Mighty artist! Sublime in great things, superior in small.… When Franz plays the piano, the burden is lifted from my heart.
GEORGE SAND1
Liszt gave his “farewell” concert on April 9, 1837, in the Salle Erard. He played a group of Chopin’s newly composed Studies, op. 25 (which are dedicated to Marie d’Agoult), and his arrangement of Hummel’s Septet.2 He then set out for Nohant, George Sand’s country house, where Marie had awaited him since February. The next three months were spent as Sand’s house-guests. The lovers of Geneva occupied quarters on the ground floor, immediately below Sand’s bedroom. An Erard piano was installed there in advance of Liszt’s arrival. A stream of friends and acquaintances passed through Nohant. Didier, Michel de Bourges (Sand’s current lover), the actor Bocage, and Mallefille were among the occasional visitors who came and whiled away their time with the distinguished trio. The warm summer evenings at Nohant were superb. After dinner everybody would gather on the terrace, and once the post-prandial discussions had subsided, Liszt would move indoors, open the French windows, and begin to play. With the old house bathed in moonlight, and the pine trees swaying gently in the perfumed air, the music began to drift over the grounds. He played mostly Beethoven and Schubert. Marie had recently preoccupied herself with making French translations of the Schubert song texts in order to help him towards a fuller understanding of their meaning. Long after the other guests had retired to bed, Liszt, absorbed, would continue to play, occasionally stopping to try out a passage in a variety of ways. Sand, who used to scribble the night away by candlelight in her room upstairs, in silent counterpoint to Liszt’s nocturnal playing, was enthralled, as her diary entries show.3
On July 24, 1837, Liszt and Marie left Nohant and embarked on their journey towards Italy. George Sand and Mallefille accompanied them on horseback as far as La Châtre, the next town. They then travelled to Lyon, where Liszt, moved by the plight of the starving workers and their families, gave a benefit concert with the tenor Nourrit. The weavers of Lyon had been on strike for months, had clashed with the police at the street barricades, and were now in a desperate situation. “The elderly were without peace, the young without hope, the children without joy,” wrote Liszt.4 Before leaving this unhappy city, Liszt raised several thousand francs for the relief committee. The young poet Louis de Ronchaud, whom Liszt and the countess had first met in Geneva, two years earlier, was in the audience and firmly attached himself to them;5 at Liszt’s invitation he travelled with them to Chambéry. After making a detour to Saint-Point in order to visit Lamartine, they continued through Geneva. Their itinerary was not without purpose: in nearby Etrambière they saw Blandine and were relieved to find her in perfect health. On August 10 Marie wrote in her diary:
I saw Blandine at Etrambière; she is very lovely. Her high forehead, her serious and intelligent air indicate that she is an exceptional child. She has a passion for flowers and already practises charity, putting coppers in the hat of her favourite beggarman. She has a temper and is also sensitive; while I was there she pinched her nurse and then immediately kissed her to show how sorry she was. What holy joys for us are enclosed in this little bud who is still so frail and so incomplete!6
Marie determined to be reunited with her daughter as soon as possible, but her itinerant life placed one obstacle after another in the way of this resolution. By August 17 Liszt and Marie had reached Baveno and were enjoying the spectacular scenery of Lake Maggiore. The couple then followed the same “grand tour” as Montesquieu in 1728, since immortalized in the travel essays of Goethe, Madame de Staël, and Chateaubriand. By early September, having explored the entire eastern coastline of Lake Como, they were resting at Bellagio.
Following Ramann, every major Liszt biography detains Liszt and Marie at Bellagio for nearly five months, there to await the birth of their second daughter, Cosima. Ramann wanted to give Liszt a proper setting for his work. She therefore had him rent the Villa Melzi, overlooking the lake, its beautiful gardens filled with flowering oleanders and scented magnolias. Every day she sent the couple into the Villa Melzi park in order to rest at the foot of the marble group Beatrice Leading Dante, sculpted by Comolli in 1810. There, under the shade of the trees, she had them read the Divine Comedy, and there, too, in these inspirational surroundings, Ramann decided that one of Liszt’s earliest masterpieces, the Dante Sonata, must have first seen the light of day. In every one of these particulars Ramann is wrong. Liszt did not rent the Villa Melzi. He and Marie did not make repeated pilgrimages to Comolli’s statue. There is only one recorded instance of their ever having visited the Villa Melzi park, on August 20, when Marie noted in her diary that “the Dante in particular is a common and deplorably vulgar piece.”7 Liszt did not compose his Dante Sonata at Bellagio; least of all was he inspired to do so while reading the Divine Comedy under the trees. Finally, Cosima was not born at Bellagio. Such a catalogue of errors deserves wide exposure. In reality, Liszt and Marie changed residences several times, and they were beset by mundane problems. Marie’s passport was confiscated by the police, and she was detained at Sesto-Calende for two days. She then had to bribe the customs officials for the release of her belongings. Shortly afterwards, she developed a severe toothache.8 These may have been petty harassments, but they did nothing to enhance that lovers’ idyll that Marie and Liszt are popularly supposed to have enjoyed at this time. (Ramann described their days by Lake Como as “cloudless.” In Liszt’s annotated copy of her book, he struck out this word and replaced it with a diplomatic question mark.) From September 6 to November 5, they were definitely back in Bellagio, making their home in “a delicious little inn.”9 What Liszt really thought of Marie’s romantic attempts to play the role of Beatrice to his Dante during these honeymoon years later emerged with vehemence. “Bah, Dante! Bah, Beatrice! The Dantes create the Beatrices, and the real ones die at eighteen!” When, after their final rupture in 1844, Marie kept referring to the Beatrice-Dante model, to which she was clearly attached, Liszt put it more cogently: “It is only the poets who create and deify their Beatrices—not the Beatrices who create or deify the poets.”10
Liszt usually spent his afternoons composing at the piano, while Marie worked on her journal or read “topical” books such as Goethe’s Lettres sur l’Italie. In the evenings they often went out on the lake in a gondola, fishing by torchlight. On October 22 Liszt and Marie celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday by taking a mountain excursion. They set out at nine o’clock in the morning, with Marie mounted on a donkey, led by their guide, Buscone, a local gondolier. Soon the whole of the surrounding countryside was spread out below them like a map. They saw the distant chateaux, a magical view of Lecco, and Bellagio itself covered in a thousand tints of brightly coloured foliage. After dark, they sat on the balcony of their inn with a bowl of flaming peaches, while Buscone lighted a resin torch in the prow of his boat and speared the mesmerized fish with a long harpoon. Marie summed up their existence thus:
A bad piano, a few books, the conversation of a serious-minded woman suffice for him. He renounces all the pleasures of pride, the excitement of the battle, the amusements of social life, even the joy of being useful to others and of doing good; he has given them all up without even realizing, apparently, that he has done so!11
When Marie d’Agoult’s confinement became imminent, the couple moved to Como and took up residence at the Hotel dell’Angelo. And it was here, on December 24, at two o’clock in the afternoon, that Marie gave birth to a daughter. They called her Francesca Gaetana Cosima, and she was baptized in the Cathedral of Como on December 26.
Until modern times the details of Cosima’s birth were obscure. She herself always celebrated her birthday on Christmas Day. Richard Wagner, her second husband, naturally took to recording this date in his correspondence,12 and from there the error spread rapidly through the Liszt-Wagner literature. The latest victim (though surely not the last) is the English translator of the recently published Diaries of Cosima Wagner, who flatly asserts that she “was born on Christmas Day 1837, in Bellagio, Italy, on Lake Como”13—yet it would have been the work of a moment to look up the letter Marie d’Agoult wrote to Liszt on Christmas Day 1840, in which she gives the true date of Cosima’s birth as December 24.14 Moreover, Cosima’s birth certificate, apart from confirming the correctness of the latter date, furnishes absolute proof that Cosima was not born at Bellagio at all, but in the city of Como. The parish records of the Basilica Cathedral of Como reveal this entry:
Francesca Gaetana Cosima Liszt, illegitimate, born on December 24, 1837, baptized on the 26th by the priest Pietro Cavadini, the daughter of Caterina de Flavigny, residing at the Hotel dell’Angelo in Como, room 614, and of Franz Liszt, also residing in the same hotel; both Catholic, her father a professor of music and landowner, her mother of noble birth. The godfather was Luigi Mortier of Milan, residing in Brussels, professor of music. The godmother was Eufrasia Mortier.
[Note] Franz Liszt has declared in the presence of the undersigned priest and witness that he is the father of the girl, whose name is hereby recorded.
[Signed]
LUIGI MORTIER, godfather and witness
AMBROGLIO SALA, witness
BARTOLOMO CASATI, priest
MARIA RODANI, midwife15
Cosima’s unusual name has posed another puzzle for Liszt-Wagner sleuths across the years. The favoured theory is that she was named after Lake Como, but this makes no sense, etymologically speaking. Cosima happens to be the feminine form of St. Cosmas, the patron saint of physicians, and when we recall that Blandine and Daniel, Liszt’s other children, also bear the names of saints, the difficulty vanishes. It has hitherto escaped attention that in Cosima’s Diaries she frequently refers to September 27 as “my name day”—the day on which the church celebrates the martyrdom of Cosmas.16 At home Cosima was known by the unique diminutive “Cosette,” an affectionate nickname by which her father addressed her all his life. When Victor Hugo called the heroine of Les Misérables (1862) Cosette, he could only have borrowed the name of Liszt’s daughter.
Marie d’Agoult was absent from the ceremony. As on the occasion of Blandine’s baptism two years earlier, she was still convalescing after a difficult birth. The fact that Liszt officially acknowledged himself to be the father of Cosima, as he had previously acknowledged himself to be the father of Blandine, was later to assume importance. In French law it made Liszt the legal guardian of these illegitimate children and left Marie d’Agoult (improperly identified on both baptismal certificates17) with few if any rights. After their rupture, Marie was to fight Liszt for the custody of their children, but the flimsiness of her legal position soon became apparent, and Liszt was able to remove them not only from her immediate sphere of influence but from France itself.
It appears that the arrival in Como of two such distinguished visitors attracted the attention of the local police. A report written by an agent of the Italian secret intelligence, which was prepared for one Count Hartwig in Milan, sheds further light on the circumstances surrounding Cosima’s birth.
A lady with a passport under the name of Countess d’Agoult has been staying in this city for some time. She is believed to be the wife of the French minister d’Argoult.18 This same person lives in the Hotel dell’Angelo with the celebrated pianist Liszt. On December 24, at two in the afternoon, and assisted by the midwife Maria Baino [sic], she gave birth to a little girl who is commonly thought to be the consequence of her relationship with the famous player mentioned above.19
While staying at Como, awaiting the birth of Cosima, Liszt paid regular visits to Milan. The city lay 35 miles to the south and was within easy reach. Liszt’s first encounter with it was entirely characteristic.
Strolling through the streets early one morning, Liszt passed the music shop of Ricordi, the publisher. He walked in, saw an open piano standing in the middle of the room, and began to improvise. Ricordi, sitting in his office, heard the music ringing through the building and rushed out exclaiming, “This must be Liszt or the Devil!” Ricordi then overwhelmed the young virtuoso with hospitality, opening for him his villa in the Brianza, lending him his box at La Scala, and placing at his disposal his library of fifteen hundred scores.20 Liszt also met Rossini, who was likewise living in Milan and was in the middle of that famous forty-year retirement from the operatic stage. Although Rossini had composed nothing for the opera house since Guillaume Tell (1829), he was still at the very centre of Italian musical life, and giving elaborate dinner parties to which opera singers, literati, and Milanese society were all invited.
The musical taste of the Milanese was poor. They were interested only in opera. There was no enthusiasm for pianists. Very few of the European virtuosos had ventured south of the Alps. Italy had never heard Moscheles, Hummel, Kalkbrenner, or Chopin. The last great pianist to play there had been John Field, who met with no success. Even the compositions of Beethoven and Mozart had little standing in Milan. The most acceptable form of piano music was the operatic fantasy, during the playing of which the Milanese would unabashedly join in, whistling and singing the familiar tunes as they went along. Liszt had few illusions about what he was up against when, on December 10, 1837, with the influential backing of Ricordi and Rossini, he took over the Scala opera house, placed his solitary Erard piano in the centre of that vast stage, and gave a solo recital. But even he must have received a jolt when, in the middle of a performance of one of his studies (duly announced beforehand), a gentleman called out from the stalls, “Vengo al teatro per divertirmi e non per studiare!”21 This comical incident set the tone for Liszt’s two other Milan concerts, given in the Assembly Rooms on February 18 and March 20, 1838. On one occasion he placed a silver urn, recently presented to him by a group of admirers, in the foyer of the concert hall to receive suggestions for themes on which he might improvise. The urn was then ceremoniously borne onto the stage so that Liszt might read the suggestions aloud from the platform. He had reckoned without the wry humour of the Milanese, however. The first slip of paper read “The Milan Cathedral,” the next “The Railway Station.” The pride of the collection carried this conundrum: “Is it better to marry or remain a bachelor?” Liszt rose to the occasion and recalled to his audience the words of the sage: “Whatever conclusion one comes to, whether to marry or remain single, one will always repent it.”22 The Milanese appreciated his ready wit more than his piano playing.
This first encounter with Milan produced an artistic consequence. Rossini had recently broken his long silence and had published a dozen songs called Les Soirées musicales. In order to please the Milanese, Liszt decided to transcribe these little gems for the piano and feature them in his concerts. They were published by Ricordi in 1838. Today they are hardly known by pianists but ought to be brought back into the repertory. Their titles are
La regata veneziana
L’invito
La gita in gondola
Il rimprovero
La pastorella dell’Alpi
La partenza
La pesca
La danza
La serenata
L’orgia
Li marinari
Liszt and the countess left Milan in mid-March 1838 and made their way to Venice. They took the conventional route, travelling via Verona, Vicenza, and Padua. Marie’s Mémoires are filled with observations about the works of art they observed as they passed through these ancient cities. Nothing seemed to please her, and she confessed that she found the journey exhausting.23 They arrived in Venice during the last week in March. Liszt fell in love with this magical city at first sight. He was absorbed by its canals, its bridges, and the play of light across its unique architecture. He hired a gondolier, Cornelio, to row them along the narrow waterways. Marie, however, disliked Venice intensely. She called it “a modern Carthage,”24 false and materialistic. The bookstores, according to her, sold books fit only for chambermaids. A mood of uncontrollable depression swept over her. The innate differences in temperament between her and Liszt flowed over into daily disagreements, which in turn developed into major quarrels. Venice was a turning point. For the first time, Liszt appreciated the full consequences of being linked to such a joyless, brooding personality. It seems clear that Marie fell victim to another nervous breakdown in Venice.25 Her diary entries are full of despair and lamentations.
Sometimes I am afraid that I am going mad, my brain is tired; I have wept too much.
My heart and spirit are dry. It is an ailment I must have been born with. For an instant, passion elevated me, but I feel that the principle of life is not within me.…
And then, with a shaft of true insight, she added:
I feel myself an obstacle to his life, I’m no good to him. I cast sadness and discouragement over his days.26
Liszt tried to encourage her, but it was uphill work. Once, from Milan, he had sent her a note: “Love me always, and most of all try to be a little satisfied, a little gay, a little happy if possible.”27 She merely sank further into gloom and despondency. The relationship between Liszt and the countess was, in fact, approaching its dénouement. They had reached that most mournful of all the conditions that can afflict two lovers: they were unhappy together and unhappy apart. As so often before in Liszt’s life, destiny now intervened. A short time earlier he had written to Lamennais and asked, “Will my life be forever tainted with this idle uselessness which weighs upon me? Will the hour of … virile action never come?”28 He did not then suspect that this hour had almost struck, and that his life was about to be changed by events of the first magnitude.
1. SJI, pp. 45–46.
2. NZfM, no. 34, 1837.
3. SJI, pp. 45–47. Liszt’s long series of Schubert song transcriptions began life at Nohant. According to a letter he wrote to Massart (VFL, p. 30), Liszt had already transcribed the first group of seven songs by July 29, 1837. Raabe (cat. no. 243) wrongly assigns them to 1838.
4. RGS, vol. 2, p. 155; CPR, p. 140.
5. Louis de Ronchaud (1816–87) was now twenty years old. After Marie’s final rupture with Liszt, in 1844, Ronchaud became one of her intimates, and he remained a lifelong friend. Marie dedicated her Souvenirs to him, and Ronchaud published them in 1877, a year after Marie’s death. As Marie’s literary executor, Ronchaud had access to all her personal papers, including the hundreds of letters Liszt wrote to her over the years. (See n. 12 on p. 8.)
6. AM, pp. 106–7.
7. AM, p. 109.
8. AM, p. 117.
9. VFL, pp. 36–37.
10. RLKM, vol. 1, p. 546; LLB, vol. 4, pp. 223–24.
11. AM, p. 119.
12. See, for example, Wagner’s letters to Judith Gauthier (TRW, p. 340) and Albert Niemann (SLWB, vol. 5, p. 232, fn. 3). He told Niemann that he must finish the newly completed score of Parsifal “in time for the birthday of my wife, December 25.”
13. WT, vol. 1, p. 11.
14. ACLA, vol. 2, p. 85.
15. From the Baptismal Register of Como Cathedral for 1837, sec. 88, item 133.
16. WT, vol. 1, p. 577. Cosmas was tortured and beheaded in A.D. 303. Because he and his brother Damian gave their medical services to the poor, they became known as “the silverless ones.” See their entry in Butler’s Lives of the Saints.
17. “Catherine-Adélaïde Méran” was now transformed into “Caterina de Flavigny,” a lighter camouflage, but a camouflage nonetheless, consisting of a simple combination of her second Christian name and her maiden name—a styling she adopted on no other occasion.
18. Count d’Agoult was here confused with the Minister of France d’Argoult.
19. Doc. no. 1670, p.r., Milan City Archives.
20. RGS, vol. 2, p. 168; CPR, p. 160.
21. RGS, vol. 2, p. 209; CPR, p. 213. “I come to the theatre to enjoy myself, not to study!”
22. RGS, vol. 2, p. 211; CPR, pp. 215–17.
23. AM, p. 131.
24. AM, p. 138.
25. The first, it will be recalled, was in 1834, shortly after the death of her eldest daughter, Louise, when she had contemplated suicide. For a detailed account of Marie’s mental problems, which dogged her for life, see VCA, vol. 4. See also p. 194 of the present volume.
26. AM, p. 140.
27. ACLA, vol. 1, p. 203.
28. LLB, vol. 1, p. 17.