In the following translation of the questionnaires, Ramann’s original text is given in italics; Liszt’s responses are in normal typeface. Footnotes at the bottom of the page represent commentary by the present author except where specifically noted. LW citations refer the reader to the List of Works by Mária Eckhardt and Rena Mueller printed in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , 2nd ed. (London: 2001), vol. 14, pp. 785–872.
| What was your mother’s first and last name? | Please write the answer here! Anna Lager (born in Lower Austria); died in Paris in ′66. |
| What was her father like? What did he do? Where did he live? | My father was a very capable and upstanding civil servant and worked as chief accountant for the princely house of Esterhazy. He also distinguished himself as a musician, playing several instruments, (piano, violin, cello, and guitar) and during the most celebrated period of the Esterhazy court orchestra, from the end of the last century through the beginning of this one, he became friends with Haydn and Hummel, and often performed with the ensemble as an amateur player. 1 . |
| When did you compose your Etudes op. 1 and where were they first published? | They were written in ′27 in Marseille, and published soon afterward in Paris. 2 |
| When were they revised for the first and second times, respectively? | The 1st in ′37, Italy, the 2nd in ′49, Weimar. 3 |
| When did you first conceive the idea for your symphonic poems? In what sequence were they written? | Approximately the way they are listed in Härtel’s edition. The first symphonic poem to be performed was Tasso, at Goethe’s Memorial Celebration in August of ′49, in Weimar. 4 |
| When did you devise the Dante—and when the Faust—symphonies? | During the Weimar period, in the mid-’50s. 5 |
| Which are the first of your Lieder? And where did you compose them? | “Loreley,” “Mignon” (the 2 books which were first published by Schlesinger in ′42, and 10, 12 years later were included in the “Collected Songs” published by Kahnt). 6 |
| Do you still possess a copy of the essays published in the Gazette musicale, “De la situation des artistes”? 7 [And if yes, would you possibly entrust it to me for a short time?] 8 | [No. They appeared in ′35, and are probably available in Leipzig, in a collection of the Gazette musicale. ] 8 |
| A Is it true, as Christern wrote of you in 1841, that as a nine year-old boy you immersed yourself “in the mystical philosophies of a certain Jacob Böhme” and focused your imagination on “apocalyptic visions”? 1 |
I don’t remember ever having read Jacob Böhme’s writings. 2 My mystical tendencies were always restricted to biblical subjects (primarily the books of the New Testament), the biographies of several saints (especially Francis of Assisi) and the book The Imitation of Christ , which was written by either Gerson or Thomas A Kempis. 3 |
| B Who owns your father’s diaries, which are often referred to by Schilling in his book about you? 4 If you have them, would you possibly permit me to take a look, and send them to me? I would return them very shortly! My mother kept a few volumes of these diaries. Since she passed away, I don’t know where they’ve gone to. 5 |
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| C Do any of your childhood letters to your mother still exist? |
Probably not—and in any case, they are entirely unimportant. 6 |
| D How old were you when you learned to read and write? |
7 years old—I taught myself how to write musical notation, and much preferred practicing music to practicing writing my letters; by the time I was 9 I had already scribbled quite a few notebooks full of musical notes. 7 |
[Piano Music, Orchestral Works, Church Music, Organ Works, Lieder] 1
[Lost]
| Do you perhaps still remember the “Tantum ergo” that you wrote as a “ten year-old” when you were studying with Salieri? And—if so , would you possibly copy it out for me? | Forgotten; but presumably the same inspirational feeling appears again in the Tantum ergo that was published four years ago by Kahnt in the collection, 9 Sacred Songs. 1 |
| Where is your opera “Don Sancho”? And where can I obtain the story of the text, or the text itself? I think it would be interesting and desirable to include an aria or some other excerpt that was especially successful and characteristic in your biography. (Perhaps in facsimile?) | The score was stored for many years in the library of the opera in Paris, which was destroyed by fire. 2 |
| Your little song “Angiolin dal bion do crin” interests me a great deal too. There is no sweeter lullaby in all the world! Did you compose it for a specific child, because it seems so artless?! 3 | The setting was written for my eldest daughter Blandine (Mme. Ollivier—died 12 years ago—) 4 in Italy, in the summer of’39, to a poem by Marchese Boccella—in Rome? |
| You told me that “Die Loreley” and “Mignon” were the first Lieder you composed. Yet I can’t escape the thought that Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (Dumas), “Il m’aimait tant” (Mme de Girardin), and Poésie[s] lyriques (Schlesinger, printed in 1843) to texts by Victor Hugo belong to an earlier period. Am I mistaken? | Answer given in my letter. 5 |
| What kind of instruction did you receive in Vienna (1822) from Randhartinger? | None at all. Randhartinger was a fellow student of Salieri’s—not my teacher. 6 |
| Did you have any other schooling at the time other than musical instruction? | No. My father gave lessons at that time in history, Latin, etc. to quite a few young noblemen, and no time to spend on me. 7 |
| What did you play at your 2nd concert in Vienna (1823) besides Hummel’s B Minor Concerto and an “improvisational fantasy”? | Probably variations by Czerny, Moscheles, or Pixis, which were very much the fashion then. |
| Did the performance of your “Don Sancho” receive any negative criticism from the press? And do you perhaps remember from which papers? | No. The 3 performances of the little 1-act opera were received with a certain approval—nothing more. 1 |
| Which newspaper was at all unfriendly in its attitude toward you at that time? | Prior to the ′30s the newspapers bothered very seldom with music and musicians. The feuilletons which did concern themselves were organized later; specialty music newspapers first became reality in Paris through Fétis […] as a result I had no real criticism until then—an omission which was abundantly made up for later. 2 |
| Is the date of the first performance of your opera perhaps still in your memory? | No—it was in ′25, at the latest ′26. 3 |
| Is there a cross or a stone marking your father’s grave? | Unfortunately not. I’ll tell you the reason for this personally. 4 |
| What is the name of the cemetery where he is buried? | I don’t remember the name of the cemetery in Boulogne-sur-mer anymore. 5 My mother lies in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. 6 Emile Ollivier (in whose home she passed away) made the funeral arrangements (in ′66) and ordered the inscription on the gravestone, “Mulierem fortem quis inveniet?” 7 |
| When was your eldest daughter Blandine born? | At Christmas, 1835, in Geneva. 1 |
| Did she remain in Switzerland for the duration of your Italian journey? | Yes, with her wet-nurse. 2 |
| Was Cosima born in the fall of 1837 or in the spring of 1838, in Como? | She was also born at Christmas, 1837, in Como. |
| Was the Countess with you in Milan? 3 In Venice? 4 Florence, Rome | Yes, of course: the Italian journey was arranged by the Countess. 5 |
| Where did Cosima stay? | Like Blandine, with her wet-nurse. |
| When was Daniel born and where? | May, 1839, in Rome. |
| When did you bring your children together under your mother’s care? | In October ′39, I left the Countess in Florence; she returned to Paris alone; I devoted myself to concert tours, beginning in Vienna. The 3 children were brought to Paris, to my mother. 6 |
| Approximately how long did they stay with her? | From the end of autumn ′39, until the summer ′44, when I parted from the Countess for good. Blandine and Cosima then entered a distinguished private girls’ school (in Paris), which was run by Mlle Laure Bernard (later governess to the children of the Duke of Nemours). I left the choice of the school up to the Countess d’A—but refused to allow the children to live with her. |
| What was the name of the Princess Wittgenstein’s governess, into whose care you released your daughters? | Madame Patersi de Fossombroni, a very honorable older lady. My 2 daughters spent quite a few years in her care, beginning in the autumn of 1848; later they came to Berlin to stay with the mother of Hans v. Bülow. 7 |
| Were your daughters never under the care of their own mother? | The children often visited their mother, but never lived with her, because I did not consider this arrangement prudent. |
| In which establishment was your son brought up? | The notes about my dearly beloved son require further discussion which I will share with you personally. |
| When did you compose the children’s hymn (Hymne de l’enfant à son réveil)? | Many years ago: last winter I modified quite a bit the edition which came out a short time ago in Pest. 8 |
| What year did you lose your son? |
He died on 3 December 1859, in Berlin, while staying with his sister Cosima, who lovingly and tirelessly cared for him. Together with Cosima, I accompanied the body of Daniel to the cemetery. 9 To summarize briefly: The 3 children stayed with their very able wet-nurses in the areas around Geneva, Como, and Rome respectively, until the end of’39; then they came to Paris, to stay with my mother; 10 they never lived with the Countess; Blandine and Cosima were first raised in accordance with good taste in Madame Bernard’s exclusive boarding school from ′44 until the autumn of ′48; always, I alone paid the not inconsiderable costs of their education; 11 Princess Wittgenstein helped me magnanimously during the years that my daughters were under the care of Madame Patersi —(from ′48 until ′53 or ′54); and likewise afterward, as both girls went to live with Frau von Bülow in Berlin. |
Honorary Doctor 1 of the University of Königsberg, 2
Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, 3
President of the Hungarian Academy of Music in Budapest, 4
Royal Hungarian Council, 5
Chamberlain to the Grand Ducal Court of Saxony-Weimar, 6
Honorary Citizen of the cities of Oedenburg, Pest, Weimar, and Jena, 7
Knight of the Prussian Order “of merit,” 8
Commander of the Orders: Franz Joseph, Legion of Honor, St. Gregory, Honor Guard, Oaken Crown, St. Michael, etc. 9
Knight of the Order of Merit (’43) 2
Commander of the Legion of Honor (’61) 3
Commander of the Order of Franz Joseph (’74) 4
Commander of the Weimar Order of the Falcon (’74) etc. 5
Honorary Doctor of the University of Königsberg (’41 or ′42) 6
Chamberlain to the Grand Ducal Court of Saxony (’61) 7
Honorary Citizen of Oedenberg, Weimar, Jena etc. 8
Honorary Canon of Albano (’79) 9
President of the Royal Hungarian Music Academy in Budapest. 10
| When—in which year—was the composition “Pensée des Morts” written? Does it refer to a particular experience, or is it rather an expression of your feelings at that moment? |
This fragment of the “Harmonies poétiques” was written (in Paris) in ′34 (including the specific indication, “avec un profond sentiment d’ennui”—with a profound feeling of world-weariness. Note: ennui is used here in the sense described by Bossuet: “this inexorable world-weariness which is the basis of human life”—not as boredom in the ordinary sense, but rather as the suffering and sorrow common to all humanity.) 1 Now then: I took up the first 4 or 5 pages of the “harmonies poétiques” fragment in the year ′50, in “Pensée des Morts,” the closing of which develops out of the melodic shift (transformation?) from the preceding austere Gregorian chant, “de profundis clamavi ad Te, Domine!” 2 I forget how many numbers are to be found within the “Harmonies poétiques” in Kistner’s edition (1850); I only remember that I played this humble work, which contains “Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude,” “Funérailles” and “Cantique d’Amour,” 3 for the Princess Carolyne Wittgenstein, and that I dedicated it to her. “Funérailles” refers to the tragic events (1850) in Hungary. 4 This kind of music is no longer of any use; it was my mistake that I did not prevent its publication. The prudent course of action is to restrict oneself to “playing music” and “musical playing.” Unfortunately the critic has become far too frivolous, while art has become far too serious! Next year I will publish an orchestral work, entitled: “Les Morts” (after a prosehymn by Lamennais). With this composition, as with “Pensée des Morts,” there was no cause other than the remembrance of my dead parents, friends and children. 5 |
| When did Belloni begin to work as your secretary? | February ′41—in Brussels, and he remained with me, ever loyal, honest and friendly, during my entire period of concertizing, which ended in the summer of ′47 at a great military revue by Kaiser Nicolas, in Elisabethgrad (near Odessa); since that time I have not given any more concerts for my own profit. 1 |
| Is it true, as Schilling says, that you gave your first concert for solo piano in Rome? | Yes: in the Salon of Prince Dimitri Galitzin (Governor of Moscow) in Rome, Palazzo Poli. Count Michel Wielhorsky arranged the concert, and turned the profits over to me. 2 |
| What were the names of your co-founding colleagues of the Gazette musicale (1834)? | The founder and owner of the Gazette musicale was Maurice Schlesinger; you will find the names of the other contributors on the first page of the paper. R. Wagner once wrote an article entitled, “A Visit to Beethoven,” etc. 3 |
| Which newspapers did you help found and contribute to other than the Gazette musical? | So as not to compromise some very well-known names, I decline to answer this question. 4 |
| From where was the letter to the Beethoven Memorial Committee in Bonn (1839) written, from San Rossore, or from Florence? 5 | Probably from Pisa, which is an hour’s travel from San Rossore. In Florence I discussed the matter with the famous sculptor, Bartolini. |
| Were you alone when you went to Elba Island, or accompanied? 6 | I was never on Elba Island. |
| And in San Rossore? Alone? | As is already well-known, my entire stay in both Switzerland and Italy, from ′34 until ′39, was only a duetto amoroso , an amorous duet, molto agitato, this is why I found myself constantly involved in a maddening “égoisme à deux.” 7 |
| Do you perhaps know how high the price of a ticket was to a concert of yours in Vienna? | No; however it was certainly not an exaggerated price, because that kind of swindle, like all swindling, was and remains repulsive to me. 8 |
| Was the piano transcription of the Beethoven septet made at the same time as those of the symphonies, or later? |
I arranged the Beethoven septet at the request of Julius Schuberth in ′41 9 —and dedicated this arrangement to the wife of the Grand Duke of Weimar, Maria Palowna, 10 sister of Czar Nicholas. I had published 3 of the Beethoven symphonies (the C minor, the Pastoral, and the A major) a few years earlier (by Härtel and Haslinger). The complete edition of the 9 Beethoven symphonies for pianoforte had first appeared approximately 11 years before, from Härtel. I finished this edition in my picturesque apartment, Monte Mario (Madonna del Rosario) in ′63—and at sunset I heard more music than all written and playable instruments put together could produce. NB. With the next questionnaire, please allow more room for answers. Your |
Figure 1. Questionnaire No. 10/1875 (WRgs MS 59/351,1; reproduced with the kind permission of the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Weimar). Ramann’s questions, in German cursive script, left Liszt without enough room for his answers, and he was forced to add to his response in a footnote, marked with his customary dotted cross.
Figure 1 continued. The second, inner page of the folded questionnaire, containing the two questions about the Gazette musicale , as well as the nota bene carried over from the back of the questionnaire and written sideways, asking Ramann to leave more space for answers on the next questionnaire.
Figure 1 continued. Third, inner page of questionnaire no. 10, with questions about the Beethoven Memorial, Elba, and San Rossore.
Figure 1 continued. Back page of the folded questionnaire, with questions and answers about the price of tickets and the Beethoven septet. As mentioned previously, Liszt was forced to squeeze his answers into the available space, writing in a manner called gitterartig —literally, a latticed style. The writer turned a sheet of paper 90 degrees and continued writing around, between, and through sentences already on the page in order to save space.
| How many “Hungarian Marches” did you compose, and in what order are they written? Which are orchestrated? |
The Hungarian category is catalogued thus: 1. Rhapsodies (14 or 16?); 1 6 of these are for orchestra, 2 and the same ones are also arranged for 4-handed pianoforte (published this spring by J. Schuberth). 2. Symphonic arrangement of the Rákóczy March: orchestral score, 3 followed by 2- and 4-hand versions for pianoforte—and also for 2 pianofortes, 4- and 8-handed arrangements (published by Schuberth) 3. Hungarian Marches: A) in D minor (dedicated to the King of Portugal) (NB. The 2 main themes are used in their entirety in the symphonic poem “Hungaria.”) 4 B) in E minor (Storm March) (It appears again soon in a much-improved second edition of the orchestral score and piano arrangements at Schlesinger, Berlin) 5 C) Coronation March (orchestral score, 2- and 4-hand arrangement, from Schuberth) 6 D) Quick March (published in Pressburg) 7 NB. Actually, “Szószat and Hymnus” also belong to the Hungarian category (orchestral score and piano transcription). 8 |
| Were you specifically invited to lead the 1841–42 winter concerts of the Philharmonic Society before your trip from London to Russia? Or are the newspaper notices referring to this based only on rumors? | I wasn’t invited to direct the Philharmonic Society, but rather to head (as music director) a German opera society that was hoping to do good business in London, but had gone bankrupt in Paris 6 weeks earlier—which is why I sent a few thousand Thaler to them there for their journey home—the result of a very elegant concert. |
| What was the name of the Prussian prince who gave you the manuscripts from Louis Ferdinand? 9 How many were there? Where are they? Was the Elegy (on themes by Prince L. F.) that Schlesinger published written at the time of your Berlin concerts of 1842? | No Prussian prince sent me the manuscripts of Prince Louis Ferdinand, whose well-thought out, classically styled and melancholy quartet (F minor) I produced in my
then not-unpopular concerts in Berlin (January, February 42). At this opportunity I had the honor of mentioning other musical works by Prince Louis Ferdinand to the Princess of Prussia (now Empress of Germany). Her Majesty delighted me with the unusual, valuable gift of a volume of Prince Louis Ferdinand’s works edited by the Mademoiselles Erard in Paris, within which Her Royal Majesty the Princess of Prussia graciously enclosed the autograph manuscript of the flute concerto by Frederick the Great (with the principal and accompaniment parts written in his own hand). Both gifts, in the same violet velvet jewel-cases within which they were presented to me in 1842 in Berlin, have been stored for the past 25 years in Weimar. 10 I renewed my thanks to the Princess of Prussia (at the beginning of the 1850s) with the dedication of the “Elegy on Themes by Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia.” This little opus was published at the same time as the paraphrase “Lyre and Sword!” (by Schlesinger in Berlin). 11 |
|
Is the following list of your waltzes complete? And is the list chronologically correct? Valse di Bravura (Geneva) “ mélancolique (Vienna?) “ a capriccio (?) ” “ infernale or Rob.-Fantasy (?) Revision of the first three waltzes: 3 Caprices-Valses (Weimar?) Soirées de Vienne (?) Faust-Waltz (?) Valse-Impromptu (?) 12 |
The catalogue should simply state: 3 Valse-Caprices— 1. Valse de bravoure (2- and 4-handed) 2. Valse mélancolique 3. Valse sur des motives de “Lucia” et “Parisina” (Haslinger Publishing, Vienna) 13 and: Valse Impromptu: (Schuberth) NB. I wrote the theme of this Valse-impromptu in one of the many keepsake albums of the Czarina of Russia in ′42, in Petersburg. Soon afterward (without my knowledge) it was published by Schuberth, under the title, “petite Valse.” Since I’ve hardly danced even half a waltz in my entire life, I also refrained from composing them. |
| In what year did your first face-to-face meeting with Richard Wagner take place? | Richard Wagner recounts it the best himself in one of his Parisian essays (’41 or ′42): 15 later, in ′44, I met him when he was court music director in Dresden, and there heard his “Rienzi”; 16 and again a few years later, again in Dresden, where we suffered through a very agitated evening together—which was my fault—at the home of Robert Schumann… 17 If these memories seem appropriate to you for your work, I’ll willingly tell you more personally. One should neither brag about such things, nor dismiss them. |
| Was the composition (in manuscript) with which you honored the Liedertafel in Munich (1843) published within your collection of 12 choruses for male voices in four parts (by Kahnt)? Which one is it? | No—and it remains unused. 18 |
| What kind of symphonic work (overture?) did you perform in Copenhagen at the time of your concerts there (1841)? |
None whatsoever—unless perhaps I might have composed a symphony (with countless movements) entitled “Newspaper Hoaxes.” I gratefully acknowledged the kind attentions of King Christian VIII of Denmark by dedicating to him my “Don Juan Fantasy,” which was published a few years later. 19 |
| Where have you stored the manuscript of the flute concerto by Frederick the Great, which was presented to you by the Prince of Prussia? 20 | |
| Beyond the three vocal quartets “Rheinweinlied,” “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?”and “Studenten-Ratten-Lied,” are there any others, and which ones, that were written on the Rhine? |
3 choruses for male voices in four parts: a)“Rheinweinlied” (text by Herwegh) b)“Die Ratt’ im Kellernest” c)“Reiter Lied” (text by Herwegh) (published by Schott) and also a few other “male choruses” which were published in a small collection (edited by Kahnt). 21 The male chorus “Was is des Deutschen Vaterland” 22 was performed a few times in Berlin in ′42 and ′43, and was published by Schlesinger in ′43. Since then I haven’t looked at this immature opus. |
| Did you live on the island of Nonnenwerth in the autumn of 1841, or in Cologne? | I traveled to Cologne often, but only for a few days at a time, to visit my friend Herr Lefevre, founder of the pianoforte manufacturer Eck — Company. 23 My summer residence in ′42 and ′43 was at Nonnenwerth (with the Countess d’Agoult, who enjoyed it there). The ceaseless visitors aggravated me very much during these summer months…and I would take care never again to attempt a quiet retreat in a place accessible to railroads and steamships. 24 |
| Did you donate a sum of 10,000 francs to the Beethoven-Memorial Committee (Bonn) only once, or several times? And how large was the total sum that you gave toward Beethoven’s monument? | In my letter from Pisa in ′38 or ′39 to the Beethoven-Memorial Committee, I offered to underwrite the entire cost of the Beethoven Monument. 25 Later it was discovered that only ten thousand francs were needed, and I had paid this already in 1840. Even after the considerable preparations for the Beethoven Centennial in August of ′45 there was no deficit (I took responsibility for that); in fact, there was a small surplus, even in spite of the establishment of the concert hall, which I initiated. 26 |
| In St. Petersburg (1842) was there any conflict between your views on the “duties and position of artists” and those of the people there? |
In no way at all. The favor which Czar Nicholas showed me in 1842 27 I completely lost during my second visit to St. Petersburg (’43), for the most part because of an exaggerated and in part false report from the chief of police in Warsaw at the time concerning my Polish sympathies, which it was my privilege not to deny. However, what some newspapers reported about my invented “deportation” from St. Petersburg is entirely false. |
| Can the Warsaw chief of police who so atrociously denounced you to Czar Nicholas be named? And if so, what was he called? | He should not be named—and he’s called Abramovich. His ill-will was damaging to me once again later on. |
| What caused the Czar’s disfavor? How long did it last? It can’t have been very long, since you played for him in 1847 in Odessa? |
The disfavor manifested itself in the lack of an invitation to the royal concerts, and in the absence of the Czar at my final concerts in St. Petersburg (’43)—I have never had the honor of speaking to Czar Nicholas since that time. 1 I ended my career as a pianist in Elisabethgrad, not far from Odessa —(late in the summer of ′47) where Czar Nicholas was holding a great military revue. I was invited there by one of the commanding generals, Osten Sacken, and played a few times in the theater. |
| Didn’t you perform in St. Petersburg when you were in Russia in 1843? And was Moscow the only city where you concertized? Our German newspapers contained only very sparse coverage of your Russian tour. | Before I went to Moscow, and if I am not mistaken, also upon my return, I gave a few concerts in St. Petersburg, which were not unpopular. In 1843 I concertized in no other Russian cities but St. Petersburg and Moscow. At the beginning of June in the same year I returned to Nonnenwerth, to meet up with the Countess d’Agoult. My third and last tour to Russia was in ′47, when I also played in Kiev in February, in Constantinople in May, 2 in Odessa at the end of June, 3 and finally in Elisabethgrad (my last concert for which I took receipts). |
| Is the “Prince of Prussia” who recalled you from Breslau to Berlin in February of 1843, our Kaiser? | Yes. I was recalled from Breslau to Berlin for the occasion of a royal concert at the palace of the Prince of Prussia, later Prince Regent, now King and Kaiser. 4 |
| A Berlin reporter indicated that on 11 January 1843, you played a “New Fantasy on Themes from Le Nozze di Figaro.” Of your works on Mozartian themes, I know only the Don Juan Fantasy. Was this Figaro Fantasy written out, or was it improvised? If it was written out, where can it be found? Has it been published? By whom? | It remained only in sketches, and has been lost. 5 |
| In Haslinger’s music catalogues, 1840–48, I saw several times the listing, “Hungarian National Melodies” (Liszt). The Thematic Catalogue (1855, Breitkopf — Härtel) refers not to these national melodies, but only to the Melodie hongroise d’après Schubert. How are they connected? | A few volumes from my Hungarian works were first published in 1840 by Haslinger under the title, “Hungarian National Melodies”: I later collected them in the edition of the Hungarian Rhapsodies. 6 |
| In what year did you compose “Geharnischte Lieder,” which was published by Knop in Basel (and later by Kahnt)? | During a journey through Basel, (in the summer of ′45) as thanks for the torchlight parade the Men’s Choral Society there provided me. 7 |
| Is the Kahnt Edition a revision of the Knop Edition? | As with the Lieder, I used the opportunity provided by the Kahnt Edition to make a number of changes to the choruses for male voices in four parts. 8 |
| Did you compose the “Six Lieder” (“Du bist wie eine Blume,” “Dichter, was Liebe sei, mir nicht verhehle,” “Morgens steh ich auf und frage,” “Die todte Nachtigall,” “Mild wie ein Lufthauch,”etc.) published by Eck — Co. in 1844 during the time you spent living near the Rhine? | Yes, at Nonnenwerth. The Eck partner, Herr Lefevre, was a friend of mine. 9 |
| Were you the mediator for Berlioz and his brief musical stroll through Germany in 1843? | Berlioz came to Germany at that time of his own initiative. At the beginning of the 1850s I saw to it that the Weimar court invited Berlioz to conduct two court concerts. Berlioz accepted the invitation, and stayed for the performances of his “Cellini,” which I conducted. 10 The first edition of “Cellini” (Braunschweig Litolf) appeared soon after, and is dedicated to Grand Duchess Maria Paulowna. 11 |
| Did you transcribe the overture to Berlioz’s Francs-Juges for piano following Berlioz’s tour through Germany? | Much earlier, at the same time as the “Symphonie fantastique” in 1833, in Paris. 12 |
| Were the lost scores for piano of the Lear Overture and the Harold Symphony written in 1843, or do they fall into the Weimar period? | During my Swiss travels, in ′35— 13 In Weimar I transcribed only the “Cellini” excerpt, “Bénédiction et Serment” (published by Litolf); 14 in Rome in ′62 I transcribed the “Pilgrim March” from the Harold Symphony, “The Dance of the Sylphs” (from the Faust Symphony) and an improved version of the idée fixe and the “March to the Scaffold.” One of Berlioz’s associates, Rieter Biedermann, edited these 4 numbers. |
| Were the two songs “Faribolo pas-tour” and “Chanson du Béarn” that were published by Schotts Söhne in 1845 transcribed by you at that time, or do they belong to an earlier period? Which one? | “Chanson du Béarn” was written during my trip to Madrid, at the end of the summer of ′44, in Pau (former residence of the Prince of Bearn, and birthplace of Henry IV); so also was “Faribolo pastour.” These two little transcriptions are hardly known, and I have completely forgotten them. 15 |
| Is the Spanish Rhapsody (?) an artistic expression of your Spanish tour in 1845? Who published it? (It is not in the Thematic Catalogue of 1855.) | Written as a reminiscence of my Spanish tour, in Rome (in about ′63). When I left Weimar (’61), I asked Bülow to take over my publishing correspondence for me, and gave him a number of manuscripts which he placed according to his own judgment with different firms, for an appropriate royalty. I don’t remember which publisher brought out the “Rhapsodie espagnole.” 16 P. S. Gottschalg just told me that the “Spanish Rhapsody” (likewise the “Todtentanz,” and the “Fantasy on Themes from ‘The Ruins of Athens’”) was published by Siegel in Leipzig. 17 |
| Is the Prince Eugen Wittgenstein, to whom you dedicated your Ballade (in D flat) , 18 the spouse of the Princess W? | Eugen Wittgenstein is the nephew of Princess Carolyne Wittgenstein, born Iwanowska. At that point he was posted with the Russian diplomatic service, as secretary to the embassy in The Hague. Eugen was an intelligent, very talented young man: he painted and composed extraordinary things: he became close friends with Berlioz in Paris, and often visited the Altenburg in Weimar (in the ′50s). For a long time now he has lived in seclusion on his estate in Russia. |
| Would you like perhaps to give me the names of some of your Polish friends from the time of your Warsaw concerts? | In particular, Count Leon Lubincki. In Warsaw (February of ′43) I met Madame Marie Kalergi (born Countess Nesselrode) 19 for the first time, whom you met 20 years later in Weimar and Kassel as Madame Moukhanoff. A remarkable and deeply kind woman. Her only daughter (from her first marriage), Countess Coudenhoven, lives in Vienna. Mme Moukhanoff was an intimate friend of my daughter Cosima. |
| And finally, I would like to ask the name of your Hungarian publisher. |
A) Rózsavölgyi; the oldest and most respected firm in Pest, where in fact for many years there has been no Rózsavölgyi, just as at Breitkopf — Härtel there is no Breitkopf, and now at Schlesinger (in Berlin) and at Schott, there is neither a Schlesinger nor a Schott—a former quasi-student of mine, Herr Dunkl, functions as manager, and his brother-in-law Grinsweil serves as financial backer. 20 B. My dear young friend Taborszky (of the firm Taborszky and Parsh, in Pest). 21 |
The instrumental arrangement (the score) of my “Elegie” (Moukhanoff) 2 was done 3 by me.
Your most grateful servant,
F. Liszt
Szegszard
October 27, ′76.
In the famous Bach Prelude arranged by Gounod there is another, similar scoring. 4 In my opinion the combination of harmonium and harp can be used to advantage in many ways. I have often used it, for example in the “Hymn of the Christ-child at His Waking” and in the 2nd version of the Angel Chorus (from Goethe’s Faust) etc. 5 The little version of the St. Cecilia Legend is also arranged for piano, harp, and harmonium; 6 and in the Stabat Mater of the Christus Oratorio the harmonium provides supporting accompaniment to the solo voice at several points. 7
NB. The 4 arrangements of the Elegie Moukhanoff were completed by me. 8
| Were your “Bravura Etudes after Paganini’s Caprices” written in 1831? Or only after Paganini’s death (1840)? | The “Fantasy” on the theme of the “little bells” by Paganini was published in Paris in ′34 or ′35(?) 1 at the same time as my “Piano Transcription of the Symphonie fantastique” of Berlioz, 2 and the fragment “avec un profond sentiment d’ennui!” from “Harmonies poétiques,” 3 before my trip to Switzerland. At that time I played the Fantasy (which is actually a set of variations) at a few concerts without success. After my first Viennese success, (’38) I took up the Paganini Etudes once again, and Haslinger (in Vienna) published (in ′39) the first edition of my transcriptions of the Paganini Etudes. 4 Ten years later, in Weimar I simplified this first edition, (which was considered unplayable) and engaged Härtel to publish the second edition, 5 which has now become rather popular thanks to Fräulein Mehlig 6 and other pianists, whose gracious fingers perform Number 6, “La Campanella,” with brilliant success. |
| Am I right in assuming that Paganini’s “Caprices” fundamentally contribute to the completely radical change in piano technique accomplished by you, which to a certain extent they have also determined? The latter to the extent that the work of transposing for piano the hair-raising figures, arpeggios, etc. showed you the way to a new technique. |
That’s for my biographer to say. When I face up to my stupidities, I can’t be objective, and can only comfort myself with the thought that it all could have been much worse. With sincerest thanks December 1, ′76 |
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Are the little events that involve you and Chopin true as told by Ch. Rollinat in “Le Temps,” and which Krasowski includes in his book about Chopin? |
If you are referring to the essay that appeared in several German newspapers a few years ago, then I declare they are untrue, because it would never occur to me to brag about myself in comparison with Chopin. I hardly read the French version of Rollinat’s essay. 1 |
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And in what year did the game with the echo take place at Nohant? 1837? Or was it in the ’40s? |
I can’t remember any “echo game.” 2 After ’37, I didn’t go to Nohant any more, and only seldom met Mme Sand. Don’t get caught up in too many details. My biography is more to be imagined than to be described. |
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When we touched on Schumann’s music one day during a discussion, you named several of his compositions which you felt were “enduring.” Have I made any mistakes if I record the following? The B major symphony , The C major [symphony] , The string-quartets , The quintet (for piano) , The piano trio No. 2 , The music for “Manfred,” “Das Paradies und die Peri,” The Fantasy for Piano, dedicated to you, and several collections of Lieder? 1 |
Schumann’s piano works from his early period remain my favorites: the F-sharp Minor Sonata, Symphonic Etudes, Carneval, 2 the Fantasy (dedicated to me), Noveletten, Fantasiestücke, etc.; later the “Manfred” overture, and many fragments of the symphonic and vocal works. If I had to write a treatise on the influence of Schumann’s genius upon his famous followers, they would gain no satisfaction from it. 3 A number of things are in a bad way. |
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At the top of your Manchester concert program from 1825 it states: A new Grand Overture Composed by the celebrated Master Liszt , Will be performed by the Full Orchestra etc. |
Indeed. Since there was nothing to it, nothing came of it. Composers both young and old have to expect this lot. It’s best when the manuscript goes missing before it’s printed. |
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What happened to this overture? Was it perhaps from “Don Sancho ”? |
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What were the names of the men who accompanied Pius IX when he visited you at Monte Mario? |
The high prelates who accompanied Pius IX during his visit toMonte Mario, 4 where I had myapartment at the time, “Madonnadel Rosario,” were: Monsignor Hohenlohe (two years later he was elevated to the rank of cardinal) Monsignor de Mérode—and also some officials of the Papal Court. 5 |
1. Ramann began with basic questions about Liszt’s mother, Anna Lager (1788–1866) and father, Adam (1776–1827), but he misunderstood Ramann’s second question: she asked “What was her father like” (“Wie deren Vater?”), meaning, what was his mother’s father like, but Liszt went on to describe Adam in detail. It is in his answer about his father that we notice one of the most interesting aspects of the questionnaires: the terms Ramann used and with which we have become familiar as descriptions of the periods in Liszt’s life were first used by Liszt himself in his responses—for instance, Glanzzeit , “most celebrated period,” which Liszt used to refer to his father’s tenure at the Esterhazy court during the period of Haydn and Mozart and not to his own years as a virtuoso.
2. Liszt’s answer about the date of composition of his first set of piano Études , op. 1 (LW A8), demonstrates just how difficult Ramann’s move from interrogatory process to her final text was going to be. Liszt’s recollection of the date of composition was off by a year. The works were indeed published in Paris, but by Dufaut — Dubois in 1826, and as op. 6 by Boisselot in Marseilles. (See “An Early Liszt Edition,” Liszt Society Journal 14 [1989]: 9–10).
3. With Ramann’s next question about the subsequent transformation of the Études into the 24 Grandes études pour le piano (LW A39) and then the Études d’exécution transcendante (LW A172), Liszt replied with their dates and place of conception correctly, but only generally. An intermediate version of Mazeppa was published separately by Schlesinger in 1847 (LW A172/4). We know now that Haslinger in Vienna, the publisher of the first versions (LW A39) did not return the publishing rights to Liszt until January 1850. The composer began to revise the Études only later that year, completing the work in 1851 and handing them over to Breitkopf — Härtel, who published the set in 1852 (LW A172).
4. To Ramann’s inquiry about the “first idea concerning the symphonic poems,” Liszt’s response is precise and accurate, but Ramann never picked up on his careful wording and discussed these revolutionary works strictly in the order of the 1856 publication. Ramann had asked about when the creative impulse had originated, and at first Liszt responded not about conception of the symphonic poem but their publication order. In fact, Tasso had begun life as a concert overture in June 1847, while he was on tour in Constantinople, in advance of a performance of the Goethe play planned for the 1849 Weimar Goethe Centenary Festival. Knowing that he would be obliged to perform a major new orchestral composition, Liszt had the piece ready for the 28 August 1849 premiere. Subsequently, in the early 1850s, he revised the work substantially, adding a large central section that effectively turned it into the first symphonic poem, and performed it in its new guise and with that appellation on 19 April 1854; see Mueller, “Liszt’s Tasso Sketchbook,” pp. 278–303. In hindsight, Liszt was stating clearly that Tasso (LW G2) had been the first work to use the term “symphonic poem” in print on a Weimar concert program: Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne , the first printed symphonic poem, was not the first to be conceived as such.
5. The information concerning the Dante (LW G14) and Faust (LW G12) symphonies again reflects Liszt’s hazy recollection of the final stage of composition. In reality, Liszt’s ideas and sketches for Dante can be traced back to individual notations dating from 1839 and 1847, while ideas for Faust also originated in the 1830s and sketches survive that may date from 1847.
6. Ramann’s query about the Lieder led Liszt to remember two of his most famous, but they weren’t the earliest of his German settings. His first setting in the German language was Heine’s text “Im Rhein, in schönen Strome” (LW N3, 1840). Die Loreley (LW N5) and Mignon (“Kennst du das Land?” LW N8) were written in 1841 and 1842, respectively. All three songs were published by Schlesinger in Berlin in 1843.
7. De la situation des artistes et de leur condition dans la société (On the Situation of Artists and Their Condition in Society) was issued in seven installments in the Gazette musicale (Paris) between 3 May and 15 November 1835.
8. Corrections to the original, inserted by the German editors.
1. In October 1840, Johann Wilhelm Christern (1809–77) published an autobiographical sketch of Liszt in the Hamburg Blätter für Musik und Literatur titled “Franz Liszt, der Romantiker.” Christern went on to publish his biographical sketch of Liszt as a pamphlet with Schuberth in 1841 (Franz Liszt nach seinem Leben und Wirken aus authentischen Berichten dargestellt von Christern) . Liszt’s personal copy of Christern’s 1841 biography with his handwritten annotations was in Princess Marie Hohenlohe’s collection and now resides in the Music Division of the Library of Congress.
2. Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) was an orthodox follower of Martin Luther’s teachings, a mystic who lived most of his life in Görlitz, a Thuringian town not far from Weimar. His mystical writings found their way into the works of Tieck, Novalis, Ritter, Schlegel, and Schelling—he was a popular figure for the German Romantic writers. Clearly his Protestant theories on life did not interest Liszt.
3. To this day, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) stands, arguably, as the most influential devotional text after the Bible. It figured prominently in the works of such thinkers as Sir Thomas More, St. Ignatius Loyola, and John Wesley. During Liszt’s lifetime, the authorship of the book was still a matter of some discussion, and Liszt shows that he is aware of the problem of attribution, mentioning one of the other claimants to the text, Jean de Charlier de Gerson (1363–1429), onetime Chancellor of Paris.
4. Gustav Schilling, Franz Liszt: Sein Leben und Wirken aus nächster Beschauung (Stuttgart: 1844).
5. Ramann’s several attempts to locate Adam Liszt’s diary were to no avail. Apparently, the only person outside the family to have handled the diary was Joseph d’Ortigue, who was given access to it by Liszt’s mother for his “Étude biographique,” published in the Gazette musicale , 14 June 1835. (See “The First Biography: Joseph d’Ortique on Franz Liszt at Age Twenty-three” in this volume.) Although the existence of the diary has been questioned (see Walker, The Virtuoso Years , p. 59n.), recent scholarship seems to accept the diary as real, but one of the many Liszt items still floating in the ether.
6. Klára Hamburger, Franz Liszt: Briefwechsel mit seiner Mutter (Franz Liszt: correspondence with his mother) (Eisenstadt: 2000), contains new translations and commentary.
7. Several of these items of juvenilia remain in Weimar in the GSA, mixed in with later materials in three large sketch portfolios, WRgs MSS 60/Z12 (the “Nagy” Pot-Pourri), Z18, and Z31.
1. German editors’ bracketed note.
1. Liszt’s first Tantum ergo (LW S1, 1822) was apparently not the same work that was composed in 1869 and published by Pustet in Regensburg in 1871, with a second edition published by Kahnt the very same year. The latter (LW J27) was written for 4-part women’s choir and organ and was originally issued as no. 4 of the Neun Kirchenchorgesänge.
2. Don Sanche (LW O1,1825) has been a subject of much discussion. Liszt wrote the work with the assistance of his teacher of composition, Ferdinand Paër (1771–1839). Liszt thought the score had been lost in a Paris fire, but parts of the manuscript survived, unbeknownst to the composer, rediscovered by Jean Chantavoine at the beginning of the twentieth century and presently in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Performed 17 October 1825, the work was given four times and then withdrawn.
3. Angiolin dal biondo crin was the first song Liszt composed (LW N1). Conceived as a lullaby for Blandine, it was published in 1843 by Schlesinger (Berlin), and then revised for Schlesinger (Berlin) in 1856 and the 1860 Kahnt Gesammelte Lieder.
4. Blandine-Rachel Liszt was born 18 December 1835 in Geneva. She grew into a handsome woman and in 1859 married Emile Ollivier (1825–1913), a rising politician, and settled in France. She died 11 September 1862, two months after giving birth to their only child, Daniel. Her death was a severe shock to Liszt, coming only three years after the death of his youngest child, also Daniel (for whom the new baby had been named) in Berlin on 13 December 1859.
5. The 27 November 1874 letter to which Liszt referred Ramann for the answers to her questions about Jeanne d’Arc (LW N37), Il m’aimait tant (LW N4), and the Poésies lyriques (LW A42) covered a great deal of ground for the biographer. Ramann had asked where he found deliverance from spiritual pain, clearly annoying Liszt somewhat with this question; yet he found himself looking back over his oeuvre and picking out some of the works he remembered most fondly, and then referred her to one of the seminal analyses of his musical being, Felix Draeseke’s pamphlet on the symphonic poems (“Liszts symphonische Dichtungen,” Anregung für Kunst und Wissenschaft , vol. 2 [1857] and vol. 3 [1858]; see “Defending Liszt: Felix Draeseke on the Symphonic Poems” in this volume). In his first paragraph, Liszt says that he found his “palliatives” for any spiritual pain in the musical materials and general feeling in the “Tristis est anima mea” and the “Seeligkeiten” in Christus (LW I7), and similar materials in Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne (LW G1), based on Hugo’s wondrous poem. He then refers Ramann to Draeseke’s commentary on his works, where the writer has gotten to “the nucleus [Kern] of all my compositions.” He goes on further to describe more musical “palliatives”: the “Magnificat” ending the Dante symphony (LW G14), Psalm XIII (“Herr! wie lange willst du meiner so gar vergessen,” LW I3), and the song “Ich möchte hingehen” (LW N31) to a text by Georg Herwegh (1817–75); see Lisztiana , pp. 41–42.
The remainder of the letter answers her questions, albeit inaccurately, about specific pieces with one especially interesting case: he remembers the “abandoned version of the Petrarch Sonnets” (“verworfene Version der Petrarca Sonette,” LW N14) from the same “Conzert Getümmels” (concert turmoil). This highly interesting remark sheds great light on these works and ultimately on Ramann’s modus operandi, which often sought to diminish the role of Liszt’s former consort, Countess Marie d’Agoult, in the development of his compositional oeuvre. The Petrarch Sonnets found their way into the Années de pèlerinage—Deuxième Année—Italie (LW A55), published by Schott in 1858. However, the only sketches extant for these works appear in the Lichnowsky Sketchbook (WRgs MS 60/N8), and date from 1842 at the very earliest, see Mueller, “Liszt’s Tasso Sketchbook,” pp. 144–59. Liszt penned these untexted melodic lines only after his attention returned to Petrarch as a result of receiving a book of Hugo’s poems from the countess, and while setting the text “Oh! Quand je dors” (LW N11), a verse he quoted in a letter written to Marie d’Agoult from Berlin 25 January 1842: “I would like also to send you a song of V[ictor] H[ugo]: “Oh! In my dreams draw near my couch, As Laura appeared to Petrarch, etc […]’ Thanks for the volumes of Hugo. I will read them.” Serge Gut and Jacqueline Bellas, Correspondance de Liszt et de Madame d’Agoult, 1833–1840 (Paris: 2001), pp. 878–85. Clearly, Liszt didn’t remember how he had come upon the Petrarch materials, and the countess’s role in bringing them to Liszt’s attention was not even a blip on the radar.
6. Ramann pressed Liszt about his musical education in Vienna, which had been a subject of great controversy: speculation was rampant with his early biographers about lessons with Beethoven, Czerny, Randhartinger, and Salieri. Liszt responded only that Benedict Randhartinger (1803–93) had been a fellow pupil in Salieri’s classes, not his teacher.
7. Liszt’s somewhat rueful remark about his father’s having little time to spend with him is the sole such critical remark concerning his parents of which this author is aware.
1. Walker (The Virtuoso Years , p. 115) says that the reviews were mixed, quoting the Almanach des Spectacles of 1826, which wrote “this work has to be judged with indulgence.”
2. Liszt is recalling that before the Revue musicale , begun in 1827 by François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871), few journals dealt exclusively with music and musicians. As a consequence he remained there without critical notices—a neglect that later was richly remedied—a sly comment on his travails with both the French and German press as he matured.
3. See note about Don Sanche (no. 2 in questionnaire no. 4 above).
4. As mentioned in my introduction, Liszt’s reticence about this event mirrors his later inability to communicate with Ramann on paper concerning the death of his son, Daniel, in 1859.
5. Walker tracked down the cemetery in which Adam Liszt was interred (Cimetière de l’Est, on the outskirts of Boulogne-sur-Mer) and reproduces the burial notice. Apparently Liszt was not present at his father’s burial, and while the reasons for this could be many (that he was ill and too shaken to attend), clearly it was something else about which he could not write to Ramann. In the biography, Ramann waxed philosophical but gave few details, only some general remarks concerning Adam Liszt’s final illness; see The Virtuoso Years , p. 125ff.
6. Anna Liszt died in Paris on 6 February 1866, in the home of her son-in-law, Emile Ollivier. The burial was scheduled for only two days later, and it did not give Liszt, who was in Rome, enough time to reach Paris.
7. German editors’ note: The complete quotation runs “Qui inveniet feminam bonam, hauriet jucunditatem a domino” (Proverbs 18:22). [The King James Bible version of this text: “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord.”]
1. See biographical note about Blandine-Rachel Liszt (note 4 in questionnaire no. 4 above).
2. Walker says that Blandine was handed over to a local wet-nurse, Mlle. Churdet (The Virtuoso Years , p. 215). When Liszt and Marie d’Agoult left Geneva to continue their Swiss idyll, the infant was left behind in the care of a Pastor Demelleyer and his family; her parents would not see her again until January 1839, when she joined them in Milan. In the meantime, their second daughter, Francesca Gaetana Cosima, had been born in Como on 24 December 1837, and Marie was expecting their third child.
3. German editors’ note: Liszt underscored “Milan” in red pencil and placed a question mark in margin.
4. German editors’ note: Liszt struck through the question mark after “Venice” and added the other two cities.
5. The four years of travel in Switzerland and Italy were chronicled by Marie d’Agoult in Mémoires de la comtesse d’Agoult , ed. Daniel Ollivier (Paris: 1927). A modern, more complete edition by Charles Dupêchez, Mémoires, Souvenirs et journaux de la Comtesse d’Agoult (Daniel Stern) , came out in 1990. Liszt’s own diary of the early period, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, is discussed by Mária Eckhardt in “Diary of a Wayfarer: The Wanderings of Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult in Switzerland, June–July 1835,” Journal of the American Liszt Society 11 (June 1982): 10–17. Since neither diary was available to Ramann, what she could consult were Liszt’s articles published as Lettres d’un bachelier ès musique , which had appeared individually in the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris and elsewhere between 1835 and 1841. These were travelogues, to some extent, but also serious statements about musical life in the cities he visited, mainly Geneva, Milan, Vienna, and Paris. Marie d’Agoult’s contribution to the authorship of these works may have been substantial, but since the letters are so filled with musical detail, something she was not capable of, they must be read as primarily belonging to Liszt. Other contemporary accounts of their journey were written by their traveling companions, principal among them George Sand (Lettre d’un voyageur no. 10), and a Swiss major named Adolphe Pictet (Une Course à Chamonix: conte fantastique [Paris: 1838]). After Cosima’s birth, the infant remained in Como with her wet-nurse, and Liszt and Marie d’Agoult continued on their travels. After Daniel’s birth on 9 May 1839, the Feast of the Ascension, he also was left in the care of a wet-nurse. But in this case, neither parent saw Daniel until the autumn of 1841, at which point they found him severely malnourished.
6. Neither Liszt nor Marie d’Agoult were cut out to be parents—at least, not for children under the age of consent. Liszt acknowledged his paternity for each child, but Marie d’Agoult used a false name on each birth certificate, which by French law limited her participation in their upbringing. Consequently, after their parting, when she would try to wrest control of their upbringing away from Liszt, she would fail (see Walker, The Virtuoso Years , p. 249). The composer was at the beginning of his virtuoso tours, never at home—indeed, he did not see his children for nine years between 1844 and 1853, although there were many letters exchanged. The countess was too busy running her salon and writing her novels and pamphlets to undertake any of the day-to-day management of the children’s care—although it must be said that this was a common attitude for the gentry of the time. As a result, all three children were brought up principally by a succession of women somewhat removed from their parents. When, in November 1839, some six months after Daniel’s birth, Marie d’Agoult returned to Paris to face the problem of how to manage her illegitimate children without further embarrassing her family, Liszt’s mother stepped in to care for Blandine and Cosima in Paris, where they grew up with no contact whatsoever with their mother for eleven years. See Walker, The Virtuoso Years , p. 383.
7. Liszt’s response of “1848” to Ramann’s query about when the girls were put under Mme. Patersi’s care was off by two years. When the girls were old enough, they attended a Parisian boarding school, still under the supervision of Anna Liszt; but in 1850, when as precocious preadolescents Blandine and Cosima established surreptitious contact with their mother, Princess Carolyne entered the picture and prevailed upon the already angry Liszt to shift the care of all three children to an elderly family retainer brought out of retirement, Madame Patersi de Fossombroni, who had been Carolyne’s own governess. In 1855, as it became clear that the aging Mme. Patersi could not go on for much longer, Liszt removed the children to Berlin in the care of the mother of Hans von Bülow, Franziska, something that caused both Anna Liszt and the children great pain. See Walker, The Weimar Years , pp. 27n., 236, 425ff.
8. One supposes that it was because of its title that Ramann, in the midst of this questionnaire dealing with Liszt’s children, inquired about the composition of the Hymne de l’enfant à son réveil (LW A61/7, 1st version, pub. 1865; Al58/6, 2nd version, pub. 1853). Liszt replied tersely about a work that began as a piano piece but had many incarnations between 1840 and 1853 and was finally published as the sixth number of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses by Schott. His recollection of the edition published in Pest in the previous winter that he had recently modified is one for women’s and mixed choral voices with varying accompaniments (LW J2).
9. Daniel Liszt began studying law at the University of Vienna in 1857. In the summer of 1859 he traveled to Berlin to spend his summer holiday with Cosima and Hans von Bülow. His sister found him to be undernourished and in poor physical condition, and despite her ministrations, his health worsened over the course of the autumn and he was unable to return to his studies. In hindsight, it seems clear he was suffering from some kind of severe lung disease, perhaps tuberculosis. As he grew sicker, Cosima agitatedly summoned Liszt, who arrived 11 December. Both he and Cosima were at Daniel’s bedside when he died on the 13th (not the 3rd, as Liszt tells Ramann; Schnapp pointed out Liszt’s mistake here in a footnote). His funeral took place on the 15th, and he was buried in the Catholic cemetery (see Walker, The Weimar Years , pp. 474–79). It must be said that this was not the first time Liszt was in error about an important death date: as early as August 1834, in a letter to Marie d’Agoult, Liszt cited 26 August as the anniversary of the loss of his father, not 28 August (see Gut/Bellas, Correspondance , p. 171).
10. Again, Liszt misspoke here: only Blandine and Cosima came to Paris in 1839; Daniel did not arrive until 1841.
11. Liszt shouldered the entire expense of the three children from the beginning, because the circumstances of Marie d’Agoult’s departure from her husband and family had, in effect, severed her from her substantial financial resources. Liszt’s concert tours were one way of ameliorating this monetary shortfall, which is one reason he undertook the English tours of 1840 and 1841. Marie d’Agoult was never as interested in Liszt’s career as she should have been. To some extent, her attitude was very much that of the aristocracy of pre-(and post-) revolutionary France, where musicians stood alongside the servants, rarely breaking free of that societal constraint. Resentful of the time he spent on tour, and more than a little jealous of the gossip that put him in compromising positions with numerous women, she was furious at his unwillingness to take her anger seriously. In the spring of 1844, Marie was shaken by the press coverage of Liszt’s rumored dalliance with a purportedly Spanish dancer named Lola Montez, which had begun in Dresden in February when she was seen in his company at a performance of Wagner’s Rienzi. Lola then embarrassed Liszt by following him as he continued his tour in Germany and then came to Paris hard on his heels. This escapade led Marie d’Agoult to utter her famous demand that she did not object to being his mistress, but she did object to being one of his mistresses. Her revenge was taken shortly after she and Liszt parted in May 1844, when she wrote her novelization of their life, Nélida , under the nom de plume Daniel Stern. After their acrimonious parting, Liszt became even more adamant about keeping the children separated from the countess’s new life in Paris as Daniel Stern, and this is the reason he was so angry when in 1850 he discovered that Blandine and Cosima had been to see their mother.
1. Liszt was the recipient of many honors throughout his life, and although he graciously accepted them, the civil orders—as opposed to the ecclesiastical orders—seemed of little consequence. Several repetitions occur in this listing of honors and orders as Liszt composed it, without a written request from Ramann, who further confused matters by misdating it—see German editors’ note below, which points out that Liszt’s treasured distinction as honorary president of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein was omitted. The Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein grew out of a more informal Tonkünstler-Versammlung that took place in Leipzig, 1–4 June 1859. Liszt was appointed its first president, and he remained in this elevated office for twenty-five years. Richard Pohl’s brochure Die Tonkünstler-Versammlung zu Leipzig am 1 bis 4 Juni 1859: Mittheilungen und authentische Quellen (Leipzig: 1859) described its concerts, personnel, and guiding philosophy. See also Walker, The Weimar Years , p. 511.
Information concerning each of the honors has been taken from Robert Bory, La vie de Franz Liszt par l’image (Geneva: 1936); Ernst Burger, Franz Liszt: A Chronicle of His Life in Pictures and Documents , trans. Stewart Spencer (Princeton, N.J.: 1989); Gut/Bellas Correspondence; Dezsö Legány, Liszt and His Country, 1874–1886 , 2 vols. (Budapest: 1976), vol. 1, p. 8; and Walker, The Virtuoso Years; The Weimar Years; The Final Years. For three photographs of Liszt wearing his orders, see Ernst Burger, Franz Liszt in der Photographie seiner Zeit: 260 Portraits, 1843–1886 (Munich: 2003), pp. 66–67.
2. Conferred 14 March 1842; letter to Marie d’Agoult from Tilsit dated 16 March. Facsimile of the diploma in Bory, Liszt , p. 105.
3. Conferred 14 February 1842; letter to Marie d’Agoult from Berlin, 15 February 1842.
4. The royal ordinance proclaiming Liszt’s appointment was prepared in Vienna and dated 21 March 1875. It was printed in the Hungarian press a week later.
5. Conferred 13 June 1871; came with an annual pension of 4,000 forints.
6. Conferred 17 August 1861 by Grand Duke Carl Alexander, on the eve of Liszt’s departure from Weimar.
7. The first conferred 18 February 1840. Liszt was named a magistrate of the county of Oedenburg, 3 August 1846. After World War I, the place name changed permanently to Sopron when part of the province was ceded to the newly constituted Hungarian state. The Weimar honor, conferred 26 October 1860, is the most interesting, coming, as it did, on the eve of his departure for Rome; facsimile in Bory, Liszt , p. 161. The Freedom of the City of Jena was conferred October 1842.
8. Conferred March 1842.
9. Of these, the most interesting are the Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, conferred by Pius IX, August 1859; and the Grand Commander’s Cross of St. Michael, conferred 2 April 1866, Liszt’s name day; investiture Paris, 2 May, immediately following.
1. German editors’ note: The above details, provided without accompanying questions from L. Ramann, in the master’s own hand on two special, completely separate slips of paper (the second slip of paper was incorrectly annotated and ordered by L. Ramann; it originated at the earliest at the end of 1879, cf. the Canonical Honor of Albano) surprisingly omit the recently awarded honorary presidency of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein.
2. See note 8 in preceding questionnaire.
3. Liszt had expected to be named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1834. His nomination was postponed by Charles X as the result of a testy personal exchange he had with Liszt that year, as Liszt himself noted in his personal copy of Ramann I (WRgs MS 59/352/1). Conferral only came in April 1845. Liszt was nominated to be an officer in the Legion of Honor, 25 August 1860 (a copy of the certificate is reproduced in Walker), and less than a year later, he was named a commander by Napoleon III.
4. Conferred 11 January 1874. Earlier, on 7 June 1867, he had received the Commander’s Cross of the Order of the Emperor Franz Joseph. On 30 October 1859, he had been elevated to the Austrian nobility and was technically entitled to use the prefix “von” before his name. Liszt never did this and allowed the title to pass to his cousin Eduard and the latter’s heirs. Bory, Liszt , p. 161, reproduces the letter of conferral.
5. Invested by the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna on the occasion of his first Weimar concert 29 November 1841. Letter to Marie d’Agoult dated 7 December 1841. Clearly his parenthetical ″74” is in error.
6. See note 2 in preceding questionnaire.
7. See note 6 in preceding questionnaire.
8. See note 7 in preceding questionnaire.
9. Installed 12 October 1879; the only promotion he accepted in the church hierarchy after he took Minor Orders (30 July 1865). Liszt never functioned as a canon as was required by the pontifical rubrics of the day. This honorary title is evidence that the entire fragmentary list could not have originated earlier than the end of 1879, since the title was conferred in October of that year.
10. See note 4 in preceding questionnaire.
1. In questionnaire no. 9, Ramann returned to matters of composition and dating, specifically, the “Pensée des Morts,” which was to become part of the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. Liszt’s reponse was illuminating from a creative point of view; the dates as he recollected them, however, are wrong. All the works he mentions in the lengthy paragraph refer to compositions that span the period 1834–53. The “Fragment der Harmonies poétiques” (LW A18) was published simultaneously in Paris (Schlesinger) and Leipzig (Hofmeister) in 1835, and then reissued in the Gazette musicale de Paris (Supplement 23, 7 June 1835) from the Schlesinger plates. The anthology with the same title appeared in 1853 (Leipzig, Kistner, LW A158). The impression he gives is that between the publication in 1835 of the single piece and the collection of the set, beginning in 1847 with the pieces Invocation (LW A158/1) and Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude (LW A158/3), little activity took place that amounted to compositional work. In fact, quite the opposite was the case.
2. “From out of the depths I cry to you, oh God!” In a letter dated 30 October 1833, Liszt describes to Marie d’Agoult a “petite harmonie Lamartienne sans ton ni mesure” (a little Lamartinian harmony without tonality or meter); see Gut/Bellas, Correspondance , pp. 92–94, which places the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (LW A18) a full year earlier than previously known. The work in question had as its inspiration a poetic collection of the same name by Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869), an idol for Liszt from the time of their first introduction in Paris in the 1820s. At this time, Liszt was taken by the idea of incorporating Gregorian melodies into works for piano or piano and orchestra, which is clear from his response to Ramann citing “gregorianischen Intonation.”
3. Funérailles (LW A158/7) was actually entitled “Funérailles, October 1849” when it was published in the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses set by Kistner in 1853, written in memory of the Hungarian martyrs executed 6 October 1849. (The Cantique d’amour , LW A158/10, was the tenth number in the set.)
4. In Liszt’s explanation of the title for Funérailles , his recollection of the date is again faulty: the Hungarian uprising occurred in 1848–49. But his memory of the inspiration was crystal clear, and had it been published earlier—and more prominently—a major controversy concerning the extramusical associations of the piece might have been avoided. Numerous writers, beginning in the 1850s, have tried to connect the work with Liszt’s reaction to Chopin’s death, 17 October 1849, the only rationale being the rather mysterious date in the title and the repetitive rolling octaves that resemble those in Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat Major, op. 53. But Liszt’s thoughts were with the unsuccessful Hungarian revolutionaries who were trying to depose their Austrian rulers (Sándor Pétöfi, Lajos Kossuth, István Széchenyi, and Ferenc Déak), all of whom, along with László Teleky, József Eötvös, and the national poet Mihály Vörösmarty, would be further remembered by Liszt in his Historische ungarische Bildnisse (LW A335) in 1885.
5. Liszt wrote to Ramann about his plan for an orchestral work entitled Les Morts (LW G25/1) to be based on a ’“Hymne in Prosa, von Lamennais,’ which through the Pensée des Morts gave rise to thoughts of my dead parents, friends, and children.” The work was conceived in 1860 as an orchestral piece in memory of Liszt’s son, Daniel. It was dedicated to Cosima von Bülow.
1. Gaetano Belloni (1810–87) became Liszt’s secretary and amanuensis at a point in the composer’s life when he badly needed such assistance. Belloni made the traveling arrangements, bought the necessary supplies for their journeys, and functioned as a general factotum—with one important distinction: he was musically learned and began to put Liszt’s musical household in order as well. By 1843, Belloni had assembled a kind of pressbook for Liszt, a folder entitled “Recensionen” (WRgs MS 59/261,1). It contained press clippings about Liszt’s performances from December 1841 through April 1843. Belloni noted on the cover that he began collecting the notices in February 1843 in Breslau; most are unfortunately without mastheads, but they were identified on the basis of their contents by Rolf Dempe, an East German researcher working in Weimar in the 1960s. Belloni also urged Liszt to write down his concert repertoire; Liszt’s original listing (WRgs MS 60/Z15a) was used subsequently in the preparation of the fair copies of what came to be called Liszt’s Programme Général. Eventually, these sources served as the backbone of Liszt’s Thematic Catalogue project, which resulted in the 1855 publication by Breitkopf — Härtel (revised in 1877); see Mueller, “Liszt’s Tasso Sketchbook,” 65ff.
2. Liszt’s letter of 4 June 1839 to the Princess Cristina Belgiojoso declared, famously paraphrasing Louis XIV, “le Concert, c’est moi!” La Mara, Franz Liszt’s Briefe , vol. 1. (Leipzig: 1893), pp. 24–26. It would not be until his first English tour in April–June 1840 that he advertised his performances as “pianoforte recitals,” nomenclature suggested to him by the London publisher Frederick Beale. See Walker, The Virtuoso Years , pp. 355–56, citing Willert Beale, The Light of Other Days (London: 1890), vol. 1, pp. 16–17.
3. Wagner’s novella, “Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven” (1840) was his imaginary visit with an idol who “obligingly outlines the future Wagnerian music drama as the continuation of his own work: poetry and music to be united in a new synthesis; arias, duets and other divisions to be replaced by the continuous fabric of a drama.” (Barry Millington, “Myths and Legends,” in The Wagner Compendium [New York: 1992], p. 133.) First published in the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris in four installments in 1840 as “Une visite à Beethoven: épisode de la vie d’un musicien allemande,” it was later reprinted in the Dresden Abend-Zeitung (1841) as “Zwei Epochen aus dem Leben eines deutschen Musikers” with an additional subtitle, “Aus den Papieren eines wirklich verstorbenen Musikers,” that showed Wagner’s familiarity with E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Kater Murr and his Meister Johannes Kreisler.
4. Liszt seems to be implying that he had something to do with the establishment of a well-known journal, and the one that most readily comes to mind is the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , founded in 1834 by Robert Schumann. Schumann’s lengthy review of the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , done from Liszt’s piano transcription that contained all of the instrumental cues, cemented both Berlioz’s reputation as one of the most creative and important composers of the time and Liszt’s position as a transcriber of miraculous powers. In 1836, Schumann published a German version of Joseph d’Ortigue’s Étude biographique of Liszt, which he had reprinted from its 1835 Gazette musicale edition. And in 1837, Liszt published a long article on Schumann’s piano music in the Gazette musicale , something that raised Schumann’s stock as a composer: Schumann was still struggling for creative recognition and was deeply appreciative of Liszt’s attention because at the time he was far better known in Germany as the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift than as a composer (Walker, The Virtuoso Years , pp. 346–47). Was Liszt suggesting that he had done much to propel the Neue Zeitschrift and its founder to the forefront of musical journalism at the time—efforts that went unrecognized (or unappreciated) by Schumann (and, later, Clara)? It remains a puzzle.
5. Ramann printed the entire letter of 3 October 1839 to the Beethoven Committee in Bonn in vol. 1 (pp. 549–50), giving Pisa as the place of origin. In his letter Liszt offered to pay the difference between the cost of the planned monument (50 to 60,000 francs) and the paltry amount raised thus far by subscription, on the condition that the statue was sculpted by the Italian Lorenzo Bartolini (1777–1850), whom he had come to know in Florence in 1838. Liszt’s offer was accepted, and in 1840 he made good on it with a first installment of 10,000 francs. In the end, the monument was sculpted by a German, Ernst Julius Hähnel (1811–91). Both Liszt and Marie d’Agoult sat for Bartolini during this period. The Liszt sculpture is in Weimar in the Liszt-Museum; the bust of Marie d’Agoult, featured prominently in all Liszt iconographies, is lost; see Burger, Chronicle , pp. 102, 110.
6. German editors’ note: L. Ramann’s words in company are struck through by Liszt and the word accompanied written above them.
7. Literally, an “egotism for two.”
8. The ticket prices for Liszt’s 1838 Vienna concerts varied, depending on the venue. See the essay by Christopher Gibbs in this volume.
9. LW A69. The work was published in 1842, not the year before.
10. Correct spelling is Paulowna.
1. Ramann’s inquiry about “Hungarian Marches” led Liszt to try to simplify the confusing situation of his compositions based on Hungarian materials. He carefully separated the categories for her, listing the ″14 or 16” Hungarian Rhapsodies first (LW A132), among the most famous of the composer’s works, but not the earliest in the chronology. Liszt had, in effect, disavowed the earlier versions of the Rhapsodies, which had borne a variety of titles when they were first published, and did not include these early works in his first thematic catalogue in 1855. The term “Rhapsody” was a second thought and a later entry into the equation (LW A60b: Magyar Rhapsodiák / Ungarische Rhapsodien / R[h]apsodies hongroises; “Hungarian Rhapsodies,” composed 1846–47, the revisions of A60a, published by Haslinger in 1847).
Liszt’s “14 or 16?” refers to the last incarnation of the well-known series, also called Ungarische Rhapsodien (Rhapsodies hongroises , LW A132), actually fifteen works written between 1847 and 1853, one of which (the Rákóczi March) existed in two versions—thus a total of sixteen pieces, and issued by a variety of publishers in Berlin (H. Schlesinger), Leipzig (Senff, Kistner), Mainz (Schott), Paris (M. Schlesinger), and Vienna (Haslinger). This group was at least the third version of some of the pieces, some of which were published as early as 1840 with alternative titles but based on similar melodic materials. Four more rhapsodies would be written in the last four years of Liszt’s life (LW A132/16–19).
2. Franz Doppler’s (1821–83) initiative to transcribe six of the Hungarian Rhapsodies for orchestra found favor with Liszt, who revised and completed them for publication by Schuberth in 1874–75. To add to the already confused situation of the Rhapsodies themselves and their various guises, the six orchestral works did not retain their original numbering from the solo piano set. Their order in the orchestral versions with their equivalents for solo piano are Rhapsody 1 = no. 14; Rhapsody 2 = no. 12; Rhapsody 3 = no. 6; Rhapsody 4 = no. 2; Rhapsody 5 = no. 5; Rhapsody 6 = no. 9. The four-hand arrangements are LW B41.
3. LW G29, written between 1863 and 1871 (Schuberth, 1871); LW A60b/3 for piano solo; LW C33 for piano four-hands.; LW C25 for two pianos four-hand and eight-hand (Schuberth, 1871).
4. LW G24 (Fürstner, 1870–71); the original piano version, LW A65 (Cranz, 1840); the symphonic poem is LW G13 (Breitkopf — Härtel, 1857).
5. LW A112, first published as the Seconde marche hongroise by Schlesinger (Paris) in 1844, and then in a revised edition as the Ungarische Sturmmarsch by Schlesinger (Berlin) in 1876; LW G35 (Schuberth, 1876–this orchestral version is based on LW A112); LW B46, the piano four-hand version of LW A112 (Schuberth, 1876).
6. LW G33 (Schuberth, 1867); LW A248 (Schuberth, 1871); LW B32 (Schuberth, 1871).
7. LW A252 (Schindler, 1871).
8. LW G34, Szózat und Hymnus: Zwei vaterländische Dichtungen von Vörösmarty und Kölcsey komponiert von Béni Egressy und F. Erkel , for orchestra (Rózsavölgyi, 1873); LW A261, Szózat und Ungarischer Hymnus , for piano solo (Rózsavölgyi, 1873).
9. Friedrich Christian Ludwig Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia (1772–1806), more widely known as Louis Ferdinand, died prematurely (and heroically) at the Battle of Saalfeld in 1806. A highly accomplished pianist, he studied with Ladislav Dussek (1760–1812), a strong musical influence on his compositional development (see Mueller, “Liszt’s Tasso Sketchbook,” pp. 204–6, 261–62). Prince Louis was also the dedicatee of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto (op. 37, 1802). His String Quartet in F Minor, op. 6 (1806) was the basis for Liszt’s Elégie , LW A94 (Berlin, Schlesinger, 1847; “Nouvelle édition,” 1852).
10. The flute concerto is held in the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv under the call number WRgs MS 60/Z36.
11. Leyer und Schwerdt nach Carl Maria von Weber und Körner , LW A151, was a piano work based on a poem by Theodore Körner from a collection of the same name published posthumously in 1814; see Mueller, “Liszt’s Tasso Sketchbook,” pp. 204–6.
12. German editors’ note: This entire list of composition titles is struck through back and forth; therefore his answer.
13. LW A88b, the collection of three waltzes written between 1836 and 1853 and issued with multiple titles. As Liszt revised these works from the 1830s, the publishers’ penchant for descriptive titles clearly manifested itself, something the composer alludes to in his “NB” at the end of this question. Some of the reissued works were disavowed by Liszt in his thematic catalogue, and his explanation to Ramann demonstrates his wish to endorse certain versions that had not, in his mind, been superseded. No. 1 in B-flat major (second version of Le Bal de Berne, Grande Valse de bravoure , LW A32a); No. 2 in E Major (second version of Valse mélancholique , LW A57); No. 3 in A Major (second version of Valse de concert sur des motifs de Lucia et Parisina , LW A88a); LW B1, piano four-hand version published as Grande Valse di bravura by Ricordi in 1837; LW A84c, the revised version of Petite Valse favorite (LW A84a), published as Souvenir de Pétersbourg (Schuberth, 1843).
15. “Face-to-face” presented a problem for Liszt in this reply. Wagner had reviewed Liszt’s 25 April 1841 concert at the Salle Erard in Paris for the Dresden Abendzeitung , and this was printed 5 May 1841; see Walker, The Virtuoso Years , p. 365ff. At this famous concert, a fund-raising event for the Beethoven Memorial and advertised as an all-Beethoven program, Liszt was to play the Fifth Piano Concerto (the “Emperor”) with Berlioz conducting, but the raucous audience insisted that he first play his newly composed Réminiscences de Robert le diable (LW A78), which forced Berlioz and the orchestra simply to stand aside and listen. Wagner fulminated at what he saw as a breach of concert etiquette, especially with such a showy work, and vented at Liszt in his review. In Mein Leben (1869), he recounts an earlier meeting with Liszt engineered at a distance by Wagner’s friend Ferdinand Laube, suggesting that Wagner visit Liszt when he arrived in Paris. The two meetings were apparently only separated by days. See Richard Wagner, My Life , trans. Andrew Gray, ed. Mary Whittall (New York: 1983), pp. 238–40.
16. Liszt saw Rienzi in Dresden in February 1844; see note 11, questionnaire no. 6 regarding Liszt and Lola Montez.
17. Liszt’s acceptance of fault for an “agitated evening” with Schumann came very late. This event is often cited as the beginning of a rift between the Schumanns and Liszt that was to culminate, after Robert’s death, in the unpleasantness of the Brahms-Joachim Manifesto of 1860 (see note 3, questionnaire 16). Ramann said little in her biography about the origins. The occasion was a dinner the Schumanns in Dresden hosted 9 June 1848 for Liszt (see Robert Schumann, Tagebücher , vol. 3, Haushaltsbücher Teil 2, 1847–56 , ed. Gerd Nauhaus [Leipzig: 1982], p. 462). Arriving late, accompanied by Wagner, Liszt upset Clara’s careful arrangements for pre-dinner music, which included her performance of Robert’s Piano Quintet, op. 44, which Liszt later tactlessly described as “Leipzigerisch,” a term that encompassed his antipathetic feelings toward the conservatory environment in general. Apparently, Liszt then slighted the recently deceased Mendelssohn, which made Schumann violently angry. The problem was twofold: on the one hand, it seemed that Liszt was insensitive to the fact that Mendelssohn, a close friend of Schumann’s, had died suddenly in December 1847. But while Liszt’s opinion of Mendelssohn had always been high, he felt that the Leipzig Conservatory, founded in 1843 by Mendelssohn and staffed by a faculty that was staunchly old school, was too conservative and not forward-looking enough for his taste. See Walker, The Weimar Years , p. 341ff., citing Berthold Litzmann (Clara Schumann: Ein Künstlerleben [Leipzig: 1902–08], vol. 2, pp. 121–22; and Schumann’s letters edited by F. Gustav Jansen (Robert Schumanns Briefe: Neue Folge [Leipzig: 1904], p. 523).
18. Liszt dedicated the Trinkspruch for male chorus (“Giesst Wein in die Gläser, ihr Zecher!” LW M17) to the Stubenvoll Männerquartett in Munich. The work was not published until 1929 in the Zeitschrift für Musik (Leipzig).
19. Réminiscences de Don Juan , LW A80, Schlesinger, Berlin, 1843.
20. German editors’ note: This question is struck through in Liszt’s ink, since it had already been answered in response to the third question of this questionnaire. [See note 11 above.]
21. LW M2; LW M3; LW M4. The Vierstimmige Männergesänge were published by Schott in 1843.
22. LW M1.
23. Eck was also a major supplier of music paper to Liszt during his virtuoso tours. Eck — Lefevre published six of Liszt’s songs in 1844. The famous third Liebestraum, “O Lieb, so lang du lieben kannst” (LW N18/3) was originally intended for this set but was lost in transit, and Liszt substituted Morgens steh’ ich auf und frage with the publisher. The important conclusion derived from this is that the Liebesträume (LW A103, keyboard, and LW N18, songs), frequently the subject of much speculation as to which came first, the piano or vocal versions, began life as songs and were subsequently transcribed for the keyboard; see Mueller, “Liszt’s Tasso Sketchbook,” pp. 218–21.
24. Apparently Liszt felt besieged by the visitors from the numerous excursion boats that landed on the island to visit the nunnery, especially on liturgical feast days.
25. See note 5 in questionnaire no. 10.
26. Walker notes that Liszt told La Mara, “There was no loss, but a surplus of 1,700 Thaler” (The Virtuoso Years , p. 417n.).
27. Liszt’s 1842 Moscow concerts were chronicled by T. Trofimova in “Liszt in Russia,” published in Sovetskaia Muzyka 8 (March 1937): 55–60. Walker (The Virtuoso Years , p. 378, n. 39) gives the author’s name as V. Khvostenko. Liszt’s first visit was marred by the specter of his contretemps with the czar at one of the St. Petersburg recitals in 1842. Famously, the czar arrived late and then continued to talk while Liszt was playing. Liszt stopped in mid-phrase and sat at the keyboard with his head bowed as if in prayer, which finally caught the czar’s attention. He asked why there was silence, to which Liszt haughtily replied, “Music herself should be silent when Nicholas speaks!”
1. Despite this limited response to Ramann’s question, her lengthy description of Liszt’s 1843 visit in the biography (vol. 1, pp. 207ff.) contained many nuggets of what can only be described as gossip—verbatim conversations between Liszt and Adolphe Henselt (1814–89), the Imperial Court pianist, and a piquant story about Liszt arriving late for a concert because of a carriage ride with Princess Menschikov. Ramann went into great detail about Liszt’s visit to a gypsy encampment in Moscow (vol. 2, pp. 211ff.), something that made a great impression on the composer and eventually found its way into a discussion of European gypsy music in his Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (Paris: 1859), pp. 177–79. But it is also notable for what is not there: real descriptions of Liszt’s interactions with Russian composers, especially Glinka, Dargomiszhsky, and Constantin Bulgakow, something that would only come later in the biographical matrix with the publication of the critical writings of Vladimir Stasov (1824–1906) and the critic Alexander Serov (1820–71).
2. Liszt’s visit to Constantinople occurred slightly later than he remembered: he dated the beginning of his transcription of the Rossini Stabat Mater transcription in the Tasso sketchbook with the place name “Bujukdere,” the artists’ quarter in Constantinople where he was staying at the time, and wrote the date “5 Juin 47” at the end of the piece; see Mueller, “Liszt’s Tasso Sketchbook,” pp. 197–202.
3. Again, Liszt’s recollection is off by a few weeks. On 17 July 1847, he wrote to his mother from quarantine in Galatz, just prior to his departure for Odessa (Hamburger, Briefe an seine Mutter , pp. 210–13). He remained in Odessa from the end of July through 17 September, accompanied by Princess Carolyne, giving six concerts there.
4. Wilhelm I, King of Prussia (1797–1888); Emperor of Germany 1871–88. He married Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1811–1890), the daughter of Grand Duke Carl Friedrich of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1783–1853) and the Grand Duchess Marie Paulowna of Russia (1786–1859), the latter the sister of Czar Nicholas I of Russia. Carl Friedrich was technically Liszt’s first patron, but it was at the initiative of his son and successor Carl Alexander (1818–1901) that Liszt first went to Weimar in 1842.
5. Liszt’s Fantasie über Motive aus Figaro und Don Juan (LW A90), was found in the Liszt collection in the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar but not published until 1912 in the Gesammelte Werke in an edition “enhanced” by Feruccio Busoni. No other work exclusively devoted to Figaro is known to have existed.
6. See note 1 in questionnaire no. 11.
7. Drei vierstimmige Männerchöre: Trost I—Vor der Schlacht (“Es rufet Gott uns mahnend,” LW M22); Nicht gezagt (“Nicht gezagt! Nicht geklagt!” LW M23); and Trost II (“Es rufet Gott,” LW M24). The title “Geharnischte Lieder” occurs only in the piano transcription; see LW A207.
8. There is some disagreement about when these works were first issued in their solo piano versions: Jacob Milstein in F. Liszt (Moscow: 1971) claims that these works were first published by Kahnt in Leipzig in 1850 and 1852, and that the 1861 edition is another revision. The second versions of the choral settings were published by Kahnt in 1861.
9. See Liszt’s response concerning Nonnenwerth in note 24 in questionnaire 11.
10. Berlioz traveled to Germany between December 1842 and June 1843, a trip that was initially hampered by his lack of knowledge of the language and chronicled by Wolfgang Griepenkerl in Ritter Berlioz in Braunschweig (Braunschweig: 1843). However, from a musical standpoint, it was extremely important. His second visit took place 14–21 November 1852. Liszt had hoped to have Berlioz present for the premiere of Benvenuto Cellini in Weimar in February 1852, during Liszt’s first planned Berlioz “Festival,” but difficulties with the preparations of the opera required a postponement until autumn. Arriving in November, the performances of a revised Cellini met with moderate success, but Roméo et Juliette and parts I and II of La Damnation de Faust were received warmly. Berlioz’s conducting was praised as well.
11. A piano-vocal score appeared in 1856, but only the overture was printed in the Werke edition edited by Charles Malherbe and Felix Weingartner (Breitkopf — Härtel).
12. Liszt’s solo piano version of the Ouverture des Francs-Juges (LW A31) was first published by Schott in 1845. Although no manuscript was thought to have survived, Jonathan Kregor of Harvard University has just discovered a discarded fragment of the work used as a collette on the manuscript of a Beethoven symphony transcription in Weimar.
13. On the basis of Liszt’s response here, the Ouverture du Roi Lear (LW A30) was presumed lost by Ramann (vol. 1, p. 289), even though it had been listed in the 1855 Thematic Catalogue manuscript copy (WRgs MS 59/Z14) as published by Schott. However, Peter Raabe located the manuscript in Weimar in the course of preparing his catalogue for his 1931 biography and works list (Franz Liszt: Leben und Schaffen , vol. 2, p. 272), and in 1983, this author verified the existence of the manuscript for Peter Bloom and the New Berlioz Edition. The first edition of Liszt’s transcription appeared in 1987 in the British Liszt Society Publications.
14. LW A178, published by Meyer in 1854. On Gottfried Meyer’s death in 1849, his widow carried on the business successfully, and in 1851 she married the composer and pianist Henry Litolff (1818–91). Litolff had been a piano teacher of Hans von Bülow in the 1840s but never a pupil of Liszt’s, although Liszt had heard him play and was extremely enthusiastic about his style. He is the dedicatee of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto (LW H4, Haslinger, 1857). Liszt first transcribed the complete Harold en Italie for solo piano and viola (LW D5) in 1836–37 and writes about a performance of it to his mother in 1836, but no complete manuscript exists for this earliest version of the work and it was never published. “The Dance of the Sylphs” was first published in Liepzig and Paris in 1866; Schnapp notes that Liszt should have written “from the Dramatic Legend, ’La Damnation de Faust’” instead of “Faust Symphony.” The cost of the first edition of the complete Symphonie fantastique transcription (LW A16a), printed in Paris by Schlesinger, was borne entirely by Liszt, and it was this edition that was used by Schumann for his famous review. Individual movements from the Symphonie fantastique were published separately (Andante amoroso , LW A16b; Marche au Supplice , LW A16c) and then issued nearly simultaneously by different publishers in Paris, Milan, Vienna, and Leipzig. Liszt revised the Marche au supplice in 1865 (Rieter-Biedermann), and the second edition of the entire symphony was completed in the years before 1876, when it was published by Leuckart.
15. LW A107 and LW A106, first published together by the Bureau Central in Paris in 1844 as Faribolo Pastour: Chanson tirée du poème de Françonnetto de Jasmin et la chanson du Béarn transcrites pour piano. Both works were dedicated to Countess Carolyne d’Artigaux, formerly Carolyne St. Cricq, a piano pupil of Liszt’s from 1828 whom Walker describes as Liszt’s “first love affair” (Walker, The Virtuoso Years , pp. 131, 408–09). In October 1844, Liszt met her unexpectedly in Pau, near the Spanish border, when he discovered that she had loaned the Erard piano for his concert.
16. LW A114, published posthumously with a dedication to Lina Ramann (Licht — Meyer, 1887).
17. Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg (1827–1908), another Liszt amanuensis from the 1850s, was an organist and secretary to Liszt in Weimar and Rome. He was incorrect about some information he imparted directly to Ramann. The catalogue numbers for “Todtentanz” and “The Ruins of Athens” are, respectively, LW H8 and LW H9; both were, indeed, published by Siegel, in 1865.
18. LW A117 (Kistner, 1849).
19. Countess Marie Mouchanoff-Kalergis, born Countess Nesselrode (1822–1874) was a confidante of first Liszt and then of Cosima Liszt-Wagner.
20. The Pest firm of Rózsavölgyi, founded in 1850 by Gyula Rózsavölgyi (1822–61) and Norbert Grinzweil (1823–90). After Gyula Rózsavölgyi’s death, Grinzweil went into partnership with János Nepomuk Dunkl.
21. Liszt had met János Mihály Táborszky in 1840 at a benefit concert he gave in Pest. Initially, Táborszky opened his firm in 1868 as a branch of Rózsavölgyi, but he soon became independent and joined with József Parsch to create Táborszky — Parsch. See Krummel and Sadie, Music Printing and Publishing , pp. 404, 442.
1. Format for this questionnaire follows the original. No question is cited.
2. LW D13a (piano, harp, hamonium), b (piano, cello), c (piano, violin), arranged from the original composition Elegie I (Schlummerlied im Grabe)—En Mémoire de Marie Moukhanoff (LW A266). The piano solo version, a piano 4-hand arrangement (LW B36), and D13a and b were published in 1875 by Kahnt; D13c followed in 1876 with the violin part said to have been arranged by Nándor Plotényi, a Hungarian student of Liszt’s, something Liszt strongly disavows twice in this questionnaire.
3. German editors’ note: L. Ramann’s word erfunden (?), invented, has been erased and corrected in Germanic letters, to getroffen , made or done, by Liszt.
4. Liszt met Charles Gounod (1818–93) when he visited Paris in May–June 1861. Gounod’s Premier prélude de J. S. Bach was originally arranged for strings and solo violin in 1853. The text of Ave Maria was added to the orchestral version in 1859.
5. Liszt’s Hymne de l’enfant à son réveil (“O Père qu’adore mon père”), LW J2, exists in four versions composed in 1844, 1860–61, 1865, and 1874. Only the final version was ever published, by Táborszky — Parsch in 1875; see note 21 above, in questionnaire no. 12. LW L7, Chor der Engel (“Rosen, ihr blendenden”) aus Goethe’s Faust II Theil , was published in the Goethe-Album printed in celebration of the Goethe Centenary (Schuberth, 1849).
6. LW I1 (Kahnt, 1876).
7. LW I7 (Schuberth, 1872).
8. There are actually five arrangements: LW A266 (solo piano), B36 (piano 4-hand), and D13a, b, c; see note 4 immediately above. Liszt seems to be at pains to set aside any idea of a collaboration with Plotényi on this work.
1. LW A14 (Paris, Schlesinger, 1834).
2. LW A16a, b, c; see note 1 in questionnaire no. 13.
3. LW A18, first published in the Gazette musicale de Paris in 1835; see note 1 to questionnaire 9. The remark “avec un profond sentiment d’ennui!” appears at the head of the work beneath the indications “Senza tempo” and “extrémement lent.” The appearance of highly personalized indications such as this is directly related to the influence of Berlioz, whose new, startlingly individualized performance practice indications in the Symphonie fantastique were to rock the musical establishment as a result of Liszt’s transcription of the work.
4. LW A52, Études d’exécution transcendante d’après Paganini , came out first with Schonenberger in Paris in 1840, not Haslinger. The dedication to Clara Schumann first appears in Haslinger’s 1841 edition. Liszt at first announced his intention to transcribe all twenty-four of the Paganini Caprices, then reduced the number to twelve, but in the end, only six were written and published.
5. Liszt actually began revising in Lisbon on 2 February 1845, and the manuscript of this intermediate version, entitled Variations de bravoure pour piano sur des thèmes de Paganini , remained unpublished until 1989, when it was issued by Editio Musica Budapest in a version edited by Imre Mezö (LW A113). The edition best known today, Grandes Études de Paganini (LW A173; Breitkopf — Härtel, 1851), originally bore the title “Grandes Études de Paganini transcendantes pour le piano,” but Liszt deleted “transcendantes” in the proof stage. This version did bear the dedication to Clara.
6. Anna Mehlig-Falk (1843–1928), a pupil in Weimar beginning in 1869.
1. Charles Rollinat (1810–77) was the brother of François Rollinat (1806–67), George Sand’s lawyer. Both were frequent visitors to Sand’s estate at Nohant, and became well acquainted with Liszt, Marie d’Agoult, the singer Pauline Viardot (1821–1910); and Chopin. Rollinat’s essay, “Souvenir de Nohant,” appeared in Le Temps 1 September 1874, some thirty years after the events, and contained stories about Chopin that were debunked subsequently by one of his early biographers, Friedrich Niecks (Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician [London: 1888–1902]), as a result of personal conversations with both Liszt and Viardot. Rollinat’s tale involved Liszt and Chopin supposedly arguing after Liszt took “liberties” with a Chopin piece at the keyboard. In his article, Rollinat offered the later frequently reproduced vignette of Liszt replacing Chopin at the keyboard in a darkened room, amazing those in attendance with his ability to emulate Chopin’s style and touch. In the course of researching his own Chopin biography, Niecks spoke at length with Liszt in Weimar when the second edition of Liszt’s own Frédéric Chopin was published (La France musicale , 1851; book form, Escudier, 1852), but Liszt remembered no such events. While it is true that Liszt’s recollections could be faulty, in this case, Niecks’s further investigations, especially his interviews with Pauline Viardot, substantiated Liszt’s denial. See Adam Harasowski, “An Early Destroyer of Legends: Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician by Frederick Niecks,” in The Skein of Legends Around Chopin (Glasgow: 1967), pp. 96–99.
2. The “echo” effect was also first described by Rollinat in Le Temps as part of his spurious description of the composition of the D-flat section of the Fantaisie impromptu , op. 66, which purportedly took place on the terrace at George Sand’s chalet at Nohant in the presence of Liszt and Viardot. According to Rollinat, the performers—Chopin, Liszt, and Viardot—all took advantage of the sylvan setting in which their keyboard and vocal renditions were answered by echoes. In fact, op. 66 was completed in 1834, some three years before Liszt ever visited Nohant.
1. Symphony no. 1 in B-flat Major (“Spring”), op. 38; Symphony no. 2 in C Major, op. 61; most likely the String Quartet in E-flat Major, op. 47 (the only other published string quartets Liszt might have known are three that were dedicated to Mendelssohn, op. 41); Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, op. 44; Piano Trio no. 2 in F Major, op. 80; op. 115—Liszt conducted the first complete, staged performance of Manfred from manuscript in Weimar on 13 June 1852, to great acclaim, though Schumann was unable to attend because of a severe attack of rheumatism (see Margit McCorkle, Robert Schumann: Thematisch-Bibliogaphisches Werkverzeichnis [München: 2003], pp. 485–88); Fantaisie in C Major, op. 17, dedicated to Liszt 14 January 1839. Fourteen years later, Liszt dedicated the B Minor Sonata to Schumann (LW A179). Liszt’s dedication page, reproduced in Bory (Franz Liszt , p. 158) is lost. Schumann was by that point too ill to respond, and Clara was soon to take umbrage at Liszt’s every action, including his letter of condolence on Robert’s death in 1856.
It is impossible to know to which Lieder Ramann was referring: apart from “Widmung” (LW A133), the first song in Myrthen , op. 25, transcribed and published as Liebeslied in 1848 with Kistner, Liszt never transcribed any Schumann songs while the composer was still alive. His other Schumann transcriptions are the Zwei Lieder von R. Schumann (LW A212/1, 2), the “Provençalisches Minnelied” from Schumann’s Des Sängers Fluch , op. 139/4 (LW A306), and seven of the ten songs in Liszt’s Lieder von Robert und Clara Schumann (LW 264a, b). Of all the works listed here, Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust (WoO 3) is conspicuous by Liszt’s omission, since he conducted it from manuscript with great success 29 August 1849 on the second day of the Weimar centenary Goethe celebration.
2. Sonata in F-sharp Minor, op. 11; Études symphoniques , op. 13; Carnaval , op. 9 (misspelled by Liszt). Liszt gave the first, albeit abridged, public performance of Carnaval on 30 March 1840 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Following Schumann’s instructions from a letter dated 24 December 1839, he played “Préambule,” “Eusebius,” “Florestan,” “Coquette,” “Réplique,” “Chopin,” “Pantalon et Colombine,” “Reconnaissance,” “Promenade,” and the “Marche des ‘Davidsbündler’ contre les Philistins.”
3. Liszt’s remark was prophetic and struck close to home. One might understand this as an oblique reference to Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, and Joseph Joachim (1831–1907, Liszt’s concertmaster for the Weimar orchestra from 1850–52), who, with Eduard Hanslick, spearheaded an anti-Liszt faction dating from the late 1850s. The difficulties Liszt’s new symphonic idiom had encountered in performance in Vienna extended well beyond that city to Leipzig, where the mostly conservative school championed by Clara Schumann and the disciples of her recently departed husband found themselves in staunch opposition to the workings of Liszt and his New German School—a cabal had firmly coalesced. This was borne out by the publication in May 1860 in the Berliner Musik-Zeitung Echo of what came to be called the “Brahms-Joachim Manifesto,” a statement condemning the “Music of the Future” and, implicitly, Liszt’s New German School. While never mentioning Liszt or Wagner by name, it stated: “The undersigned have long followed with regret the activities of a party whose organ is Brendel’s Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.” Written by Joachim, who now appeared to be firmly antagonistic toward Liszt’s music and was openly leading the cabal, the Manifesto was later signed by Brahms as well. The debate had been fueled by Wagner’s polemics, sent from his exile in Switzerland in the 1850s, especially Opera and Drama (1851), which set out premises for the “Music of the Future” that seemed at odds with the compositional efforts of anyone save Wagner, Liszt, and Berlioz. But the apparent misuse of the journal to promote the works of composers reviled by Clara and her cohorts led directly to the publication of the Manifesto. Coming on the heels of Liszt’s precipitous departure from the podium at Weimar (December 1858), after a debacle involving the music of his pupil Peter Cornelius at the premiere of his opera, Der Barbier von Bagdad , it is no wonder that Liszt began to retreat from active conducting and urged his students to refrain from programming his works.
4. The visit took place 11 July 1863, after Liszt had been in residence three weeks. Liszt’s report on the visit is found in his letter to Franz Brendel of 18 July 1863 (see Briefe , vol. 2, pp. 44–46).
5. Prince Cardinal Gustav Adolf von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (1823–96) was the brother of Prince Konstantin von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (1828–96). In 1859, Konstantin married Marie Sayn-Wittgenstein (1837–1920), the daughter of Princess Carolyne. Elevated to the College of Cardinals in 1866, Gustav played a crucial role in the intrigue that prevented Liszt’s marriage in 1861. Frédéric-François-Xavier Ghislain de Mérode (1820–74), a confidant of Pope Pius IX, succeeded Cardinal Hohenlohe as papal almoner. Mérode’s family claimed ancestral individuals such as Saint Elisabeth of Hungary, and Liszt’s work on his oratorio, Die Legende von der heiligen Elisabeth (LW I4), which occupied the composer during his early years in Rome, may have benefited from Mérode’s hagiographical insight.