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Show HOW LISZT GOT TITLE ABBE (From the Western Watchman.) The Protestant papers give free rein to their fancy when describing the career of the greatest musical composer or their own or any other age. We have had occasion before to deny many of the absurd stories told of him. We can give our readers read-ers the facts as they are. Liszt wished and hoped to be a priest, and went to Pope Pius to ask his advice as to studying for ordination as quickly as might be. His Holiness, who saw with a keen eve that music had, and at Liszt's age would probably keep, a larger part of his heart than a priest could well give it, persuaded him very gently out of his intention. "Mv son, the world will not let you alone. It will have you at its parties; the ladies will be about you, and you will play duets perhaps. It is not altogether what I wish for a priest. And then parties will be late, and midnight will come unawares, and there will be a supper, and you will be very tired and hungry and yet the Holy Mass in the morning ! No, your, gift of music comes from Almighty God and is very pleasing to Him, and you cannot do two things. But vou shall have Cantor's orders and the name abbe." And in effect His Holiness gave the pianist the most minor of minor orders those of the singers' of the Sistine chapel, which are shared, by the way, even by the men who do the sweeping there. Mr. Liszt therefore was nothing at all like a priest, but he had in the Vatican a kind of sanctuary which he took when he would, apart from the world which pressed too closely on his later years. |