Music-Study in Germany, from the Home Correspondence of Amy Fay

This day it was particularly trying, as it was really my first serious performance before him, and he speaks so very indistinctly that I feared I shouldn't understand his corrections, and that he would get out of patience with me, for he cannot bear to explain. I think he hates the trouble of speaking German, for he mutters his words and does not half finish his sentences. Yesterday when I was there he spoke to me in French all the time, and to the others in German, – one of his funny whims, I suppose.

Well, on this day the artists Leitert and Urspruch, and the young composer Metzdorf, who is always hanging about Liszt, were in the room when I came. They had probably been playing. At first Liszt took no notice of me beyond a greeting, till Metzdorf said to him, "Herr Doctor, Miss Fay has brought a sonata." "Ah, well, let us hear it," said Liszt. Just then he left the room for a minute, and I told the three gentlemen that they ought to go away and let me play to Liszt alone, for I felt nervous about playing before them. They all laughed at me and said they would not budge an inch. When Liszt came back they said to him, "Only think, Herr Doctor, Miss Fay proposes to send us all home." I said I could not play before such great artists. "Oh, that is healthy for you," said Liszt, with a smile, and added, "you have a very choice audience, now." I don't know whether he appreciated how nervous I was, but instead of walking up and down the room as he often does, he sat down by me like any other teacher, and heard me play the first movement. It was frightfully hard, but I had studied it so much that I managed to get through with it pretty successfully. Nothing could exceed Liszt's amiability, or the trouble he gave himself, and instead of frightening me, he inspired me. Never was there such a delightful teacher! and he is the first sympathetic one I've had. You feel so free with him, and he develops the very spirit of music in you. He doesn't keep nagging at you all the time, but he leaves you your own conception. Now and then he will make a criticism, or play a passage, and with a few words give you enough to think of all the rest of your life. There is a delicate point to everything he says, as subtle as he is himself. He doesn't tell you anything about the technique. That you must work out for yourself. When I had finished the first movement of the sonata, Liszt, as he always does, said "Bravo!" Taking my seat, he made some little criticisms, and then told me to go on and play the rest of it.

Now, I only half knew the other movements, for the first one was so extremely difficult that it cost me all the labour I could give to prepare that. But playing to Liszt reminds me of trying to feed the elephant in the Zoological Garden with lumps of sugar. He disposes of whole movements as if they were nothing, and stretches out gravely for more! One of my fingers fortunately began to bleed, for I had practiced the skin off, and that gave me a good excuse for stopping. Whether he was pleased at this proof of industry, I know not; but after looking at my finger and saying, "Oh!" very compassionately, he sat down and played the whole three last movements himself. That was a great deal, and showed off all his powers. It was the first time I had heard him, and I don't know which was the most extraordinary, – the Scherzo, with its wonderful lightness and swiftness, the Adagio with its depth and pathos, or the last movement, where the whole key-board seemed to "donnern und blitzen (thunder and lighten)." There is such a vividness about everything he plays that it does not seem as if it were mere music you were listening to, but it is as if he had called up a real, living form, and you saw it breathing before your face and eyes. It gives me almost a ghostly feeling to hear him, and it seems as if the air were peopled with spirits. Oh, he is a perfect wizard! 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.

On Friday Liszt came and paid me a visit, and even played a little on my piano. – Only think what an honour! At the same time he told me to come to him that afternoon and play to him, and invited me also to a matinee he was going to give on Sunday for some countess of distinction who was here for a few days. None of the other scholars were asked, and when I entered the room there were only three persons in it beside Liszt. One was the Grand Duke himself, the other was the Countess von M. (born a Russian Princess), and the third was a Russian minister's wife. They were all four standing in a little knot, speaking in French together. I had no idea who they were, as the Grand Duke was in morning costume, and had no star or decoration to distinguish him. I saw at a glance, however, that they were all swells, and so I didn't speak to any of them, luckily, though it was an even chance that I had not said something to avoid the awkwardness of standing there like a post, for I had been told beforehand that Liszt never introduced people to each other. Liszt greeted me in a very friendly manner, and introduced me to the countess, but she was so dreadfully set up that it was impossible to get more than a few icy words out of her. I was thankful enough when more people arrived, so that I could retire to a corner and sit down without being observed, for it was a very uncomfortable situation to be standing, a stranger, close to four fashionables and not dare to speak to any of them because they did not address me.

After the company was all assembled, it numbered eighteen persons, nearly all of whom were titled. I was the only unimportant one in it. Liszt was so sweet. He kept coming over to where I sat and talking to me, and promised me a ticket for a private concert where only his compositions were to be performed. He seemed determined to make me feel at home. He played five times, but no great work, which was a disappointment to me, particularly as the last three times he played duetts with a leading Weimar artist named Lassen, who was present. He made me come and turn the leaves. Gracious! how he does read! It is very difficult to turn for him, for he reads ever so far ahead of what he is playing, and takes in fully five bars at a glance, so you have to guess about where you think he would like to have the page over. Once I turned it too late, and once too early, and he snatched it out of my hand and whirled it back. – Not quite the situation for timorous me, was it?

May 21. – To-day being my birthday, I thought I must go to Liszt by way of celebration. I wasn't really ready to play to him, but I took his second Ballade with me, and thought I'd ask him some questions about some hard places in it. He insisted upon my playing it. When we came in he looked indisposed and nervous, and there happened to be a good many artists there. We always lay our notes on the table, and he takes them, looks them over, and calls out what he'll have played. He remarked this piece and called out "Wer spielt diese grosse mächtige Ballade von mir? (Who plays this great and mighty ballad of mine?)" I felt as if he had asked "Who killed Cock Robin?" and as if I were the one who had done it, only I did not feel like "owning up" to it quite so glibly as the sparrow had, for Liszt seemed to be in very bad humour, and had roughed the one who had played before me. I finally mustered up my courage and said "Ich," but told him I did not know it perfectly yet. He said, "No matter; play it." So I sat down, expecting he would take my head off, but, strange to say, he seemed to be delighted with my playing, and said that I had "quite touched him." Think of that from Liszt, and when I was playing his own composition! When I went out he accompanied me to the door, took my hand in both of his and said, "To-day you've covered yourself with glory!" I told him I had only begun it, and I hoped he would let me play it again when I knew it better. "What," said he, "I must pay you a still greater compliment, must I?" "Of course," said I. "Il faut vouz gâter?" "Oui," said I. He laughed.

CHAPTER XVIII

Liszt's Drawing-room. An Artist's Walking Party. Liszt's TeachingWEIMAR, May 29, 1873.

I am having the most heavenly time in Weimar, studying with Liszt, and sometimes I can scarcely realize that I am at that summit of my ambition, to be his pupil! It was the Baroness von S.'s letter that secured it for me, I am sure. He is so overrun with people, that I think it is a wonder he is civil to anybody, but he is the most amiable man I ever knew, though he can be dreadful, too, when he chooses, and he understands how to put people outside his door in as short a space of time as it can be done. I go to him three times a week. At home Liszt doesn't wear his long abbé's coat, but a short one, in which he looks much more artistic. His figure is remarkably slight, but his head is most imposing. – It is so delicious in that room of his! It was all furnished and put in order for him by the Grand Duchess herself. The walls are pale gray, with a gilded border running round the room, or rather two rooms, which are divided, but not separated, by crimson curtains. The furniture is crimson, and everything is so comfortable– such a contrast to German bareness and stiffness generally. A splendid grand piano stands in one window (he receives a new one every year). The other window is always wide open, and looks out on the park. There is a dove-cote just opposite the window, and the doves promenade up and down on the roof of it, and fly about, and sometimes whirr down on the sill itself. That pleases Liszt. His writing-table is beautifully fitted up with things that all match. Everything is in bronze – ink-stand, paper-weight, match-box, etc., and there is always a lighted candle standing on it by which he and the gentlemen can light their cigars. There is a carpet on the floor, a rarity in Germany, and Liszt generally walks about, and smokes, and mutters (he can never be said to talk), and calls upon one or other of us to play. From time to time he will sit down and play himself where a passage does not suit him, and when he is in good spirits he makes little jests all the time. His playing was a complete revelation to me, and has given me an entirely new insight into music. You cannot conceive, without hearing him, how poetic he is, or the thousand nuances that he can throw into the simplest thing, and he is equally great on all sides. From the zephyr to the tempest, the whole scale is equally at his command.

But Liszt is not at all like a master, and cannot be treated like one. He is a monarch, and when he extends his royal sceptre you can sit down and play to him. You never can ask him to play anything for you, no matter how much you're dying to hear it. If he is in the mood he will play, if not, you must content yourself with a few remarks. You cannot even offer to play yourself. You lay your notes on the table, so he can see that you want to play, and sit down. He takes a turn up and down the room, looks at the music, and if the piece interests him, he will call upon you. We bring the same piece to him but once, and but once play it through.

Yesterday I had prepared for him his Au Bord d'une Source. I was nervous and played badly. He was not to be put out, however, but acted as if he thought I had played charmingly, and then he sat down and played the whole piece himself, oh, so exquisitely! It made me feel like a wood-chopper. The notes just seemed to ripple off his fingers' ends with scarce any perceptible motion. As he neared the close I remarked that that funny little expression came over his face which he always has when he means to surprise you, and he suddenly took an unexpected chord and extemporized a poetical little end, quite different from the written one. – Do you wonder that people go distracted over him?

Weimar is a lovely little place, and there are most beautiful walks all about. Ascension being a holiday here, all we pianists made up a walking party out to Tiefurt, about two miles distant. We went in the afternoon and returned in the evening. The walk lay through the woods, and was perfectly exquisite the whole way. As we came back in the evening the nightingales were singing, and I could not help wishing that P. were there to hear them, as he has such a passion for birds. There are cuckoos here, too, and you hear them calling "cuckoo, cuckoo." Metzdorf and I danced on the hard road, to the edification of all the others. In Tiefurt we partook of a magnificent collation consisting of a mug of beer, brown bread and sausage! Some of the party preferred coffee, among whom was Metzdorf, who made us laugh by sticking the coffee-pot into his inside coat pocket as soon as he had poured out his first cup, in order to make sure that the others didn't take more than their share; he would coolly take it out, help himself, and put it back again. The servant who waited got frightened, and thought he was going to steal it. Afterwards when we were playing games and wanted the door shut, the host came and opened it, and would not allow us to shut it, because he said we might carry off something! How's that!

—WEIMAR, June 6, 1873.

When I first came there were only five of us who studied with Liszt, but lately a good many others have been there. Day before yesterday there came a young lady who was a pupil of Henselt in St. Petersburg. She is immensely talented, only seventeen years old, and her name is Laura Kahrer. It is a very rare thing to see a pupil of Henselt, for it is very difficult to get lessons from him. He stands next to Liszt. This Laura Kahrer plays everything that ever was heard of, and she played a fugue of her own composition the other day that was really vigorous and good. I was quite astonished to hear how she had worked it up. She has made a grand concert tour in Russia. I never saw such a hand as she had. She could bend it backwards till it looked like the palm of her hand turned inside out. She was an interesting little creature, with dark eyes and hair, and one could see by her Turkish necklace and numerous bangles that she had been making money. She played with the greatest aplomb, though her touch had a certain roughness about it to my ear. She did not carry me away, but I have not heard many pieces from her.

However, all playing sounds barren by the side of Liszt, for his is the living, breathing impersonation of poetry, passion, grace, wit, coquetry, daring, tenderness and every other fascinating attribute that you can think of! I'm ready to hang myself half the time when I've been to him. Oh, he is the most phenomenal being in every respect! All that you've heard of him would never give you an idea of him. In short, he represents the whole scale of human emotion. He is a many-sided prism, and reflects back the light in all colours, no matter how you look at him. His pupils adore him, as in fact everybody 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. A student from the Stuttgardt conservatory played a Liszt Concerto. His name is V., and he is dreadfully nervous. Liszt kept up a little running fire of satire all the time he was playing, but in a good-natured way. I shouldn't have minded it if it had been I. In fact, I think it would have inspired me; but poor V. hardly knew whether he was on his head or on his feet. It was too funny. Everything that Liszt says is so striking. For instance, in one place where V. was playing the melody rather feebly, Liszt suddenly took his seat at the piano and said, "When I play, I always play for the people in the gallery [by the gallery he meant the cock-loft, where the rabble always sit, and where the places cost next to nothing], so that those persons who pay only five groschens for their seat also hear something." Then he began, and I wish you could have heard him! The sound didn't seem to be very loud, but it was penetrating and far-reaching. When he had finished, he raised one hand in the air, and you seemed to see all the people in the gallery drinking in the sound. That is the way Liszt teaches you. He presents an idea to you, and it takes fast hold of your mind and sticks there. Music is such a real, visible thing to him, that he always has a symbol, instantly, in the material world to express his idea. One day, when I was playing, I made too much movement with my hand in a rotatory sort of a passage where it was difficult to avoid it. "Keep your hand still, Fräulein," said Liszt; "don't make omelette." I couldn't help laughing, it hit me on the head so nicely. He is far too sparing of his playing, unfortunately, and, like Tausig, only sits down and plays a few bars at a time, generally. It is dreadful when he stops, just as you are at the height of your enjoyment, but he is so thoroughly blasé that he doesn't care to show off, and doesn't like to have any one pay him a compliment. Even at the court it annoyed him so that the Grand Duchess told people to take no notice when he rose from the piano.

On the same day that Liszt was in such high good-humour, a strange lady and her husband were there who had made a long journey to Weimar, in the hope of hearing him play. She waited patiently for a long time through the lesson, and at last Liszt took compassion on her, and sat down with his favourite remark that "the young ladies played a great deal better than he did, but he would try his best to imitate them," and then played something of his own so wonderfully, that when he had finished we all stood there like posts, feeling that there was nothing to be said. But he, as if he feared we might burst out into eulogy, got up instantly and went over to a friend of his who was standing there, and who lives on an estate near Weimar, and said, in the most commonplace tone imaginable, "By the way, how about those eggs? Are you going to send me some?" It seems to be not only a profound bore to him, but really a sort of sensitiveness on his part. How he can bear to hear us play, I cannot imagine. It must grate on his ear terribly, I think, because everything must sound expressionless to him in comparison with his own marvellous conception. 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 pedal are two secrets of his playing, and then he seems to dive down in the most hidden thoughts of the composer, and fetch them up to the surface, so that they gleam out at you one by one, like stars!

The more I see and hear Liszt, the more I am lost in amazement! I can neither eat nor sleep on those days that I go to him. All my musical studies till now have been a mere going to school, a preparation for him. I often think of what Tausig said once: "Oh, compared with Liszt, we other artists are all blockheads." I did not believe it at the time, but I've seen the truth of it, and in studying Liszt's playing, I can see where Tausig got many of his own wonderful peculiarities. I think he was the most like Liszt of all the army that have had the privilege of his instruction. – I began this letter on Sunday, and it is now Tuesday. Yesterday I went to Liszt, and found that Bülow had just arrived. None of the other scholars had come, for a wonder, and I was just going away, when Liszt came out, asked me to come in a moment, and introduced me to Bülow. There I was, all alone with these two great artists in Liszt's salon! Wasn't that a situation? I only stayed a few minutes, of course, though I should have liked to spend hours, but our conversation was in the highest degree amusing while I was there. Bülow had just returned from his grand concert tour, and had been in London for the first time. In a few months he had given one hundred and twenty concerts! He is a fascinating creature, too, like all these master artists, but entirely different from Liszt, being small, quick, and airy in his movements, and having one of the boldest and proudest foreheads I ever saw. He looks like strength of will personified. Liszt gazed at "his Hans," as he calls him, with the fondest pride, and seemed perfectly happy over his arrival. It was like his beautiful courtesy to call me in and introduce me to Bülow instead of letting me go away. He thought I had come to play to him, and was unwilling to have me take that trouble for nothing, though he must have wished me in Jericho. You would think I paid him a hundred dollars a lesson, instead of his condescending to sacrifice his valuable time to me for nothing.

CHAPTER XIX

Liszt's Expression in Playing. Liszt on Conservatories. Ordeal of Liszt's Lessons. Liszt's KindnessWEIMAR, June 19, 1873.

In Liszt I can at last say that my ideal in something has been realized. He goes far beyond all that I expected. Anything so perfectly beautiful as he looks when he sits at the piano I never saw, and yet he is almost an old man now.5 I enjoy him as I would an exquisite work of art. His personal magnetism is immense, and I can scarcely bear it when he plays. He can make me cry all he chooses, and that is saying a good deal, because I've heard so much music, and never have been affected by it. Even Joachim, whom I think divine, never moved me. When Liszt plays anything pathetic, it sounds as if he had been through everything, and opens all one's wounds afresh. All that one has ever suffered comes before one again. Who was it that I heard say once, that years ago he saw Clara Schumann sitting in tears near the platform, during one of Liszt's performances? – Liszt knows well the influence he has on people, for he always fixes his eyes on some one of us when he plays, and I believe he tries to wring our hearts. When he plays a passage, and goes pearling down the key-board, he often looks over at me and smiles, to see whether I am appreciating it.

But I doubt if he feels any particular emotion himself, when he is piercing you through with his rendering. He is simply hearing every tone, knowing exactly what effect he wishes to produce and how to do it. In fact, he is practically two persons in one – the listener and the performer. But what immense self-command that implies! No matter how fast he plays you always feel that there is "plenty of time" – no need to be anxious! You might as well try to move one of the pyramids as fluster him. Tausig possessed this repose in a technical way, and his touch was marvellous; but he never drew the tears to your eyes. He could not wind himself through all the subtle labyrinths of the heart as Liszt does.

Liszt does such bewitching little things! The other day, for instance, Fräulein Gaul was playing something to him, and in it were two runs, and after each run two staccato chords. She did them most beautifully, and struck the chords immediately after. "No, no," said Liszt, "after you make a run you must wait a minute before you strike the chords, as if in admiration of your own performance. You must pause, as if to say, 'How nicely I did that.'" Then he sat down and made a run himself, waited a second, and then struck the two chords in the treble, saying as he did so "Bra-vo," and then he played again, struck the other chord, and said again "Bra-vo," and positively, it was as if the piano had softly applauded! That is the way he plays everything. It seems as if the piano were speaking with a human tongue.

Our class has swelled to about a dozen persons now, and a good many others come and play to him once or twice and then go. As I wrote to L. the other day, that dear little scholar of Henselt, Fräulein Kahrer, was one, but she only stayed three days. She was a most interesting little creature, and told some funny stories about Henselt, who she says has a most violent temper, and is very severe. She said that one day he was giving a lesson to Princess Katherina (whoever that is), and he was so enraged over her playing that he snatched away the music, and dashed it to the ground. The Princess, however, did not lose her equanimity, but folded her arms and said, "Who shall pick it up?" And he had to bend and restore it to its place.