Ludwig Nohl

“ All the passions which agitate men—vanity, ambition, envy, jealousy, even love itself, are outside the magic circle which incloses his inner world. Withdrawing into this, as into a sanctuary, he contemplates and worships that ideal which it is the object of his life to realize. Here appear to him divine and incomprehensible forms, and colors such as his eyes never beheld on the most beautiful flowers in the brightness of spring. Here he listens to the harmony of the eternal, whose cadence rules the worlds, and in which all the voices of creation join in a marvelous celestial concert. ”

“ Music is such a real, visible thing to him that he always has a symbol, instantly, in the material world to express his idea.
“How he can bear to hear us play, I can not imagine. I assure you, no matter how beautifully we play any piece, the minute Liszt plays it, you would scarcely recognize it. His touch and his peculiar use of the pedals are the secrets of his playing, and then he seems to dive down into the most hidden thoughts of the composer, and fetch them to [171] the surface, so they gleam out at you, one by one, like stars. ”

“ At my grand piano I sing, dream, rejoice, and it excels in its rapidity the nimblest bows. Like the orchestra, it has its whispering flutes and pealing horns, and without any preparation can, like that, breathe the evening breeze from its silvery clouds of magic chords and tender melodies. It requires no scenes, no decorations, no spacious stage; I need not weary myself with tedious rehearsals; I want neither a hundred, nor fifty, nor twenty assistants; I need not one, and can even do without music. A large hall, a grand piano, and I am master of a whole audience. ”

“ But they have one thing that vies with our culture and art—their music. As they feel the complete rapture of an existence in nature which is boundlessly free, free from everything which hinders the slightest movement or inclination, so in their habits, but particularly in their improvisations, they express the God-given freedom of the inner sensibility in all its emotions, from the proudest human consciousness to the inmost longing of the soul for sympathetic communion. ”

“ He had experienced and realized that to him, as to the gypsies, music was an All, a hold upon life itself scarcely weaker than the natural bonds of the [45] closest human intimacy or of the love of children and parents. He knew, that to this miserable people, without home or place, without social affiliations or culture, even without religion, this spontaneous art of music was all that the world offers beyond mere nature and her gifts, culture and customs. It was to them those higher thoughts and deeper emotions of human life we call religion and God himself. ”

“ And yet that quality of his music which is showered down upon our spirits like heavenly peace and blessing is a something which far transcends the beautiful earnestness of a life measured by duty and brings us to a close perception of the infinite, of those conditions of life with which marvelous natural endowments and the highest perfection of intellectual and artistic skill have little to do, and in which we are forced to recognize the peculiar essence out of which genius springs and creates. ”

“ What ethereal music! What smorzandos on organ points! All this must have floated before Berlioz when he composed the [56] ‘Dance of the Sylphs.’” But, say we, such a picture of the surprisingly varied activity of creative nature must have filled the daring and at all times active fancy of the same artist who quickly makes the living human heart, with all its foolish pride and restless longings, realize “the pain and pangs of almighty nature,” as he terms it, with an effect as wonderfully vivid as only a Salvator Rosa or a Ruysdael could paint it. ”

“ In contrast with the poet who speaks all languages and besides only devotes himself to mankind, and whose mind has been cultivated by classical study, the musician reveals himself in a mysterious language, the comprehension of which, if it does not presuppose particular study, shows at least a long accustomed familiarity with it. Besides that, in contrast with the painter and sculptor, he has the disadvantage that they are devoted more to the expression of form, which is more universal than the inward conception of nature and the feeling for the infinite which are the essence of music. ”

“ Does it not, like the antique, live an imperishable life by the side of and yet above humanity? Do not these melodies of Mozart and Beethoven give us a new and different view of our kind, and does not the mighty Leipsic cantor, Sebastian Bach, construct a dome of mere tones which is a part of the plan and order of the universe we call the cosmos, a tangible and perceptible mental structure, as apparent as the everlasting abode of Deity? ”

“ He had heard these tones rising from the lowest depths of a mysterious being and pervading his earliest emotions with all the energy of a heart full of the inexhaustible power of youth, and he had felt himself alternating between rapture and sorrow, between tears and delight, between pride and desire, the plaything of those uncomprehended and eternal powers which nevertheless are the source and essence of life. For years he had acquired and exercised in the great world that immense skill which complete devotion to an external object secures. ”

“ The world knows to-day, by hundreds and hundreds of his victorious achievements, that by the “ideality of his personal presence” as well as by the fascinating and magical beauty of his playing, he has marched through the world like another Alexander the Great, and that it yielded not merely to the purest enjoyment of human nature but to the highest possible proofs of truth and beauty—brother and sister to each other as it were, yet in our inmost being they are one. ”

“ Can we fancy an existence in which the tenderest graces of life bloom like roses and violets without a development of those sources in the human breast in their endless breadth and ineffable depth and reaching their full maturity, from which melody flows and in which the eternal power of creation reveals itself like the reason in idea and word? ”

“ And yet, however well known he may be, in reality, we, his contemporaries, can know little of such a man, for the reason that we are now in a position to define the limits of his artistic power. How long is it since we shrugged our shoulders at the so-called earnest manner of Mozart when we spoke of him as a man? That he was a genius no one doubted, but with it was immediately associated the idea of a light-minded person who was only too glad to drink champagne, or of a child who did not know how to deal with life, still less with money, and consequently differed from ordinary people. ”

“ We see in Beethoven how one with perfect knowledge seizes upon the fresh material of the intellectual life about him. It is (as Liszt’s favorite scholar, Hans Von Buelow expresses it,) the lamentation of the eagle whose flight is checked by the ardor of the sunbeams, the mournful roar of the lion whom the impenetrable darkness has overtaken. A newer, grander horizon looms up—a spiritual world full of poetry.
“Liszt grasped this manifold material with the strength of his imagination, and introduced [116] it in the world of music. ”

“ A thousand consuming thoughts revolve in his brain from which only the sacred labor of art can release it. He feels as if he were the victim of an unutterable disease. An unknown power urges him to reveal by words, colors or tones, the ideal which dwells in him and fills him with a thirst of desire, with a torment for possession, such as no man has ever experienced for an object of actual passion. ”

“ The composer indeed retained the name because it truly denominates a general style of music. But it goes further than this. It is a very powerful and clearly realistic expression of the actual spirit of the subject in contradistinction to the operatic style. It is, in fact, a pure epic poem, which an oratorio must be as distinguished from dramatic music, besides being a calm and thoughtful principal features. We behold a great world-moving event arising and passing before us. The particular acts and salient phases come and go, like the heroes of the epic, in quiet, simple grandeur. ”

“ It is as interesting to see him as it is to hear him, for his face changes with every modulation of the piece and he looks exactly as he is playing. He has one element that is most captivating and that is a sort of delicate and fitful mirth that keeps peering out at you here and there! It is most peculiar, and when he plays that way the most bewitching little expression comes over his face. It seems as if a little spirit of joy were playing hide and go seek with you. ”

“ This deep heavenly joy of the spirit which only seeks the good, and in such wise only as to maintain and cherish it, how and when it can, not merely to conform his habit and life to it—this genuine spirit of love which is the essence [79] of industry, of power, and of the highest and most productive qualities, this strongest characteristic of Mozart’s nature is due to that spirit of human love which was characteristic of his South-German home. It is as good a product of his own peculiarly moral labor as his boundless knowledge is the result of his industry as an artist. ”

“ I never saw a more delicious piece of cleverness. It was so quick-witted and so exactly characteristic of Liszt. Instead of giving you a chance to say ‘He has made a mistake,’ he forces you to say, ‘He has shown how to get out of a mistake.’
“Another day I heard him pass from one piece into another by making the finale of the first one play the part of prelude to the second. So exquisitely were the two woven together that you could hardly tell where the one left off and the other began. Ah, me! such a facile grace! Nobody will ever equal him with those rolling basses and those flowing trebles. ”

“ In order to reach the goal of an art which has been rightly designated as the idea of the world and the soul of humanity, and to behold it spreading over our age and extending to posterity, he settled down to rest after his career as a virtuoso, and founded “Weimar.” It must be in that Germany of which he wrote to his friend Berlioz, in 1838, “the study of art is universally less superficial here, the feeling is truer, the usages are better. The traditions of Mozart, Beethoven and Weber are not lost. These three geniuses have taken deep root in Germany.” ”

“ Hence, there can only be cruel pain to one who was born with the pride and the wild freedom of a genuine child of art. He is surrounded by a swarm of mechanical workers who obsequiously devote their services to the caprices of the populace [156] and the fancies of the uncultivated wealthy, at whose nod they bow themselves down to the earth, as if they could not get close enough to it. The artist must accept them as his brothers and as the multitude confounds them together, must see himself and them rated at the same value and regarded with the same childish, stupid astonishment. ”

“ In short, he represents the whole scale of human emotions. He is a many-sided person and reflects back the light in all colors, no matter how you look at him. His pupils adore him, as in fact every one else does, but it is impossible to do otherwise with a person whose genius flashes out of him all the time so, and whose character is so winning.
“One day this week, when we were with Liszt, he was in such high spirits that it was as if he had suddenly become twenty years younger. ”

“ But we can not forbear alluding to one composition; we mean his ‘Reminiscences from Don Juan,’ one of the most genial of piano pieces. We lament for any one who has not heard him play these reminiscences. The marble guest on horseback, the insinuating Don Juan with his La ci darem, the struggling and at last consenting Zerlina, the Champagne song, etc., all this did Liszt pass before our minds in such a way that we forgot Liszt, concert-hall and all; one awoke from the performance as from a blissful dream. Four times we heard this piece by him, and always with the same emotions. ”

“ That such a restless head, driven and perplexed by all the needs and doctrines of his time, feeling the necessity of troubling himself about all the necessities of humanity, and eagerly sticking his nose into all the pots in which the good God brews the future, that Franz Liszt can be no still piano-forte player for tranquil townsfolks and good-natured nightcaps is self-evident. ”

“ Surely such a life as his, so rich in success, so bountiful in reward and triumph, so fruitful in results, its skill and love attested to by eminent scholars in every country, refutes his mournful remark to George Sand, in one case at least, “Sorrowful and great is the destiny of the artist.” ”

“ In his discontent he would perhaps destroy it, did not some new phenomenon avert his glance from his creations, to throw him anew into those heavenly, painful ecstacies which make his life a constant struggle toward an unattainable goal, a continual effort of all the powers of the spirit to raise itself to the realization of that which he has conceived in those favored hours when the eternal beauty disclosed itself without a cloud. ”

“ Have our language and literature acquired afresh such far-reaching capabilities, such a fixed scope and self-enrichment as the plastic art has, through Winckelmann? This question is all the more worthy of attention since music, embodying the very essence of things and not their appearance, reflecting the idea of the world itself by its own hand and with its own power, is more essentially poetical than the plastic art. We have in Liszt’s writings a significant incentive to consider the question further. ”

“ As the weak pupil of a strong master, his father, he had as yet had no other insight into the world of phantasy than the architectural framework of notes in their artificial arrangement together, and when we think of the old-fashioned composers, like Hummel and Ries, we imagine that it must have doubly fascinated him to exercise that charm, which these calloused gypsy hands practiced before all eyes, when they drew the bow across the sighing instrument or made the metal ring with powerful defiance. ”