of the arts and the calling of the artist was hardly widespread in public
thinking at the time. As Liszts earlier writings make clear, the notion of artistic heritage was always
central to his thinking, as was the teaching of the arts and the circumstances and social role of the
artist. It was his intention to liberate the artist from all limitations and constraints so that he would
be able to follow the promptings of inspiration and in doing so fulfill his calling. He demanded, almost
obsessively, that the artist be accorded the appropriate reverence, for only then could be realized
the romantic view according to which only one last relic of humanitys golden age yet remained: art.

The title itself is tellingly concise, F. Chopin, the triumphant proper name that begs no further
explanation. In order to write a book on Chopins life Liszt needed reliable information, so he turned
to Chopins sister Ludwika with questions. The mourning family declined his requests for assistance,
however, in part because of Liszts one-time critical remarks, in part because of the many questions
he raised concerning the relationship between Chopin and Sand, but most importantly because of
the regrettable timing of his inquiry, exactly two weeks after Chopins funeral. Ludwika fended off
Liszts questions by suggesting he seeks answers to his questions from the official widow Jane
Stirling, one of Chopins former students, who, however, gave no answers of any real worth. Given
his ignorance of many of the necessary details, Liszts book, written in French, is often imprecise or
misleading, though full of biographical references. It should be considered not so much a reliable
monograph as the portrayal complex, at times grandiloquent, at times pathetic of a great artist
and admired friend.

Liszts inspired and almost imagistic depiction of Chopin and the world in he lived and moved is
captivating. It teems with romantic flights of fancy, veiled interconnections, visions of landscapes,
and literary quotations. The unusual attributives, the enumerations, and the emphasis on
oppositions all show the influence of the spirit of French Romanticism of the age. Using references to
works by Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, and Miczkiewicz, pithy proverbs and
adages, and works of the visual arts, Liszt expresses not only the ideas he sought to put into words,
but also the fundamental inspiration of his own compositions. Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein worked
together with Liszt on the book, assisting primarily with descriptions of the Polish historical
background. Before publishing the manuscript Liszt sent it to his friend Sainte-Beuve, asking him to
edit it, but Sainte-Beuve politely declined. Eventually it was published in installments in the February
through August 1851 issues La France Musicale and in 1852 later as a book by Escudier. In 1874
Breitkopf&Hrtel suggested that it be published again in a revised format. Liszt entrusted the task of
reworking the text to Carolyne. Given that he spent the vast majority of his time traveling, Liszt was
unable to check the second edition, which was significantly expanded between 1876 and 1879 and
hardly resembled the first, so its publication was cause for later misunderstandings. He was
understandably unable to make any unambiguous remarks concerning his paramours role, but he
did comment to Friedrich Niecks that the second edition was written by Carolyne.

The new Hungarian edition published by Gondolat Kiad in 2010 in honor of the bicentennial of
Chopins birth and on the threshold of the bicentennial of Liszts is a reprint, with corrections of
misprints and some expressions, of the translation of the 1852 edition by Countess Ottilia Wass
entitled Chopin Liszt Ferencz utn. The diction and style may seem a bit distant or even ponderous to
a reader of today, but in my view the text nonetheless bears the most affinities with the spirit of
Liszts era, the romantic world of which Liszt and Chopin were two of the leading artists. Given
limitations of space I included only the most essential details in the appendix in order to offer the
reader a bit of assistance in understanding some of the more interesting interconnections. It is a
captivating book that will be particularly fascinating reading for those interested both in the life and
art of Chopin and the complex world of Liszt.

http://www.hungarianreview.com/article/liszt_on_chopin