| Show THE ABBE LISZT A remarkable career in hell relf siou glon andrusic and music A GIFTED SPIRIT FLED from a humble hungarian hun garian home to a royal palace historical facts the abbe franz liszt is dead at his home in Bair cuth for a year or more he lived there in retirement tir ti ement rement evidently affected b by the death of his friend idich ilich ard wagner about ten d days ays since since the abbe was taken seriously ill and thursday suddenly began sinking just before midnight saturday the watchers saw that the great was dying and early yesterday morning ho he passed away franz liszt the greatest ur calest pianist of the century perhaps of all time waa was born in 1811 his father w was a poor hungarian accountant in the ervice of prince estern Ester esterhazy nazy V ho he knew something of music and what he knew he taught the boy who took to that kind of tea teaching ebing so naturally that he could write a score long before he knew his letters and had to be bodily lifted off the mus 0 stool by his anxious mother when dinner was served he ile was thue thus phenomenal from the first and the father had no great difficulty in finding frienda friends to contribute to the expense of his musical education ho ile gave co concerts n aerts at vienna at a ridiculously early age and after one of these he be was in a manner consecrated to music by a kiss from beethoven then he came to in the hope of getting a regul regular r musical education the only thing ho he needed at the alue conservatory Conser but Cheru cherubini billi was in charge of that institution and be sternly pointed to a clause in the rules which closed it to foreign pupils the boy was almost heartbroken heart broken for the moment but began to give concerts among the duchesses cheeses du with marked social suc ceso the duke of orleans afterward aft eward to be louis phillippe tok took notice of him and his social popularity was probably due to an interesting exhibition of nai vete which attended hia his first performance por for mance at the palace the rhe duke wishing to make him a present asked him hini what be he would like ike to have and he decided for a doll toll the could not hold out a moment after that he ile was yas the I 1 rage age at his cinat concert at the i It allens aliens the spell bound orchestra i forgot to play the accompaniment it i ia 1 a pure puro case of me tempay chosia said one critic 1 I am convinced that his tiny body holda holds the soul of mozart anecdotes abounded of course and one ot of them was none the tile worse for having done duly duty in the lives of other musical celebrities on one occasion it was said when the span of bi hii infant hand could not take in all the keys he ob obtained the requisite air effect act by bobbing docu and striking the tu instrument with hia his nose it is the only instance of plagiarism that can be laid to the charge of lirot he ile picked up much musical training as be he went on but bis his baut of a complete system probably accounts for his persistent failure ag as a great composer p oser he ile tried his hand several t times ca at opera but never with sue cesa and at last he found his true vocation lu ill a it new development of the instrument which he understood better than anyone else in the world he went to england as an all infant phenomenon in 1824 and as its master liszt went the tile tour of the pro provinces vinced he was received with a mingled admiration and hauteur which contrasted becomingly with the delirium of paris there the duchesses could never pet the wonderful child enough and when he be was not at the piano bo he nas was on their laps but bu ti in london they do things differently and they were once capable of whisking away a piano from under fingers because because a royal personage wa was passing and they were afraid there might inight not be room master liszt was a wonderful as well as a general and at one of his concerts sir joseph smart invited the public PI to give the boy a theme A lady suggett suggested ed the from the barbieri Barbi cr and on thia this the boy immediately executed an astonishing ashing fugue london loudon did not impress ress him quite as much aa as paris aut but when the heard beard the charity children at st Pi paul pitula ho declared deo deol lared areil there waa was nothing fiber in the universe he was 20 when came to paris at the came same time as the cholera und and in spi edite to of the epi demic all paris flocked to hear him young liszt was of the number it was a new emotion and paris parisians jans d described cribe di it t i in n their emotional way wat never had they heard beard I 1 such playing jt it wag was ironical and mocking like byron fantastic like hofmann dreamy like lamartine lamart in wild liko like dante tender like the tile melody of schubert and so forth young liszt formed form e d his bi 3 own 0 w n conclusions n clu and the c chief h cef 0 of f t them b e m eoa was s that he would be the tile Paga uini of the pianoforte the great italians execution reve revealed alid diew pos possibilities Abilities to him he be saw that it doomed the clate claza ical school which he had hitherto followed though in his own brilliant brillian tway way he abut himself up for six hours a day until he be began to do with the keys something of what PA ganini had done with the at strings rings but he hoped to surpass bis his model for in Paga ninis greed of booey anc narrowness he recognized with a fine instinct a certain fatal limitation io in art A great player he said musk must be a great man from that t moment dates his definite manner and a success which has made every great pianist of the time proud to be called his pupil pa ganini after all was one influence another and a deeper one came td him through his hungarian birth he bad heard the Tzi ganes and all europe has since heard them after him thanks to the revelation of their genius which he first gave to the world he only admired a i i he both admired and loved anini chopin hopin and played bis music masic in a manner which gave ave a new mean meaning I 1 i n to it for the composer himself X A sketch of litzts life is incomplete w without some mention of his grand grano passions P as eions and as these haye hate been the common property of european gossip for nearly half a century c and have besides beside largely influenced his career there can be no indiscretion io iq alluding to them georges sand waa was the farat she encountered the youth at hia his most im able age and her theory that love is christian compassion concentrated on a single being at once seems 68 to have won bis his hearty assent but a tendency on the part patt of the lady to make this compassion unive universal raal by extending it to all the human race in turn ultimately ti brought about an estrangement A romantic castle in the alps was the scene of bis his next experience of this nature and for some time paris and find were inconsolable at the report that be he was about to become a mountaineer A lady 10 r who after ward wrote as daniel stern succeeded in winning him back to the french ca capital P ital though at theon the sacrifice cri of bis his own peace of mind she was a it little older than the young virtuoso and she had known him ie le petit liszt in that happy infancy in when he ate his bonbons from the hands bands of the due besses the great deplored thesa these erratic tendencies i es and for a time brought him hini back to better thought but the patient it must bo be confessed had a strong tendency to relapse hlis his curiously impress sio siou able nature to have made him the vict victora fill of every strong emotion in turn hypochondria andria was in the family and as a boy liszt hail had suffered from intense melancholy and from yearnings for religious retreat alq let the world renounce nie met I 1 he cried at IU 10 a characteristic variation by the way on the common form of that peti tion he lie read thomas a kempis and belonged to enter A monastery they cured him by a course he gave himself up to worldliness again paris reported with mingled in i angled delight and terror that li liszt zt is is no longer devout but this was ran not to last long lone the st doctrines attracted attrie ted him next and be he forgot his bi playing for it lime time to read everything that came in his way even lexicons and nothing but a hope 0 of f regenerating the world through music brought him back to hie his art in 1865 his on the whole pera intent wish for a religious religious life wad was allowed to prevail an and they gave him or bersand dere der sand and the tonsure of th the vatican he stayed in rome for some years after devoting himself to rel religious igl 0 Us music 21 and nd religious work and an d then t h e n went back to settle in his own country until a new craving to see efe the world which he thought he had quilted quitted forever brought him to pans paris and to london once more early this year year beside besides a it large arge quantity of pianoforte music including n concertos liszt produced many works of grand symphonic design prominent among which are his series of great orchestral pieces the Sym phon his lii symphonic zu dantes divina commedia ilia his faust symphonic hia his gruner mas and hie his two oratorios chris and die L gende von der heiligen heiliger Hei ligen El elisabeth habeth 0 O these however are but a few of bis h is in i n numerable productions which include in elude works in almost all forms of composition sacred ana secular ps asaluis aluis cants cantata las hymns lieder and as already eaid said piano forte concertos concert na and a pf other pieces bat P ea for that instrument of which lizt was eo an consul mate a master the intense romanticism the amplitude of development the independent originality ori aliby of treatment M ent and the tile WE wondrous d rolls orchestral effects realized in in many of theae works have only recently been made widely known like all great musicians 12 lisete asals I 1 intellectual powers and nod a accomplishments I 1 r ranged beyond the art which h W waag sa hi his s specialty rap e clai t y H he e w was aa a in man am of w wide i de general g e r a 1 cu culture at ur e w who bo aou would ld have been remarkable apart frondt at music his literary aud critical borers have been manifested in several instances among imong othere by b II 11 hie his writings on wagner and suid his music on chopin and an d on hungary Hun H angan garr ay 14 an gypsy music chicago aetis Ae tvs t |
