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Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: Years of
Travel as a Virtuoso"
by Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated byConstance Bache
The Austrian composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a pianisticmiracle. He could play anything on site and composed over 400works centered around "his" instrument. Among his key works arehis Hungarian Rhapsodies, his Transcendental Etudes, his ConcertEtudes, his Etudes based on variations of Paganinini's ViolinCaprices and his Sonata, one of the most important of thenineteenth century. He also wrote thousands of letters, of which260 are translated into English in this first of a 2-volume setof letters.
Those who knew him were also struck by his extremelysophisticated personality. He was surely one of the mostcivilized people of the nineteeth century, internalizing withinhimself a complex conception of human civility, and attempting toproject it in his music and his communications with people. Hislife was centered around people; he knew them, worked with them,remembered them, thought about them, and wrote about them usingan almost poetic language, while pushing them to reflect the highideals he believed in. His personality was the embodiment of arefined, idealized form of human civility. He was the consummatemusical artist, always looking for ways to communicate a newcivilized idea through music, and to work with other musicians inorganizing concerts and gatherings to perform the music publicly.He also did as much as he could to promote and compliment thosewhose music he believed in.
He was also a superlative musical critic, knowing, with fewmistakes, what music of his day was "artistic" and what was not.But, although he was clearly a musical genius, he insisted onprojecting a tonal, romantic "beauty" in his music, confining hismusic to a narrow range of moral values and ideals. He would haverejected 20th-century music that entertained cynical notions ofany kind, or notions that obviated the concept of beauty in anyway. There is no Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Cage, Adamsand certainly no Schoenberg in Liszt's music. His music has anideological "ceiling," and that ceiling is "beauty." It nevergoes beyond that. And perhaps it was never as "beautiful" as themusic of Mozart, Bach or Beethoven, nor quite as rational (Areall the emotions in Liszt's music truly "controlled?"). But itcertainly was original and instructive, and it certainly willlinger.
To the Memory of
MY BROTHER WALTER,
AND TO OUR
DEAR AND HONORED FRIEND
A.J. HIPKINS, ESQ.,
I DEDICATE THIS TRANSLATION.