MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3006, 25 October 1911, Page 80

MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS.

WHY LISZT TURNED ABBE. A CENTENARY REMINISCENCE. It is still a matter of some debate why Liszt should have taken priest's orders at the very zenith of his career. If he had dene it at the opening of his career one could have better understood. As a young man in Paris he was acutely seized, as Gounod was later, with the doctrines of Saint Simon, and, in fact, came perilously near entering upon a monastic life. There is a significant trace of this in the story of his love for Caroline, Countess of Saint Cricq, sweet 17 when he met her, and, as he put it, " impressionable to beauty, to the world, to religion, and to God." This episode happened during Liszt's juvenile passion for churchly affairs, and it must have been that passion which led him to describe the Countess as " a maiden chaste and pure as the alabaster of holy vessels." The affair finally miscarried, owing chiefly to a stern parent, and Liszt wrote subsequently of " that maiden chaste and pure" as the sacrifice he tearfully offered to the God of Christians. Renunciation of all things earthly followed this early disappointment. But not for long. Liszt was only 20 when the Polish Countess Plater meaningly said that she would choose Ferdinand Hille.r for friend, Chopin for her husband, and Liszt for her lover. Now, it would seem curious that any man should beoome a priest simply in order to escape the attentions of what Rubinstein colled "the adorable sex." But there is some reason to believe that this was really the case with Franz Liszt. To be sure, Liszt was a sad flirt; a libertine, too, if we are not to mince matters. Nietzsche coined a synonym for him, and it was in this form: " Liezt, or the art of running after women." Borodin, the Russian composer, who hunted him up at Weimar, remarked mildly that "evidently he has a weakness for the fair sex." Emil Liebling, a disciple, noting his practice with fair lady pupils, wrote that "Liszt shared with General Sherman and Bismarck a naive fondness for kissing pretty girls." The sex found something magnetic about that winsome face and fascinating .manner, about these delicate lineaments and dreamy blue eyes. An eminent singer once made her way into his presence in male attire, horseless of attracting him by other means. Liszt as Abbe.— Even when he had.assumed the priest's habit (this was in 1865, when he wes 54) there was no check to the female adoration. The whole subject is perhaps best illustrated in Mile. Judith Gautier's book on Wagner. On one occasion, at Weimar, she found that the women " hurried towards him, and, almost kneeling, kissed his hands, raising looks of ecstasy to his face." She was naturally surprised, and asked an explanation from Franz Servais, son of the Belgian violinist and an intimate of Lis/.t. Servais answered, in effect, that, so far from the priestly garb restraining the devotees, it inflamed them the more as having all the fascination of forbidden fruit. "Some of the women undoubtedly go too far," ho added. "It leads them into a sort of idolatry and fetishism. They dispute over a flower that he has touched, they gather up the ends of his cigars, and those who are sufficiently independent, and are able to do so, follow him from city to city all through the year." Liszt's dying father, speaking to the boy in his teens, warned him that women would upset and dominate his life, and the forecast proved essentially correct. But if the priestly garb did not 'restrain the devotees, why did Liszt adopt it? Let us look back. In the bloom of his young manhood Liszt had linked himself with the " enchantingly graceful" Countess d'Agoult ("Daniel Steam"), who bore him three children, one of whom, Cosima Liszt, became Von Bulow's first and Wagner's second wife. This " free love" union lasted for upwards of five years, when it ended, if we are to believe Ramann, owing to the Countess's too candid criticism of Liszt's compositions. The Princess Carolyne.—

Thcn Liszt fell under the spell of the Princess Carolyns von Ivanowaka, the daughter of a rich Polish nobleman. She

was married to a commonplace Russian. cavalry captain, with whom she lived unhappily. Carolyn© fled from her horn© and joined Liszt at Weimar, where she lived with him for 12 years. Her husband obtained a divorce, and the lady set about getting the Pope's consent to a union with Liszt. The consent was obtained; _ all arrangements were made, and Liszt arrived in Rome two clays before the date fixed for the wedding—only to find that, at the last moment, his Holiness had vetoed the ceremony on the ground that his sanction had been irregularly obtained. The Princess read this as a direct interposition of Providence, gave up idea of marrying Liszt, and devoted the rest of her life to asceticism and good works. It was in 1861 that the marriage wa"s" to have taken place, and Liszt became an Ahhe four years later. Was there any connection between the two events, any influence acting on him from. the lady's side? It seems highly probable, to say the least. Franz Servais, already quoted, thought this was the real explanation. " Perhaps Liszt wished in this way," he said, "to announce to the world, which had been in a state of excitement over his projects of marriage with the Princess Carolyne, that these projects were definitely abandoned. I beiievo also that he was relieved at being able to take away from all the women who adored him the hope of obtaining his hand." It need only be added that when Liszt died in 1886 he made the Piincers Carolyne his sole heir and executrix. She outlived him only one year. She was la,id to rest at Rome, near St. Peter's, and it was Liszt's music that was_ heard at her funeral by her express desire.