Among the Great Masters of Music: Scenes in the Lives of Famous MusiciansRowlands, Walter
History
Among the Great Masters of Music: Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians
Rowlands, Walter
Music in art; Musicians -- Biography; Musicians -- Portraits
"This happened at a time when it became more and more evident that my
dramatic works would have no outward success. But just when the case
seemed desperate, Liszt succeeded by his own energy in opening a
hopeful refuge to my art. He ceased his wanderings, settled down in
the small and modest Weimar, and took up the conductor's _baton_, after
having been at home so long in the splendour of the greatest cities of
Europe. At Weimar I saw him for the last time, when I rested a few
days in Thuringia, not yet certain whether my threatening prosecution
would compel me to continue my flight from Germany. The very day when
my personal danger became a certainty, I saw Liszt conducting a
rehearsal of my 'Tannhaeuser,' and was astonished at recognising my
second self in his achievements. What I had felt in inventing the
music, he felt in performing it; what I wanted to express in writing it
down, he proclaimed in making it sound. Strange to say, through the
love of this rarest friend, I gained, at the moment of becoming
homeless, a real home for my art, which I had longed and sought for
always in the wrong place.
"At the end of my last stay at Paris, when ill, broken down, and
despairing, I sat brooding over my fate, my eyes fell on the score of
my 'Lohengrin,' totally forgotten by me. Suddenly I felt something
like compassion that this music should never sound from off the
death-pale paper. I wrote two lines to Liszt; his answer was the news
that preparations for the performance were being made on the largest
scale the limited means of Weimar would permit. Everything that men
and circumstances could do was done in order to make the work
understood. . . . Errors and misconceptions impeded the desired
success. What was to be done to supply what was wanted, so as to
further the true understanding on all sides, and with it the ultimate
success of the work? Liszt saw it at once and did it. He gave to the
public his own impression of the work in a manner the convincing
eloquence and overpowering efficacy of which remain unequalled.
Success was his reward, and with this success he now approaches me,
saying: 'Behold, we have come so far, now create us a new work that we
may go still further.'"
LISZT.
In a letter written to Franz von Schober, the poet and writer, and the
intimate friend of Schubert, in 1840, Liszt says: "Most affectionate
remembrances to Kriehuber. His two portraits of me have been copied in
London. They are without doubt the best."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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