In 1842 Liszt was invited by the grand duke of Weimar to conduct a series of concerts each year in the city of Goethe and Schiller. Soon afterward he became director of the court theatre. He gave to Weimar ten years of brilliant eminence, performing, among other works, Wagner’s _Tannhäuser_, _Lohengrin_, and ‘Flying Dutchman’; Berlioz’s _Benvenuto Cellini_; Schumann’s _Genoveva_ and his scenes from _Manfred_; Schubert’s _Alfonso und Estrella_; and Cornelius’ ‘The Barber of Bagdad.’ The last work, an attempt to apply Wagnerian principles to comic opera, was received with extreme coldness, and Liszt in disgust gave up his position, leaving Weimar in 1861. But during these years he had composed many of the most important of his works. [Illustration: Liszt at the Piano] _After a painting by Josef Danhauser_ From this time until his death at Bayreuth in 1886 he divided his life between Buda-Pesth, Weimar, and Rome. In the ‘Eternal City’ the religious nature of the man came to full expression and he studied the lore of the Church like a loyal Catholic, being granted the honorary title of Abbé. The revolutionist of 1834 had become the religious mystic. Rome and the magnificent traditions of the Church filled his imagination. Liszt’s compositions may be roughly divided into three periods: first, the piano period, extending from 1826 to 1842; second, the orchestral period, from 1842 to 1860 (mostly during his residence at Weimar); and, third, his choral period, from which date his religious works. The nature of these compositions and their contribution to the development of music will be discussed in succeeding chapters. Here we need only recall a few of their chief characteristics. Of his twelve hundred compositions, some seven hundred are original and the others mostly piano transcriptions of orchestral and operatic works of all sorts. Certainly he wrote too much, and not a little of his work must be set down as trash, or near it. But some of it is of the highest musical quality and was of the greatest importance in musical development. The most typical of modern musical forms--the symphonic poem--is due solely to him. He formulated the theory of it and gave it brilliant exemplification. His mastery of piano technique is, of course, unequalled. He made the piano, on the one hand, a small orchestra, and, on the other, an individual voice. While he by no means developed all the possibilities of the instrument (Chopin and Schumann contributed more that was of musical value), he extended its range--its avoirdupois, one might almost say--as no other musician has done. His piano transcriptions, though somewhat distrusted nowadays, greatly increased the popularity of the instrument, and, in some cases, were the chief means of spreading the reputations of certain composers. His use of the orchestra was hardly less masterful than that of Berlioz and Wagner; in particular he gave full importance to the individuality of