Franz Liszt : A Story of Central European Subjectivity [1 ed.] 9789004279223, 9789004279216

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Franz Liszt

Studies in Central European Histories Edited by Roger Chickering (Georgetown University) David M. Luebke (University of Oregon) Editorial Board Steven Beller (Washington, D.C.) Marc R. Forster (Connecticut College) Atina Grossmann (Columbia University) Peter Hayes (Northwestern University) Susan Karant-Nunn (University of Arizona) Mary Lindemann (University of Miami) H.C. Erik Midelfort (University of Virginia) David Sabean (University of California, Los Angeles) Jonathan Sperber (University of Missouri) Jan de Vries (University of California, Berkeley)

VOLUME 59

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sceh

Franz Liszt A Story of Central European Subjectivity By

Erika Quinn

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Josef Danhauser, Liszt at the Piano, 1840. Oil on Canvas. © Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin / Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen / Art Resource, NY. Quinn, Erika, author.  Franz Liszt : a story of Central European subjectivity / by Erika Quinn.   pages cm. — (Studies in Central European histories, ISSN 1547-1217 ; 59)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-27921-6 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-27922-3 (e-book) 1. Liszt, Franz, 1811–1886. 2. Composers—Hungary—Biography. 3. Music—Hungary—19th century—History and criticism. 4. Music—Germany—19th century—History and criticism. I. Title.  ML410.L7Q56 2015  780.92—dc23  [B]

2014023817

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1547-1217 isbn 978-90-04-27921-6 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-27922-3 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Acknowledgments  vii List of Illustrations  viii List of Abbreviations  ix Introduction  1 1 The Virtuoso Prophet  23 2 The Hungarian Patriot  64 3 The Romantic Hero and the Kulturnation  105 4 The War of the Romantics  148 5 Composing a Nation-Church Bond in Hungary  184 6 The General German Music Association  220 Coda  246 Bibliography  250 Index  269

Acknowledgments This book has been a long time in the making. As is the case with creative projects, it is the product of many conversations, exchanges, expressions of support and questions. Celia Applegate’s questions and observations pushed my thinking forward. Shennan Hutton read the manuscript chapter by chapter, making suggestions that significantly improved the work; Jim Brophy also generously read an early draft. Mona Siegel and Katerina Lagos both read portions of the manuscript. Friends Edward Ross Dickinson and Michael Miller have been hugely supportive, Edward for the ongoing conversation and Michael for his warm hospitality and guidance in Budapest, as well as for reading the Budapest chapter. Maté Rigó also translated Magyar sources for me. Pete Tisa contributed his skills to images. At the Metropolitan Ervin Szábo Library’s Budapest collection, Tibor Sándor was a helpful and welcoming presence, as was the Liszt curator at the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik in Weimar. Thanks also to Zsuzsana Domanska of the Liszt Museum in Budapest, who generously met with me on short notice. Rob, most of all, deserves thanks for his consistent love and support.

List of Illustrations FIGURE Caption 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 4.1 5.1 5.2 6.1

Josef Danhauser, Liszt at the Piano  47 In the Concert Hall  54 Miklós Barabás, portrait of Franz Liszt  86 Josef Kriehuber, Franz Liszt  87 The New Pegasus in the Yoke  93 Weimars Volkslied  144 The Goethe-Schiller Monument in Weimar  145 Drawing of Beethoven and the young Liszt  155 Liszt conducts Elisabeth in the Redoute  205 The most recent Jewish Messiah  218 Liszt as Inspiration for the ADMV  243

List of Abbreviations The following are frequently cited sources and archives. AAZ AMZ Anr BAA

Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung Anregungen für Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft Franz Liszts Briefe an Anton Augusz, 1846–1878, ed. Wilhelm von Czapó. Budapest, 1911. BCA Briefwechsel zwischen Franz Liszt und Carl Alexander, Grossherzog von Sachsen, ed. La Mara. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1909. BMA Correspondance de Liszt et de la Comtesse d’Agoult 1833–1840, ed. Daniel Ollivier. Paris: Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1933. Br I–VIII Franz Liszt’s Briefe, ed. La Mara, VIII vols. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1894. BUS Franz Liszt: Briefe aus Ungarischen Sammlungen 1835–1886, ed. Margit Prahács. Basel: Bärenreiter Kassel, 1966. Echo Berliner Musik-Zeitung LWB Franz Liszt—Richard Wagner Briefwechsel, ed. Hanjo Kesting. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1988. GSA Stiftung Weimarer Klassik NFP Neue Freie Presse NMZ Neue Musik-Zeitung NZfM Neue Zeitschrift für Musik PL Pester Lloyd RGMP Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris SS I–V Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Detlef Altenburg, 5 vols. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1997. UPB Legány, Dezsö. Franz Liszt: Unbekannte Presse und Briefe aus Wien 1832–1886. Vienna: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1984.

Introduction In the summer of 1886, Franz Liszt, pianist, composer, and teacher, traveled to Bayreuth to attend his granddaughter’s wedding. Having reached his seventies, Liszt’s health and patience were not what they had once been, and long distance travel was increasingly onerous for him. For this reason, Liszt hadn’t planned on attending the Bayreuth Festival. Yet when he heard of the wedding, and his daughter, Cosima Wagner, insisted his presence would lend important support to the Festival, he agreed to attend. After enjoying the wedding and a performance of Richard Wagner’s music drama Parsifal, a piece Liszt loved, he fell ill with pneumonia and died in misery on 31 July. Liszt’s funeral took place on 3 August in the local Catholic church, attended mostly by those present in Bayreuth for the Festival, although some of his piano students and friends also arrived for the ceremony. The chapel was bedecked with Hungarian and German national wreaths of red-white-green and blackred-white.1 The music consisted of chants performed by a handful of priests and an organ improvisation on themes from Parsifal: because his friends and students could not participate in the ceremony, none of his own music was performed. Despite Liszt’s relatively low profile in Bayreuth, throngs of mourners appeared in the streets.2 Masses of onlookers surrounded the area of the grave, as the police had not received orders to keep access to it open. Liszt’s friends and family had to struggle through the crowd to reach the gravesite, where mourners had trampled the grave decorations in their eagerness to participate in Liszt’s commemoration.3 Shortly after the funeral a dispute arose between Liszt’s daughter Cosima Wagner, his long-time companion the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, and various nationalist and religious groups in Germany and Hungary regarding the proper location of Liszt’s remains. Cosima Wagner based her decisions about her father’s remains on her desire to preserve both his and her late husband Richard Wagner’s reputations. She wanted him buried in the royal tomb at Weimar, or in Budapest, so long as both legislative houses requested it and Liszt was given national honors. She believed Liszt’s close alliance with the Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Weimar, as his music director for thirteen years, earned him a place alongside Goethe and Schiller and their patron, the Grand 1 C.R., “Am Grabe Liszt’s,” NZfM 82, no. 33 (13 August 1886): 359. All translations mine unless otherwise noted. 2 “Franz Liszt,” PL Beilage (2 August 1886). 3 Kornél Ábranyi, “Franz Liszt,” PL 33, no. 214 (4 August 1886).

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Duke Carl August. Carl Alexander offered to build a mausoleum for Liszt at the artist’s former home, the Altenburg, but Wagner rejected that idea as unfitting for her famous father. Sayn-Wittgenstein wanted him to rest in a place of honor, either in Weimar, where she and Liszt had lived together for more than a decade, or in Rome, to be honored as a member of the Church. She endorsed the Franciscans’ claim, who sought to have his body moved to Rome. The Church laid claim to Liszt as he had belonged to the secular Third Order since 1857 and had taken lower orders in 1865, becoming an abbé. Another suggestion sought to commemorate Liszt as a Catholic by burying him in Eisenach, near Weimar, at the foot of the Wartburg in the Chapel of St. Elisabeth. Cosima Wagner did not want that kind of commemoration for her father; since divorcing her first husband, Hans von Bülow, to marry Richard Wagner, and converting to Protestantism, her relationship to the Church was strained at best. Representatives from regions of the Habsburg lands where Liszt had lived also forwarded suggestions. Many members of the Hungarian aristocracy and friends to whom Liszt had purportedly expressed a desire to be buried in Hungary supported Budapest as a burial site. Liszt had contributed much to Hungarian music and teaching, exemplified by his Hungarian Rhapsodies and the sizable number of Hungarian professional pianists who had studied with him. In response to a Hungarian citizens’ petition for a burial in Pest, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Kálman Tisza, made a speech in which he accused Liszt of being a disloyal son of his nation because of his book of 1859, Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie, and so Pest became impossible as a burial site, disappointing Cosima Wagner and Liszt’s Hungarian friends.4 Proposals were also made for Liszt’s burial in his birth village of Raiding in western Hungary. All of these suggestions about Liszt’s final burial site signal the importance of commemoration and its function of affixing a final meaning to Liszt’s life; Liszt’s protean allegiances and roles were to be laid to rest.5 The struggle over Liszt’s interment was a skirmish in a much larger contest over Liszt’s identity during the nineteenth century. Liszt spent important portions of his life in Vienna, Paris, Weimar, Budapest, and Rome. During his performance tours, he played nationalist pieces in the German lands, Russia, 4 Az Országgyűlés Képviselőházának naplója [Parliamentary Session Minutes] (Pest, 1887), 58–59. 5 For works exploring funerals as forms of commemoration, see Volker Ackermann, “Staatsbegräbnisse in Deutschland von Wilhelm I. bis Willy Brandt,” in Nation und Emotion: Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich, 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Hannes Siegrist, Jakob Vogel, and Etienne François (Göttingen, 1995), 252–273; Avner Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France, 1789–1996 (Oxford, 2000).

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and Hungary; he also contributed to cultural nation building in Central Europe through his own compositions and participation in artistic foundations and academies. He allied himself with various causes and groups, from radical socialism to the Catholic lower orders; he admired Napoleon III of France and István Széchenyi of Hungary; he played hackneyed showstoppers and composed a sizable opus of sacred music. Even during his lifetime, Liszt proved to be a difficult figure to categorize, resisting attempts to pigeonhole him into national, social, or aesthetic categories. For nationalists, Liszt’s multivalent national allegiances were abominations that made him ultimately untrustworthy; the devoutly religious suspected his sensuality and bohemian lifestyle; the artistic elite mocked his turn to the Church as yet another sham foisted on an unsuspecting and naïve public.

Biography as History

These tensions rendered Liszt a figure too complicated to fit into the rigid conventions of standard biography; biographers rejected “his personal incoherence” which conjured the “specter of instability.”6 Another conclusion drawn from the “paradox” of Liszt’s life was that he possessed a “divided” or even “delightfully fragmented self.”7 A key component of these perceptions was Liszt’s national allegiance. In the not so distant past, Liszt’s national identity has been hotly contested, and various scholars have claimed him as a national hero, a sign of their attachment to a coherent identity.8 Conferences have 6 Susan Bernstein, Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century: Performing Music and Language in Heine, Liszt, and Baudelaire (Stanford, 1998), 8; see also Alexander Rehding, “Inventing Liszt’s Life: Early Biography and Autobiography,” in The Cambridge Companion to Liszt, ed. Kenneth Hamilton (Cambridge, 2005), 14–27. 7 Katharine Ellis, “The Romantic Artist,” in The Cambridge Companion, 1–13, here 13; James Deaville, “A Star is Born?: Czerny, Liszt, and the Pedagogy of Virtuosity,” in Beyond the Art of Finger Dexterity: Reassessing Carl Czerny ed. David Gramit (Rochester, 2008), 52–66, here 60. 8 For examples of biographers who take strong stands in regards to Liszt’s nationality, see Émile Haraszti, Franz Liszt (Paris, 1967); Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861, vol. 2 of Franz Liszt (Ithaca, 1993); Dezsö Legány, Ferenc Liszt and His Country 1874–1886, trans. Elizabeth Smith-Csicsery-Rónay (Budapest, 1992). On the other side of the debate, one work presents a post-national Liszt, claiming that Liszt rejected national cultures altogether. See Detlef Altenburg, ed. Liszt und Europa (Laaber, 2008), in particular page 10. Klaus Ries issues a cri de coeur about this matter, saying that Liszt’s nationalism, like his relationship to politics and to social-political issues has not received a scholarly investigation. “Die Einheit der Kunst: Franz Liszt zwischen Universalismus und Nationalismus,” in Liszt and Europa, 27–42, here 27.

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deteriorated into quarrels about whether Liszt was Hungarian, German or French. The whiff of disapproval that lingers about Liszt’s various national allegiances is a remnant of nationalist ideology itself. Regarding Liszt’s status as a musician, scholarship generally cleaves to two camps: biographers who tend to be sympathetic to him, and those who see him as a manipulative charlatan.9 Until recent attempts at reexamining his artistic reputation, scholars mostly portrayed Liszt as a showman who loved adulation, yet did not really know art, a flaw that explained his alleged lack of success as a composer.10 Only some of his piano compositions and the Faust Symphony have entered into the modern performance canon. For those suspicious of Liszt, his literary activities have long been understood as poorly written self-promotional material.11 But musicologists have lately begun to take him more seriously, noting that Liszt contributed to the late-Romantic expansion of tonality, helped to disseminate Beethoven’s works, and composed one of the most sizable oeuvres of sacred music in the nineteenth century.12 The difficulty biographers faced in writing Liszt’s life stemmed in part from their method of highlighting Liszt’s personality and activities in a high-intensity beam.13 Most biographers lack any particular training in personality analysis or other means of assessing psychology, a central task of biography.14 Without such theoretical grounding, biographers can slip into present-mindedness to assess individuals’ motivations and actions in modern terms. Such pres­ entism obscures the past as it assumes an unchanging human nature. Liszt’s 9

10 11

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Gustav Schilling, Franz Liszt: Sein Leben und Wirken, aus nächster Beschauung (Stuttgart, 1844); Lina Ramann, Franz Liszt als Künstler und Mensch, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1880–1894); Derek Watson, Liszt (London, 1989); Émile Haraszti, Franz Liszt (Paris, 1967); Julius Kapp, Liszt (Berlin, 1922); Peter Raabe, Franz Liszt (Tutzing, 1968). On the charlatan side, see Ernest Newman, The Man Liszt: A Study of the Tragi-Comedy of a Personality Divided Against Itself (London, 1934); Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge, 2004). Bernstein, 112–126. Émile Haraszti, “Franz Liszt—Author Despite Himself: The History of a Mystification,” The Musical Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1947): 490–516; Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years: 1811–1847, vol. 1 of Franz Liszt (New York, 1983), 20–23. Charles Rosen, The Romantic Generation (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 472–531; Ryan Minor, “Prophet and Populace in Liszt’s ‘Beethoven’ Cantatas,” in Franz Liszt and His World, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs and Dana Gooley (Princeton, 2006), 113–166. His most thorough biographer, Alan Walker, estimates that at least 10,000 works on Liszt exist. Walker, 27. See 3–29 for a literature review. Exceptions are psychoanalysts like Peter Ostwald and Stuart Feder. See Ostwald, Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius (Boston, 1987), and Feder, Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis (New Haven, 2004).

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understanding of his selfhood differed in key ways from ours, and in emphasizing Liszt’s personal agency and character, biographies have failed to fully embed Liszt in his historical context, an oversight that leads to misapprehensions about Liszt’s motivations and reception. The task of the biographer, “to understand how people assume the identity that situates and motivates them in relation to others,” makes it “necessary to grasp the symbolic world from which they construct meaning in their lives.”15 That symbolic world is the product of interaction and exchange, just as identity is “glued together by the viewpoints and expectations of other individuals.”16 The act of constructing a self is dependent just as much on the context around the subject under construction as it is the character of the person performing it: selves are relational and situational and therefore in flux. If as historians or biographers we write accounts of coherence, such accounts conceal the unknown, paradoxical components of individual lives.17 Subjectivities are unstable: selves are multifaceted and shifting rather than coherent and static. Starting with this premise to understand Liszt “could provide a different path into the past.”18 In most biography, the subject becomes the intellectual and analytical center of the work, and his character is highlighted over cultural or other structural influences, an approach which results in a fairly shallow understanding. This biography attempts to craft neither a complete accounting nor a chronicle of Liszt’s life; rather, it focuses on questions of his self-understanding and subjectivity. I begin by confronting the tensions in Liszt’s self-understanding and reception, asking, for example, why his contemporaries believed Liszt’s virtuosity to be incompatible with his compositional aspirations? How did Liszt reconcile his loyalty to the Habsburg Empire, his participation in German nationbuilding projects and his Hungarian patriotism? In their search to build a national audience for music, how did Liszt and his allies define the nation? 15

Jo Burr Margadant, ed., The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 2000), 4, 24. See Jolanta Pekacz, Musical Biography: New Paradigms (England, 2006), 1–16, for an examination of these issues in regard to musical biography in particular. 16 Niklas Luhmann, “The Individuality of the Individual: Historical Meanings and Contemporary Problems,” in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, ed. Thomas C. Heller, Morton Sosna, and David E. Wellbery (Stanford, 1986), 313–325, here 313. 17 Susan Grogan, Flora Tristan: Life Stories (London, 1998), 10. 18 Alice Kessler-Harris, “Why Biography?” American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (June 2009): 625–630, here 626. Michael Saffle, a leading Liszt expert, calls for an evaluation of Liszt’s life in “cultural-critical” terms: “Lingering Legends: Liszt after Walker,” in Musical Biography, 89–110, here 93.

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What drove Liszt, the famed performer, teacher, and bohemian, to join the Catholic Church? Liszt’s personal and professional complexity offers the portraitist a rich, varied and often surprising palette that can reveal much about the long nineteenth century during which he lived.19 This study seeks to “discover and reveal the ways in which subjects assume, discard, reconfigure, merge, and disassociate multiple identities and roles.”20 Through his participation in nationalist events in much of Central Europe and his commitment to composing devotional music, Liszt’s story can aid the historian to “de-center, desecularize, and de-nationalize” the nineteenth century.21 Contextualizing and historicizing the tensions in Liszt’s subjectivity will allow us to retain our view of Liszt as an extraordinary individual while accounting for his apparent contradictions. Examining a widely traveled figure like Liszt presents an opportunity to break down artificial boundaries created by nationalists or by academic scholarship, boundaries that obscure the complexity of Liszt’s European story. The sorts of categories of identification available to Liszt and his contemporaries are historically bound; we do not need to accept their existence prima facie. Instead of seeking a definitive answer about Liszt’s nationality, this work explores how and why Liszt and his contemporaries thought national identity was important, and points out that mono-nationality, so to speak, was not an implicit norm for a major portion of Liszt’s lifetime. My critical distance from the idea of an innate, essentialized nationality or other form of identity for the individual helps to reestablish Liszt’s cosmopolitanism as a historical phenomenon rather than a personal quirk. This study brings a focused look to how Liszt understood himself to belong (or not) to larger imagined communities like nation and confession. Instead of seeing him as a postmodern creature of infinite flexibility and no substance, I suggest that Liszt embodied many of cultural and social currents of the nineteenth century and adeptly rode the crests of the waves rocking Europe, negotiating challenges to his artistry, integrity, and subjectivity. In all his enthusiasms, pursuits, and projects, Franz Liszt exemplified the nineteenth-century quest for self-definition and fulfillment. Seeking to gain agency, authority, and 19

Suzanne Marchand called for the study of “ambiguous people” in “The Long Nineteenth Century: Forum,” German History 26, no. 1 (January 2008): 72–91, here 74. 20 David Nasaw, “Introduction,” AHR Roundtable: Historians and Biography, American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (June 2009): 576. 21 Suzanne Marchand, “Embarrassed by the Nineteenth Century,” Consortium on Revolutionary Europe: Selected Papers, 2002, 6.

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community, Liszt experimented with various subject positions from which to forward his goals. The stances he selected allowed him to retain his cosmopolitan sensibility while making specific aesthetic and creative claims. The facets of his subjectivity, his virtuosity, his Romantic interest in national culture and expression, and his conviction that art and religion shared a redemptive social power, resembled the colored fragments of glass in a kaleidoscope. Shake the cylinder, and get a new configuration of identity, but one which is composed of the same three basic elements. For the scholar making a study of Liszt’s life, source material abounds. Because of his early fame, Liszt’s activities gained early and consistent documentation from the press and his peers. Liszt also wrote avidly himself: he enjoyed an extensive correspondence and became a prolific essayist in his adulthood.22 By mining his personal correspondence, one can examine the multiple facets of Liszt’s selfhood and the performative aspects of fashioning forms of subjectivity. Liszt rarely expressed inward or self-reflective thoughts—for the most part, he commented on his activities and those of others. Except for a brief period of his adolescence, Liszt did not keep a personal journal or diary. For the historian seeking motivations and intentions, this requires close reading of his writings but also of his actions, which did express his motivations and values, albeit less than explicitly. In exploring Liszt’s assertions of subjectivity, this study goes well beyond what either Liszt or his contemporaries would articulate in regard to selfhood or collective identity. Liszt was raised in an era during which personal correspondence gained the status of an art form. His letters demonstrate a mastery of etiquette and formality when needed, and are filled with much self-deprecating humor, quotations from literature, and quips about current events. The language in which his correspondence was conducted—either French or German, with sprinklings of Latin, Italian, and Magyar, was determined by his audience, although most of his schooling took place in French. In displaying impeccable epistolary etiquette, Liszt demonstrated his merit as a cultivated individual. He was very aware of the power of a well-turned phrase, and the high value society placed on fluency in the form: during the early nineteenth century, letter writing came to be seen, ideally, as an expression of authenticity as well as of discernment, education, and taste. One of Liszt’s letters to his adolescent daughter Cosima instructed her,

22

Approximately 6,000 of his letters to 800 correspondents have been published. Walker, 14.

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In our day writing letters is a talent so generally cultivated that not knowing how to record clearly and elegantly your thoughts and also details from journals is seen as unpardonable negligence. You have to acquire the talent on your own.23 Self-presentation and expression were vital skills for educated Europeans to possess. To his second daughter Blandine he wrote how much he enjoyed her recent letter because “it was completely your creation.” He continued that he wanted her to develop a style appropriate to her fourteen years.24 For Liszt and his contemporaries, the composition of a letter, and by extension a self was an art that allowed an immediacy and connection between correspondents.25 Subjectivity was shaped via an interactive process of writer and reader, a dynamic also evident in Liszt’s public performances. As Liszt crafted his forms of subjectivity through correspondence, performance, and relating to others, he grappled with huge changes in how society approached selfhood and collective belonging.

Self, Subjectivity, Identity

Employing precise terminology for a person’s individuality can be a tricky undertaking. The commonly used terms “identity” and “identification” indicate a fixed category of belonging, a social group, often imposed from the outside. One’s identity is often what others project or ascribe, and because it is external and dependent on others’ perceptions, it is very difficult to alter or contest. Identity also carries a connotation of essence with it. In order to avoid this kind of reification or conflation of categories of practice with categories of analysis, I am using “identity” only in the sense of this accepted, external, fixed belonging to a group. For a person’s own perception of individuality, the terms “subjectivity”, “self-understanding”, and “self-conception” are the clearest choices. That is, Liszt’s own process of constructing selfhood, one which shifted and adapted to external and internal impulses, can be understood as an inward, creative one, rather than one of discovery. 23 24 25

Letter of 17 December 1850, Liszt’s Letters to his Children, 33. Letter of 11 December 1850, Correspondance de Liszt et de sa fille Madame Émile Ollivier 1842–1862, ed. Daniel Ollivier (Paris, 1936), 57. Annette C. Anton, Authentizität als Fiktion: Briefkultur im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1995); Reading, Interpreting and Historicizing: Letters as Historical Sources, ed. Regina Schulte and Xenia von Tippelskirch (Florence, 2004).

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Central Europe is a particularly fruitful place to investigate overlapping, interchangeable and contested subjectivities. In the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires, diversity was the norm rather than the exception. In these imperial lands, people spoke multiple languages without necessarily privileging one above the other, simply associating different languages with different contexts and uses; they forged mixed marriages across religious lines, and ideas of ethnic and national identities were in early stages of development in the early nineteenth century. Plurality and cultural difference were endemic to Central Europe, so much so that people there developed multifaceted subjectivities to address their shifting social contexts. Multiple subject stances were possible, and even necessary as people moved between situational and particular identities.26 A particular identity, or a subculture, like Hungarian Unitarian, Ruthene, Jew, Rhenish Protestant, to name a few, could be set aside when dealing with someone who did not share that particular identity. Situational identity, then, was a tool of communication that allowed for the construction of social, economic and political ties: it was relational. Such identities, which helped individuals constitute and join social groups, were by nature porous, as were the boundaries of the groups themselves.27 These stances were increasingly indicated by and tied to language use. Indeed, a late-eighteenth-century Hungarian magnate would have spoken Latin while performing his political duties at the Parliament, used German at court, read his news in French, and perhaps, spoken Magyar to local peasants. Such situational and relational choices were demonized only with the ascendancy of nationalist ideologies, which insisted on one particular, fixed identity. Because of this very diversity and plurality, studies of nationalism have traditionally flourished in regard to Central Europe. Earlier models of nationalist development presented stages from the initial impulse among artists and intellectuals to create a nationalist movement, to its adoption by the literate classes, to its final adoption by the masses. This model was rooted in Weberian sociology and its incarnation during the 1960s and 70s in modernization theories. While this older scholarship on national identity did acknowledge that nationhood is a constructed entity, many of the older works on nationalism fell into the trap of reifying an analytical category, that is, of investigating the 26

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Cemal Kafadar, “The Ottomans and Europe,” in Structures and Assertions, vol. 1 of Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: the Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, ed. Thomas A. Brady, Heiko Augustinus Oberman, and James D. Tracy, (Leiden, 1994), 589–636; Till van Rahden, Jews and Other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity, and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860–1925, trans. Marcus Brainard (Madison, 2008). Van Rahden, 9, 241.

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emergence of nationalism while taking the existence of nations as a given.28 The historiography of nationalism has blossomed in recent decades, producing a rich variety of works that underline the fact that nationhood is a constructed and contested category that nationalists themselves created.29 These works focus on nationalists themselves, the “carriers” (Hroch) of nationalist ideology in older terms. Rather than think of nationalists as carriers, a term that implies the preexistence of the load to be carried, I suggest it is more fruitful to think of them as creators. The creators of nationalist movements, and indeed, of the concept of nation itself, were educated polyglots who strove to impose an artificial homogeneity on the places and peoples they called home. In investigating how such elites created the idea that nations exist, recent scholarship emphasizes the inherently opportunistic nature of nationalist movements. Despite their claims about awakening ancient nations from slumber and their selfless devotion to the fatherland, nationalists created the idea of national existence, or joined national movements, for very tangible social, political, and economic gains.30 Recent works challenging this older developmental model of nationalism often focus on the last stage of nationalist development, when nationalist ideologies purportedly spread to the masses. These studies highlight the lack of interest among common people regarding national identity and nationalist allegiance in Central Europe.31 My work on Liszt challenges the model at 28

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Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, 1983); Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations, trans. Ben Fowkes (Cambridge, 1985), Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1992); Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA, 1992); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990); Hagen Schulze, The Course of German Nationalism: From Frederick the Great to Bismarck (Cambridge, 1991). Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York, 1991); Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, 1996) Michael Hughes, Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800–1945 (London, 1988). Bernhard Giesen, Intellectuals and the German Nation: Collective Identity in an Axial Age, trans. Nicholas Levis and Amos Weisz (Cambridge, 1998); Jeremy King, “The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond,” in Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present, ed. Maria Bucur and Nancy M. Wingfield (West Lafayette, IN, 2001), 112–152. Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, 2008); Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA, 2006); Jeremy

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an earlier stage: not only were common people often nationally indifferent; the “carriers,” the nationalist elite, also failed to wholeheartedly endorse the project of mono-nationality. Liszt never adhered to one single national loyalty to the exclusion of others. He was nationally indifferent or perhaps more aptly, nationally catholic, or cosmopolitan, in his appreciation of the beauties and contributions of different cultures in Europe. Well into the third stage of the nationalist model, the “nationalization of the masses,” of the 1880s, Liszt retained a cosmopolitan sensibility as he divided his time between Hungary, Germany, and Rome, and sought to contribute to the Hungarian and German nations.32 His strategies to accommodate a cosmopolitan stance provide us with a critical reminder of alternatives to increasingly normative, exclusivist nationalist ideologies. Particular forms of cosmopolitanism are bound by their historical and geographical contexts; the term is not interchangeable with universalism, which envisions one humanity united in timeless values and practices, a conception that can and has at times become hegemonic and imperialistic.33 Cosmopolitanism, rather, practices a “cultivated detachment from restrictive forms of identity,” in particular, national and religious identities, a stance which allows for the appreciation of difference.34 Cosmopolitanism enacts situational identities: its practitioners possess various modes of subjectivity that they adopt to better relate to others or advance their own interests. Historically, a cosmopolitan outlook relied on privilege that afforded its beneficiaries mobility, literacy and agency. The Enlightenment produced a cosmopolitan era associated with the rise of print culture, civil society, and an international

32

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34

King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2005). George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York, 1975); Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1980). In order to avoid the elitist overtones struck by “cosmopolitanism,” scholars have coined the term “transnationalism,” which also can unwittingly reify conceptions of nations into spatial or social entities with fixed and discernable boundaries that can be crossed. Jürgen Osterhammel and Sebastian Conrad, eds., Das Kaiserreich transnational: Deutschland in der Welt, 1871–1914 (Göttingen, 2004); Osterhammel, “Transnationale Gesellschaftsgeschichte: Erweiterung oder Alternative?” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27 (2001): 464–479; Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and James Piscatori, eds., Transnational Religion and Fading States (New York, 1997). Amanda Anderson, “Cosmopolitanism, Universalism, and the Divided Legacies of Modernity,” in Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis, 1998), 265–289, here 266.

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network of scientists. Industrial innovation quickened the pace of publishing, correspondence and travel, making a cosmopolitan lifestyle more possible or desirable for a larger number of people in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.35 The new print culture enabled conceptions of nations to take hold by uniting readers in an imagined community that shared their interests and values.36 While it’s true that print did help to nationalize reading audiences, at the same time, the literate world retained older, nationally indifferent, or cosmopolitan currents, evidenced by the persistence of French as a lingua franca into the early twentieth century, or the fact that readers like Liszt took their news in several languages.37 Cosmopolitanism and nationalism were not necessarily adversarial ideologies: they mutually informed and reinforced each other in a dialectical, ongoing conversation38 among the middle classes, who saw rational, developmental, and even moral connections between them. Patriotism became, for many of its adherents, a step toward a tolerant and united humanity.39

Liszt’s Choices

As he chose to situate himself variously as a performer, composer, patriot, and cleric, Liszt enacted the process of composing a kaleidoscopic subjectivity. When he identified and allied himself with multiple national and cultural collective forms in a syncretic manner, he defied his nationalist contemporaries’ desires for fixed, essentialized loyalties. In seeking a subject status, Liszt employed ideas about nationality, art, and religion to construct useful positions from which to pursue his goals of contributing to society and gaining respect for those contributions. He consistently chose to follow an ethical 35 36 37 38

39

Margaret C. Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, 2006). Benedict Anderson, 67–82. For example, the French-language Budapest-based Gazette de Hongrie, published in the 1880s. For examples in which nationalism and cosmopolitanism are opposed, see Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism (Hanover, NH, 2000), 60–61; Michael Saffle, “Liszt and the Birth of the New Europe: Reflections on Modernity, Wagner, the Oratorio, and ‘Die Legende von [sic] der heiligen Elisabeth’,” in Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe: Music as Mirror of Religious, Political, Cultural, and Aesthetic Transformations (Hillsdale, NY, 2003), 9. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, The Politics of Sociability: Freemasonry and German Civil Society 1840–1918, trans. Tim Lampert (Ann Arbor, 2007), 239, 243.

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course I am calling “artiste oblige,” meaning, the calling of the artist to serve society through self-expression and inspiration. His selfhood was based in his sense that he had a duty as a creative person to foster creativity and appreciation of art in others. This term’s echo of noblesse oblige delineates Liszt’s regard for being of service to others. He consistently chose art and aesthetics as anchors for his subjectivity. His sense of what subjectivity was as it related to his own development was shaped by his early experiences in Vienna and Paris, a sense based in the ancien regime. Like situational identity, the eighteenth-century “ancien regime of identity”, indebted to religious and corporate worldviews, conceptualized issues of difference and specificity in relation to others: this was a form of selfhood that looked outward to collective, malleable categories. These categories were bounded by a “set of assumptions that defined the meaning, significance, and limits of identity” and defined types rather than individuals.40 External markers, like clothing, coats of arms, accents, or hairstyles linked individuals to various corporate bodies or abstractions. These abstractions, standing to represent categories of belonging, were changeable like a suit of clothing, and therefore selves in the early modern world possessed the possibility of multiplicity: that is, one individual could express or embody several selves, all associated with different abstractions or categories. Because external signs defined selves, the senses, especially vision, were the main tool for perceiving and distinguishing individuals. Religious wars and emerging ideas about nation-states, as well as commercialized market relations eroded this sense of individuality.41 Yet the aforementioned plurality of Central Europe and the enactment of situational identities allowed this ancien regime conception to persist well into the nineteenth century for many like Liszt, Central Europeans, musicians, or aristocrats.42 The nineteenth century, through its dismantling of corporate social and political structures, presented new opportunities and difficulties for the individual’s self-definition. Enlightenment visions of merit, emancipation, and progress, joined with new civic freedoms and responsibilities, placed the onus of constructing a self more on the individual than ever before. The individual was now thought to be autonomous and rational, free from inherited traits, defined by a presumed interior depth of personal, essential truth. The new 40 41 42

Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self (New Haven, 1998), xiii; Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980). Wahrman, 168–74. See Timothy Snyder’s The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke (New York, 2010) for a late-nineteenth century aristocrat’s self-fashioning.

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identity regime insisted upon “one self, one culture, one language”.43 Two new ways to articulate and maintain individuality emerged: conquering and civilizing nature through the ownership of property, or personal aesthetic development. While some readers may associate Liszt with market activities such as advertising, self-promotion, and large financial gains from his career, his aversion to the new model of selfhood expressed itself in his consistent rejection of the market as an ethos: he did not purchase property for his own use or investment, and allied himself with aesthetic rather than commercial endeavors. The aesthetic path to selfhood entailed the individual’s creativity stimulating his “heart to act upon itself”, which in turn was thought to produce a self. In seeking to formulate their subjectivity, individuals turned increasingly to the possibility of transcending the ever-changing material world to a more eternal realm. In linking emotional expression and creativity to selfhood, “the individual could claim to have a transcendental source of authority within himself.”44 Inwardness, compassion, and empathy were all key components of this modern identity regime. Liszt’s own process of fashioning subjectivity took place during this shift from ideas about malleable, multifaceted, changing senses of self to a more monolithic identity regime—one that increasingly demanded external verification of an internal dynamic. In the new understanding of selfhood, the older flexibility could be seen as a “masquerade”, one of one many “in a life of ‘intrigue’, a calculated swindle ‘with a view to profit’.”45 Inwardness and essence were to be detected consistently in outward display. Liszt found himself betwixt and between these two forms of self-fashioning as he relied on display, costume and malleability yet claimed to possess essence and inwardness expressed through his compositions and aesthetic cultivation. Yet when Liszt felt threatened or under attack, he did revert to a single, essentialized “truth” about himself: that he was a man. Again and again, in French-, German-, and Magyar-speaking contexts, Liszt asserted his masculinity through rhetoric, gestures, and costume. In this age of fluidity and anxiety, even someone like Liszt, who embraced multiple subjectivities, did adhere 43 James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning: Conrad and Malinowski,” in Reconstructing Individualism, 140–162, here 140; Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2008), 55; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA, 1992); Morse Peckham, Beyond the Tragic Vision: The Quest for Identity in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1962). 44 Luhmann, 317–18. 45 Wahrman, 33.

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to the new gender regime. Whereas the eighteenth century had allowed for gender play, the nineteenth century heralded a new gender economy of rigid categories of masculinity and femininity, in which “outward appearance and inward virtue” were to align.46 The porosity of gender identity, which viewers and listeners detected in Liszt, was not a mutability he chose to embrace.47 Masculinity gained him dignity, authority, and public legitimacy. In expressing his masculine qualities through bravura performances, participation in revolutionary activities, and open, public debate, he asserted his deservingness and valor.48 While musical studies have begun to embrace gender as a category of analysis, to my knowledge very little work at yet has been done on Liszt’s peculiar insistence on his own masculinity in a sustained focus.49 In addition to the category of masculinity, Liszt also identified himself with the nation and music, two abstractions that increasingly were endowed with a subject status of their own. They were thought, particularly by Central Europeans, to possess understanding, expressivity, and destiny.50 Both of these abstractions were central components of an emerging Romantic sensibility, one that left a deep impression on Liszt’s life. The idea of a national identity that informed the development of interior selves posited a particular alternative to Enlightenment universalism. Each nation’s uniqueness, like that of individuals, had its own value; each possessed its own worth. Music was the form through which national identities increasingly were to be conveyed as listeners and critics imbued music itself with emotions and expressive capability.51 When Liszt was born, national ideologies were just beginning to gain articulation among German-speaking thinkers. Indeed, the idea that Liszt possessed a particular national identity did not arise until the late 1830s when he returned to Hungary. His views of nationhood were shaped by Herderian 46 47

48 49 50

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George Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford, 1998), 5. Wahrmann, 40; Isabel V. Hull, Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815 (Ithaca, 1996); Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (New Haven, 1992). Annette F. Timm and Joshua A. Sanborn, Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe: A History from the French Revolution to the Present Day (Oxford, 2007), 47. Jeffrey Kallberg, Chopin at the Boundaries: Gender, Sex, Genre (Cambridge, MA, 1998); Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt. Mark Evan Bonds, Music as Thought: Listening to the Symphony in the Age of Beethoven (Princeton, 2006); Michael P. Steinberg, Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-Century Music (Princeton, 2004); Karen Painter, Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900–1945 (Cambridge, MA, 2007). See M.A. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, 1953), 42–58, 65–83.

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conceptions of Romantic nationalism, that is, a claim that each nation possessed a unique culture that yearned for self-expression via poetry and song, but no one culture was superior to the others. Herder’s relativist stance toward nationality allowed him and his adherents to appreciate cultural differences in a non-chauvinist manner. National identity was a tool to convey aesthetic and social ideas, not political ones. Liszt believed that he could help different nations, like Hungary and Germany, achieve this self-expression. Liszt disregarded the desires of nationalists who sought mono-national loyalty from their adherents and alleged compatriots: for him, multiple loyalties coexisted and complemented each other.52 Liszt was nationally indifferent in that he elected to avoid a single, exclusive allegiance to a single national group. While he did choose to label himself Hungarian, he did not adopt all of the practices and trappings of that putative nationhood that cultural or political nationalists may have wished: Liszt continued to express interest in and admiration for French rulers and politicians; he actively participated in German cultural nation-building projects, and he failed to settle permanently in his homeland. He was a cosmopolitan who wore his adopted nationhood lightly, participating in other nations’ creative processes when it suited him. While this is not the same type of national indifference that nationalist ideologues battled in the rural lower classes, Liszt’s lack of exclusivity nonetheless presented a challenge to nationalists’ values and programs. He struggled to navigate the tensions between universality and particularity, inclusion and exclusion. A generation before Liszt, Central European musicians had commonly embraced a cosmopolitan lifestyle. Conducting, performing and producing music required trained specialist professionals that impresarios could draw from a small, and therefore European-wide supply: it was also a profession in which Jewish and Christian musicians interacted on a regular basis.53 Performers and composers, among them Anton Reicha, Ignacz Moscheles, Ferdinand Paer, Ferdinand Ries, and Friedrich Kalkbrenner all traveled widely for their careers.54 The open and porous nature of eighteenth-century musical 52

See Shay Loya, Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism and The Hungarian-Gypsy Tradition (Rochester, 2011), xi, for a similar formulation. 53 Jürgen Osterhammel, “Herr des Publikums, Diener der Kunst,” in Europa und die Europäer, Quellen und Essays zur modernen europäischen Geschichte, ed. Rüdiger Hohls, Iris Schröder, and Hannes Siegrist (Stuttgart, 2005), 47–50; Lois W. Banner, “Biography as History,” The American Historical Review 14 no. 3 (June 2009): 579–86, here 583; Ther, 20. 54 Ignacz Moscheles, Recent Music and Musicians as Described in the Diaries and Correspondence of Ignacz Moscheles, ed. A.D. Coleridge (New York, 1889); Ludwig Überfeldt, Ferdinand Ries’ Jugendentwicklung (Bonn, 1915); Ferdinand Ries, Ferdinand Ries: Briefe und Dokumente, ed. Cecil Hill (Bonn, 1982); Hans Nautsch, Friedrich Kalkbrenner:

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life reflected the ancien regime of identity; because these musicians were in many ways a pre-national cohort, they generally did not face the same issues of identification and subjectivity that Liszt confronted.55 Ries was born in Bonn, then relocated to Vienna, traveling and living in London before settling in the German lands. Moscheles was born in Prague, trained in Vienna and then lived many years in London before settling in Leipzig. Paer moved from his native Parma to Paris via Vienna and Dresden. Anton Reicha, Liszt’s theory instructor, moved from Prague to several German-speaking cities to settle in Paris. By the time of Liszt’s early adulthood, the centrality of travel in a musician’s life, as well as his affect, comportment, and the significance of his travels changed with the increasing importance of national markers of identity.56 Much as print culture did, cosmopolitan musicians taught people the meaning of nationality.57 In 1839, Moscheles observed in his diary, “German and French artists . . . the latter with faultless gloves, meet at our house with English friends, music forming a bridge of communication between the different nationalities.”58 Moscheles saw distinct national characteristics in these artists which music could transcend. For Liszt, who deployed nationalist rhetoric and claimed national subjective stances, nationality existed, but did not constitute the definitive power over self or identity that others, including Moscheles purported, a stance which became more difficult the longer he lived, as nationalism made deeper inroads into society and culture. Nor did Liszt follow the linear path sketched by the previous generation: Liszt’s travels took a more circular shape as he addressed his various national commitments in a more overlapping fashion, cycling between them rather than completing and discarding them. In writing a historical biography of a musician, I remind readers that politics, science and trade were not the only realms of plurality, borrowing and exchange in Central Europe: the world of high culture, and art music in particular, was one of the prime sites of cosmopolitanism throughout the nineteenth century.

55

56 57 58

Wirkung und Werk (Hamburg, 1983); Ernst Bücken, Anton Reicha: Sein Leben und seine Kompositionen (Munich, 1912). Celia Applegate, “Music in Place: Perspectives on Art Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” in Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930, eds. David Blackbourn and David Retallack (Toronto, 2007), 39–59, here 51; Sigrid Wiesmann, Vienna: Baston of Conservatism,” in The Early Romantic Era, 84–108, here 87. Applegate, 51. Ibid., 54–55. Moscheles, 254.

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In addition to his profession, Liszt’s Catholic faith, as well as the older sensibility about self tied to a corporate order, supported his cosmopolitan selfunderstanding as well as his conviction about art’s redemptive power. Religion served as another locus of potential cultural exchange, linguistic intermixing and national indeterminacy. Catholic universalism, transcendence and spirituality embedded Liszt’s cosmopolitan and aesthetic sensibilities. The Church, while an institution rather than an abstraction, provided a context for Liszt’s theatricality, expressivity and generosity. The Catholic faith also fostered institutions, practices, and beliefs that cut across state boundaries, yet took particular, local forms. Liszt’s Catholic sensibility, acquired at a very young age, informed many of his other projects. Liszt consistently identified himself with radical reformist Catholics who sought to reconnect the Church with its parishioners and to humanize and spiritualize religious experience. Such reformers also often focused on particular religious traditions grounded in regional cultures; Liszt’s Catholicism in this way continued his project of embracing humanistic universalism while also focusing on purportedly national particularities as he forged alliances with other believers from France, Hungary, and the German and Italian lands. He saw a particular role for himself in reforming church music, which he hoped would in turn inspire spiritual reform in his listeners. Liszt’s religious activities often cut across state and confessional divisions: his devout cosmopolitan Catholicism highlights the flexibility and syncretism of the Church as well as its involvement in national questions in the last half of the nineteenth century as it, too, sought to come to terms with new identities and allegiances. Liszt’s modes of subjectivity focused on expression and transcendence. He was the epitome of the Romantic artist, sensual, sensitive to the point of impressionability, theatrical, and charismatic. Inspired by his sense of Catholic and artistic obligation, he also gave generously of his time and money, donating to charitable organizations and offering free instruction, and remained modest regarding his own creative abilities. His charisma captivated audiences, inspired countless students, and created lifelong friendships and admiration. These consistent personality traits, coupled with Liszt’s commitment to a cosmopolitan outlook of transcendence, found their greatest expressions in his dedication to music and to national cultural development.

Biographical Overture

In order to fully explore Liszt’s subjective choices, chapters are organized around those stances, even when they coincided, as they did from the mid1850s until the end of Liszt’s life. While this study charts a roughly chrono-

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logical structure, Liszt’s travels, multiple residences and overlapping projects which shaped his Romantic circuitous journey make following a timeline quite challenging. The biographical information presented below, familiar to many readers, will acquaint others with the major events of Liszt’s life. Liszt was born in the village of Raiding, then part of Hungary in the Habsburg Empire, on 22 October 1811. His father Adam Liszt, an estate administrator for the Esterházys, had given up a musical career in his youth. He recognized his son’s musical talent quickly after hearing the boy improvise and sing themes from a concert they had attended. Several years of piano study produced Liszt’s first public recitals. After successful performances in Pressburg, the seat of the Hungarian Parliament, a group of six aristocrats decided to fund the young performer’s training in Vienna.59 Liszt and his father traveled to the imperial capital to study with Carl Czerny, a respected pedagogue and composer who had been Beethoven’s pupil. Liszt studied with Czerny for two years until his father decided to take him to Paris to further his studies and launch his performance career in 1823. After being denied entrance to the Conservatory there, Liszt undertook lessons with private instructors and began salon concerts, becoming the darling of his aristocratic audiences. He also began touring France and expressed a growing dislike for the performing life. His father died four years later, at which point Liszt’s mother moved to Paris. Liszt continued performing and teaching; he experienced his first (disastrous) love affair, dropped from public life, and newspapers reported of his death. The July Revolution of 1830 drew Liszt out of his depression. The politics in the street energized him and enlivened his Romantic and theatrical sensibilities. He began composing and performing again. Audiences feted Liszt in salons and performance halls. He competed for public acclaim with such virtuosi as Sigismond Thalberg and Henri Herz. His presence at salons introduced him to many important Romantic figures, and he began to educate himself, reading French works of philosophy and social commentaries. It was during these years that he began his literary activity, writing articles for musical journals. He continued this the rest of his life, writing cultural criticism, publicity pieces, and ethnographic works. Liszt also attended Saint-Simonian meetings, befriended the Abbé Lammenais, and involved himself with other radical groups during the revolution of 1830. In her salon, Liszt met Marie d’Agoult, and they embarked on a love affair. In d’Agoult Liszt was attracted to an educated, literary woman of aristocratic background who was willing to flout convention for him. He and d’Agoult fled her husband, living first in Switzerland and then in Venice. Their 59

A note on place names: I will use the names of cities that Liszt himself used, most often the German names.

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relationship produced three children, Blandine, Cosima, and Daniel. The liaison with d’Agoult was finished by 1844. D’Agoult went on to forge a successful literary career, writing under the pseudonym Daniel Stern. Liszt toured Europe between 1838 and 1847, attracting an international following, composing piano pieces and sketching larger orchestral works. In 1839 he performed in Vienna, returning to the city for the first time since his studies with Czerny. There, he performed benefit concerts for the victims of the floods in Pest and proclaimed himself a patriot of Hungary. He toured the country in 1840 and again in 1846, where he was adopted as a national hero. Liszt traveled to Spain, England, and Russia in this period, winning audience acclaim and some grumbling from music critics, who thought he was all flash and no taste. While touring the Russian Empire he met the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, who became his lover, co-author and life companion until he died. During his tours of the German lands in the 1840s Liszt composed nationalist choral works in response to the Rhine crisis and also made huge donations to the erection of the Beethoven monument in Bonn as well as for the restoration of the cathedral in Cologne. In 1841 Liszt performed in Weimar, to the delight of the local court. The Grand Ducal heir, Carl Alexander, proposed that he take up an appointment as Kapellmeister (court conductor). In response, Liszt ended his touring career in 1847 and moved to Weimar in 1848, accepting the Grand Duke’s offer, bringing Sayn-Wittgenstein with him. Liszt’s time in Weimar was one of the most lasting in his life, and was very important in his shift from performer to composer. While in Weimar, Liszt composed his most ambitious works, including his twelve symphonic poems and the Faust and Dante symphonies, as well as the church music that increasingly occupied his time. In order to support his musical aims, he took to music criticism, publishing several books on contemporary composers, and making frequent contributions to his friend Franz Brendel’s publication, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Liszt and Brendel gathered like-minded musicians and intellectuals around them in Weimar to foster progressive German music, consciously claiming the mantle of Goethe, Schiller, and other literary luminaries who had been active in Weimar fifty years earlier. He also participated in the small town’s nationalist projects: the years Liszt spent in Weimar were a decade of numerous commemorations for national figures, from poets to dukes. Liszt’s Weimar years were also ones of devotion to teaching: he established master classes and students from all over the Western world flocked to his home to learn from him. Liszt met Richard Wagner in 1841 and admired the composer’s early operas. He became Wagner’s champion and was responsible for Lohengrin’s 1850

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premiere in Weimar. He published introductory pieces to Wagner’s works in French music journals, which were then translated for German readers. Liszt also supported Wagner financially and aesthetically while the latter was exiled in Switzerland because of his participation in the Dresden 1848 revolution. Their friendship lasted for decades. Liszt’s daughter Cosima married his pupil, the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow and later began an affair with Wagner, eventually marrying him and converting to Protestantism. This led Liszt to break his relationship with them for five years. They finally reconciled, and Liszt supported Wagner’s Bayreuth project. Wagner died in 1883. Beginning in the mid-1850s, Liszt’ church music gained the attention of Hungarian clergy and nationalists. His oratorios and Masses became important components of nationalist-religious festivals in Hungary as leaders there sought to gain autonomy from the Habsburg regime. While visiting Hungary for one such festival, Liszt also visited the Franciscan monastery in Pest, where he decided to become a lay brother in 1857, expressing his commitment to Christian ideals and charity. After a scandalous 1859 performance of one of his protégé Peter Cornelius’s operas in Weimar, an engineered display of public disapproval of Liszt’s musical projects, Liszt retired in disgust as court conductor and left Weimar in 1861, planning to marry Sayn-Wittgenstein. She had reason to believe the Vatican would grant her a divorce. For various reasons, this did not take place and Liszt entered the Franciscan Lower Orders in 1865, residing in Rome. While visiting Hungary in 1869, Liszt was swept up in the church-state conflict of Italian unification, and after the Pope declared himself “Prisoner in the Vatican,” Liszt remained in Hungary for eleven months, as he deemed it unsafe to attempt a return to Rome under such strained conditions. Liszt’s visits to Hungary included an involvement in nationalist politics. He was connected to three countries, Germany, Italy, and Hungary, which gained nation-state status in the 1860s and 70s. Liszt wrote the Coronation Mass for the ceremony when Franz Joseph accepted the Hungarian Crown as part of the Compromise of 1867. He paid avid attention to political and diplomatic news, expressing admiration for Napoleon III and Giuseppe Mazzini, and dislike for Otto von Bismarck. Under pressure from both Carl Alexander and friends in Hungary, he settled into his “threefold life,” in 1869, dividing his time between Rome, Weimar and Budapest every year. In Rome he composed piano pieces and church music, performing in elite salons and socializing with high church officials. In Hungary he helped found the Music Conservatory in 1875 and taught classes there for several months each year, in addition to serving as an informal cultural ambassador and composing musical works for important state and church occasions.

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In Weimar, he continued to participate in nationalist projects, attending meetings of the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein (ADMV), which he helped to found in 1861. He died in Bayreuth in 1886. Because no agreement could be reached and Liszt’s own wishes were not completely clear, his grave remains there, at the city cemetery.

chapter 1

The Virtuoso Prophet Looking back on the start of his performing career in France, Liszt compared Parisian haute society and his early exposure to it to a den of wolves into which his father “threw me, the poor child, into the salons of a shining society, which labeled me with the fawning nickname ‘the small prodigy.’ From then on I experienced an early melancholy and only with revulsion did I bear the badly concealed subordination of the artist to the servant class.”1 Liszt’s anger and resentment had roots in his experiences with his audiences in Paris and Central European cities. The early training Liszt received in Vienna gave him a technical foundation and familiarity with the repertoire, yet the young performer found during his 1820s European tours that audiences valued aspects of his performance that he himself scorned. The early years of Liszt’s career established some lifelong dreams and obstacles to achieving them. Liszt’s longing for creative expression and independent thought clashed with his status as a virtuoso.2 Liszt’s 1823 arrival in Paris coincided with an influx of other Central Europeans; the generation before his had fled the instabilities of the Napoleonic Wars, and Liszt’s own cohort left Vienna for better opportunities in Paris, where Liszt’s search for a subjective stance and true artistry began. He experimented with his performance techniques and style as well as his self-presentation. The subjectivities he started to develop during his early adulthood in Paris focused primarily on aesthetic and religious categories, with nationality coming later in his process of self-fashioning. This chapter explores the central problems of performance and artistry, alienation and authenticity which shaped all of Liszt’s later subjective stances. His technical mastery and charisma allowed him to bridge the sizeable gap between the classical virtuosity in which he was trained and Romantic performance style. The early nineteenth century was characterized by the twin processes of art’s commercialization and sacralization, as well as a shift from a neoclassicist to a Romantic epistemology, especially in the arts; these aesthetic transformations foregrounded individual creativity and satisfaction of an unknown listener over adherence to inherited values or displays to please 1 Franz Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 4, no. 7 (12 February 1837): 54. 2 David Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770–1848. Berkeley, 2002, 11.

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a particular patron.3 Liszt’s own career and yearnings encapsulated the apparently contradictory forces of production for an anonymous market and individual expression, yielding his early selection of subjective stances—the virtuoso and Romantic prophet. These subjectivities, like the aesthetic transition taking place in Europe, started with ancien regime conceptions about selfhood and its constitution through display and therefore, its malleability, which came into conflict with modern ideas of subjectivity, to be formed through inwardness and possession of a fixed essence. Liszt’s aesthetic and subjective choices mutually informed and reinforced each other. In order to become a successful virtuoso Liszt acted as a cultural entrepreneur, that is, he organized and managed the enterprise of presenting piano music concerts, taking full responsibility for his own success with great initiative and risk, and in the process altering the place of music in society. His fame was as much due to his carefully groomed subjective stance as it was his musical ability, and that stance was of a peculiarly early-nineteenth century variety: as a virtuoso Liszt operated in both the aristocratic and bourgeois worlds and helped to create a new elite culture in Europe. He commercialized music as a market-driven form of entertainment, while simultaneously seeking to sacralize art as a new force of social and cultural cohesion.4 His subjective stance as a virtuoso allowed him to cross aesthetic boundaries between ancien regime display and modern expressivity. Yet this stance also undermined his artistic and creative sensibilities, establishing an unbearable status and aesthetic tension within him. In order to resolve his discomfort at operating in such an obviously materialistic, competitive and market-driven world, Liszt turned to Romanticism as an aesthetic and social system; his virtuosity evoked its opposite number, artistry. Liszt’s Romanticism, which manifested most importantly in his longing to be considered a great artist and redeemer-servant rather than simply a virtuosic performer, born in his years in Paris, was his most enduring and consistent subjective stance, one that subsumed his later strategic choices.

The Changing Musical World

During the late eighteenth century, music was the central form that aristocratic patronage of the arts supported; musicians played a central role in 3 T.C.W. Blanning, “The Commercialization and Sacralization of European Culture in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe (Oxford, 1996), 120– 147; Abrams, 17–25, 65, 89, 159. 4 Blanning, 137.

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providing a pleasing environment for their patrons.5 These artists were held to very specific aesthetic standards, as they represented the power and distinction of the nobility.6 Courts and churches used music in order to awe audiences, to impress them with institutional might; opera was a favored vehicle of the state to express dominance and subjection.7 Ancien regime aesthetics sought to mimic nature in order to demonstrate mastery of it. This cultural world was one of horizontal breadth, a cosmopolitan one that embraced aristocrats across Europe with a set of shared aesthetics, language, and comportment. Its center was Vienna, which attracted performers and composers from all over the Habsburg lands. This personal, elite support for music began to decline in both Vienna and Paris because of the instability and high costs of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars that emptied aristocratic coffers. The upheavals of the era also spurred a sizable emigration from Central Europe to Paris as musicians and other performers sought stability in which to pursue their careers.8 The cosmopolitan world of personal relationships was gradually supplanted by commercial, competitive, and increasingly national markets. The emergence of print as an inexpensive vehicle of communication, the increased production of musical instruments, and the rise of the bourgeoisie as a semi-leisured class hastened the turn towards the commercialization of music. These trends led to a veritable explosion of musical life in Paris in the 1820s so that by the 1830s Paris was the musical capital of the world, a replacement for Vienna, which long was associated with an older, more courtly set of aesthetics and comportment.9 The musical world was not only changing in social and economic terms: repertoires and performance styles shifted away from the representation of power or imitation of nature to more individualized expression and enjoyment. The aesthetic shift was accompanied by a shift from vocal to instrumental music.10 The erosion of patronage and the heightened value placed on music as an art form created a new emphasis on education, discernment, and training. 5 6

7 8 9

10

Rebecca Gates-Coon, The Landed Estates of the Esterházy Princes: Hungary During the Reforms of Maria Theresia and Joseph II (Baltimore, MD, 1994), 159–161. Alexander Ringer, “The Rise of Urban Musical Life between the Revolutions, 1789–1848,” in The Early Romantic Era: Between Revolutions: 1789 and 1848, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1990), 8; William G. Atwood, The Parisian Worlds of Frédéric Chopin (New Haven, CT, 1999), 160. Steinberg, 12–13. Wiesmann, 88. Jean Mongrédien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism 1789–1830, trans. Sylvain Frémaux (Portland, OR, 1996); Peter Bloom, ed., Music in Paris in the EighteenThirties, vol. IV of Musical Life in 19th-Century France (Stuyvesant, NY, 1987). Ringer, 7.

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Musicians were not trained in the tradition of the crafts trades as often as in the past, but rather gained a more academic and theoretically grounded expertise in the classrooms of the growing number of new music conservatories.11 Such education also offered greater specialization and a higher status for its beneficiaries. During the late eighteenth century, composers and performers had participated in the “underdetermination of the score,” that is, of loosening interpretive and performative aesthetic values from their social function and genre.12 Musicians became more responsible for the interpretation of the music, at least through the mid-nineteenth century, when the canonization of music led to a high value placed on fidelity to the composer’s markings. The greater responsibility placed on musicians was part of a larger process in which art and music gained new social and political import. During the late Enlightenment writers and musicians in the German lands heatedly debated music’s aesthetic and moral value and slowly adopted music as a moralizing and improving vehicle that would legitimate their newly adrift profession, and would also serve bourgeois interests of challenging aristocratic culture. Anton Reicha, one of Liszt’s instructors in Paris, was a key bridge figure between Viennese Classicism and Romanticism. Reicha emphasized music’s power to move listeners emotionally and called on young musicians to educate themselves in order to more deeply reach audiences. Liszt likely absorbed Reicha’s ideas about music’s elevating potential and the artist’s duty to fulfill it through their lessons.13 This view of music’s power to develop taste and ethics blossomed during the Romantic era, during which it was valued as a source of expressivity, individuality, and transcendence: the inwardness nurtured by listening to music (or performing it) could allow the listener access to her true self.14 Émigrés carried these views of music to France, where music never gained as much moral power or strong national identification as it had done in Central Europe.15

11

12 13 14 15

Jim Samson, “The Musical Work and Nineteenth-Century History,” The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, 2001), 3–28, here 16; Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, “Germans as the ‘People of Music’: Genealogy of an Identity,” in Music and German National Identity (Chicago, 2002), 7. Samson, 11. Anton Reicha, Unbekannte und Unveröffentlichte Schriften vol. I, ed. Hervé Audéon, Alban Ramaut, Herbert Schneider (Hildesheim, 2011), 17, 132, 225. Richard Taruskin, Music in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2010), 73. For more on cross-cultural interactions see Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, “Deutsch-Französischer Kulturtransfer im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” Francia 13 (1985): 502–10.

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The emergence of a relatively free press and higher literacy rates played a vital role in making art music more accessible to commoners while also elevating its social status. For example, the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (AMZ) of Leipzig, founded in 1798, addressed an educated audience in matters of music aesthetics, performance, and education, establishing itself as the standard of authority and quality in music criticism. In France, music was not to play such a vital role in shaping national consciousness, nor in providing the middle classes a legitimizing cultural undertaking. The Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris (RGMP), France’s first music periodical, was founded a full thirty years after the AMZ. Its circulation grew at a respectable rate, however, at precisely the era of Liszt’s virtuoso career: in 1836, the publisher ran 600 copies per issue (compared to 10,000 of the Journal des Débats); ten years later, the publication run was 875.16 Music publishers began to print scores commercially in the early nineteenth century, making it possible for the middle classes to play at home; opera and orchestral scores were often transcribed for a solo or duet piano performance. Like the music press, publishers’ catalogues grew enormously in this period.17 These scores were often the only way large-scale orchestral works reached provincial towns and cities. Liszt’s piano transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies, for example, represent his agenda in introducing audiences to new, excellent music, and thereby educating them.18 In addition, professional musicians themselves relied heavily on the printing of their own scores for sale as well as press publicity for their livelihoods. Music publishers took an interest in new concert careers of the burgeoning group of virtuosi, for their sales climbed after a performance of any score. New performance styles, repertoires and venues attracted new and different audiences. Starting in the 1820s, Parisian grand opera faced competition for audiences from virtuoso concerts and those of Viennese classical repertoire, two kinds of performance from the German lands that appealed to different sections of the bourgeoisie. These new alternatives to grand opera highlighted “the division between [the forms of music, which] became more than just an esthetic dispute . . . , for the two worlds had distinct publics and institutions

16

17

18

John Rink, “The Profession of Music,” The Cambridge History, 55–86, here 81; Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 1834–1880 (Cambridge, 1995). William Weber, “Mass Culture and the Reshaping of European Musical Taste, 1770–1870,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 8, no. 1 (June 1977): 5–22, here 10. See Jonathan Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber (Cambridge, 2012).

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and pursued radically different musical activities.”19 Because they had different audiences, each form of music took on a class inflection of its own. The aesthetic and social were inextricably intertwined.20 For example, salonnière and writer Delphine de Girardin characterized bourgeois music audiences into two camps: “gay” versus “serious” salons. The former sought to absorb the privileges and tastes of the aristocracy, meaning they frequented the opera, and hosted fashionable virtuosi in salons. Countess Marie d’Agoult, Liszt’s mistress, described the salons of ambitious hostesses who had no real interest in art for itself (Girardin’s “gay” listeners): The great maestro (Rossini) would sit at the piano all evening, accompanying the singers. He usually added a virtuoso instrument player, [Henri] Herz or [Ignacz] Moscheles, . . . or the wonder of the musical world, little Liszt. They would all arrive together at the appointed time, by a side door, would all sit together round the piano, and then all leave together, after having received the compliments of the host and of various musical dilettantes.21 One can see that old habits had not yet disappeared from 1820s Paris, as these performers were treated as Mozart and Beethoven had been by their patrons some thirty years prior. Music critic and historian Joseph d’Ortigue commented on the aristocracy’s cultural habits and social assumptions, “they admire talent; they research it, encourage it, applaud it, and recompense it. But they recompense it because they consider talent a thing that should be paid with money. A noble has never given his daughter to an artist.”22 The boundaries between patron and entertainer remained firmly fixed. Girardin’s “serious” camp was indebted to German ideas about music’s expressivity and capability to improve its listeners and avidly attended director Luigi Cherubini’s Beethoven concerts at the Conservatory.23 Such listeners were in the process of constructing a new social, political and aesthetic code of order and legitimacy for themselves, and aesthetics were used as the bonding 19 20 21 22 23

Weber, 20. Gramit, 3. See also James M. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 23. Mongrédien, 248. See also Peter Quennell, Genius in the Drawing-Room: The Literary Salon in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1980). Joseph d’Ortigue, “Études Biographiques, Frantz Listz” [sic] RGMP 2, no. 24 (14 June 1836): 200. Ralph P. Locke, Music, Musicians, and Saint-Simonians (Chicago, 1986), 59.

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glue: taste served as a political arbiter.24 Their emphasis on respectability took musical form in a new esteem for instrumental music performed in concert halls rather than in salons or opera houses. Such music was to be attended with one’s full attention; chattering, eating, and flirting were no longer acceptable concert behaviors. The new code of silent appreciation of the music signaled a radical change from the manners of the aristocracy and its internalization served to bolster bourgeois social and political claims.25 This code did not gain wholesale adoption at virtuosic concerts: there, quiet would indicate a total disapproval of the performance.26 The early decades of the nineteenth century, the beginning of Liszt’s musical career, were an era of musical expansion beyond the court and church. The spread of print culture, of more leisure time, and of a new middle-class ethos opened new possibilities for musical careers. The idea that music had power to express original and authentic feelings as well as improve audiences also signaled a shift away from an older aesthetic of representation of power and mimicry of nature to that of inspiration. Yet technological innovations and social change also created a shift in the meaning of an ancien regime figure who, according to music critics, epitomized mimicry and the worst aspects of a new commercial culture.

Virtuosi and Audiences

The cultural, social, and economic changes noted above contributed to the burgeoning number of piano virtuosi. The term, applied in the mid-1600s to scientific amateurs, had shifted in the mid-1700s to mean “person with great skill,” particularly in music. Because they constituted a new professional class, virtuosi, as a cultural institution, articulated a “tangle of attitudes” toward art, social class, labor, and gender roles.27 An 1806 AMZ article stated that “given today’s conditions, no artist is more often required to live among and with people of all kinds from the distinguished and rich classes than the musician— especially the practical musician, the virtuoso; but none, as a rule, fits less 24 Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford, 1990), 27; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA, 1984). Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther is an early literary example. 25 James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, 1995), 228–236. 26 Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (Oxford, 2008), 85–86. 27 Cook, 121.

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well among them than he does. Very rarely does he enjoy an upbringing in his early years for the finer world.”28 As a “practical” musician who had to think about the bottom line, the virtuoso was a figure caught between the old aristocratic world of patronage, and the new market-driven world of bourgeois art.29 Virtuosi also straddled aesthetic value systems: they were bound to the old world of mimetic aesthetics through their performance of others’ compositions, yet their expressivity and their own compositions were products of Romantic artist-centrism. Virtuosi had long been favorites of the Viennese music scene. As the Habsburgs boasted few national heroes, musicians often filled that role of public celebrity, beginning as early as the 1760s with the child prodigy Mozart.30 The generation that preceded Liszt could boast of such stars as Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Moscheles, and Czerny and continued to interest itself in child performers (among them Liszt himself). Virtuosi performed in aristocratic salons as well as on public stages. These performers were famous for their technical virtuosity and brilliant style as well as for their deferential comportment and manners. Their repertoire was intended principally as a vehicle to display technique, as a spectacle; virtuosi cultivated the stile brilliante, which combined bravura display with lyrical thematicism.31 Much of the music performed, such as variations, fantasias, rondos on operatic tunes, and etudes, was already familiar to audiences. With their repetitions of principal melodies and changing accompaniments, cadenzas, or embellishments, variations and etudes allowed performers to showcase particular technical skills such as octaves, passagework, or arpeggios. Technological innovations also spurred the development of flashy piano concerts. Piano makers greatly strengthened and expanded the pianoforte in the early nineteenth century to feature seven- or eight-octave keyboards. Double-escapement key action was patented by Érard in 1821. The key beds, however, remained fairly shallow so that the action compared to modern pianos was much lighter, allowing the performer much more power. Not only was piano design improved, but also more pianos were built. Along with Streicher 28

29 30 31

“Bemerkungen aus dem Tagebuche eines praktischen Tonkünstlers,” AMZ 8 (1806): 705. The author uses the term “Musiker” for musician rather than the “Tonkünstler,” literally, tone-artist, of the article’s title. The latter term had higher status. The author’s word choice reveals the lower status of the virtuoso than other musicians. Marc Pincherle, The World of the Virtuoso (New York, 1963); Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in the Age of Revolution (Berkeley, 1998). Alice M. Hanson, “Czerny’s Vienna,” in Beyond the Art, 181. Rink, 67.

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and Graf in Vienna, other German firms were producing 60,000–70,000 pianos yearly by the 1880s. Even though the French fell behind these rates, there were at least four major piano manufacturers in Paris, among them Chopin’s piano maker Pleyel, and Liszt’s, Érard; in 1830 production rates mounted to 8,000 and by 1860 21,000.32 The new piano was remarkable for its range and ability to reproduce instrumental scores and textures: Liszt capitalized on the instrument’s new capabilities, becoming famous for his orchestral, full-bodied tone. Compared to the pianoforte, the piano commanded attention and could be used as a solo instrument. The convergence of technique and commercialization coincided in piano making: Liszt’s long relationship with Érard amounted to branding, and he relied on his Érards so heavily he brought them along or arranged to have them shipped while touring. The violinist Niccolò Paganini epitomized the newly imagined Romantic virtuoso par excellence. Indeed, Paganini created this profession almost singlehandedly with his wildly successful European tours of the late 1820s. His brilliant displays of technique and his cadaverous appearance (caused by mercury and opium treatments for syphilis) inspired rumors of pacts with the devil. His vicious bow attacks broke strings in performances, and he would continue playing a piece on three, two, or sometimes even only one remaining string. Audiences often viewed Paganini as a supernatural being or a technical genius. The visual aspects of Paganini’s performance were central to his persona and to the concert experience but also contributed to scorn among music lovers: “visual quackery denoted a . . . vulgar, and illiterate way of representing and transmitting equally inferior” artistry.33 The spectacle of Paganini’s performances forced audiences to watch him, rather than each other, as had been customary during the ancien regime. A visual component to musical performance, present in opera, now appeared in instrumental music as well, garnering criticism from the serious music crowd that such spectacles detracted from music’s aural, spiritual nature and debased a potentially elevating experience. Such critics of virtuosity saw the shift away from patronage to the market as a dangerous opportunity for virtuosi to emancipate themselves from one master, but one which forced them to risk pandering to the lowest common listening denominator. Paganini’s European tours and Parisian concerts of the early 1830s, as well as a larger audience base, led to a boom in piano performances. Paris became a magnet for performers seeking their fortunes from all of Europe; their 32 33

Blanning, 126. Barbara Maria Stafford, “Conjuring: How the Virtuoso Romantic Learned from the Enlightened Charlatan,” Art Journal 52, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 29.

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numbers swelled with the addition of refugees seeking asylum in Paris from the failed revolutions of 1830 in the Russian empire. Liszt was but one of many foreigners in the French capital. An anonymous Parisian bemoaned the large numbers of “Germans, Belgians, Swedes, Danes, Poles and Italians on a quest for celebrity” whose “idée fixe . . . of daytime thoughts, of dreams at night, is to give concerts.”34 The cult of the virtuoso was powerful indeed: there were at least twenty piano virtuosi alone in Paris, many from Central Europe, all competing with each other. The principal arenas in which these pianists contended for public acclaim were the Conservatory, and the Salles Pleyel and Érard. In 1841 Heinrich Heine complained, “one comes close to drowning in music here. There is scarcely a house in Paris in which one can save oneself as in an ark from this Biblical flood of music.”35 The flashy style of the virtuosi, however, was associated with the ancien regime’s system of representation and dominance, the system the middle classes sought to alter. Modernity, the realm of bourgeois culture and values, claimed to emancipate the subject from older forms of power, be they political or religious.36 The bourgeois notion of individual selfhood was firmly grounded in the autonomous subject, rational and respectable. This autonomous subject entered the public realm to pursue his self-interest. In engaging in work, the liberal subject chose freely of his own will what he would do to earn money. Autonomy and emancipation characterized not only the political, but also the economic realm, where effort and result were thought to align fairly seamlessly. The autonomous subject could become, in another century’s phrase, fully self-actualized. As the distinction between the “work of art and the commodity were . . . erased, . . . the cultural context was to be source of differentiation and aesthetic distinction.”37 This widespread concern about authenticity functioned as a coping mechanism to address the tumult of modernization, in which change occurred so rapidly that it became difficult to discern a person’s or idea’s origins.38 While Romantic aesthetics downplayed rationality, restraint and judgment in favor of expression, passion, and natural genius, they too valued authenticity: for Romantics, universal truths as purported to exist in 34 35

36 37 38

“Des Artistes Étrangers,” RGMP 3, no. 19 (2 November 1836): 172. Heinrich Heine, “Musikalische Saison in Paris,” in Zeitungsberichte über Musik und Malerei, ed. Michael Mann (Frankfurt, 1964), 114–15; for a biography, see Jeffrey L. Sammons, Heinrich Heine: A Modern Biography (Princeton, 1979). Steinberg, 12–13. Mary Gluck, “Theorizing the Cultural Roots of the Bohemian Artist,” Modernism/ Modernity 7, no. 3 (2000): 373. Cook, 27, 160.

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Enlightenment thinking were highly suspect; their ideal was personal truth, sincerity and authenticity of the individual’s beliefs and actions.39 In this Romanticism shared a premise with liberalism that the human mind was a creative, active force that fashioned its own experiences, rather than simply serving as a reflective mirror. On an aesthetic level, the emphasis on authenticity deriving from an active, creative mind was an attempt to revitalize the mechanistic universe theorized by Descartes, Hobbes, and others.40 The agency with which the individual was endowed by both bourgeois and Romantic precepts challenged ancien regime mimetic aesthetics and social stability undergirded by rigid social classifications. Liszt’s composer contemporaries, especially Schumann and Berlioz, saw virtuosi and their performances as threats to music’s newly won status as art. They were concerned to protect this fragile prestige: all were aware that the generation of Mozart and Beethoven had used servants’ entrances and composed commissioned pieces for powerful patrons. Composers jealously protected their perceived freedom and autonomy, in part through vigorous use of their pens. This generation believed the most pressing threat to the art they produced was the very forces that had made their careers possible: the development of a public sphere and market for music.41 Schumann most strikingly presented the struggle to define high art in opposition to popular music. In 1833 he founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, a music journal that in time proved to be Liszt’s staunchest champion, to protest against declining standards of performance and composition. When Schumann took on editorship of the journal in 1835, he set out to combat degraded musical taste in the German lands. To Schumann, the most telling symptom of this degradation was the cult of the virtuoso. Schumann’s criticism of the virtuosi was founded on their lack of musical innovation. He charged that most of their repertoire was based on preexisting music, particularly operatic arias. The mimetic and mechanical aspect of virtuosity clashed with Schumann’s Romantic sensibility. In a series of reviews of piano music, Schumann complained that “one must gulp down the most hackneyed Italian tunes.” He hated the “botched amateurism” and the “wretchedness” of such compositions.42 Berlioz also loathed empty compositions that he suspected were written for the titillation of the public. Berlioz named undiscerning listeners “Romans” 39 40 41 42

Taruskin, 62. Abrams, 65. Gramit, 85. Robert Schumann, “Variationen für Pianoforte,” NZfM 5, no. 16 (23 August 1836): 63. Schumann’s hostility to Italian music in general is quite well known.

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and stated that this group was composed of those who “applaud professionally, vulgarly known as claqueurs, throw bouquets, and generally those entrepreneurs of success and enthusiasm.” The composer proceeded to construct a detailed taxonomy of claqueurs, including glove-wearing dandies to violinists who tapped the bodies of their violins with their bows.43 Jacques Barzun noted in his translation of Les Soirées de l’Orchestre that the term “Roman” might also be associated with the public who applauded the gladiators at the Colosseum.44 Such a public would be interested in spectacle, violence and entertainment, rather than serious or emotional art. In his memoirs Berlioz bitterly remarked that piano virtuosi had a much easier time earning money than did composers of orchestral works. He accused the virtuosi, [you] who do not write anything but for the orchestra of your own two hands, who pass by the large halls and choruses, have less to fear from contact with bourgeois mores [than other types of composers]. . . . If you were to jot down some brilliant nonsense, publishers would gild it and fight over it; but if you have the misfortune to develop a serious idea in a large form, then you can be sure of the outcome. The work will remain with you, or, if it’s published, no one will buy it.45 Berlioz and other Romantics believed that virtuosi could not be important composers. They were creatures created by and for the market. Virtuosi’s entertainment power and their public venue both empowered and threatened the new ethos of emancipation and authenticity, and their acts of showmanship both titillated and repelled audiences. They were selfmade men who exhibited their talents through technical skill while promoting themselves through the press and concerts.46 Yet this very technical skill subverted virtuosi as self-made men: their sheer technical brilliance invoked mechanistic metaphors and virtuosi were seen as ghosts in the machine. They were also creatures of the market: they promoted themselves through salon performances, hoping to gain wealthy students, as well as public concerts that could generate sheet-music sales.47 These practices clashed with the quest to elevate music’s status through education and create a refined sense of taste. 43 44

Hector Berlioz, Les Soirées de l’Orchestre (Paris, 1853), 82. Hector Berlioz, Evenings with the Orchestra, ed. and trans. Jacques Barzun (Chicago, 1999), 77. 45 Berlioz, Mémoires, 403. 46 Metzner, 1. 47 Weber, 38.

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The widespread practice at virtuosic concerts to take audience requests for improvisation, for example, usually produced the same familiar themes with a stock list of requests. Music critics in particular thought virtuosi lacked true subjectivity and therefore represented a “miscarriage of individual creativity.”48

Liszt’s Virtuosic Beginnings

Liszt’s performance career made him famous and continues to be the most studied aspect of his biography. His early training and experiences as a Wunderkind in Vienna and Paris also established dynamics and tensions that would last throughout his life. When Liszt’s talent became evident and converged with his father’s vaulting ambition, the boy was propelled along an intensive training trajectory. After winning support from Hungarian aristocrats to study in Vienna, Adam Liszt moved his wife and son to the imperial capital in 1822. The young pupil’s studies with Czerny, creator of the stile brilliante, focused on transforming Liszt’s prodigious natural talent into a disciplined tool with which to make skilled interpretations of music. Czerny introduced Liszt to the repertoire and honed his taste. Much of eighteenth-century virtuosic performance focused on ornamentation and tempi, as well as improvisation, known as fantasizing. Czerny “mechanized” piano training and encouraged Liszt to memorize the pieces he performed, a practice new at the time.49 Czerny sought a clear purity of tone, so all notes would carry to the listeners in the concert halls, and also believed performers needed strong nerves.50 Liszt debuted his first Viennese concerts in “knowledgeable, staid, and private salons” to great acclaim, and soon presented public performances, where he was sometimes lauded as another Mozart.51 This exposure also indirectly trained the boy in social etiquette and comportment, particularly among the aristocracy. Soon Adam Liszt grew frustrated with Czerny’s diligence and wanted to present his son to a larger audience. Paris’ population was more than three times that of 48 49

50

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Gramit, 143. Oliver Hilmes, Franz Liszt Biographie eines Superstars (Munich, 2011), 24; James Deaville, “A Star is Born? Czerny, Liszt, and the Pedagogy of Virtuosity,” in Beyond the Art of Finger Dexterity: Reassessing Carl Czerny ed. David Gramit (Rochester, 2008), 52–66; Michael Saffle, “Czerny and the Keyboard Fantasy: Traditions, Innovations, Legacy,” in Beyond the Art, 202–228. Heinz von Loesch, “Wo das Wort ‘brilliant’ in Schwung kam und sich Legionen von Mädchen in Czerny verliebt hatten, ” in Carl Czerny: Komponist Pianist Pädagoge (Mainz, 2009), 40–41; Rena Charmin Mueller, “Liszt’s Indebtedness to Czerny,” in Carl Czerny, 150. Hanson, 29.

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Vienna, and offered a potentially lucrative market. Like so many other Central European musicians, they departed for Paris after little more than a year: Liszt’s formal technical training was now de facto complete. When the twelve-year-old Liszt and his father sought entry to the Conservatory, bringing with them a letter of introduction from Prince Metternich, Liszt later recalled, “I felt more dead than alive.” When the director Luigi Cherubini arrived, “[I] went quickly, moved by unknown sentiments, and kissed Cherubini’s hand. Suddenly, for the first time, the idea came to me that this might not be the custom in France.” Liszt, confused and humiliated, hardly dared glance at the director, who, after hearing Liszt play, then informed him and his father that the Conservatory did not accept foreigners.52 Just a year prior, Cherubini had complained about the growing numbers of piano students at the Conservatory.53 The bewilderment Liszt felt at his gaffe and Cherubini’s rejection based on his nationality underscored Liszt’s outsider status in Paris. At his father’s urging, Liszt undertook private theory and composition studies with émigrés Reicha and Paer and began to perform in aristocratic salons, the “little Liszt” d’Agoult, six years his senior, remembered from the “gay” salons. At this time he and his father befriended the Érard family, and Liszt soon adopted their pianos as his sole instruments, which helped popularize the double-escapement mechanism the Érards had recently invented. Within three months, he had given thirty-eight performances and his audiences had included the Duchesse de Berry and the royal family.54 When he and his father toured England in 1827, Liszt’s diary from that time illustrates the tension he felt between his father’s ambition and his own adolescent desire to make his own choices.55 Liszt increasingly turned to religion to resolve this tension; his diary includes quotations from the priest Alexander von Hohenlohe, a member of the princely family that would become so important in Liszt’s later life. His father’s abrupt death later that year liberated him from the punishing concert schedule and pushed him into financial adulthood, as Liszt needed a means to support his mother and himself. Salon concerts had given Liszt access to wealthy piano students and he began giving lessons for twelve hours per day. Liszt fell in love with one of his young aristocratic students, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, whose father showed Liszt the 52 53 54 55

Franz Liszt, “De la situation des artistes,” RGMP 2, no. 35 (30 August 1835): 55. Mongrédien, 302. Hilmes, 37. Franz Liszt, Tagebuch 1827, ed. Detlev Altenberg and Rainer Kleinertz (Vienna, 1986), 13, 33, 35.

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door after he proposed to her. This disappointment, coupled with grief over his father’s death and perhaps a sense of abandonment or bewilderment at his new responsibilities, caused a breakdown or spiritual crisis:56 from 1828–1830 Liszt mostly withdrew from public performances; we have very little information about his activities from 1828–late 1830, as he seems to have stopped corresponding with friends and family. Rumors of his death led to obituaries in newspapers. The models of a performer which he received from his father, who had spent years as a member of the Esterházy retinue, and Czerny’s deferential performance style and social stance did not speak to his longing for agency and authority as an artist. That longing was expressed in his sketches for a Revolutionary Symphony inspired by the 1830 summer revolts in Paris, and by the end of the year he had met Berlioz and learned of the composer’s experimentation with symphonic form. In early 1832 Liszt’s professional and emotional fortunes changed with the arrival of Niccolò Paganini in Paris, who “evidently made Liszt aware of the potential of virtuosity for formally integrating ‘experimental’ musical material, and conversely the potential of a radically modern musical idiom for giving virtuosity a substance lacking in the fashionable style” for which Liszt had been groomed.57 He saw in Paganini a possibility to have his cake and eat it too: to be financially independent as well as to pursue a composing career, Liszt’s increasingly focused aim. Liszt created his first subjective stance, that of the virtuoso, when he resumed public concerts and took full responsibility for his self-presentation and career. Seeing Paganini’s more substantive repertoire and Berlioz’s innovations inspired the hope that his virtuosic career could be an artistic one as well. He brought his own particular strengths to this undertaking: Liszt’s sight-reading was astounding and the shape of his hands allowed him to span large key ranges and attack the keys with a great amount of power.58 These two attributes allowed him to quickly master new material and to perform it powerfully. He was also handsome, slender, and graceful. Lastly, Liszt’s great charisma and sensitivity charmed audiences and his interlocutors in salons. Joseph d’Ortigue noted,

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57 58

In this crisis of 1828, Robert Wangermée sees the first of several which led Liszt to ultimately reject the fame of virtuosity and turn to artistic creation as his ultimate goal, an argument similar to mine. Robert Wangermée, “Conscience et inconscience du virtuose romantique: à propos des années parisiennes de Franz Liszt,” in Music in Paris, 553–574. Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, ed. Joseph Kerman, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley, 1989), 135. Walker, 301.

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It’s not surprising that those who feel nothing reproach Liszt for feeling too much: it is natural, after all, that they praise certain well known virtuosi whose play is elegantly glacial, the presentation studied, the smile gracious . . . which is all they can with withstand.59 Liszt’s passionate, emotional performance style, combined with his other personal attributes seemed to indicate a virtuosic destiny. Liszt complemented his technical prowess, expanded repertoire and marketing strategies with a persona of wit, cultivation, and gallantry. He mastered a charming conversational style and began to read voraciously, including works by Tertullian, Augustine, Pascal, Montaigne, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, although as an autodidact he lacked systematic or scholarly training.60 The salons of Paris provided opportunities for intellectual discussion, artistic performance, and social interaction; in Liszt’s case, they introduced him to future friends Hector Berlioz, Frédéric Chopin, Eugene Délacroix, Heinrich Heine and George Sand. The fashionable aristocratic households in the Faubourg Saint-Germain such as those of Italian princess Cristina Belgiojoso and d’Agoult were arenas of fierce competition as well: hostesses vied with each other to gather the most scintillating assemblage of intellectuals, artists, writers and politicians in their homes, people with the most wit, learning, and a whiff of scandal.61 Salon goers adored Liszt; his 1832 performance of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata at critic Ernest Legouvé’s darkened house brought the small audience to tears. Liszt’s salon performances successfully linked him with elite circles: “the aristocracy . . . occasionally accepted a musician—notably Liszt—virtually as one of its own.”62 Liszt participated in the professionalization of music performance, which sharpened the distinction between amateur and professional musicians.63 A dearth of piano repertoire existed due to the newness of the instrument’s enlarged expressive capabilities, and Liszt filled the gap with his own 59 60

61 62 63

Joseph d’Ortigue, “Revue Musicale. Concert au Vauxhall,” La Quotidienne (30 March 1833), quoted in Écrits sur la Musique 1827–1846, ed. Sylvia L’Écuyer (Paris, 2003), 323. Gustav Schilling, Franz Liszt: Leben und Wirken, aus nächster Beschauung (Stuttgart, 1844), 94; Michael Saffle, “Liszt and the Birth of the New Europe: Reflections on Modernity, Wagner, the Oratorio, and ‘Die Legende von [sic] der heiligen Elisabeth,” in Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe: Music as Mirror of Religious, Political, Cultural, and Aesthetic Transformations, ed. Michael Saffle and Rossana Dalmonte (Hillsdale, NY, 2003), 3–24, here 13. Beth Archer Brombert, Cristina: Portrait of a Princess (London, 1978). Dahlhaus, 43. Weber, 11.

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compositions.64 He also continued to improvise on familiar themes, a skill he owed to Czerny and one that served him well his whole life. Liszt innovated with constructing his own performance programs, combining popular crowdpleasers like opera transcriptions and Schubert’s Erlkönig, a piece Liszt grew to hate, with new, little known or forgotten music such as that of Beethoven or Bach. Beethoven’s music was met with bewildered and often hostile reception in France well into the 1830s. Audiences walked out of performances of pieces such as Beethoven’s C-sharp Minor Quartet: they thought “his late works were the product of a deranged mind.”65 Liszt was received as a unique virtuoso. Even usually hostile critics such as Robert Schumann and Heinrich Heine, at least initially thought him different from his chief rivals in Paris, Sigismond Thalberg and Henri Herz.66 He asserted his agency and subjectivity through choices that distinguished him: Liszt performed a much greater variety of music than other virtuosi, and he was interested in music for its own sake and possessed an educated sense of discernment about the quality of various works. He also, in contrast to Thalberg and Herz, launched himself into writing about music, an activity associated with a more serious and artistic stance toward music. In gaining acceptance from fellow composers and critics, Liszt created a new type of virtuosity and musicianship: Hector Berlioz praised him as “the pianist of the future” and Robert Schumann lauded his broad repertory.67 During Liszt’s European tours in the mid-1840s, A lover of Bach . . . reproached [Liszt] with his charlatanry, and then asked him to play his famous arrangement for the piano of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A Minor for organ: ‘How do you want me to play it?’ ‘How? But . . . the way it ought to be played.’ ‘Here it is, to start with, as the author must have understood it, played it himself, or intended it to be played.’ And Liszt played. And it was admirable, the perfection itself of the classical style exactly in conformity with the original. ‘Here it is a second time, as I feel it, with a slightly more picturesque movement, a more modern style and the effects demanded by an 64 65 66 67

Rink, 61. Walker, 183. Gooley, 18–77. Hector Berlioz, “Listz,” [sic] RGMP 3, no. 24 (6 December 1836): 200; Leon B. Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New Haven, CT, 1967), 218.

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improved instrument.’ And it was, with these nuances, different . . . but no less admirable. ‘Finally, a third time, here it is the way I would play it for the public—to astonish, as a charlatan.’ And, lighting a cigar which passed at moments from between his lips to his fingers, executing with his ten fingers the part written for the organ pedals, and indulging in other tours de force and prestidigitation, he was prodigious, incredible, fabulous, and received gratefully with enthusiasm.68 This story, while humorous, contains an important seed of truth. Liszt’s great talent and ear for mimicry, as well as his sensitivity towards others, allowed him flexibility in interpretation and execution of musical performances: he could present a “correct,” educated version that adhered to the composer’s intentions, or an exaggerated, theatrical, eye-popping spectacle. The fact that the music he played was Bach for this listener is also hugely important: Bach’s compositions were just being revived at the time, and his works represented the epitome of “serious,” i.e. German music. Playing Bach tested Liszt’s technique, musical pedigree, and self-restraint. Liszt’s performances demonstrated his historicism as well as his showmanship. In part because of his versatility, but also because of his profession’s inherent liminality, Liszt trod a fine line between accessibility and elite cachet. For public concerts, Liszt often priced his tickets double as much as those of his competitors or comparable concerts, which shut out the lower middle classes.69 His audiences consisted primarily of nobles and bourgeois such as the “wealthy . . . merchants” Hans Christian Andersen observed at a concert in 1840.70 The high price of tickets helped to blend the upper-middle class with the aristocracy to form a new high status public.71 Another Lisztian innovation we today take for granted was the solo concert. Heine noted in 1841, “Liszt has recently given two concerts in which he, against all customary practice, without participation of other artists, played completely alone.”72 Some performances highlighted his courtly style as in Vienna, where the critic Heinrich Adami noted the full concert halls with approval. He described a concert of 1838: “the hall is almost overflowing; some ladies make their way with difficulty 68 69 70

71 72

Rosen, 510. Gooley, 7. Anna Harwell Celenza, “The Poet, the Pianist, and the Patron: Hans Christian Andersen and Franz Liszt in Carl Alexander’s Weimar,” 19th-century Music 26, no. 2 (2002): 130–154, here 133. Weber, 29. Heine, 116. For more on the development of solo concerts, see Hamilton, 54–63.

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to their seats. The virtuoso hurries toward them and offers them his arm. They are surprised and hesitate, he indicates chairs at his side, with which they don’t appear discontented.”73 Adami reported that Liszt also frequently conversed with the audience before performances.74 Liszt employed many methods to court a seemingly inclusive yet restricted audience. Despite his desire to be different from other virtuosi, Liszt nonetheless used crass tactics to craft his subjectivity and gain success. Heine and others noted his use of the claque, a means of ensuring a warm response to performances and a fairly common practice at the time. Andersen’s diary documents an instance from Liszt’s 6 November 1840 performance in Hamburg: “At the end of the concert bouquets were tossed up to him from the stage. (The washroom attendant at the hotel had brought most of them. He asked people to throw them. If something like this had been done in Copenhagen, there would have been quite an outcry about it all being prearranged.)”75 In this manipulation of audience response, Liszt was no different from other performers. Liszt also used the press to control his reception. As we’ve seen, nascent music journalism lent music a new authority and dignity, especially in the German lands. In Liszt’s case, his writing was central to his subjectivity, so important to him that the two long-term romantic relationships of his life were with literary women, d’Agoult and Sayn-Wittgenstein, who both published several novels and non-fiction works and contributed to his published works.76 Liszt’s writing in the musical press helped him reach a less socially exclusive but perhaps more learned audience. When he heard of Sigismond Thalberg’s Parisian successes, Liszt returned from his tours in 1837, wrote critical articles about his rival, and engineered a pianistic duel at Belgiojoso’s salon. Liszt also rebutted negative reviews. This relationship with the press earned Liszt and others scorn and suspicion from some critics. By 1843, Heine had lost his faith in Liszt and claimed with disgust that the press was “usually duped, especially in connection to the most famous virtuosi” because the virtuosi exploited journals and journalists. Per Heine, the press kissed up to the performers, who in these transactions lowered both the standards of reportage and performance. In addition, the advertisements for “the famed Joe Zero (Guido Null), the famed 73 Heinrich Adami, review in Allgemeiner Musikalischer Anzeiger, 21 June 1838, UPB, 33. 74 Adami, Allgemeine Theaterzeitung 10 May 1838, UPB, 43. 75 Celenza, 140. 76 On d’Agoult’s literary career, see Whitney Walton, “Republican Women and Republican Families in the Personal Narratives of George Sand, Marie d’Agoult, and Hortense Allart,” in The New Biography, 99–136; Richard Bolster, Marie d’Agoult: The Rebel Countess (New Haven, CT, 2000). To my knowledge a biography of Sayn-Wittgenstein has yet to be written.

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Assinsky (Eselinski) etc.” also fooled audiences into respecting undeserving performers.77 Liszt’s virtuoso persona encompassed much more than piano performance; his celebrity was contrived and managed through the press, the salons, and, of course, concerts.78 The convergence of performance, technical skill and improvisation in virtuosity produced a particular stance toward music and composition that mirrored Liszt’s ancien regime understanding of self. Liszt is renowned as a tireless reviser of his own works: he scrutinized and revised his Lieder and virtuoso pieces in particular for his entire life.79 His continual reworking of musical material and non-attachment to fixity resemble his fluid approach to subjectivity. Liszt was very prolific and lived a long life: some see his approach to composition as unduly open, without the inner editor many possess to reject less fruitful ideas, and so his oeuvre is quite uneven in quality. Also, because of his longevity Liszt had the time and changed perspective to reevaluate his own work. This lack of attachment to finality was an aspect of his approach to life that many of his nineteenth-century contemporaries found problematic, as they valued fixity, essence and authenticity. Liszt’s virtuoso persona developed out of his technical training, financial need and his innate charisma, sensitivity and theatricality. It launched him into European fame, giving him access to wealth and power. His entrepreneurship utilized the most up-to-date marketing schemes to reach a broader audience while cultivating an aura of glamour and rarity. In order to impress salon-goers, as well as to participate in their conversations, Liszt began a lifelong habit of reading. His exposure to French literature and philosophy hinted at his grander aspirations and informed his Romanticism. His wild successes as a virtuoso came into direct conflict with his growing Romantic sensibilities.

Romantic Artists’ Aesthetics and Alienation

Liszt’s Viennese background bequeathed him the legacy of being a virtuoso performer of the old style, yet also being a musician who had closely studied Beethoven and adopted his teacher Reicha’s and others’ Romantic views 77 78 79

Heine, 144. Bernstein, 79. Ben Arnold, “Visions and Revisions: Looking into Liszt’s ‘Lieder’”, in Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe: Music as a Mirror of Religious, Political, Cultural, and Aesthetic Transformations, ed. Michael Saffle and Rossana Dalmonte (Hillsdale, NY, 2003), 253–280; Kenneth Hamilton, “Liszt’s early and Weimar piano works” in The Cambridge Companion to Liszt (Cambridge, 2005), 57–85, particularly 71–74.

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about music’s transcendental potentiality. His experiences in France heightened this tension, but also indicated a way to resolve it through fully adopting a Romantic stance, which in France included more direct political or social engagement than in Central Europe. The year he remounted Parisian stages was also the revolutionary moment of 1830 in which Romantics made grand gestures like Byron’s participation in the Greek revolt and Délacroix’s completion of Liberty Leading the People. Surrounded by artists, intellectuals, and émigrés in Parisian salons, Liszt became aware of political problems, such as the foreign occupation of Poland, and social ones, like the desperate conditions of the lower classes in Paris.80 Liszt determined that art, particularly music, had the potential to awaken people’s moral consciences and sense of belonging, and thus could solve some of the problems he saw around him: it could serve as an extension of his religious impulses. Romanticism gave him a group to belong to, and a critique of society that channeled his anxieties. While culture in Europe was becoming popular and commercial as never before, it simultaneously was subject to claims about its transcendental nature. The sacralization of culture during the Romantic era can be understood as an attempt to mask the commodification of art.81 Romantics reveled in the particular and unique, horrified by centralizing and standardizing trends wrought by rationalization. For them, the idea of a mechanistic world was dissatisfying in it incompletion, because it failed to acknowledge intuition and mystery.82 In both France and the German lands, Romantics established new codes of meaning and values to counter that of the ascendant bourgeoisie who they held accountable for what Romantics experienced as the soullessness of modern life. Romanticism praised the individual; emotion, sensuality and spirituality were ways that most could gain a deeper understanding of themselves or of others. This code connected to the sacred and sublime realm, which stood apart from reason, progress, and rationality.83 Romantic politics became more pointed under the influence of new arrivals to Paris, those who fled political persecution in their Central European homelands, or those from the provinces seeking a freedom and adventure. Both 80 81 82 83

On his tours of the mid-1830s Liszt visited Lyon and composed a piano work, Lyon, in support of the striking silk weavers, as well as organizing a benefit concert for them. Cook, 74; Gramit 2, 130. Abrams, 175. Rüdiger Safranski, Romantik: Eine deutsche Affäre (Frankfurt, 2007); H.G. Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics: An Essay in Cultural History (New York, 1966); Henri Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century Prussia (Chicago, 1974); Gerald Chapple, Frederick Hall, and Hans Schulte, eds., The Romantic Tradition: German Literature and Music in the Nineteenth Century (Lanham, MD, 1992); Morse Peckham, The Romantic Virtuoso (Hanover, 1995).

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groups sought out Paris due to its reputation as the home of republicanism, social experimentation, and cultural innovation. “Through the gathering of a large marginal population in a great city, the scarcity of ‘honorable’ occupations, and the professional ambiguity of the new [art], that peculiar vision of the . . . roving intellectual, had become a permanent feature of Parisian life.”84 These intellectuals published their opinions in journals and frequented salons; some founded clubs to further their purposes. Despite their warm reception in salons, these Romantics were outsiders to their society, marginalized both aesthetically and politically. Chopin the exiled Pole, Délacroix the painter rejected by the Academy, Sand the writer who could not use her own name, Berlioz the impoverished and misunderstood composer: these were not successful artists who enjoyed broad respect and social or political power during their lifetimes. They claimed that their art challenged the ossified status quo of the academies and conservatories. Chopin’s chromaticism, Delacroix’s bold use of color and brushwork, and Sand’s feminist and republican novels all challenged the aesthetic standards supported by both the state and the nobility. Such artists reinforced the young Liszt’s ideas about the need for experimentation in art and presentation, and welcomed him as a fellow explorer. They also modeled alienation and rebellion: Berlioz’s father, like Liszt’s, had ideas which differed markedly from his son’s about his son’s career (Berlioz was to be a physician). Perhaps more importantly, this rebellion also underlined the power of the individual to self-create. George Sand, née Aurore Dupin, played with gender roles in a way that suggested she, as an aristocrat, shared Liszt’s sense of ancien regime identity.85 She literally changed clothes and became a different person: the baroness Dupin set aside her aristocratic status as well as her femininity and became a boot- and trouser-clad flaneur. While her gender and place of birth led her to different choices than Liszt faced, her “tendency toward selfcontradiction” and her “propensity for change” may have inspired Liszt: her choices to wear trousers and men’s boots, and to adopt a male pen name were all made out of expediency; they granted her more freedom and mobility.86 Her success at role-play possibly reinforced Liszt’s sense of flexible subjectivity, giving him a belief that he could be more or something different than a piano virtuoso. Lloyd Kramer observes that “the experience of living among

84 85 86

César Graña, Modernity and Its Discontents: French Society and the French Man of Letters in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1964), 26. George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectabililty and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York, 1985), 69. Elizabeth Harland, George Sand (New Haven, CT, 2004), xiii, 87, 12.

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alien people, languages, and institutions can alter the individual’s sense of self” as well as creating a process of exploring problems of personal identity.87 Romantics like Sand and Berlioz rebelled not only against a bourgeois social code, but also against an older, more established, official taste in art. The vestiges of royal and noble patronage still clung tightly to established institutions that also served as a fortress to keep out the unwanted. The Romantics railed against academicism; in their view, “academic discourse was an instrument of oppression.”88 By rejecting the institutions and codes to which they could not possibly gain entry, the Romantics projected themselves above older or more sober ideals: “the idiosyncratic psychological coloring of the Romantic struggle came from the Romantics’ passionate pride in being out—while, of course, they were struggling to get in.”89 The honor of being rejected by the establishment was a central component of the Romantic mindset, as was rejecting bourgeois power in turn.90 “From the [Romantic] point of view the great flaw of the bourgeoisie, its great inner deformity, was a creative poverty and a cowardice of imagination natural in men who were slaves to pragmatic design.”91 Romantic world-weariness and jadedness came from the continual struggle to assert their own ideas and values and the realization that those could not be fulfilled with an ordinary existence; they would always be outcasts.92 Heinrich Heine attacked the new cultural power of the middle classes in his reportage on the 1843 musical season in Paris. The ancien regime has ended and the scepter has come into the hands of the bourgeoisie, but these new rulers have just as many sins to repent, and the displeasure of the gods is even harsher towards them than their predecessors.93 The Romantics’ high levels of education and cultivation clashed with their low status and lack of political power; this misalignment (in their eyes) yielded a “compulsion” to deem themselves the creators of “an autonomous, original, 87

Lloyd S. Kramer, Threshold of a New World: Intellectuals and the Exile Experience in Paris, 1830–1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 9–10. 88 Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, “Romanticism: The Permanent Revolution,” in Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art (New York, 1984), 10. 89 Rosen and Zerner, 11. 90 Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830– 1930 (New York, 1986), 4, 11, 150. 91 Graña, 65. 92 Ibid., 68. 93 Heine, 141.

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and indeed superior culture” as they viewed the bourgeoisie “as commanding power and wealth only through historical coincidence, and as projecting its hegemonic cultural claims without substantiation.”94 Romantics cast academicians and other institutional artists as arbitrary beneficiaries of the status quo, and themselves as wronged geniuses. This perception caused Romantics to oppose not only the overt political messages of the ruling classes, but also the unspoken and subtler indicators of ideology such as clothing and aesthetics. The Romantics often adopted an aristocratic aesthetic with rich, colorful fabrics, long hair, and more liberal sexual mores than those of the bourgeoisie.95 Liszt’s famous long hairstyle, which he flaunted even when his hair was white, was more than a personal hallmark; it was an oppositional statement against bourgeois conventions of respectability, efficiency and solemnity. The Romantics’ praise of emotionalism, sensuality and spirituality served the same purpose. Their emphasis on style is apparent in Josef Danhauser’s 1840 painting, Liszt at the Piano (Figure 1.1). Liszt is seated at the piano, gazing off into space with a spiritual look on his face. He does not even need to look at his hands or the score: the music is his essence. D’Agoult sits at his feet and leans against the piano. With them are (clockwise from the back) Hugo, Paganini, Rossini, Sand, clad in her notorious male costume, and Alexandre Dumas père. This is an imagined collection of great Romantics, some of whom were Liszt’s close friends. They are grouped close to each other in fraternal unity, admired by the feminine and disheveled muse d’Agoult below them. Their casual, intimate manner suggests a private room, away from the concerns of the world. The bust of Beethoven, which seems to float in the sky, godlike, and the portrait of Byron emphasize the lineage from which the Romantics claimed to descend. The number of books and sumptuous fabrics scattered about are a further testament to the Romantic lifestyle. Danhauser portrayed a Liszt with the power to transport his audiences to a transcendent state.96 While in literature and the visual arts, the Romantic aesthetic emphasized the artist’s self-expression at the cost of connecting with an audience, Romantic musicians depended more directly on an audience for their works to gain approval. Romantic musicians, composers in particular, still adhered to a more didactic aesthetic in which art’s purpose lay in improving its con94 95 96

Giesen, 7. Gluck, 356. See Hamilton, 83n35, for a discussion of other possible interpretations of which men are portrayed here.

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sumers or audience. So while composers did emphasize their own expression, they also hoped for a more discriminating audience that could appreciate and understand those expressions. Composers approached listeners as blank slates to be given discernment through cultural education. This notion of education conveniently separated the educators from their pupils. “An internal boundary is established between the virtuosi who are trusted with the secrets of the sacred core and are its gatekeepers, and the uneducated lay persons at the periphery.”97 This distinction shored up the difference between Romantics and the public by tracing socially created difference to talent. Romanticism’s paradox lay in what was at stake was “incomprehensible, unspeakable, impossible to represent—and yet art . . . must make precisely that effort.”98 Thus the Romantics’ legitimacy depended on the distance from their audiences, yet their purpose was at least in part to serve those audiences. In his notes from his German tours Berlioz stated that

Figure 1.1 Josef Danhauser, Liszt at the Piano, 1840. Oil on Canvas. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin / Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen / Art Resource, NY. 97 98

Giesen, 37. Ibid., 88.

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even though the bourgeois dominate the masses of the public in Frankfurt, it appears impossible to me that, considering the large numbers of persons of higher classes who seriously occupy themselves with music, one could not gather together an audience that was both intelligent and capable of discerning the great works of art.99 This anti-bourgeois sentiment was a double-edged sword: Berlioz longed for an educated audience to appreciate him, yet he himself needed to be the creator of that public, because he assumed that the average bourgeois concertgoer could not possibly be a serious music lover. Many have also pointed to the dual role that Liszt’s and other’s dissatisfaction served to elevate their commercial profession.100 Liszt’s membership in this Romantic circle gave him a community as well as a source of authority from which to critique his profession and his rivals. Romantics’ ideas about transcendental sources of inspiration and expression, as well as their interest in outcasts complemented Liszt’s own Catholic upbringing and values. Liszt had considered becoming a priest in his youth even before his father died, but his teachers and mothers dissuaded him, saying that with his talent he could make more of a difference for people out in the world than behind the walls of a monastery. Catholicism played an important role in his generous charitable acts, the value he placed on the metaphysical realm, and his interest in the less fortunate members of society. The mother of one of Liszt’s piano students observed, “Liszt avidly seeks out all the emotions. He confronts himself, so to speak, with suffering nature, he observes the expression of every pain.”101 Such confrontations also led Liszt to visit hospitals and insane asylums.102 Liszt’s very personal, expressive Catholicism went hand in hand with Romanticism, yet left him dissatisfied with his experiences within the Church itself, which Liszt believed was impotent in its distance from its parishioners.103 He sought, d’Agoult observed, “to move, to lead the crowd,

99 Berlioz, Mémoires, 320. 100 Richard Leppert, “The Musician of the Imagination,” in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, ed. William Weber (Bloomington, 2004), 36; David Gramit, “Selling the Serious: The Commodification of Music and Resistance to It in Germany, circa 1800,” in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 90. 101 Auguste Boissier, Liszt pédagogue; leçons di piano données par Liszt à Mademoiselle Valérie Boissier à Paris (Paris, 1927), 39–40; cited in Metzner, 140. 102 Paul Merrick, Revolution and Religion in the Music of Liszt (Cambridge, 1987), 6. 103 See BMA, 78–95, for their discussion of Catholicism and its public role.

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to fill them with adoration and divine love” by “returning sacred music to the temple from which it had been banned by the profane tastes of the century.”104 Liszt and other Romantics were radicalized by various religious movements sweeping through Paris. As the break with the ancien regime deepened, “the growing intelligentsia [needed] to find a secular substitute for—or supplement to—revealed religion.”105 For the 1830s in Paris, this new alternative often took the form of political and social activism. In these moments Liszt sought an expression for his charitable Catholic sensibilities as well as a group to belong to. Heine, despite his scorn of Liszt’s alliance with many different activist groups, said Liszt’s “inexhaustible craving for Light and Godliness is still praiseworthy; it illustrates his sensibility for the holy, for the religious.”106 A few months after the 1830 revolution, just as he was beginning to conceptualize himself as a virtuoso, Liszt encountered the Saint-Simonian socialist movement; like so many others disappointed by Louis-Philippe’s lack of radicalism, he attended meetings, sometimes with Sand, for roughly a year. As Stephen Greenblatt has observed, when individuals choose to fashion themselves, the authority through which they claim their selfhood confronts its polar opposite.107 In this case, Liszt’s virtuosity and the fame it brought him collided with the idea of a higher artistic and spiritual community. The Saint-Simonians’ emphasis on a divine, united, earthly community appealed greatly to Liszt, alienated culturally, socially and morally from most of Parisian society. After avid reading of aesthetic debates about the role of the artist in an ideal society, Liszt’s own observations about his career now had a philosophical underpinning. In 1834 Liszt encountered another radical thinker, Felicité de Lammenais, whose critique of society would prove to be fundamental to Liszt’s conceptions of social justice, community and morality. Lammenais praised religion not on grounds of theology, but rather as a balm for the evils of life, arguing that society needed faith to hold it together. Here, religion was about building communities rather than becoming closer to God or being better Catholics. He believed that such close-knit communities were necessary to prevent anarchy 104 Charles F. Dupechez, ed. Mémoires, Souvenirs et Journaux de la Comtesse d’Agoult (France, 1990), 359. 105 Blanning, 129. For a specifically German focus on Romantics’ longing for transcendence, see George S. Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago, 2004); John Daverio, Nineteenth-Century Music and the German Romantic Ideology (New York, 1993). 106 Heinrich Heine, “Bürgerliche Oper,” in Zeitungsberichte über Musik und Malerei, 95–107, here 101. 107 Greenblatt, 9.

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or despotism, both witnessed in the Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s Empire. In Lammenais’ thought, the best chance for a real Catholic revival lay in an alliance between the Church and liberalism, rather than with the monarchs of the past, in order to guarantee certain individual freedoms. Lammenais also valued the Catholic emphasis on charity as he sought to improve living conditions for the lower classes. Like Liszt, Lammenais sought to use the power of the printed word for his project: he began to publish L’Avenir, the first daily Catholic newspaper, seeking to create a kind of liberal Catholic international.108 Lammenais’ influence on the virtuoso permeated his music: Liszt’s piano cycle Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses and the symphonic poem Les Préludes, both composed more than a decade after Liszt’s encounter with Lamennais, were inspired by the cleric’s poetry. These two aspects of Liszt’s subjectivity began to converge when he began European tours in 1835; his status as virtuoso started to dovetail with an important Romantic trope, that of the wanderer. His sense of searching for higher purpose and inner conflict epitomized a Romantic stance. The figure of the wanderer, first articulated at the end of the eighteenth century and made famous by Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 oil painting Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog, was a key component of the new idea of selfhood. On his solitary journey, the wanderer helped people to understand the self as a malleable object, open to improvement and direction. Self-improvement hinged on taking in new experiences, much as artisanal journeymen had done in their rites of passage. The Romantic circuitous journey was driven by longing and signified a liminal state, one in which the individual stood outside society and its norms. Such wanderers were autonomous creators, free to discover themselves through solitude.109 Liszt’s essays “Lettres d’un bachelier ès-musique” and his piano composition, Années de pélerinage, focus on travel, observation of nature, and Liszt’s own alienation and search for an authentic self.110 Liszt’s Romantic journey played a vital role in cementing together his virtuosic and Romantic selves and producing the synthesis to come, that of composer. Romantics cast themselves as an oppositional subculture committed to authenticity and expression. In this outsider status they bolstered their claims as geniuses. They identified with outcasts and the unwanted, celebrating the 108 Schenk, 68, 118; Philip Spencer, The Politics of Belief in Nineteenth-Century France (New York, 1953). 109 Andrew Cusack, The Wanderer in Nineteenth-Century German Literature: Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism (Rochester, 2008), 62–67. For literary examples, see Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre; Heinrich Heine, Die Harzreise. 110 Katharine Ellis, “The Romantic Artist,” 3.

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ugly, the poor, and the oppressed. In doing so they allied themselves with political protests of the 1830s. They also sought transcendence through religious revival. Liszt’s introduction to Romantic sensibilities as well as his Catholic spirituality came into direct conflict with the virtuosic career he was establishing; the theatricality with which he performed others’ compositions seemed to be a holdover from older days when musicians were mere entertainers.

Liszt’s Career Conflicts

Publicity, performance and musicianship collided in Liszt’s virtuoso career. He epitomized the Romantic artist, larger than life and passionate to the point of abandon. Liszt’s technical command of the keyboard, as well as his melodramatic physical and facial gestures challenged bourgeois notions of selfconstraint and autonomy. Indeed, some of his more dramatic performances led uncritical audiences to suspect that he was endowed with supernatural abilities. He was a creature rather than a man: Hans Christian Andersen’s published review of the concert he witnessed portrayed Liszt as a “demon who was nailed fast to the instrument . . . trying to play his soul free.”111 If he wasn’t a demon or angel, Liszt was a magician, enchanter, seducer, and dominator who robbed audiences of their discrimination, and thus, of their own subjectivity.112 D’Ortigue described Liszt’s playing as “full of impetuosity.”113 Andersen watched Liszt “bleed” on the keyboard.114 Heine said his concerts “worked a magic that borders on that of fairy-tales.”115 Later, after he had rejected Liszt as a charlatan, Heine again mentioned Liszt’s magical power: it “conquers us, [his] genius delights us, [his] madness confuses our own good sense . . .”116 Observers accused Liszt of robbing listeners of their power and discernment through his excess and abandon. These images of demonic possession and magic indicate some key tensions in early-nineteenth century culture. Like Paganini, Liszt presented audiences and critics with a subjectivity barely under 111 Celenza, 133. 112 Philip Smith, “Culture and Charisma: Outline of a Theory,” Acta Sociologica 43, no. 2 (2000): 101–111. 113 D’Ortigue, “Etudes Biographiques”: 200. 114 For this interpretation, see John Irving, “The Invention of Tradition,” The Cambridge History, 193; Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 78–106; for Andersen’s observations, see Celenza, 140. 115 Heine, “Musikalische Saison in Paris,” 115. 116 Heine, “Musikalische Saison in Paris I,” 163.

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conscious or willed control, one that flew in the face of the notion of a liberal rational self-possession. By closing his eyes, gazing into the distance, ignoring the score, and using large movements of the torso, the performer appeared to surrender to an ecstatic state of abandon that also mesmerized audiences. Liszt presented an alternative model to that of the bourgeois subject, one that was seductive and dangerous. His was an irrational, unwilled power. Many critics complained that words were inadequate to describe Liszt’s performances: logos was subsumed by pathos. Liszt thus represented the shadow side of his audiences, the side they could not afford to express themselves. While critics meant to celebrate Liszt with such terms as “sorcerer” (Hexenmeister), such kudos also “engage[d] magic’s doubleness.”117 The question of Liszt’s artistic legitimacy and intentions plagued him in Paris as well as on his European tours of 1835–47. The scandals that emerged around Liszt’s repertoire, performance style, and audience behavior all helped to mark boundaries of acceptable comportment, of respectability and taste, and were powerful socialization mechanisms for the new commercialized world of public entertainment.118 Liszt’s supporters sought to portray him as an artist expressing himself rather than a ruthless businessman raking in profits. In 1837 Heine explicitly addressed this anxiety in a positive review of Liszt: he characterized the pianist as “a person of eccentric but noble character, unselfish and without falseness.”119 Despite a flashy performance style, Heine reassured readers, Liszt was trustworthy. This dichotomy between financial gain and artistic expression continued to inform Liszt’s reception. Liszt negotiated a tricky balancing act with his audiences: acceptance by a literate public could verify Liszt’s claim to value, but if that public became linked to rabble, they could undermine his status.120 Like Heine, Adami tried to shore up the virtuoso as Romantic artist, insisting, “Liszt does not pursue art out of speculation, but because of inner needs.”121 Liszt also sought to counteract some of the contamination of his success with popular audiences with social flattery, playing in aristocratic salons purportedly for relaxation among friends.122 Liszt’s ongoing dissatisfaction with his performance career and his longing for authenticity, creativity and authority shine through his correspondence 117 Simon During, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 40. 118 Cook, 28. 119 Heine, “Bürgerliche Oper,” 100. 120 Gramit, Cultivating Music, 7. 121 Adami, review in Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 18 February 1840, UPB 82. 122 Cook, 80.

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with d’Agoult. Liszt and d’Agoult had left Paris in 1834 because of her pregnancy and settled in Switzerland, where their first child Cosima was born. While there, Liszt composed the piano cycle Années de Pélerinage, which encouraged d’Agoult to hope his performance career had come to an end and he would devote himself solely to composition. While it is the case that d’Agoult disliked his tours and performance career because they took him away from her, and she helped him with some of his publications in which this animosity shines through, his personal correspondence with her illustrates his own vexed stance to his career. Liszt wrote from Lyon in 1836, “First of all, I have absolutely no desire to go to Paris at this time. The two or three people that in other times I might have seen with pleasure have now become profoundly distasteful and strange.”123 Later that year, from Paris, he said the city was “unbearable.”124 D’Agoult was unhappy with Liszt’s long absences and his dalliances with other women.125 As I read it, his complaints about Paris are partly meant to assuage d’Agoult’s fears and soothe her anxieties, in other words, to preserve the status quo between the pair. They also signal Liszt’s alienation from his audiences and his profession. D’Agoult shared these concerns about audiences and artistry. She wrote in her journal that Liszt was in a way humiliated by the sparkle of celebrity for which he no longer holds any importance. [He was] tormented by higher ambitions, wishing that silence would fall around his name and his life.126 These problems became more pointed in the German lands. Liszt’s concerts in Berlin in the early 1840s sparked a new cult of personality as well as critical attacks. Caricatures of Liszt and his audience abound from this time: Heine coined the term “Lisztomania” to describe the crazed crowds scrapping over Liszt’s gloves and cigar butts.127 An 1842 German sketch depicts Liszt at the piano, adored by an audience that cannot even stay seated. (Figure 1.2) The audience members, mostly young women, are drinking, throwing flowers on the stage, and ogling Liszt through opera glasses. Their behavior suggests that they are bourgeois parvenues. Men are trying, ineffectually, to restrain them from such unseemly displays. Liszt himself has very long limbs, with large hands and long fingers. Depicting Liszt with such a physique was an 123 124 125 126 127

Undated letter from 1836, BMA, 146. Italics in original. Letter from May 1836, ibid., 162. See Bolster for d’Agoult’s point of view. Dupechez, 359. For analysis of Liszt’s Berlin concerts, see Gooley, 179–181.

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Figure 1.2 In the Concert Hall, 1847. Pen lithography, colored. Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin / Art Resource, NY.

attack on the pianist’s masculinity: he appears delicate, without a central core of muscular strength. He looks out at the audience and has just struck a very powerful note, because his left hand has flown up above his head. His rubbery appearance might be the caricaturist’s comment on his slippery persona. The sensationalism of Liszt’s concerts awakened fears about blunting audience discernment and about female sexuality: men could not control the young women present, and so Liszt was seen as a threat to social and gender order. Liszt himself mocked his audiences’ gaucheness and gullibility: he wrote to Sand that he used to play the same piece at various concerts, giving different composers credit on the playbill. The applause, he noted, was based on the name of the composer rather than the composition itself or its performance. This was a true indication for him of the public’s ignorance.128 He noted in the same series of essays that often, as I noticed the hopeless silence that follows the performance of the most beautiful works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert, and in 128 Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 4, no. 29 (16 July 1837): 340.

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observing on the other hand the noisy, resounding, loud transports that miserable trifles arouse, I was embarrassed and despairing.129 Liszt seemingly hated himself for needing such audiences: he suffered from a “bad conscience” about his fame, which contradicted his Romantic aesthetics.130 Liszt confessed his feeling of fraudulence to Sand. I have often been told that I have less right than others to complain in this way, because since my childhood success has overtaken my talents and desires. But exactly that, the thundering applause, was the saddest thing that convinced me that it has more to do with the unexplainable chance of fashion and the respect for a big name and a certain vigorous execution than a genuine feeling for truth and beauty.131 He also noted in the journal that he and d’Agoult shared, Perhaps I am a failed genius, that’s what time will reveal. I feel like I am no more than a mediocre person. . . . That to which I attach the greatest importance . . . is my harmonies, that is my serious work; I won’t sacrifice anything for effect. When I am done with my tour as a pianist, I will not play any more for my public than for myself: I will form and elevate them.132 Liszt’s concern with authenticity is striking in its dissonance with the contemporary image of him as a glitzy entertainer. The clash between art and commercialism was closely connected to another conflict within Liszt’s image as virtuoso. The charge that the virtuoso was a mimetic rather than creative artist, and therefore a corrupting force, restricted Liszt’s access to the high status of other artistic producers. During the pianist’s Rhineland tour of 1840 a critic claimed that “the virtuoso was no composer in his own right.”133 Liszt compared himself to a court juggler or the famous

129 Franz Liszt, “Encore quelques mots sur la subalternité des musicians,” RGMP 2, no. 46 (13 November 1833): 371. 130 Wangermée, 556. 131 Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 4, no. 29 (16 July 1837): 340. 132 Dupechez, 590–91. 133 Frankfurter Konversationsblatt, no. 209 (30 July 1840): 836, quoted in Michael Saffle, Liszt in Germany 1840–1845: A Study in Sources, Documents, and the History of Reception (Stuyvesant, NY, 1994), 102.

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trained dog of the time, Munito.134 Thus, Liszt’s fame and status as a technical and interpretive genius of the keyboard worked to convince him of their ultimate uselessness, and indeed, their detrimental effect on both society and upon himself. Liszt was plagued by the perception and his own feeling that his performances had corrupted music, altering it “from a sacrament to a trade.”135 Heine made the link between virtuosi and alienated labor explicit. The triumphal procession of the piano virtuosi shows the victory of machines over spirit. The technical skill, the precision of an automaton, the identification with the stringed wood, the musical instrumentalization of humans is now praised and celebrated as the highest.136 Both Liszt and Heine expressed a Romantic backlash against rationalization and what they saw as dehumanizing conditions, while both of them lived through the most modern means, writing and performing for a public audience. Liszt’s most trenchant critique of the virtuoso’s life was that it wasted an otherwise needed talent. In spending one’s creativity, time, energy and inspiration on performing for the aristocrats in salons or bourgeoisie in concerts, society was robbed of an ameliorating force: he believed that virtuosi had talents that could better be used in creating true art, which would then contribute to society. He used the virtuoso Michel Gusikow as an example: It is certainly regrettable that . . . the Paganini of the boulevards . . . did not dedicate himself to the invention of an instrument or the introduction of a new branch of culture to his land. He could have possibly blessed an entire population, but his misdirected talent led to nothing but musical childish nonsense.137 Saint-Simonian ideology continued to influence Liszt: Saint-Simonians particularly loathed virtuosi for their waste of energy and talent.138 Liszt’s Romantic inclinations shaped his distrust of material gain for its own sake. Liszt’s prowess as a virtuoso and disgust with fawning audiences set up conflicting value systems for him. Romantics and other intellectuals scorned the 134 135 136 137 138

Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 4, no. 7 (12 February 1837): 53. Stephen Arata, Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (Cambridge, 1996), 45. Heine, “Musikalische Saison in Paris,” 143. Liszt, 56. Locke, 57–58.

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popular, sensational aspect of virtuosity, which they believed was fueled by the most ignorant sector of the public. The success of virtuosi undermined the hard-won new status of musicians and composers: their mimetic performances that depended heavily on technical prowess, as well as their large profits, seemed to make them tools of the bourgeoisie and their aesthetics. Liszt sought to diminish the tension first with attacks on musical institutions, and elevation of the artist to position of redeemer, as in his essay De la situation des artistes.

Liszt the Romantic Αctivist

Liszt’s 1835 piece, “De la situation des artistes”, presented some concerns and ideas that informed his artistic and professional choices for the rest of his life. After all, just three years after its publication, Liszt developed its Romantic, engaged stance into an expression of Hungarian patriotism, which gave him a place in which to pursue the projects delineated in the essay. Its tone is that of a young idealist firebrand, and revels the influence of the Saint-Simonians as well as of Lamennais. The most important aspect of this piece is its conception of the role of the artist in society. Liszt issued a rallying cry for the empowerment of artists in order to elevate their subaltern status.139 He argued that art must assume a long-forgotten role; it must no longer be an instrument of aristocratic standing, nor of bourgeois respectability; it had an important spiritual and moral power to initiate change. Here, Liszt extended religion’s power to the realm of art, particularly music.140 Liszt claimed that this power of art was completely understood and embraced by the ancient Greeks, but had since been forgotten. Liszt intoned that one has seen [the aristocracy’s] sycophantic and parasitical influence in the palaces for too long, as one has glorified the loves of the great and the joys of the rich; now the hour has come to lift the courage of the weak and to ease the suffering of the oppressed! Art must call the people back to beautiful devotion, heroic resolutions, strength, and humanity.141

139 Wangermée, 558. 140 Friedrich Wilhelm Riedel, “Musik und Geschichte,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge zur musikalischen Landeskunde (Munich, 1989), 203ff. 141 Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 5, no. 6 (11 February 1838): 61.

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Liszt described the role of the artist as a missionary of higher values: artists were to teach their audiences. Taking this a step further, he coined the phrase “genie oblige!”, a direct reference to the aristocratic ethical code that simply transferred honorable duty to the artist.142 In a description of these artists, Liszt called them chosen ones . . . the ones who bear witness of the highest emotions of humanity and who appear predestined by God to tend to them with noble loyalty. These God-anointed, downtrodden people bound in chains, those who stole the holy flame from heaven, those who bring matter to life, shape to thoughts, . . . are evangelicals and priests.143 Liszt and other artists’ claims to a higher understanding and sensitivity to both morality and emotion led these thinkers to believe they were separate from the masses, who needed them as guides. The values they sought to inculcate, however, transcended class or the nation: indeed, their proponents claimed that these values embodied universal truths. Liszt claimed that music once held the most powerful and honored post in society: No art, no science—excluding philosophy—has the right to such a glorious past as music does, to raise a claim to such an ancient and beautiful synthesis. When we go back to the oldest times, we find the most famous men, the most honorable philosophers and legislators bowing before her cradle.144 Music’s purpose was to protect and carry on the tradition of truth and wisdom. Contemporary musicians were partially to blame for their own sorry situation; along with the bourgeoisie, they too had succumbed to the temptations of financial success and fame. Thinkers and writers have characterized the crisis of faith and the lack of unity—which leads to materialism—as the greatest wound of our time. All layers of society are affected by it, including musicians. Instead of standing fast and staying alert, . . . instead of praying, or acting, we have bowed and cowered together under the golden yoke.145 142 143 144 145

Blanning, 138; Walker, 190. Liszt, “De la situation des artistes,” RGMP 2, no. 18 (5 May 1835): 135. Liszt, “De la situation des artistes,” RGMP 2, no. 19 (10 May 1835): 158. Liszt, “De la situation des artistes,” RGMP 2, no. 20 (17 May 1835): 166.

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Liszt thought that art and music were needed forces of change; he began the piece with a diagnosis of Parisian society. It was characterized by debates, ignorance, presumption and half-measures in the salons and in journalism. In politics, as in philosophy and the fine arts, the masses had barely the slightest notion of the most basic concepts; the greatest truths passed over the capable and educated. Technological and scientific innovation, while beneficial for material needs, warped society’s priorities. Liszt argued that although modern civilization had freed humanity from darkness, superstition and ignorance, which in turn led to specialization and individualization of the arts and sciences, there was a cost to be paid: “in yearning for progress and reform,” he wrote, “society has lost sight of the original laws (of social unity).”146 Politics, art and science, once a unified group, were divided by animosity and egoism. This longing for an organic wholeness was typical of Romanticism: Liszt despaired of the new divisions in society, in part wrought by the political changes of the French Revolution, the intellectual questions raised by the Enlightenment, with its enthusiasm for iconoclasm and critique, and the emergence of market capitalism and its concomitant alienation. The powerful were particularly culpable for these problems. Liszt claimed that writers and attorneys of the aristocracy, people who could not understand spiritual matters, put through the Charter of 1830, which was ostensibly intended to grant greater freedoms to more people. Despite Louis-Philippe’s claim of being the “bourgeois” king, social equality had not yet been achieved. Liszt wrote, like a doctor who believes he’s curing an illness when he soothes the patient’s ill temper, so does society flatter itself that it can heal a deep wound through superficial means. Those who have the fate of nations in their hands forget all too easily that humility cannot long remain the virtue of the masses, and that, when the people have long sighed, one will soon hear them roar.147 Liszt himself chose to roar through writing: one could easily substitute “masses” in the last sentence with “artists.” Institutional reform and creation were centerpieces of Liszt’s proposed solution to these problems. New, effective institutions would produce better musicians, who would then write and perform glorious music. This music would elevate audiences and its ameliorating effects would ripple through society at large. The first area in need of change was the conservatory system; 146 Franz Liszt, “De la situation des artistes,” RGMP 2, no. 18 (5 May 1835): 135. 147 Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 5, no 6 (11 February 1838): 62.

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it needed both expansion and renovation. Liszt lamented that only five or six main European cities had music conservatories. His other mission at this point becomes clear: to combat academicism. He questioned whether the extant conservatory system really served society. “Is . . . life, activity, true, deep, glowing artistic feeling to be found in each part of this unclean, badly divided school on the Faubourg-Poissonière?”148 For Liszt, renowned names on the teaching faculty were not enough—he called for a broader repertoire, including modern compositions. Another institutional innovation Liszt demanded was the establishment of musical societies, probably inspired by Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, established in 1812. These societies would improve musicians’ training and communication with each other. Their activities would include many rehearsals; founding of music schools and libraries, which would subscribe to the most excellent music journals of France and other lands; calling general assemblies every five to six years, awarding prizes for outstanding works and establishing honoraria for outstanding artists. Liszt intended these groups to give musicians support as well as benefit society by encouraging better compositions, teaching and reference materials. Liszt also attacked teaching and criticism; he believed that they held a great amount of power in shaping the direction of art, or society at large. Music education, the proper development of physical skill and professional behavior, was one of the most discussed topics across Europe in the musical press during the nineteenth century. Especially in the German lands, educators and critics voiced concerns about hasty development of musicians for professional careers; they feared that this would both damage the students, and would lower standards of performance and accustom audiences to mediocre performances.149 Liszt claimed that many teachers were indifferent and had backgrounds either in artisanry or trade or had not studied at all, and that it was the same with music critics. These teachers and critics thought it enough to have ears. Here Liszt lambasted the leisured classes who were untrained in music, yet sought to earn even more money as music teachers. He raises his own authority by painting them as effeminate, incompetent and grasping. So the next best pedant decorates himself with the title Professor with just as much right to it as so many of his money-scraping and usurious noble colleagues. Some of these artists combine a teacher’s salary and 148 Liszt, “De la situation des artistes,” RGMP 2, no. 35 (30 August 1835): 287. 149 For discussions of music education in the German lands, see Celia Applegate, Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca, NY, 2005), and Gramit.

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that of a journalist. Unmindful of this, the journal recruits much more profitably from these especially unqualified people, envious and idle, dirty or yellow-gloved eunuchs, as from possessors of beautiful open carriages, of impertinent sidewalk pounders—from this highly important race of men who build themselves up as the highest judges of the beautiful and the ugly, of success and defeat, whom one can admire as they promenade gravely as a great king in the halls of theater and opera.150 This is a scathing image of the moneyed classes: they were emasculated, idle courtiers who claimed to have good taste and discernment. These so-called critics were, in truth, grasping individuals seeking to better their situations by any means available. By insisting on education for teachers and critics, Liszt was trying to raise the quality of the repertoire and performances, which in turn would enhance the status and exclusivity of the profession. The remedy for this deplorable situation of art and artists lay in the following areas of focus: education of musicians, education of audiences, and new music. First of all, Liszt argued, artists needed to rise to their responsibilities. To achieve this end, he would found a gathering that met every five years for religious, dramatic and symphonic music through which the best conceived works of these three genres would be celebrated in the Louvre and commissioned by the government; found a new music museum; create general assemblies of philharmonic societies modeled on the large music festivals in the German lands and England; found a progressive school for music, outside the conservatory, led by the best artists, a school with branches in all the provinces. The education of children and audiences was also important: Liszt called for the introduction of music education in elementary schools, and its spread to other schools; improvement of choir singing in all Parisian churches and those in the provinces; lyric theater, concerts, chamber music recitals, organized through the earlier-mentioned conservatory plan; the publication of ­important 150 “Ainsi, le premier cuistre venu s’intitule professeur, du même droit à la vérité que tant de gagnes-pains et de grippes-sous ses honorables collègues. Quelques-uns de ces artistes cumulent les honoraires du professorat et du journalisme. Néanmoins le feuilleton se recruite plus habilement dans cette population d’incapacités spéciales, d’eunuques envieux ou oisifs, en gants jaunes our sales, possédant des beaux tilburis ou battant impertinement le pavé, population d’une haute importance, juge souverain du beau, du laid, du succès, de la chûte et qu’on peut regarder et admirer, se promener elle-même, comme le grand roi, au foyer des Bouffes et de l’Opéra.” Ibid., 291. Yellow gloves were worn by Louis-Philippe and his courtiers. Trésor de la Langue Française: Dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe siècle (1789–1960) (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1971), “gant.”

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works of old and new composers since the Renaissance up to modern times, which would include both folk music and art music. In a follow-up to “De la situation”, Liszt observed that while in the German lands each major provincial city produced music publications, there was only the Gazette Musicale for all of France.151 Liszt outlined his vision of art’s power to improve people and their lives in some essays published by the RGMP as “Lettres d’un bachelier ès-musique.” He stated that musical education of the type discussed in “De la situation” could make the “myth of Orpheus’s lyre become reality.” Music then “could become a beneficial educational divinity and its children would adorn their brows with the noblest of all crowns, the crown that the people bestows on its liberator, its friend, its prophet.”152 Music was a liberating force—not necessarily in a political, but a social and cultural sense. The same letter portrays society as prosaic and bourgeois; Liszt wanted to reinvigorate it emotionally and spiritually, for people to break the fetters of respectability and academicism. Liszt’s evangelical fervor for new music animated his activities for the rest of his life. Liszt was much more than a piano virtuoso. His interest in new music, in church music, and in music aesthetics left him ultimately dissatisfied with a performing career. D’Ortigue claimed that Liszt was “ceaselessly preoccupied with his future, living ten or twenty years in advance, he regarded the success that was other virtuosos’ greatest ambition secondary.”153 Liszt’s tours from 1835–47 confirmed some of his worst fears about such a profession and jaded him. In 1837 he complained to George Sand, “If one has but a bit of fame, the public wants to know the color of one’s slippers, the cut of one’s nightshirt, the brand of tobacco that one prefers, yes, even the name of one’s pet rabbit.”154 His first career as piano virtuoso was to contribute lastingly to his public persona to the point of overwhelming other aspects of his life. Liszt’s virtuoso career ended his financial insecurity, giving him the ability to support his aging mother and his three children. His fame was such that he could raise vast sums of money in a series of concerts. His tours of the 1830s and 40s had cemented his international reputation as a star, perhaps the first of his kind. Wild audience reception and attacks from music critics heightened the drama of his subjective stance. The virtuosic self, while vastly enriching him, also constrained Liszt’s future. He had begun composing piano, ­instrumental 151 Franz Liszt, “Encore Quelques Mots sure la Subalternité des Musiciens,” RGMP 2, no. 46 (13 Novembre 1833): 371. 152 Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 4, no. 7 (12 February 1837): 56. 153 D’Ortigue: 201. 154 Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 4, no. 7 (12 February 1837): 53.

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and vocal works already in his teens, some of which met with warm reception. In the early 1840s Liszt had made the acquaintance of many German elites, including aristocrats as well as the educated middle classes. Liszt’s compositional and philosophical-aesthetic interests pushed him beyond a career as a performing musician. He sought a new way to pursue his interests and to shed his reputation as charlatan virtuoso. While he devoted the rest of his life to composition and pursuing cultural development, he was unsuccessful in completely transcending his reputation as a flashy performer. In his search for a higher, nobler, more sacred calling, Liszt turned to nationalism as a secular religion and source of authenticity, expression, and creativity.

chapter 2

The Hungarian Patriot In 1838, Franz Liszt returned to the Habsburg lands and made a choice that would influence the rest of his life. The virtuoso had been touring Central Europe and was living in Italy with d’Agoult when he heard of disastrous flooding in Pest. When he arrived in Vienna as dictated by his touring schedule, Liszt gave a series of concerts to benefit the city and homeless people of Pest. This episode, notorious in the Liszt literature, illuminates several aspects of his character. The first that strikes the reader is Liszt’s impressionability and sensitivity: he absorbed impressions like a drug and made them his own. As he offered these concerts to the Viennese public, he wrote, the meaning of the word ‘Fatherland’ became obvious. I suddenly transported myself back in the past and rediscovered the treasures of childhood memories clean and untouched in my heart. A beautiful landscape rose before my eyes: that was the well-known forest from which the hunter’s call echoed—that was the river Danube falling over rocks—that was the broad meadowland, where peaceful herds grazed in freedom—that was Hungary, the powerful fertile ground that bore noble sons! That is my homeland! I shouted with an attack of patriotism you might laugh at, ‘I belong to this old powerful race too, I too am a son of this natural, untamed Nation, which is destined for better days!’1 This pastoral narrative of recovering lost memories and selfhood was reprinted in newspapers all over Europe; the virtuoso Liszt now saw himself as a Hungarian hero, adding nationality as a third and last component to his kaleidoscopic subjectivity. He bolstered his article’s credibility through his insistence on the validity of his experience: his childhood memories of his nation had not been altered in the intervening years; they rather had been simply recovered. Liszt, however, had not yet set foot in Pest, nor in the Hungarian lands; this article was written based on his experiences in Vienna. Why, after his great Parisian and European successes, did Liszt suddenly become Hungarian? What did audiences, music critics, and nationalists make of this moment? What does Liszt’s “awakening” indicate about the formation and articulation of national identity in nineteenth-century Europe? 1 Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 5, no. 35 (2 September 1838): 350–351.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004279223_004

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When Liszt wrote this article, nationalist ideologies were becoming increasingly powerful among educated elites in Central Europe. Literate malcontents like Liszt have long been understood as “carriers” of national identity.2 Recent literature on nationalism has characterized such educated elites as creators rather than carriers; they conjured nationhood through their debates, publications, and discussions about the nations they claimed to discover. Liszt and his fellow writers, musicians, and critics were architects of the idea of national belonging and of nations themselves. The purpose of the new category and identity articulated by nationalism has typically been characterized as motivated by either political or economic benefits.3 Nationalist sentiments, then, are at heart opportunist and self-serving; the love patriots feel for their nations is by no means selfless. Until this point in his life, nationality was not an important part of Liszt’s self-conception. Contemporary critics and biographers had characterized Liszt as “cosmopolitan,” a concept associated with a range of definitions. Cosmopolitanism meant worldly sophistication; it also indicated homelessness or lack of geographical allegiances or loyalties; or, when connected to neoclassical values, a kind of universalism superior to provincialism, backwardness, and ignorance. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, these ideas of cosmopolitanism were also inflected with a Western European focus, as the Enlightenment had originated in the British Isles and in France. As we’ve seen, Liszt’s adolescence and early adulthood in Paris had acculturated him to French ideas and codes of behavior, which were often lionized as superior and “cosmopolitan,” the ideal against which other societies were implicitly (or at times explicitly) compared and ultimately found wanting. Given these inflections, it appears at first blush that Liszt’s Hungarian identity would be a step of downward mobility, as he associated himself with a “smaller” nation, apparently in place of his cosmopolitan sensibilities. However, a specific, particular identity, counter to cosmopolitanism or universalism, suited Liszt’s purposes of resolving the tensions between his Romantic aesthetics and virtuoso career. Liszt sought a subject position from which to assert his creativity, agency, authenticity, and authority, a position that would allow him to escape his objectified and alienated status as a 2 Ivan Berend, History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 2003), 41–133;  John Hutchinson, “Moral Innovators and the Politics of Regeneration: The Distinctive Role of Cultural Nationalists in Nation Building,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 33 (1992): 101–117. 3 For political opportunism, see Jeremy King, “The Nationalization of East Central Europe,” 131; Robert Nemes, The Once and Future Budapest (DeKalb, IL, 2005), 11.

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v­ irtuoso. Inspired by Romanticism, embracing nationhood allowed Liszt to reframe his audiences from undiscerning, spectacle seeking parvenus to “the people” who appreciated his art and himself for their greatness. In adopting his new national subjectivity, Liszt became a champion of the people, a redeemer rather than exploiter or entertainer. As audiences became authentic with a national inflection, so did Liszt himself. The particular Hungarian nationality he adopted, associated with a martial past, also lent authority to the artist as a man, a masculine warrior tied by duty and glory to his country. Liszt imagined Hungary as a site of freedom and authenticity, an Eastern land that had retained its original wildness, as opposed to the mannered sophistication of France. Yet he also viewed Hungary through that sophisticated perspective himself. In choosing to become Hungarian, Liszt straddled authenticity and cosmopolitanism. Liszt situated himself at the center as he wrote about Hungarians, Gypsies and Poles, peoples less civilized, and more innocent than his readers; yet he also wrote from the periphery, claiming a shared identity with the Gypsies as a rootless wanderer who expressed himself through music.4 Like his contemporaries, Liszt navigated between local, regional, national and cosmopolitan loyalties.5 In mid-nineteenth century Central Europe, national belonging had not yet gelled into an exclusivist undertaking; Liszt could claim multiple homelands. Liszt’s choice to identify with Hungary as his homeland was driven by his quest to find a subjective stance of authenticity that would allow him to gain recognition as a creative artist, a composer, rather than a virtuoso. This chapter will explore the development of Hungarian assertions of nationhood along political, linguistic and cultural lines. Cultural nationalism was indebted to the writings of Johann Gottfried von Herder, and by the 1830s, artists across Europe were making a “national turn” for inspiration and expression in their work, particularly in music. These ideas influenced Liszt’s adoption of Hungarian patriotism as well as his musical compositions. His book about Hungarian and Gypsy music reveals the tensions inherent in national identity creation as well as in Liszt’s desire to be both original and civilized.

4 Currently, the term “Roma” is more commonly used instead of the approbation “Gypsies,” which I have chosen to use because it was the accepted term of Liszt’s era. 5 Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990).

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Hungarian Nationalism

At the end of the eighteenth century, Central Europeans began a profound reevaluation of their place in the world with the arrival of liberalism, republicanism, and nationalism from France and the German lands. The imperial Habsburg state sought to reform its administration and strengthen its rule, which provoked reactions from its elite subjects that increasingly were voiced in nationalist terms and critiques of imperial cultural hegemony. Nationalist claims about the ineffable nature of national belonging were often expressed through a narrative of awakening from a long sleep, a story to empower and legitimize these new movements seeking to improve their proponents’ political, economic, or social standing. Hungary, the largest formerly sovereign territory subsumed within the Habsburg lands, functioned as a “small empire . . . within the larger imperial unit.”6 The German language was generally spoken in the larger towns and cities by the Christian and Jewish burgher class, as well as at the courts of the magnates, while Magyar, Slovak or Croatian served as the rural language of peasants. The term “Hungary” itself referred either to the historic Kingdom, or to the polity and its institutions within the larger empire.7 At the end of the eighteenth century, Hungarian magnates began to assert nationalist claims in order to defend their legal and economic privileges from Josephinist centralization. These magnates were long protected by some of the central points of the Hungarian constitution, a document that dated from the medieval period and changed form over the centuries, which stated that their landholdings had to remain in their families and could not be sold. “Estates nationalism” was a political and economic movement meant to enhance and preserve magnates’ seigneurial rights within the imperial framework in part by blocking imperial attempts to conscript more farmhands; it was restricted to the most wealthy aristocrats, who saw themselves as “Paladins of Christian universalism in the service of a European dynasty.”8 This was a “multilingual patriotism” in which enlightened cosmopolitanism and national pride could coexist: at this point, Magyar patriotism existed only among the magnates,

6 Andrew Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945 (Princeton, 1982), 69. 7 Given this historical terminology, I will use the adjective “Hungarian” when referring to a political entity or identity, “Magyar” when speaking of the language, ethnicity, or nationalists who asserted the importance of these. 8 Janos, 19.

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who associated their national identity with their feudal privileges.9 Seeking to protect their rights and privileges, cartographers began to chart the Hungarian lands by the end of the eighteenth century. Part of the Habsburg centralizing reform policy focused on language use and the imposition of German language laws, which magnates countered with a new emphasis on the Magyar language. They emphasized it by switching the Hungarian public-political language from Latin to Magyar. Magyar was chosen because it was the language spoken by the largest proportion of the population. Additionally, in 1790–91 the Hungarian parliament enacted a law that required the use of Magyar in all high schools and universities. Scholars created grammars and dictionaries in their attempt to elevate Magyar into a literary language. Latin left behind a legacy in that this early, moderate, elite form of nationalism is also called the “Hungarus” vision. Some magnates linked their privileges to a new responsibility, that of reforming and modernizing society. Led by István Széchenyi, reformers saw a connection between nationalism and socio-economic reforms.10 As the magnates sought to reform their lands, their project also created deeper foundations of nationalist sentiment and identification in Hungarian society, seeking to effect a connection between nobles and commoners. Széchenyi is considered the father of such reforms; he believed that Hungarian literature was “destined for an entire nation, not only for the feudal classes.”11 Széchenyi and other reformers sought to link western liberalism and Christian values: their nationalist assertions were tied to morality. Their project also entailed a 9

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George Barany, “The Age of Royal Absolutism, 1790–1848,” in A History of Hungary, ed. Peter Sugar, Péter Hanák, and Tibor Frank (Bloomington, 1990), 174–208, here 183; Éva H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 1865–1800: An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism (Budapest, 1997); Laszlo Katus, “Die Magyaren,” in Die Völker des Reiches, vol. III of Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna, 1980), 411–488. Nobles made up between five and ten percent of the population, which bolstered their self-perception as the Hungarian people. William O. McCagg, A History of Habsburg Jews 1670–1918 (Bloomington, IN, 1989), 130. Nemes, 57; Iván Zoltán Dénes, “Political Vocabularies of the Hungarian Liberals and Conservatives before 1848,” in Liberty and the Search for Identity: Liberal Nationalisms and the Legacy of Empires (Budapest, 2006), 155–196; Miklós Szabó, “The Liberalism of the Hungarian Nobility, 1825–1910,” in Liberty and the Search, 197–238. George Barany, “Hungary: From Aristocratic to Proletarian Nationalism,” in Nationalism in Eastern Europe, ed. Peter F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer (Seattle, 1969), 264. For more on Széchenyi, see Barany, Stephen Széchenyi and the Awakening of Hungarian Nationalism, 1791–1841 (Princeton, 1968); Andreas Oplatka, Graf Stephan Széchenyi: Der Mann, der Ungarn schuf (Vienna, 2004).

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strengthening of the middle classes through a slow erosion of feudal privileges, an “ennoblement” of the common people that hinged on education. They hoped political nationalism could act as a unifying spiritual force that eliminated class and confessional differences from cultural life. Széchenyi and his allies were Liszt’s heroes; their Christian, moral mission resonated with his own allegiance to Lamennais’ ideas and his conception of art as a spiritual and social good. Estates nationalists were well aware that they did not operate in isolation from larger imperial institutions and loyalties, nor from more localized forms of identification. Studies of nationalism’s emergence in Central Europe have until recently assumed an “inherent opposition between national consciousness and imperial loyalty.”12 The multi-linguistic, multi-confessional nature of the Habsburg lands stymied nationalists who sought to inscribe homogenous groupings onto diversity, and to impose monopolies on people’s loyalties. These attempts were unsuccessful; “national hermaphrodites” existed well into the twentieth century.13 Rather than nations awakening as after a long slumber, scholars now posit that people choose a national affiliation based on the potential gains to be won from such an association. Recent studies of Central Europe suggest that individuals could adopt “situational ethnicity” based on their surroundings and social context.14 Liszt’s actions and writings also demonstrate that imperial loyalties could coexist with Hungarian patriotism and national identification.15 Estates nationalism, based in an ancien regime understanding of identity, was particularly amenable to blending with larger imperial loyalties, but even the newly emerging Romantic nationalist movement could accommodate itself to operating as simply one of many obligations upon imperial subjects. The writings of Johann Gottfried von Herder, imported from the German lands, inspired and legitimated this new form of nationalism. Herder argued against Enlightenment universalism, and broke the “neoclassic reverence for antiquity as a timeless norm.”16 Rather, Herder lauded uniqueness and particularity, seeing in them a vitality that would elevate humanity. Cultures and individuals developed in an organic manner that marked each one as ­distinctive. 12

13 14 15 16

Laurence Cole and Daniel Unowsky, “Imperial Loyalty and Popular Allegiances in the Late Habsburg Monarchy,” in The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy (New York, 2007), 2. Judson, 183. Van Rahden, 9, 241. Cole and Unowsky, 2–3. Todd Kontje, German Orientalisms (Ann Arbor, 2004), 64.

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Herder sought to encourage the excavation and dissemination of national cultures to gain an understanding of the past, which would aid in appreciating the present. In Herder’s historicist and hermeneutic project, nations were to be discovered and developed. Like plants, nations were grounded, literally, in the soil from which they sprang. Herder believed that culture was shaped by environment: each nation is in its imagination deeply marked, because it is related to its skies and earth. From these its living style sprang, bequeathed by fathers and great-grandfathers.17 The “living style” of myth, poetry, song, and dance expressed a particular character. Climate and geography nurtured unique cultures, all of which would contribute to humanity’s development in Herder’s teleological schema. Liszt’s own fascination with the landscapes of his touring years, reflected in Années de Pélerinage and the Hungarian Rhapsodies, was rooted in particular impressions of the terrain. While he might not have shared Herder’s universalist cultural-political agenda, he nonetheless absorbed the Romantic message of particularity, place, and expression. Herder believed in the agency of the people to create culture and valued folk and peasant art just as highly as formal poetry. He claimed that the “original genius” of a people stemmed from a basic naïveté, which created unstudied expressions of strong feeling: poetry had originated with the emotional outcries of primitive people.18 These pure expressions also took the form of song, one of the earliest forms of communication: Herder posited that music and language had evolved together.19 Each culture should embrace this rustic, rough, but genuine product as its authentic voice. This folk project had a strong anti-colonial component to it as Herder railed against Enlightenment universalism and French cosmopolitanism. He urged nations to break the shackles of good taste and cultivation dictated by strangers. Per Herder, the artist was no longer a man of taste who imitated nature for didactic and entertainment purposes: he was now a “Promethean genius who rivaled God” in artistic

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Johann Gottfried von Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, vol. 6 of Werke, ed. Jürgen Brummack and Martin Bollacher (Frankfurt a. M., 1989), 298. See also Herder’s Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zu Bildung der Menschheit, vol. 4 of Werke. 18 Michael Beddow, “Goethe on Genius,” in Genius: The History of an Idea, ed. Penelope Murray (London, 1989), 99; Abrams, 78. 19 Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 53.

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creation.20 These ideas found analogous expression in the writings of SaintSimon that had so captivated Liszt in Paris. The estates nationalists’ assertion of aristocratic privilege and noblesse oblige sparked in turn the nationalism of lesser nobles and the gentry, who claimed that Magyars’ unique culture and language gave them a particular national identity and thus empowered them to participate in national politics.21 They also defined their culture in opposition to the Habsburg Germans. This new Romantic nationalism took on primarily cultural expression: more and more intellectuals translated texts into Magyar, and Hungarian cultural institutions began to appear, such as the National Theater, established in Pest in 1837. In the 1820s and 1830s a notable Magyar-language literature developed, represented by the Romantic poets Mihály Vörösmarty and Sándor Petőfi. Their works echoed Herderian ideas about the bond between the land and a people. Petőfi’s “The Hungarian Plain” praises the animals who roam the countryside, the plants that grow in the soil, and ends with a fervent plea: Fair art thou, Alföld, fair at least to me!/ Here I was born, and in my cradle lay./ God grant I may be buried ‘neath its sod,/ And mix my mouldering cerements with its clay!22 Even in death, the land and people were to be one. Liszt admired both poets and near the end of his life composed elegies for them. For Romantic nationalists, poetry, music, and dance were favored forms to express Magyar identity. Waltzes, associated with the Viennese court, were shunned in favor of the csárdás, a dance based on military recruiting songs. In addition, ball attendees wore national costumes and spoke Magyar.23 The illogic of adopting a foreign idea to define themselves against that foreign source did not impede nationalists’ efforts. Hungary’s transition to a market economy and the mobility associated with it were other spurs to an increasingly linguistic and cultural understanding of nationhood beginning in the 1820s. The project of teaching Magyar pride and language was successful over the course of several decades. By 1880, 73% of Budapest’s inhabitants spoke Magyar (not necessarily to the exclusion of other 20 21 22 23

Kontje, 64. Barany, “Hungary”, 265. “Alföld” is the proper name of the Hungarian plain. Egon F. Kunz, ed. Hungarian Poetry (Sydney, 1955), 58–59. Robert Nemes, “The Politics of the Dance Floor: Culture and Civil Society in NineteenthCentury Hungary,” Slavic Review 60, no. 4 (Winter, 2001): 802.

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tongues). In the 1840s, the percentage was considerably smaller, and raising that percentage was a focus of nationalist efforts.24 These efforts often were linked with Széchenyi’s liberal reforms, offering emancipation and progress to those who participated. The new linguistic emphasis on national identity promised access to upward mobility for the principal national minorities in Hungary, because they could choose to use Magyar as their primary tongue and shed religious or ethnic differences as they became members of the nation. In this way, “German authors and scientists, Jewish merchants, physicians, and rabbis chose Hungary as their homeland.”25 This emphasis on adopting Magyar as the language of Hungary also sparked debate, resistance and resentment. German-speakers, who had begun emigrating to Hungary in the Middle Ages never created a coherent group identity in Hungary; becoming German was not an option as it was in other parts of the Habsburg empire, such as the Bohemian lands.26 The “Deutschungarn” were active in the 1840s in asserting their place in the Hungarian nation as Germanspeakers. They criticized the “obstinate fanatics” who insisted that Magyar be the sole national language.27 While Liszt fit the profile of the culture-carrying German speakers, selecting this form of national identity would not have appealed to him: German was strongly associated with commercial activity. Other national minorities, such as Croats and Romanians, were also unhappy with Magyarization and viewed it as a hegemonic repression of their own cultures. Indeed, Magyarization became increasingly ethnicity-based and intolerant, especially of unassimilated Jews, in the second half of the nineteenth century. These new Magyarizing policies were also a reaction in part to Herder’s prediction that the Magyars faced extinction due to the large number of nonMagyar speakers in Hungary.

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Nemes, 174. For nationalist symbolic politics in Hungary, see András Gerö, Imagined History: Chapters from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Hungarian Symbolic Politics, trans. Mario D. Fenyo (Boulder, CO, 2006). Péter Hanák, Ungarn in der Donaumonarchie: Probleme der bürgerliche Umgestaltung eines Vielvölkerstaates (Vienna, 1984), 45–46. For a reassessment of Jewish assimilation, see Howard N. Lupovitch, Jews at the Crossroads: Tradition and Accommodation during the Golden Age of the Hungarian Nobility, 1729–1878 (Budapest, 2007). Hanák, 284–85; Nemes, Once and Future Budapest, 81. For the Bohemian German nationalist movements, see Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (Princeton, 1981); King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans. Das deutsche Element in Ungarn und seine Aufgabe. Eine Zeitfrage besprochen von einem Deutschungar (Leipzig, 1843), v; Carl Maria Benkert, Jahrbuch des deutschen Elements in Ungarn (Budapest, 1846).

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Another group that challenged both nationalists’ conceptions of Hungarianness and the state’s authority over its subjects was the Gypsies. The state made nomadism illegal at the end of the eighteenth century and attempted to tax the Gypsies and conscript them into military service, although the nobility did little to enforce these new laws.28 For nationalists, Gypsies were a group that refused to assimilate and were for that reason alone worthy of suspicion, a perception that centuries of persecution and prejudice against them grounded in apparent truth. Gypsies’ nomadic lifestyle also contradicted nationalist ideas about peoples residing in specific geographic territories. These points will be developed later when I turn to Liszt’s relationship to Hungary and the Gypsies. Nationalist ideas about Hungarian identity presented two polarized options to Hungarians in their relationship to the larger empire, and indeed, to Europe as a whole: Hungary was either European, or Oriental. During the Enlightenment, philosophes had marked Eastern Europe as a marginal location in regard to Western Europe—remote and economically, politically, and culturally backward.29 For Western Europeans at least, Hungarians were not much different from Turks as both peoples loved hunting, horses, and good living.30 Counter to this characterization was Herder’s new aesthetic based on oppositional values: he elevated the primitive over the modern, feeling over form, the spoken over the written word, and nature over art. Following this line of argumentation, philologists eagerly traced Hungary’s origins to the arrival of Asiatic tribes from the east: Hungary’s foundational myth commemorates its origins with the arrival of the tribes of Arpád in the year 1000. These tribes were thought to be the source of Hungarians’ purported freedom, pride, honor and courage.31 Hungary’s geographical position as the easternmost and southernmost part of the Habsburg Empire made it an outpost, a frontier of Western Christianity. The immediate presence of the Ottoman Empire was a source of anxiety and pride. Hungarian nationalists were acutely aware of their intermediate 28

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David M. Crowe, A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia (New York, 1994), 76–77; Claudia Breger, Ortlosigkeit des Fremden: “Zigeunerinnen” und “Zigeuner” in der deutschsprachigen Literatur um 1800 (Cologne, 1998). Nancy M. Wingfield, Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe. (New York, 2003), 1; Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Enlightenment (Stanford, 1994). Woolf, 164. In 1699 the Ottoman Empire had ceded its Hungarian territories to the Habsburgs as a result of the Treaty of Karlowitz. Irina Popova, “Representing National Territory: Cartography and Nationalism in Hungary, 1700–1848,” in Creating the Other, 31; András Vári, “The Function of Ethnic Stereotypes in Austria and Hungary in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Creating the Other, 39–55.

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physical location between East and West, barbarism and civilization, authenticity and mannered manipulation.32 This tension between the perceived need for distinctive uniqueness and for legitimacy as a civilized, mainstream nation, not a cultural backwater, divided conceptions of the Hungarian nation’s character and also appeared in Liszt’s essays. At a Hungarian National Circle Ball a Moorish kiosk expressed some of these tensions as Hungarians sought to find an Eastern other for themselves, and in order to prevent the Orientalizing of Hungary itself.33 This tension between subjectivity, the Hungarians’ unique and particular culture, and objectivity, their cultural inferiority and backwardness in comparison to larger states and empires, was one that Liszt attempted to wield for his own uses and yet could not completely bend to his control. Hungarian assertions of autonomy and distinction based in political rights and cultural uniqueness coexisted throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. These assertions did not necessarily take political form, as most of their adherents accepted their status as Habsburg subjects. They spawned economic and social reforms as well as Magyarization policies, as educated elites sought to be taken seriously by the West and to assert their difference from it. Both estates and Romantic nationalism influenced Franz Liszt’s beliefs about nationhood and his Hungarian patriotism. He, like Hungarian nationalists, would experience tensions in asserting his national, particular identity while seeking to retain the power and stature he had gained as an inhabitant of Europe’s cultural capital.

Music Takes a “National Turn”

Not only did art music break away from older patrons to establish itself as a middle-class pursuit; thanks to changes in aesthetic thought, music increasingly was seen as an expressive subject that could convey thoughts and emotions.34 More and more often, the thoughts and emotions to be conveyed were national ones. Neoclassical universalism was supplemented or even replaced by the Romantic interest in the particular, a particular that musicians increasingly believed to be national, à la Herder. Anton Reicha had communicated these ideas to his pupils in Paris and to the public. Among other music

32 33 34

Popova, 30–31. Nemes, “Politics of Dance Floor,” 815n52. Bonds, xiii; Steinberg, 9.

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theory texts, Reicha wrote “Observations sur les airs nationaux” which bolstered the Herderian project of national expression and development.35 Both Romanticism and the new music market brought composers’ own intentions and expressions to the fore. Nationalism became a way for composers to be fresh and original, and to appeal to their new audiences. For an authentic piece of music to be composed, it had to be “rooted in the national spirit.”36 The relationship of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, then, was not necessarily one of opposition. The case was much more one of complementarity: “nationalism was seen as a means, not a hindrance, to universality. Nor was a strong national tint . . . an obstacle to international recognition; indeed, it was almost always the vehicle.”37 The developmental telos of nationalist thought began with discovery of national folk culture and ended in a nation’s international recognition and achievement, a process in which music could play a vital role. And for composers themselves, a way to market their music was to play the nationalist card. They did so through the use of folk melodies, rhythms, harmonies, and scales in their compositions. Exotic flourishes drawn from local music practices had long been ingredients in musicians’ repertoire. For example, Haydn and Mozart both freely appropriated from the so-called “Turkish” style.38 Exoticism presented listeners with a strange, alien culture, signified by the increased use of the drone, new uses of percussion, or modal scales. The unique, entertaining snippets allegedly imported from another place far away diverted and amused courtly audiences. This practice of ornamenting art music with Eastern accents continued throughout the nineteenth century, notably in pieces such as Schubert’s Divertissements à la Hongroise, Berlioz’ Rakóczy March, and Brahms’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. These exotic touches formed a “unified and coherent dialect running parallel to the normal musical lingua franca of the nineteenth century.” Jonathan Bellman’s observation underlines the normative power of French and German musical traditions, which were the dominant schools of musical composition.39 In highlighting the difference from the listeners’ native culture, a piece that employs exotic flourishes implies or even calls for a comparison of 35 36 37 38 39

Cited in Adrienne Kaczmarczyk, “Ungarische Dreikönige: Franz Liszts Oratorium Christus,” in Liszt und Europa, 113–144, here 137n32. Dahlhaus, 37. Ibid., 37. Jonathan Bellman, “Toward a Lexicon for the Style hongrois,” The Journal of Musicology IX, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 214–37, here 219. Bellman, 214.

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the native and the exotic, and also an evaluation of the two; exoticism enforces the superiority of one’s own culture.40 One specific set of mannerisms, the style hongrois, shifted from a diversionary entertainment to an aspiration to express the national soul via the compositions of Franz Liszt. By 1850 art music culture increasingly reflected nationalist aspirations, particularly in the Habsburg lands.41 For example, the National Theater in Pest provided a platform for “national” music productions. At a concert in Romania in 1847, Liszt combined the hora (a Romanian national dance) with themes from Alexandru Flechtenmacher’s Moldavian Overture.42 Once arriving in Russia, he encouraged composers there to develop “Russian” music.43 Inspired by such suggestions, Magyar and Czech composers such as Ferenc Erkel, Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvořák, and Zdeněk Fibich “ransacked” the folkloric past for material.44 Folk song and dance became privileged sites of invented tradition.45 As composers drew upon folk songs that had sometimes been used as exotic touches, the emphasis shifted from introducing listeners to a strange culture to teaching them about their own culture and its history.46 Not only did art music reflect nationalist rivalries; composers also began to build careers on their national bona fides. In Hungary, artists, writers, and nationalists regarded cultural production as a service to the nation.47 Prior to 1850, composers and musicians often left their regional homelands, as Liszt, Chopin, and Reicha had done, to arrive in the major musical cities of Vienna or Paris; with nationalism’s ascendancy, they remained in their homelands as voices of the people. The tension with cosmopolitanism or universalism remained, however: in order to truly be successful, one needed to speak to a larger audience than that of a single nation. For example, “where [Ferenc] Erkel spoke to native Hungarians in a language accessible to all, Liszt spoke to the world at large about Hungary, and in the language of contemporary

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Jonathan Bellman, The Exotic in Western Music (Boston, 1998), ix. Jim Samson, “Nations and Nationalism,” in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music, 580. Walker, 439. Walker, 380; Dorothea Redepennig, “Liszt und die russische Symphonik,” in Liszt und die Nationalitäten, ed Gerhard J. Winkler (Eisenstadt 1996), 138–150. Samson, 587–88. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (New York, 1983). For Hungarian examples, see Nemes, “The Politics of the Dance Floor,” 802–23; Bellman, 216. Bellman, ix. Barany, “Hungary,” 265.

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European art music.”48 The tension between universalism and national inflections was apparent in Hungary already in the late 1830s.49 One author questioned the nature of German music after hearing calls in Hungary to ban German music completely in a move of cultural protectionism. He asked, “Is German music a national form designed to incite patriotic sentiments, one that is exclusive and closed off?” For him, German music was an art form like the Florentine or Dutch schools of painting, in short, a form that heralded a European Renaissance. “The great Italian composers, Palestrina, Scarlatti, Cherubini and others,” he claimed, “composed more German music than the most German of Germans before the German Confederation even existed.” Clearly, “German” was a descriptor of quality compositions for this writer, although his cultural-historical mission as a German bringing art to less educated audiences revealed an imperial attitude. The author then turned his attention to German-Hungarian relations, saying that the idea of animosity between them was “crazy” (tollhäuslerisch). According to him, German music had until the present been a nurturing source for Hungarians.50 This writer adhered to a developmental model of nationhood in which Hungarian and German cultures were not opposed to each other, but rather were but different stages of history. Written at the very outset of the revolutionary year 1848, this letter to the editor is a testament to music’s politicization for national aims. Musicologists now take pains to emphasize that the category of “national” music is a creation of nationalist ideologies, rather than a category that describes inherent qualities of the music itself. Music’s national quality, then, depended on the composer’s intention, but even more so on audience reception and use of the music.51 While nationalist composers could make claims about the nature of their music, it was ultimately up to the public to decide such matters: national identity is relational.

48 49 50 51

Samson, 589. For the full-fledged aesthetic crisis of the late nineteenth century, see Judit Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest (Berkeley, 1998). “Offener Brief an die Redaktion des BudaPesther Musikvereins,” Morgenröthe no. 22 (26 January 1848): 90–91 and no. 23 (27 January 1848): 94. Dahlhaus, 39; Samson, 598. For a critique of seeing nationalism in music and composers’ biographies, see Jolanta T. Pekaca, “Deconstructing a ‘National Composer’: Chopin and Polish Exiles in Paris, 1831–49,” 19th Century Music XXIV, no. 2 (Autumn, 2000): 161–72.

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Liszt’s Upbringing and Understanding of Nationality

Liszt’s family had emigrated from the German lands in the seventeenth century to the western part of Hungary, and approximately forty years before Liszt was born, either his grandfather or father, Adam, changed the orthography of the family name from List to Liszt in order to “Magyarize” it, ensuring that Magyar-speakers would pronounce it properly.52 Adam Liszt was educated at the Imperial Gymnasium and gained employment as part of the Esterházy family’s retinue. The Esterházys’ manor houses had been important sites of cultural production in the eighteenth century, especially when Joseph Haydn served as court conductor. Like other aristocrats, the Esterházys spoke no Magyar and until the 1850s, theirs and other magnates’ courts were very similar to German ones.53 Liszt’s early years then, were a time of immersion in German- and French-speaking court culture peopled by Hungarian magnates; his first language was German. His father’s assimilation to a nominally Hungarian identity also came to influence Liszt’s early career. Until at least the mid 1830s, Liszt identified himself as a Central European and German-speaker when at all. When touring the Habsburg lands as a young prodigy, the boy wore Hungarian costume, and Liszt’s concert placards announced him as Hungarian, but these were almost certainly designed by his father rather than by Liszt himself.54 His father’s decision to take Liszt to Paris, as we have seen, landed the boy in an alien world. Perhaps Liszt’s sense of his outsider status, or his awareness of being a German-speaker, led him in 1833 (four years prior to his Hungarian “awakening”) to share a sense of nationality with Heinrich Heine and Marie d’Agoult. In a letter to d’Agoult, whose mother came from the German bourgeoisie, Liszt referred to Heine as “our celebrated compatriot . . . one of the most distinguished men of Germany.”55 Liszt had not yet identified himself as a Hungarian, and his understanding of himself as German was based in language as well as his origins in the Habsburg Empire. However, he was primarily concerned with aesthetic and social forms of identification and belonging as he crafted his virtuoso and Romantic redeemer selves. 52

53 54 55

Walker, 38; Watson, 2–3; Ernö Békefi, “Franz Liszt: Seine Abstammung—seine Familie,” in Beitråge von ungarischen Autoren, ed. Klára Hamburger (Leipzig, 1978), 7–48. For a belabored treatment of Liszt’s possible ethnicity by his favorite relative, see Eduard von Liszt, Franz Liszt: Abstammung, Familie, Begebenheiten (Vienna, 1937). Samson, 579. For the previous century, see Gates-Coon. Gooley, 120. Undated letter of 1833, BMA, 19.

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Some of Liszt’s experiences in Paris may have begun to alter his views on national identity. After the revolution of 1830s, French Romantics became interested in exotic locales, from the Middle East to Central Europe, and greeted exiles from Eastern Europe with open arms. In many cases, the exiles’ Eastern origins heightened interest and respect for them, since Romantics saw these exiles as representatives of the particular identity of their nations as well as exotic, authentic Others. The exiled princess Cristina Belgiojoso was a fervent Italian nationalist who protected other exiles through subsidies, recommendations, and introductions to French society. She hosted a salon, for example, where many Poles gathered, as well as others from the Habsburg Empire. Belgiojoso patronized both Liszt and Chopin in their artistic endeavors, and was also known for her “strange turbans” that made her look like one of “Michaelangelo’s Sibyls”.56 The Romantics’ interest in “exotic” nationalities bolstered their own rejection of bourgeois norms: “Young men were to be seen everywhere sporting . . . Polish military uniforms from Brandenburg, Hungarian hussars’ mantles, [and] oriental robes of all kinds” to display their unique artistic outlooks and personalities.57 Liszt’s return to Vienna for a series of concerts to raise funds for the flooding in Pest that had struck in March 1838, killing more than 400 people and destroying more than half of Pest’s buildings was the moment Liszt himself pinpointed as his awakening to his Hungarian identity.58 He exercised his choice to elect a “public nationality” as so many other Central Europeans were doing.59 Liszt’s arrival in Vienna coincided with the emergence of Romantic nationalism in Hungary. The prodigal son returned to the city that had launched his performance career, unwittingly reenacting his arrival in Paris sixteen years earlier: by this time his French was much better than his German, and his manner seemed French to the Viennese.60 The young boy’s embarrassment at meeting Cherubini in Paris recurred in Viennese salons. One forgiving journalist claimed that although “one can at first expect aberrant behavior here or there, the animated nature of the young artist soon reconciles any small misunderstanding.”61 Liszt had become a stranger in his “homeland” with his

56 57 58 59 60 61

Rodolphe Apponyi, Vingt-Cinq Ans à Paris, vol. 3 (1835–1843) (Paris, 1914), 265. Gluck, 357. László Kontler, Millenium in Central Europe: A History of Hungary (Budapest, 1999), 237. Nemes cites 151 deaths; Once and Future Budapest, 107. Chad Bryant, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 3. Gooley, 125. Allgemeine Musikalische Anzeiger, 21 June 1838, 97–100, UPB, 32–33.

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French manners and language. His sense of dislocation unsettled him enough for him to write publicly about it. After declaring himself Hungarian, Liszt wrote an apology about his ties to France, a relationship he nonetheless treasured for the rest of his life. “I had become accustomed to thinking of France as my homeland and had ceased to remember that there was another fatherland for me,” Liszt recalled. He felt grateful to France; after all, France’s earth received my father’s ashes, his coffin rests in French soil, the holy asylum of my first pain! How could I not have regarded myself a child of the land where I suffered and loved so much? How could I have thought that I was born in another land, that in my veins flowed the blood of another race, that my people belong to another land?62 With this apology, Liszt minimized his lack of a unitary, single-faceted subjectivity, a kind of selfhood increasingly expected in Western Europe; one with but one point of identification in various categories like confessional affiliation, national identity, gender identification, and sexual preference. Liszt’s understanding of Hungarian nationhood articulated in his article, was rooted in soil, the “beautiful landscape,” and blood, the “old powerful race”; claims he could support, rather than in language, which he could not.63 As we’ll see later, Liszt pursued the possibility that he possessed aristocratic Hungarian ancestry, and he had grown up in Hungary itself. Linguistic nationalism was a cause he never embraced. Hungarian culture, however, was the framework for his patriotism. For the rest of his life, Liszt composed “Hungarian” works and supported cultural causes such as libraries, museums, and music academies. Liszt completely accepted the nation as an entity rather than a construction; the meaning of Fatherland, he stated, was “obvious.” It was by no means obvious in Vienna, nor in Budapest: for most inhabitants of those cities, the forms self-identification took were functions of confession, profession, and family ties. In speaking as if national allegiance were a given, Liszt helped to construct it, as well as his own subjectivity as a Hungarian.

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Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” 350–51. This attitude toward national identity was shared by Joseph d’Ortigue, who in 1836 described France as Liszt’s “adopted fatherland.” D’Ortigue, “Revue Musicale,” La Quotidienne (24 July 1836), quoted in Écrits sur la musique, 504. In 1833, Liszt lent a volume of Herder’s writings to d’Agoult. BMA, 64.

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The Hungary presented in Liszt’s article was a fallen nation, one of great potential, downtrodden in its backwardness, yet also nostalgically pastoral. Indeed, in a later letter to d’Agoult, Liszt characterized his Hungarian Melodies as “semi-Ossian,” referring to a myth about a vanished Gaelic warrior race that was all the rage among Romantics.64 Liszt evoked a place of natural beauty that featured forests, meadowlands, and a river, like that portrayed in Petőfi’s poem “The Hungarian Plain”. Its beauty was complemented by its fertility, and these qualities spoke to its past and future greatness: it would rise again, since it was “destined for better days” and simply slumbered in the trope of nationalist awakening. Liszt’s role as redeemer, presented as an artistic calling, started to take a more solid shape in this experience. Liszt’s “awakening” to a Hungarian identity was a not a simple, single-faceted new subjectivity, nor was it undertaken without specific ends in mind.65 Liszt fully adopted Herderian notions about the terrain and its importance in nurturing primitive authenticity. The nation was natural and untamed, uncontaminated by civilizing influences. Indeed, the fact that a flood awakened these sentiments in him indicates the strength of his Romantic conception of nationhood. For Romantics, rivers symbolized the flow of life, fertility, nature’s power, and even the souls of individuals.66 Rivers inspired many Romantic compositions, including the Rheinlieder of the 1840s, Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony (1850), Wagner’s Das Rheingold (1854), and Smetana’s Moldau (1874). The Danube itself figured larger-than-life size on Hungarian maps of the late eighteenth century, indicating its importance as an element of national identity.67 When it oversprang its banks the river demonstrated its raw natural power. Yet for Liszt and nationalists of the period, what or who constituted the nation, however, was vague. Of the nation, the Volk, the people, Liszt implied only that they could be hunters or shepherds. He relied on stock stereotypes about the Hungarian national character.68 The “old powerful” race to which Liszt belonged was completely open and unmarked, unreferential to the point of emptiness. I contend that this reveals not only the difficulty Hungarians 64 65 66 67 68

Letter of 8 Oct. 1846, BMA vol. II, 368. Dana Gooley presents Liszt as a schemer with a plan that would allow him to compose. Gooley, 12, 58. Abrams, 61; David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (New York, 2007). Popova, 29. Vári, 43–44.

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faced in defining their nation, since at least six languages were regularly spoken within its borders, but also of defining nations at all. Liszt was unsure who “the people” were, other than a vague sense that they practiced traditional professions and lifestyles. Liszt had been both geographically and culturally distant from Hungary for his entire adult life. While Hungary’s mode of production was focused on agriculture at the time, Liszt did not seek to portray contemporary Hungarians accurately: his Hungarians were nomads. He had not met any of them, after all, but in nailing down which people constituted the nation, Liszt would also have risked alienating those who were excluded from his conception, as he unwittingly did twenty years later with his book about Gypsies. Liszt’s correspondence with d’Agoult expressed his nonspecific ideal of nationhood and his adherence to Habsburg-loyal conceptions of patriotism. In 1838, Liszt wrote to her about his warm reception in the Habsburg capital, sending her two newspapers. “After reading them you will be able to judge the enthusiasm of my compatriots,” meaning, the Viennese audiences.69 Even more ironically, Liszt protested that he was not going to travel to Hungary-what point would there be? “You are my homeland (patrie),” he reassured d’Agoult.70 The idea of belonging, of nation and homeland clearly was not one that required abstention from other loves and loyalties. In April and May 1839 Liszt pleaded with d’Agoult to join him in Vienna, planning travels to Hungary, the Tyrol, and other vacation spots. In case she simply waited for him in Venice, he assured her, he would “go neither to Pressburg nor to Pest . . . there isn’t but a small amount of money to earn in these two cities. That which makes me desire to go there is a silly (bête) sentiment of nationalism that you know.”71 Here, Liszt clarified that profit was not his aim, and denigrated his own patriotism, perhaps because it was so new, but he also sought to downplay his absence from her. This “sentiment” was the outward sign of his new inward identification. Liszt prepared for a trip to Hungary throughout the rest of 1838. The deciding factor was a proposal from Hungarian aristocrats, written by Count Feit, to engage Liszt for concerts in Pressburg and Pest.72 The timing of Liszt’s adoption of a Hungarian identity has generally been ignored: Tibor Tallián is one of the few who questions the fourteen-month delay between Liszt’s “awakening” and his actual return to Hungary.73 69 70 71 72 73

Letter of 21 April 1838, BMA, 219. Letter of April 1838, BMA, 221. Letter of 5 May 1838, BMA, 228. Letter of 9 November 1838, BMA, 282. Tibor Tallián, Musik in Ungarn: Zeiten, Schicksale, Werke (Budapest, 1999), 11.

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Liszt’s reception upon his arrival in Pest made it clear that being a national hero could be valuable. After a rousing encore of the Rákóczy March at a benefit concert, a group of notables, led by Liszt’s patron and friend Count Leo Festetics, approached the stage and presented Liszt with a jewel-studded ceremonial saber inscribed with the words “To the great artist Ferenc Liszt, for his artistic merit and for his patriotism, from his admiring compatriots.”74 Liszt gave a speech in French that was then translated into Hungarian.75 While some scholars have made an issue of this, claiming that Liszt’s use of French alienated his audience, most of his listeners were aristocrats who spoke French and applauded appropriately while Liszt was speaking.76 An admirer later observed that Liszt’s speech was delivered in the “French tongue, but with Hungarian heart.”77 While Liszt may not have spoken the language, in his essence, or soul, he was a member of the nation. Linguistic nationalism had not fully eclipsed other forms of Hungarian belonging by 1839. After the performance, Liszt marched back to his lodgings, leading a torchlight procession of five thousand admirers crying Eljen! Eljen! Liszt!78 Aristocrats feted him, housed him at their estates, and held banquets in his honor. Liszt saw a very clear benefit to being Hungarian. He was being appreciated as a figure of the nation by its leading political and cultural figures, a very different type of appreciation from the swoons of middle-class women. Whereas his recognition as a virtuoso came from performances that he himself scorned as false and manipulative, the reception as a national hero seemed to recognize him on his own merits. Being adopted as a hero won Liszt over to the value of his new subjectivity. He wrote of his conquests to d’Agoult with great excitement, and his letters give us a glimpse into his new persona. He asked her if she liked the Hungarian spelling of his name, told her about ordering a new Hungarian outfit and receiving a Hungarian cap bedecked with a magnificent gemstone.79 Liszt fell back on older ways of establishing selfhood, with external trappings: his “sentiment,” sign of inward truth, was inadequate to convey 74 The March’s origins have been traced back to a Hungarian uprising against the Habsburgs from 1703–1711, which was led by Ferenc Rakoczi II. The March was associated with the martial aristocracy. 75 Liszt did not speak in German because that language was banned on the stage of the National Theater. 76 Letter of 6 Jan. 1840, BMA, 350. 77 Franz von Schober, Briefe über F. Liszt’s Aufenthalt in Ungarn (Berlin, 1843), 32. 78 Eljen is Magyar for “Hail!”; Walker, 324. The other notables were Count Domoks Teleki; Pál Nyáry, director of the Hungarian National Theater; Baron Bánffy; Baron Antal Augusz; and Rudolf Eckstein. 79 Letter of 9 Dec. 1839, BMA 327.

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his self-understanding. His transformation was a performance that enacted the process of “becoming national.”80 Liszt understood his stake in a Hungarian identity as a means of gaining access to a larger community and to garner authority. After spending three months traveling in Hungary and Transylvania in 1847, he wrote to a friend that of all living artists I am the only one who has a glorious fatherland and shows that he is justly proud of it. While other [musicians] had to struggle in the shallow waters of the miserly public, I sail freely forward on the sea of a great nation. My north star indicates that Hungary will proudly be able to claim me.81 With the assertion that Hungary was a great nation, Liszt hoped to inherit its greatness through association as its son, and believed that an outward display was necessary to forge such a link. His comment about the “miserly [West European] public” revealed his dissatisfaction with the acclaim and criticism he received as a virtuoso. Liszt continually drew a distinction between the people and the public. One was authentic, organic, and pure, while the other was driven by petty needs and bad taste. “This population is not one of bellowers (hurlers) as those in Vienna and others; rather, they possess robust minds, and generous and proud hearts.”82 For a man who had characterized himself as a trained poodle or pet monkey, to claim a heroic ancestry promised a life of freedom unfettered by concern about others’ expectations and mores. He gushed to d’Agoult, “Oh! My savage and far-away homeland!”83 The savagery of Hungary guaranteed Liszt an authentic, unmodern, unsoiled identity; per both Rousseau and Herder, humans in their natural state were pure and innocent. Liszt utilized the by-then common trope of the Gute Wilde or bon sauvage when he characterized the Hungarian nation in a toast among friends: “Especially the dances, music, and melodies [of Hungary] are thoroughly original,” Liszt claimed, “because while with other nations those are to a certain degree related to each other, those of Hungary remain unspoiled in their

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Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (Oxford, 1996). Letter of 16 January 1847 in Br VIII, 46. Emphasis mine. Letter of 25 Dec. 1839, BMA 340. Letter of 19 Dec. 1839, BMA, 330.

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originality.”84 In the emerging hierarchy of nations measured by civilization, i.e. political power and economic production, Hungarians ranked below Germans and the French. The lower on the scale of civilization, the more authentic the nation was. Liszt’s understanding of national identity was underpinned, as it was for his contemporaries, with gendered assumptions. Before the revolutions of 1848–49, Liszt sat for the prestigious portraitist Miklós Barabás, wearing national costume. (Figure 2.1) Liszt’s right hand rests upon a piano displaying one of his Hungarian marches.85 His left hand on his hip gives him an arrogant, commanding presence, and his erect posture and serious demeanor with the set jaw reinforce this air of authority. He wears a coat known as a dolman, which originated with the Asiatic peoples who came to the Hungarian plains centuries earlier. By Liszt’s time, the dolman “was worn mainly on holidays, at court, and during national festivals.”86 In the provinces, men still wore the dolman to political meetings, but otherwise, Western European fashions were the norm. Thus, Liszt’s costume was a nationalist statement, and an invented traditional fashion meant to evoke the martial, aristocratic Magyar past. This clothing linked its wearers with early nineteenth-century projects of claiming national sovereignty in opposition to the Germans: “in this political struggle, the national costume once again became a powerful symbol of political independence. . . . The black broadcloth dolman worn in Hungary in the 1840s surpassed the European frockcoat in popularity.”87 Barabás’ portrait of Liszt establishes the pianist’s authority and identity as a Hungarian patriot, and changing clothes was much easier than learning Magyar. The visual symbol of clothing was actually more accessible not only for Liszt, but for a more diverse audience. A portrait by the German-speaker Josef Kriehuber from 1838 reveals a different interpretation of Liszt’s Hungarian image. (Figure 2.2) Here, Liszt is youthful, with large moist eyes, a soft mouth and small smile. Despite his impressive “Attila” jacket, part of the official Hussars uniform, adorned with brocade and tassels that emphasize his chest, Liszt is immature and somewhat 84 85 86

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BUS, 296n1. For the history of the idea of the noble savage, see Ter Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley, 2001). Loya, 98. Katalin Földi-Dózsa, “How the Hungarian National Costume Evolved,” in The Imperial Style: Fashions of the Habsburg Era, ed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1980), 80. Földi-Dózsa, 86. Alice Freifeld suggests that in the Habsburg lands fashion became politicized post-1848; for more on women’s clothing, see “Empress Elisabeth as Hungarian Queen: The Uses of Celebrity Monarchism,” in The Limits of Loyalty, 145.

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Figure 2.1 Miklós Barabás, portrait of Franz Liszt, 1847. Hungarian National Museum, Budapest

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Figure 2.2 Josef Kriehuber, Franz Liszt, 1838. Watercolor. Klassik Stiftung Weimar

feminine. Perhaps this portrayal reflects the greater status and power Germanspeakers enjoyed in the empire; they looked upon Hungarians as youthful, quaint characters rather than adult warriors. Liszt’s conception of Hungarian nationhood combined the ideas of the estates nationalists and the romantic nationalists. He didn’t master Magyar, although Liszt studied the language in the 1870s to the point where he could read newspapers, translate from grammar books and correctly

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pronounce words.88 Most of his Hungarian patrons were from powerful old families, spoke French, and enjoyed close ties to the Habsburg court. Yet Liszt also emphasized cultural origins and expressions of nationhood over political ones. Liszt consistently critiqued the more linguistically exclusive and politically radical Magyarist nationalism that emerged under Lajos Kossuth’s leadership in the 1840s. After István Széchenyi’s suicide in 1860 Liszt’s friend and mistress Agnes Street-Klindworth sent him obituary notices. Liszt praised the reformer as a man of “great sense, prodigious activity, and practical genius, aware of the needs of his times and his country. He rendered immense services to Hungary, where he enjoys a popularity without equal exactly at the moment when Kossuth gained the upper hand with his pretty talk and led the whole nation down a false path.” He continued, “I never saw good results with this hot fever of patriotism. If we had followed Széchenyi’s example and methods with loyalty and deliberation, Hungary would certainly be strong and blossoming today.”89 Széchenyi’s gradualist approach and willingness to work not only with the Habsburgs, but also the Romanian and Croat minorities in Hungary, spoke to Liszt’s reforming impulses. On this and other occasions Liszt denounced the angry passion of exclusivist nationalism. Liszt’s adoption of Hungarian patriotism reveals the nature of nationalist ideologies in a transparent manner. As he eagerly accepted gifts from admiring patrons, shopped for new clothes, and sat for a portraitist, the performative nature of nationalist movements shone through. Liszt’s original statement penned from Vienna, with its reliance on long-held stereotypes and emphasis on an unpeopled landscape illuminates the uncertainty Liszt and other nationalists grappled with regarding the nation’s true characteristics and demographic makeup.

Reception of Liszt as National Figure

Liszt’s tours of the late 1830s until his retirement in 1847 spread the idea of his Hungarian identity. In his performances, Liszt’s presence, sensitivity and charisma were responsible for the “fanatical attachments which he inspired” among audiences, reviewers, patrons, friends, and, later, students.90 Indeed, 88 89 90

Dezsö Legány, Ferenc Liszt and His Country 1874–1886, trans. Elizabeth Smith-CsicseryRónay (Budapest, 1992), 189. Br III, 25. July 1860, 126. Janka Wohl, François Liszt: Recollections of a Compatriot, trans. B. Peyton Ward (London, 1887), 7. Wohl herself was a fanatic about Liszt, having met him at the impressionable age of ten.

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throughout the 1840s, audiences and critics in Hungary, the German lands, and France, all sought to definitively claim Liszt as one of their national figures, or to at least fix Liszt’s nationality and end his “hermaphroditic” loyalties. Hungarians were happy to welcome Liszt as their own immediately upon his arrival in 1838. After all, as one of his admirers observed, “All of Europe had extended a wreath to him—and he was Hungarian.”91 That the performer had won European recognition could only reflect well on his homeland. Liszt’s status as Hungarian hero was invented quickly and bolstered through various means, including an attempt to link him to Hungarian nobility. Counts Leo Festetics and Lajos Batthyányi, reformers identified with the national struggle against Austria, petitioned the interior minister for patent of nobility for Liszt. The magnates’ petition was an important signal that they sought to Hungarianize Liszt: in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the nobility had represented the whole country and constituted the nation in the Hungarus conception.92 The awarding of nobility “would please me,” Liszt wrote to d’Agoult.93 The petition was rejected on the grounds that Liszt had played the insurrectionist Rákóczy March in Pressburg, although the story of his noble ancestry was taken up by newspapers until it became common knowledge.94 For example, Constant von Wurzbach’s Habsburg “Who’s Who” of 1866 claimed that Liszt was descended from a “respected Hungarian aristocratic family who, once the fortunes of history had impoverished them, freely gave up their title.”95 Liszt himself abandoned the claim by 1859, and the title was later awarded to his cousin Eduard, an attorney. Nationalists, politicians, and merchants all exploited Liszt’s newfound patriotism. Just as Liszt had adopted Hungarian costume and flaunted the jewels and other gifts he received from adoring admirers, kitschy Liszt trinkets proliferated in shops, and priests and schoolmasters welcomed the virtuoso’s arrival. Wurzbach recalled,

91 92 93 94 95

Franz von Schober, An Franz Liszt an seiner Ankunft in Pesth am 23. December 1839 (Füskút, 1839), 25. Tallián, 10; Another impetus to seek a noble lineage lies in his name itself: “liszt” is “flour” in Magyar. Letter of 19 Dec. 1839, BMA, 331. See, for example, “Urkunden den Adel Liszt’s betreffend,” Pester Tageblatt no. 308 (28 December 1839): 3517. Constant von Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich. Bd. 15 (Wien, 1866), 247. Liszt was still evidently thinking about the title after 1847; an unpublished letter to him from Sayn-Wittgenstein devotes several pages to discussing a proposed design for his coat of arms. Undated letter, H.I.N. 197722, Handschriftensammlung, Wienbibliothek im Rathaus.

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One ate and drank à la Liszt: ladies wore ribbons and bonnets emblazoned with his name; clothing boutiques, hairstylists and restauranteurs made good profit from Liszt’s name, and if one had swooned (schwärmte) for the virtuoso Liszt, one deified the Hungarian Liszt.96 Newspapers raved about the success of his concerts and indulged in hyperbolic claims. One magnate counted Liszt among the greatest contemporary musicians and continued, “our compatriot will be looked upon proudly by posterity.”97 In 1841 Mihály Vörösmarty composed a poem for Liszt, lauding him as the nation’s savior: “Sing out a song so in their deepest graves/ our ancestors are compelled to stir,/ so each immortal soul awaking proves/ new life to descendants, made aware/ of blessings in their Magyar fatherland.”98 This Hungarian identity was accepted within Central Europe. As soon as 1839, the poet and actor Franz von Schober wrote a text, albeit in German, commemorating Liszt’s activities in Hungary, supporting Liszt’s claim to be Hungarian.99 In an 1846 article, an anonymous critic wrote of Liszt’s rendezvous with “his countrymen, the Hungarian musicians from Debreczin.”100 Two months later, the same Viennese paper, published in German, raved, “our famous compatriot Franz Liszt arrives in our capital [Pest]. The gallant Magyars have transformed a steamship into a flowered grove, with which they will meet him . . . in order to accompany him to Pest.”101 The journalist conflated Viennese and Pest-based readerships and audiences. In an often-quoted concert review, Moritz Saphir, writing for the Viennese Humorist claimed Liszt as a “compatriot” and described him as a “noble countryman” of the inhabitants of Pest.102 Liszt was not alone in his unspecific national pride. Yet even in this early era of developing nationalist ideologies, understanding Liszt as Hungarian was not an obvious choice. Liszt’s use of French, for example, puzzled German-speaking critics. The Humorist, a strong supporter of Liszt, which had but months earlier praised him as Hungarian, at the end of 1839 asked why he announced a change in program “in French; why did the

96 97 98

Wurzbach, 256. “Urtheil über Liszt und sein Spiel,” Pester Tageblatt no. 310, 31 December 1839. Mihály Vörösmarty, “To Ferencz Liszt,” in In Quest of the ‘Miracle Stag’: The Poetry of Hungary, ed. Adam Makkai (Chicago, 1996), 225. 99 Schober, 9. 100 n.a., n.t., Allgemeine Theaterzeitung (26 March 1846): 291, UPB, 99. 101 “Empfang in Preßburg,” Allgemeine Theaterzeitung (5 May 1846): 411, UPB, 109. 102 M.G. Saphir, “Franz Liszt,” Der Humorist 2, no. 64 (21 April 1838): 253.

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German artist not speak German to the German audience?”103 The same critic dubbed him the “Hungarian genius” again in 1840.104 In 1840 the Dresdner Wochenblatt published an article accusing him of changing the spelling of his name (from “List”) in order to appear exotic. His failure to speak German also offended critics.105 National identity and mores were certainly at stake in criticism of Liszt’s performances: Michael Saffle speculates that “[Liszt’s] refusal for whatever reason to present himself as a different, possibly more ‘German’ kind of composer during his transcendental tours helped transform the [negative] perceptions of his critics into ‘facts’.”106 These perceptions about Liszt’s non-Germanness had to do with his showmanship, manners, and language: these all served to confirm suspicions about Liszt’s “French” superficiality. While most audiences accepted Liszt as Hungarian after 1838, this recognition later proved to be a source of debate and mockery itself. His sudden “awakening” and proud flaunting of his Hungarianness led some French and German critics to believe it was yet another aspect of Liszt’s virtuosic manipulation of audiences. He wore the ceremonial saber he had been given in Hungary, and was roundly mocked for it in Paris and some German cities. Magyars were “little people” whose antics, whatever they were, would have been amusing to the French. Cosmopolitanism and universalism were hegemonic categories that could in some cases denote French and German nationalism. Perhaps the French and Germans, too, to an extent, felt robbed of the artist they believed to be theirs. Liszt’s participation in the Bonn Beethoven festival of 1845 will be familiar to many readers: his speech at the banquet was another instance of his tone-deafness regarding the importance of nationality, in particular his own. His friend Moscheles was present at the banquet and described the speech: Liszt began, “Here all nations are met to pay honor to the master. May they live and prosper, the Dutch, the English, the Viennese, . . .” at which point a French musician rose to his feet in outrage, screaming that Liszt had forgotten the French. Liszt was taken aback and tried to speak his way out of the hole he had

103 “Concert-Salon. Liszts zweites Concert, am 27. November,” Der Humorist 3, no. 238 (29 Nov. 1839): 957. 104 “Concert-Salon. Liszts musikalische Soirée zum Besten des Bürgerspital-Fondes,” Der Humorist 4, no. 24 (17 Feb. 1840): 139. 105 “Vorschlag an den Tonkünstler Fr. Liszt wegen Abänderung der Schreibart seines Namens,” Dresdener Wochenblatt no. 23 (18 March 1840): 130, cited in Michael Saffle, Liszt in Germany 1840–1845: A Study in Sources, Documents, and the History of Reception (Stuyvesant, NY, 1994), 97. 106 Saffle, 212.

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fallen into, mentioning he had lived among the French for fifteen years and was grateful to them, to no avail. It took a long while to calm the audience.107 Liszt’s adoption of a Magyar identity was imbued with gendered implications, as the portrait by Barabás indicates. In common stereotypical thinking about Hungarians, the martial, savage Magyars were masculine and untamed; Saphir bolstered Liszt’s martial image as a “victor upon the battlefield, a hero in the arena.”108 Yet this warrior image did not carry over to all audiences: Liszt had in earlier years been described as pale, delicate, and spiritual. A German cartoonist lampooned Liszt’s new martial image in an 1842 steel engraving, which provoked a heated retort from Liszt himself. (Figure 2.3) The cartoon, titled “The New Pegasus in the Yoke,” inspired by a poem of Schiller’s, was a variant of a similar lithograph published in the Paris Miroir drolatique. Liszt’s shock of unruly hair, closed eyes and firm mouth give him a high-minded, pretentious air, indicating he is oblivious to his own absurdity. He sports a Hungarian military cap on his head, and wears an enormous scabbard presumably containing the ceremonial saber. He also carries a piano keyboard with him, and a conductor’s baton as long as his torso. The horse’s gait is highly stylized and Liszt’s posture is ramrod-straight as they pass by crowds of people, most of them women. The obvious phallic symbol of the oversized blade may be an attempt to mock Liszt’s efforts to resist the feminization that came with his fame: indeed, one can see his allegiance with nationalism as a bid for masculine valor and company. The artist took Liszt’s emphasis on the Hungarian martial tradition to the extreme, casting him as a toy soldier. The doggerel mocks Liszt, “he whom ladies buy wreaths for,” who possesses a “romantic face and a Magyar saber of great weight!” Liszt’s face is admired by women, implying his only source of his legitimacy is his appearance and appeal to women. The “great weight” of the saber mocks both its size and significance. The text points out Liszt’s manipulative image in a sarcastic tone, indicating that his performances and perhaps even his identity, were a deception, the result of smoke and mirrors.109 107 Moscheles, 318. 108 Saphir, “Franz Liszt,” 253. 109 Cited in Ernst Burger, Franz Liszt: A Chronicle of His Life in Pictures and Documents, trans. Stewart Spencer (Princeton, 1989). The Stiftung Weimarer Klassik possesses another illustrated pamphlet mocking Liszt for his multiple allegiances and infatuations. Complaint funèbre et lamentable (Paris, 1844); GSA 59/217,3. For more on gender and virtuosity, see Katharine Ellis, “Female Pianists and their Male Critics in Nineteenth-Century Paris,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 50, no. 2/3 (Summer-Autumn 1997): 353–385.

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Figure 2.3 The New Pegasus in the Yoke, 1842. Collection Ernst Burger, Munich

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Liszt wrote a letter to the editor of the RGMP in an attempt to defend himself from these attacks: in doing so, he fell back on gendered thinking to assert his virility and authenticity. Liszt complained, “my name was pronounced in connection with the exaggerated pretension and success of performing artists.” He continued, the wreaths of flowers thrown at the feet of Mademoiselles [Fanny] Elssler and [Francilla] Pixis by New York and Palermo dilettantes are shocking manifestations of public enthusiasm; the saber that was given me at Pest is a reward given by a nation in a traditional ceremony. In Hungary, monsieur, in the country of antique and chivalrous manners, the saber has a patriotic significance. It is a sign of virility: it’s the weapon of every man who has the right to carry a weapon. . . . Hungary saluted in me the man from whom she awaits artistic glory after all of the military and political figures that she has produced in great numbers.110 Here Liszt clearly sought to distance himself from other “sensational” entertainers; his public was different and more serious than that of the female “dilettantes.” His artistic contribution to the Hungarian nation would be meaningful and authentic rather than effeminate, cynical and commercial. His haughty tone and emphasis on his masculine virtue suggest that critics’ attempts to feminize him had struck home. When Liszt’s subjective status of Hungarian patriot was attacked, he fell back on a more essentialized and politically powerful category, that of gender. In the letter Liszt also claims that six of the country’s most illustrious men granted him the “rights of the citizen.” By associating the saber with the right to carry it, traditionally granted only to the aristocracy, he is evoking political rights, and implicitly, estates nationalism. Again, we see the tension between the commercial and sacral notions of art: Liszt’s adulation was of a finer quality as a gift from a nation rather than a public, who paid for tickets as their only bond. Nationalists seized the opportunity he presented them as an internationally renowned figure and bedecked him with symbols of the nation they were trying to construct. Shopkeepers and other business owners profited from the throngs of Liszt fans eager to appropriate some of his charisma for themselves through buying tokens or associating themselves with him through their 110 Fanny Elssler was a celebrated ballet dancer; Francilla Pixis, an alto singer, hailed from long line of renowned musicians. Letter of 26 October 1840 in Br I, 39. Italics in original. See Liszt’s letter to Leo Festetics, 21 March 1840, for another comparison of public versus national audiences; BUS, 49.

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choice of dining or lodging establishments. The reaction to Liszt’s newfound national allegiance in the greater Habsburg Empire also was favorable. Viennese audiences and journalists seemed to have no problem embracing Liszt as their own and recognizing him as a Hungarian, further evidence that imperial and national loyalties coexisted in the imperial-royal Empire. Further abroad, however, French and German critics smelled a marketing ploy and challenged Liszt’s national authenticity. In part they were dubious about Liszt’s determination to associate himself with a backward, to their minds, inconsequential nation. The tension between cosmopolitanism and national particularity, civilization and savagery, came to the fore in Liszt’s work on the Gypsies. Gypsies and Music Liszt finished his most well known pieces, the Hungarian Rhapsodies immediately after his arrival in Weimar. They represented a nationalist and ethnomusicological project he had begun upon his arrival in Hungary in 1839, featuring the “Gypsy” scale and Hungarian folk song rhythms. Liszt was one of the first musicians to incorporate peasant music into art music forms. To supplement his compositions, Liszt began writing a small pamphlet that grew into Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie. The book blended travel narrative, history, musicology, and ethnography. While Des Bohémiens has since been critiqued for its poor scholarship and his claim about Hungarian music’s origins has been disproven, it is still an important document of Liszt’s beliefs about nationality and music’s interaction with it.111 In it Liszt sought to establish himself as an authentic composer and voice of the people through drawing parallels between the Gypsies and himself. Yet in writing to an educated audience in French, Liszt also situated himself as a Westerner gazing on a primitive and savage people. Liszt’s fascination with the Gypsies was compassionate and sympathetic one. He was well aware of the oppression and brutality they had faced. Dominance, as exercised by the Habsburg state in this case, is a key component of the concept of orientalism originally presented by Edward Said, whose observations about imperial powers’ view and domination of the Orient can fruitfully be applied to the German and Habsburg lands in addition to its o­ riginal focus on

111 Béla Bartók, “Gypsy Music or Hungarian Music?,” The Musical Quarterly 33, no. 2 (April 1947): 240–57. Sayn-Wittgenstein contributed prose and ideas to Liszt’s Des Bohémiens.

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Britain and France.112 German speakers not only took a superior view of their own cultures in comparison to those of Eastern Europe; real economic and political exchanges and dealings reflected a gap in power. Despite Liszt’s compassion for the Gypsies, he too, sought to gain from their existence. Liszt’s Janus-faced stance vis-à-vis the Gypsies and his own identity came to an unfortunate outcome after his departure from Hungary in 1840. In an ultimate displacement, Liszt related that one day in Paris in the 1840s, Count Sándor Téleki brought him a “gift” from the magnate’s estates: a young Gypsy boy approximately twelve years old. The youth Josy Sárai served for Liszt as an Oriental experimental subject. Liszt admitted that the idea of simply taking the boy and bringing him to Paris must have appeared “very strange from the French point of view,” but this was a long-cherished wish of his. Liszt wanted to transform the boy’s natural talent into a polished, professional performance career. Once into this project, however, Liszt complained that while Josy adopted Parisian clothing, the boy’s relentless scrubbing and perfuming of his “yellow and brown” skin did nothing to lighten it, nor did Josy soften his “haughty gaze” and “arrogant countenance.” Josy’s eyes retained their “Asiatic” appearance, and the youth proved to be incorrigible, wanting only to return to his own people.113 Liszt’s Konzeptbuch, a notebook in which he drafted his correspondence, features an apparent response to a letter he received from Josy in 1859 or 1860. In it, Liszt displayed envy of what he saw as Josy’s freedom: “your music-making is free and hot like the surging of your blood; no blabbing of pedants, know-it-alls, critics and the whole meaningless bunch can affect you.” Liszt continued, “You did well not to enslave yourself in the concert halls. . . . as a gypsy you remain your own master.”114 Liszt’s resentment and bitterness about his virtuoso career continued to plague him. He believed that his concert successes had “enslaved” him to the public and he could never be free from that success or their regard. Liszt’s experiment with civilizing a savage was a failure, unlike his own transformation from Hungarian child to European virtuoso twenty-five years earlier. The attempt to Westernize Josy reveals Liszt’s bifurcated stance vis-à-vis the East, as he claimed to belong to it, yet wanted to 112 Nina Berman, Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne: Zum Bild des Orients in derdeutschsprachigen Kultur um 1900 (Stuttgart, 1997); Suzanne Marchand, “German Orientalism and the Decline of the West,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145, no. 4 (Dec. 2001); James Deaville, “Liszts Orientalismus: Die Gestaltung des Andersseins in der Musik?,” in Liszt und die Nationalitäten, ed Gerhard J. Winkler (Eisenstadt 1996), 163–95; Kontje. 113 Franz Liszt, Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (Paris, 1859), 200–203. 114 GSA 59/55a, Blätter 130–31.

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tame it as well. Here, Liszt could not decide between national authenticity and cosmopolitan civilization. Liszt presented his notions about nationality and revealed his orientalist stance in his works Chopin (1850) and Des Bohémiens (1859). Both works championed groups whom Liszt argued had been oppressed and punished by more powerful forces. Poles, as Slavs, had long been demonized by German hegemons, and the Gypsies were one of the “best-known Others” in the Habsburg Monarchy.115 Periodicals in the Monarchy regularly printed fictional or ethnographic pieces about the Gypsies. Poles and Gypsies were heroes in Liszt’s estimation: they retained their own native cultures despite the overlordship of the Russian and Austrian Empires. These oppressed nationalities served as Others in Liszt’s works against which German, French, or universal, culture was defined: they were the marked categories that naturalized unequal political power. As musicologist Tibor Tallián observes, “that which one expects to be close and warm, the fatherland, [Liszt] perceived as wild and strange; that which was wild and strange, he perceived as his fatherland.”116 Liszt wrote from outside both of these cultures as an educated, cosmopolitan European in that he projected his longing for exoticism and freedom onto them. This viewpoint may explain his sloppy disregard for Hungarian nationalists’ feelings regarding the Gypsies: as a national hermaphrodite, Liszt failed to understand how important and essential many held their national identities to be. For him, conflating “Hungarian” and “Gypsy” characteristics was unproblematic. Liszt’s book illuminated much about his own longings and imaginings about Gypsy culture and Hungarian national identity, as he lacked much knowledge of either one. In writing about the Gypsies, Liszt indulged in some nostalgic reminiscence as well as wishful thinking, particularly regarding the Gypsies’ motivations in creating music. Liszt’s book was based on personal childhood experiences and other books: his knowledge of Hungary was emotional rather than intellectual.117 Austrians perceived Gypsies and Hungarians as interchangeable equivalents; Liszt’s Hungarian readers knew he was not writing

115 Wingfield, 3; for German/Polish relations, see William W. Hagen, Germans, Poles and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 (Chicago, 1980); Richard Blanke, Prussian Poland in the German Empire (1871–1900), (New York, 1981); Andrei S. Markovits and Frank E. Sysyn, Nation Building and the Politics of Nationalism: Essays on Austrian Galicia (Cambridge, MA, 1982). 116 Tallián, 15. 117 Kaczmarczyk, 130. See also Klára Hamburger, “Franz Liszt und die Zigeuner,” in Franz Liszt und die Nationalitäten, 62–73.

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from a Hungarian point of view, but could not level such a charge at a national hero.118 The folk music repertoire that provided inspiration for Liszt originated with Hungarian peasants, but was spread by Gypsy musicians who served as itinerant bards, moving from courts to wealthy manors to public drinking houses. They took requests from their audiences, and if they didn’t know a requested tune, the customer or audience would teach it to them. Such performers sought to please an audience by “play[ing] the customer’s soul” in order to earn a living.119 Ironically, then, Gypsy authenticity was in fact a ploy in order to gain sympathy and appreciation from a paying audience. As part of his folkloric research, composer Zoltán Kodály classified Hungarian music life into three tiers. The top tier was a small elite of educated people, connoisseurs of international music; the second was the middle class, who patronized Gypsy musicians; the third was rural villagers, a group to whom Liszt had no access.120 One primary form adopted by Gypsies and incorporated by Liszt was the verbunkós, a dance music used beginning in the eighteenth century as recruiting music for the Hussars, the permanent Hungarian army: recruiting agents would either force or pay Gypsy musicians into playing and dancing verbunkós as part of the enticement of villagers into army life. Another component was nóta songs with sentimental lyrics, popular among peasants, and last were the csárdás, seemingly a combination of verbunkós and nóta music. As Gypsies performed these genres of music, they incorporated their own performance style, which eventually became associated with the music itself.121 By the early nineteenth century, such Gypsy musicians were well established not only in cities and large towns, but also in villages such as Liszt’s birthplace, Raiding.122 Liszt’s aim in Hungary was to be, in his words, “one of the first musicians, independent of the influence of a school, who individualize[d] the poetic content of an entire nation in himself.” 123 He was indebted to Herder’s claim that the poet connects with the soul of his audience through his artistic products. Authenticity cohered only when the nation, like the self, possessed interior depth.124 In his mistaken assertion that the Gypsies created Hungarian folk 118 Tallián, 12. 119 Bellman, 221. See also Bálint Sárosi, “Gypsy Musicians and Hungarian Peasant Music,” Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council (1970): 14, 19. 120 Mária Eckhardt, “Die zeitgenössische Rezeption der symphoische Werke Franz Liszts in Ungarn,” in Liszt und Europa, 245–63, here 253. 121 Bellman, 216–17. 122 Sárosi, 15. 123 Liszt, 164. 124 Smith, The Continuities of German History, 54–55.

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music, one can see his attempt to claim cultural agency. He knew he was not Magyar, and so endowing the Gypsies, outsiders with whom he identified, with agency in creating Hungarian folk music, he was also speaking of his own cultural power. He tied himself to them in remembering his childhood: “soon I became a wandering virtuoso, like them starting in my own land.”125 Liszt’s commitment to seeing himself as the wandering Romantic searching for his origins and a higher existential level found new authority in his ties to the Gypsies.126 Liszt also emphasized how much he believed the Gypsies admired him. He returned to the village where he was born “to be met by a group of the most famous traveling Gypsy musicians who wanted to celebrate with me.”127 Liszt’s “oriental primitivism” presented the Gypsies as savage creatures.128 Liszt saw the Gypsies as a self-sufficient people, completely independent from European civilization. He observed, “this people is strange, so strange that it does not resemble any other. It does not possess soil, religion, history, or any sort of moral code.”129 They were connected to nature, and Liszt envied them their freedom. Because they lacked the concepts and institutions of a civilized society, he argued they didn’t think “to calm, moderate, mitigate or resist [their passions].”130 When they performed music, he continued, they abandoned themselves with the “ecstasy of dervishes,” an even more exotic and “authentic” group of spiritual seekers.131 Liszt’s Romanticism informed his ideas about Gypsies as authentic, pure peoples living without social constraints. The Gypsies’ freedom ensured their status as authentic national musicians. Liszt says he visited them in order “to listen to them play before their proper public in the glimmer of their own fires where chance determines the hearth, and belie the stupor of which they are accused.”132 Gypsy musicians played for their own enjoyment and self-expression, not for a demanding and undiscerning public, as Liszt the virtuoso had done. They were not alienated from their own labor, nor from their environment. They had developed over time, interacting with their environment and own inner creative impulses, yielding a truly authentic art form. His own longing to be appreciated for something other than his bravura performances is evident in his assertion that “they did 125 Liszt, 163. 126 Cusack, 62–63. 127 Liszt, 172. 128 Marchand, 466. 129 Liszt, 7. 130 Ibid., 82. 131 Ibid., 167. 132 Ibid., 166.

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not cultivate art based on a model, nor for a public at all. They sang because they felt the need to; they sang for themselves.”133 Liszt believed that each nation was originally shaped by its surrounding and environment. Each people (or nation) produced art that was a direct response to its environment, the first expression of which was the saga. Primitive sagas were influenced by the “climate, culture, history, mores, costumes and the particular tendency of their own poetic genius.” They were the most true, direct product of the nation.134 Such epics expressed collective sentiments that were shaped by a people’s inherent character and mores, and built a foundation for national consciousness. Indeed, “the saga may therefore be the Bible, the book of a people from which they draw inner knowledge of themselves.”135 That was the purpose of art: to bring self-awareness and knowledge to people. In other words, art was a major aspect of national development, at the level of the individual and of the group. While art was the product of a specific time and place, it was not simply an artist’s individual expression. Liszt claimed that art was not autonomous, but rather developed organically in relation to its environment and audience. In order for art to flourish, every artist needed an aware and active audience. 136 For the Gypsies, the Hungarians had served this role. “The [melodies’] popularity is determined and maintained by the resemblance between the inspiration from which they sprang and the national feeling. It is this union which has imprinted upon them a national character.”137 So long as artistic producers were connected to the national sentiment, they could produce something that spoke for and to the nation. Art served as a prism through which the sentiment passed and became clearer and more intense. Yet in selecting the Gypsies to represent freedom and artistic expression, Liszt contradicted accepted truths about national identity. As nomads, Gypsies lacked a territorial center which would serve as the soil in which their culture could grow and blossom. Like the Jews, Gypsies “left the homeland (heimathlichen Heerd) where they lived in pure unity, and scattered themselves in all directions of the wind,” as one critic pointed out.138 In 1837, at the height of his 133 134 135 136 137 138

Ibid., 60. Ibid., 2. See Abrams 169–175, 205–218 for a discussion of Romantic organicism. Ibid., 16–17. Ibid., 218. Ibid., 271. Alexander von Czeke, “Vorwort,” in August von Adelburg, Entgegnung auf die von D. Franz Liszt in seinem Werke: “Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie” aufgestellte Behauptung, daß es keine ungarische Nationalmusik, sondern bloß eine Musik der Zigeuner gibt. (Pest 1859), V.

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outrage about his virtuosic success, Liszt had written of himself in the third person that “before he was torn from the steppes of Hungary, . . . he had grown up free and untamed in the surroundings of many savages.”139 This essay predates his awakening as a Hungarian and reveals his Western, or cosmopolitan, stereotypes about Eastern primitivism, that remained unchanged by his actual presence in Hungary. Such unbroken purity of character was essential to support his subjective stance as an authentic artist, yet Liszt’s identification with a nomadic group as true members of a nation continued to be a contradiction that confused and irritated his readers. Not only did Liszt perform his national identity via clothing and declarations; he also began to seriously devote himself to composing “Hungarian” pieces. The honor and duty imposed by national allegiance dovetailed nicely with his ideas about the purpose of artistic production. Lamennaisian ideals combined with national pride produced a large oeuvre of piano and orchestral works, and a lasting interest in making Hungarian musical culture known to the rest of Europe. The Hungarian Rhapsodies were inspired by ethnographic research Liszt had conducted during his visits to Hungary, when he gathered melodic and rhythmic fragments from the verbunkós and csárdás as well as orchestration patterns from Gypsy performers. In composing them, Liszt saw himself as an ambassador for his nation. He introduced “Hungarian” music to European audiences, who consumed it as exoticism. His borrowing of disparate elements to compose the works makes transparent the process through which many nationalist works are created: their architects draw upon available symbols and tropes as well as freely interpreting and creating their own additions. In 1862 Liszt wrote to his protégé Mihály Mosonyi that he had completed his oratorio Die Legende der heiligen Elisabeth. Liszt observed, “If my wish comes true, this work will become an integrating contribution to the new Hungarian music literature. With the symphonic poem ‘Hungaria’ I believe that I have delivered my response to Vörösmarty.”140 Liszt took the poet’s call seriously enough to cite almost two decades after the poem appeared: one musicologist has argued that in addition to obviously “Hungarian” works like Mazeppa, Hungaria, Funerailles, and the Rhapsodies, Liszt consistently submerged the verbunkós cadence into a substantial number of his works.141

139 Franz Liszt, “Lettre d’un Bachelier Ès-Musique,” RGMP 4, no. 7 (12 February 1837): 54. 140 Letter of 10. Nov. 1862 in BUS, 113. Italics in original. 141 Shay Loya, “Liszt’s Verbunkos Legacy and the Paradoxes of Progressive Hungarian Music,” (paper presented at the symposium “Liszt’s Legacies”, Ottawa, Ontario, 31 July 2011).

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Liszt’s claim that Gypsies had created Hungarian music “touched one of the most sensitive spots of his Hungarian readers’ national consciousness.”142 In part, readers were outraged because of his recent adoption of patriotic sentiment and the book’s apparent betrayal of that allegiance. Among the angrier suggestions for Liszt included a directive from Alois Szábo in the Magyar Néplap (Hungarian People’s News) that Liszt should travel to Hungary and take the train north from Pest to Farkasd or Negyed to experience “true” Gypsy music, distinct from Hungarian music. Szábo commented, “our honored countryman claims that each nation possesses its own music and dance, only not the Hungarian nation.”143 In his book Hungarian or Gypsy Music?, Sámuel Brassai argued that Hungarians possessed a right to Hungarian music “just as ancient as the right of Hungarian nobles to own property.”144 Szábo, Brassai, and others felt robbed by Liszt’s book: possessing an authentic and unique art form was one of the most important markers of national identity and even viability. For Brassai, to accept Liszt’s thesis about the origins of Hungarian music would be to commit “national suicide.”145 An uglier refutation appeared in a characterization of the Gypsies: violinist and composer August von Adelburg questioned Liszt’s portrayal of Gypsies as musicians who played for the joy of it. He asked, “who is more possession- and money-hungry than the Gypsies? For them music-making is pure ‘speculation,’ a source of income like the smithing that they practice in the Orient.”146 They were not artists, but rather were simple Musikanten, that is, performers.147 Here von Adelburg implicitly attacked Liszt’s own claims to authenticity and artistry with an argument that for Gypsies music was merely a source of income, nothing more. The Pester Lloyd’s reviewer commented that Franz Liszt appeared to be an ideal critic of Gypsy music, since he was born in Hungary and heard the “wild melodies of the bards of the Hungarian people” as his first musical experiences. The reviewer called attention to Liszt’s “nomadic drive,” likening him to a Gypsy himself. In doing so, he undermined Liszt’s Hungarian nationality. “Because their astounding virtuosity has aroused his admiration, Liszt believes that he must be able to find within them something they have not been given, 142 Von Czeke, vi. 143 “Liszt und die ungarische Musik,” PL no. 241 (9 October 1859). 144 Sámuel Brassai, Magyar vagy czigány zene? Eszemfuttás Liszt Ferenc “Czigaånyokról” irt könyve felett [Hungarian or Gypsy Music? Contemplations on Franz Liszt’s Book Des Bohémiens] (Kolozsvár, 1860), 42–45. 145 Brassai, 30. 146 Von Adelburg, 17. 147 Ibid., 18.

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the power of creation.”148 The critic indirectly accused Liszt of lacking the creative force he had been seeking for ten years. Brassai also questioned Liszt’s authority on the subject by recommending Liszt learn Magyar.149 In criticizing Liszt’s book, opponents tarred him with the brush of Gypsiness himself and attacked his patriotic sensibility and authentic Hungarianness. Liszt’s reputation was damaged by this book, and the anger that its reissue sparked in 1881 shows that the animosity of 1859 never fully disappeared. In 1859, von Czeke noted that in reaction to the book’s claims, people in Pest had begun to ban performances by Gypsy musicians.150 In response to the war between the Habsburgs and the Italians, as well as the outrage over his book, Liszt wrote to his close friend Anton Augusz, Patriotism is of course a grand and admirable sentiment, but when in its excitement it does not take limits into account and takes only fevered inspirations as counsel, it sows the wind to reap the tempest. . . . I firmly hope to pay honor to my country . . . with my work and my artistic character. If it’s not exactly in the manner that certain patriots expect, for those whom the Rákóczy March is as the Koran was for Omar . . . the uproar made about my book on the Gypsies made me feel that I’m really more Hungarian than the Magyaromaniacs, my antagonists, because loyalty is one of our national traits. Is it loyal to steal from those we have protected?151 Again, Liszt showed his dislike of nationalism’s exclusivity: he compared Hungarian nationalists who “would burn all German music” (his own included) to the Muslim caliph associated with the destruction of the library at Alexandria. Liszt, like his critics, felt betrayed. Hungarians had embraced him with open arms but twenty years earlier, and now he saw himself as a victim, as the Gypsies, who had contributed so much to Hungarian music, were as well. The damage done to Liszt’s and Gypsies’ reputations and livelihoods demonstrates the relational nature of national identity: even while nationalists asserted that it was an unchanging, fixed essential part of a person’s makeup, they withdrew their support of Liszt’s belonging to the Hungarian nation. Liszt’s travels to Central Europe and articulation of Hungarian patriotism illuminate several points about identity in the mid-nineteenth century. 148 149 150 151

“Franz Liszt über die Zigeuner und ihre Musik,” PL no. 253 (23 October 1859). Brassai, 14. Von Czeke, IX. Letter of 14 January 1860, BAA 94–95. Italics in original.

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He exhibits the tension between different understandings of national identity based in political power, or in language and folk culture. Liszt was attracted to the lure of Eastern authenticity, expressed through Romantic nationalism, and Western civilization and credibility, evident in his Orientalist and cosmopolitan stances. His dual articulation of belonging was one shared by many inhabitants of Central Europe, where people spoke many languages and embraced political and cultural allegiances that may now seem contradictory. I conclude that Liszt, in seeking authenticity, found it in an exotic primitivism that in its vagueness could be embraced by all “civilized’ peoples. He did not remain among his countrymen, however; in 1847 he settled in Weimar, Germany, one of the most civilized small towns in Europe, home to Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and other German cultural heroes.

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The Romantic Hero and the Kulturnation While touring in Russian Poland in the late 1840s, Liszt had met and fallen in love with the unhappily married Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein. The lovers made an assignation to meet on the border of the Russian Empire and settle in the apparently sleepy town of Weimar in Thuringia, where Liszt intended to pursue his composing career. While engaged on his European tours, Liszt had performed in Weimar and in 1843 was appointed Kapellmeister. His subsequent visit to Weimar of January 1844 made a strongly favorable impression on him. Prior to this point, Liszt had seen Hungary as the “natural and necessary conclusion” to his virtuoso career.1 Yet a year later, he wrote to d’Agoult, “let’s dream of building a new Weimar . . . let talents act freely in their spheres . . . let’s arrive at a triple result. . . . Court, Theater, University; this is the great trilogy for a state like Weimar.”2 Liszt saw his role as one of stimulating a cultural and also political renewal of Weimar’s classical inheritance. In 1846 Liszt described Weimar as the “fatherland of the Ideal (patrie de l’Idéal),” as his “fixed star, whose beneficent rays illuminate my long course.”3 Romantic notions about the Ideal as an unapproachable but nonetheless worthy artistic goal and Liszt’s circuitous journey in seeking to discover it highlight his hope to grow and mature as an artist, ultimately transcending his virtuosic subjectivity. As the “home of the ideal” Weimar could nurture Liszt’s and others’ artistic expression and production, as it had done in the late eighteenth century. Doubtless inspired by the salons of Paris, Liszt hoped to recreate the Neoclassical artists’ colony by attracting like-minded artists and intellectuals to his side; Weimar’s reputed political liberalism added a note of tolerance and openness as incentive. Liszt’s sentiment won an enthusiastic response from the hereditary Grand Duke Carl Alexander. He welcomed Liszt and invited him to consider Weimar his “second patrie.”4 The Duke accepted Liszt as a Hungarian who could nonetheless be a part of and contribute to German culture. Liszt busily engaged himself in composition, writing, and ambitious attempts to remold Weimar as a center of German culture and music after his 1 2 3 4

Letter of 22 Jan. 1843, BMA II, 253. He also considered Vienna as a possible home. Gooley, 12. Letter of 23 Jan. 1844, BMA II, 323. Letter of 6 October 1846, BCA, 7. Letter of 3 December 1846 BCA, 12.

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arrival there. Liszt’s choice to settle in Weimar stimulated another shake of the subjective kaleidoscope. His subjective stance as a Hungarian patriot was unchanged, yet Liszt balanced it with his preexisting larger vision of himself as prophet and redeemer of music, especially German music, for him the most central, vital, highest form of musical expression. It was in Weimar that Liszt’s maturity as an artist came into full blossom. He embraced multiple national allegiances and synthesized Viennese, French, and Hungarian musical idioms. Like his compositions, which he continuously revised, his self-understanding was one of evaluation, revision, and malleability. This chapter concerns itself with Liszt’s Romantic heroic subjectivity, his vision of Weimar, his allies, and his literary and associational activities. He found many colleagues in the local musical community, attracted many visitors to Weimar, and forged long-term allegiances with German academics, all of whom shared his cultural and implicitly political aspirations. In doing so, they had to confront the larger issues raised by the revolutions of 1848. The 1850s were a complex time of engagement for nationalist liberals like Liszt’s allies as they sorted out priorities, raised and answered questions about the values of the German nation, its heroes and territorial scope. In doing so, he and his allies contributed to a groundswell of cultural-political activity that surfaced in the 1860s as the rhetoric of nationhood gained universal acceptance and intellectuals and artists attempted to create a truly national art and culture. We could brush aside the 1850s as a stagnant period of reaction, when political engagement subsided and liberals underwent a deep depression as decades of historical scholarship have done. Certainly, censorship and bans on political activity hampered liberals’ attempts to create a constitutional, unified German state. Yet when we examine liberalism as a much broader movement than simply one of party politics, we find that it thrived as a habitus among the educated middle classes in the 1850s and 60s. In Weimar, Liszt and his allies’ attempts to reinvigorate the Kulturnation focused on Goethe as the central figure of these efforts. They envisioned the creation of a Goethe Foundation which would serve as an artistic institution to build upon the legacy of Weimar Classicism. Liszt, a main participant, could see himself in the cosmopolitan genius, and liberals hoped that such a figure would inspire pride and unity among a larger group of Germans. Their attempts to establish Goethe as the central figure to represent German art, values, and qualities were met with resistance, excitement, and indifference, which reflected the diversity of opinion regarding how the cause of German nationhood should move forward. These varied responses also raised a question about the relationship of art and society: was Goethe a progressive figure, whose oeuvre offered later generations a model of aesthetic achievement and

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a moral social stance, or a reactionary whose aesthetics and politics were now out of date and in fact would be dangerous to emulate? These questions— about the artist’s role in society, and the future of the German nation, were intricately and inextricably linked. The decade after 1848 saw the polarized atmosphere of the revolutionary impulse persist as Liszt and his circle sought a new direction in both aesthetics and politics. In doing so they prolonged the public debate regarding the German nation’s constituency, values, and geographical boundaries.

Nationhood and Universality

German-speaking intellectuals and artists had long seen a central role for themselves in guiding society. The German Kulturnation, nationalists believed, had existed since the late 1700s and was discernable through language, comportment, custom, and high culture.5 Intellectuals and artists, early creators of the idea of national uniqueness, saw themselves as the aesthetic vanguard: for them, art was to be independent of corporate or market influences so that it could be a means of social and political elevation. This conception reigned as the dominant mode of nationalist expression from its inception through the mid-nineteenth century, and shaped Liszt, Schumann, Wagner, and other intellectuals of their generation. The idealized cultural nation united Germans who still did not enjoy a unified state; it had arisen among alienated court employees, pastors, and unemployed university graduates, who resented French dominance in the arts and sought to employ their talents and improve their social standing. This developmental project of self- and eventually social improvement, Bildung, possessed a progressive trajectory that over time would create a new elite based on merit, talent and education rather than birth. This new elite, while sheltered from the moneyed bourgeois concerns of work and production, would be by no means apolitical. The supporters of Bildung “saw this metapolitical education as providing the strongest impetus towards a new era of political thought” by producing independent thinkers free from social 5 Henri Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century Prussia (Chicago, 1974); John Hutchinson, “Moral Innovators and the Politics of Regeneration: The Distinctive Role of Cultural Nationalists in Nation Building,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 33 (1992): 101–117; Thomas Nipperdey, “Auf der Suche nach der Identität: Romantischer Nationalismus,” in Nachdenken über die deutsche Geschichte (Munich, 1986), 110–125; Helga Schultz, “Mythos und Aufklärung: Frühformen des Nationalismus in Deutschland,” Historische Zeitschrift 263, no. 1 (August 1996): 31–67.

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constraints.6 The formal education cultural elites received at the Gymnasien emphasized classical values, and admiration for the Greek Golden Age in particular informed ideas about the interaction of artistic creativity and civic responsibility.7 Bildung, developed through formal education and humanist pursuits, was meant to produce autonomous, moral, cultivated citizens. This was the liberal conception of meritocracy through aesthetic development. Drawing on what they knew and admired from classical Greek political culture, Bildungsbürger (the educated middle classes) frequently defined political participation in moral and spiritual terms, which meant that most of them embraced a liberal political ideology. They sought to train individuals for autonomy, rationality, and civic participation in a political system governed by the rule of law that granted civil liberties based on educational or property requirements. For them, the nation and its culture were sacred realms; civic participation served to spread enlightenment and moral improvement.8 Both nationalism and liberalism strove for autonomy and self-determination. Nationalism, shaped by Bildung, was not understood merely in linguistic or geographical terms; the customs associated with self-cultivation, as well as Bildung’s progressive arc, allowed some delegates to the Frankfurt Parliament to conceptualize non-German speakers as members of the nation.9 The notion of Bildung had fostered liberal and nationalist beliefs, and by 1848 liberals had attempted to institutionalize it politically in their proposed educational requirement for suffrage.10 The Kulturnation, grounded in Herderian conceptions of nationhood, articulated a dichotomous view of German culture. On the one hand, Germanness was unique and particular, rooted in the customs and language of common people; on the other, it was universally accessible and valuable to those of 6

7 8 9 10

Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866, trans. Daniel Nolan (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 46; W.H. Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: ‘Bildung’ from Humboldt to Thomas Mann (Cambridge, 1975); Ralf Roth, “Von Wilhelm Meister zu Hans Castorp: Der Bildungsgedanke und das bürgerliche Assoziationswesen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” in Bürgerkultur im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Dieter Hein and Andreas Schulz (Munich, 1996), 121–139; James Garratt, Music, Culture and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner (Cambridge, 2010), 9–27. Suzanne Marchand, Down from Olympus: German Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton, NJ, 1996). James J. Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1978), 14–16. Brian Vick, Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity (Cambridge, MA, 2002), 20. Dieter Langewiesche, “Kulturelle Nationsbildung im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Nation und Gesellschaft in Deutschland, ed. Manfred Hettling and Paul Nolte (Munich, 1996), 113.

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merit. In Herder’s developmental model of nations, awakening and selfexpression were necessary components that once accomplished, would yield to a transcendent universalism. For Herder, any attempt to emulate a foreign culture, as he believed Germans had done with that of the French, was inherently misguided because each culture was historically specific. Herder and other cultural nationalists believed that “the nation was no end in itself but merely a step toward a shared humanity, a world citizenship.”11 Attempts to define or articulate German national identity were plagued by a “patronizing ambivalence toward nationalism” as well as toward the common people in the universalist project.12 A vision of progressive awakening toward universalism predominated in nationalist thought among German-speaking artists and intellectuals, including Franz Liszt’s circle. Franz Brendel, professor of music at the University of Leipzig and Schumann’s successor as editor of the Neue Zeitschrift, one of Liszt’s closest colleagues, wrote extensively to support the cause of cultural nationalism. In countless articles in the Neue Zeitschrift as well as his hugely successful Die Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich (1860), Brendel articulated his vision of cultural development. The German character, argued Brendel, was constituted of two strands, the specifically German and the universal. Brendel thought that classical artists such as Mozart, Goethe and Schiller all took elements from diverse national cultures to achieve a universal artistic expression. To be German was to synthesize: we do not only recognize the specifically German in the narrow sense as the truly national, but rather see the decisive factor in the truly German foundations of the works, whether they themselves be mainly German or universal. This universal composition of the nation has included very talented foreigners who have in Germany sought and found their homelands.13 Brendel believed that Germans had a national mission that was associated with their dualistic nature. His Hegelian understanding of history led him to

11 Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, 71; for comments regarding the relationship between universalism and nation-states in general, see Martin Geyer, ed., The Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War (Oxford, 2001), 9–23. 12 Taruskin, 346. 13 Franz Brendel, Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich, 5th ed. (Leipzig, 1875), 272.

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assert that German history was characterized by phases of tension that yielded to synthesis. Brendel claimed, While the other nations have been developing their laudable individuality and have stagnated in isolation, it was Germany’s task, because of its peculiarities to raise itself to a broad universality, to absorb the individuality of the other peoples and to make it all one whole.14 German national identity was one that assimilated and synthesized the contributions of other nations. Germany traveled along a distinctive “special path”; it had a greater potential as a nation and following the path was the nationalists’ central purpose. Brendel viewed difference in national characters as cultural and environmental, which left the possibility open that foreign artists, like Liszt and Berlioz, could adopt German culture and participate in its elevating influence.15 After Germany asserted its own individual culture, a new age was to follow in which nationality mattered little: German universalism would be embraced by peoples across Europe. He hoped for “the single states and peoples to flow into each other spiritually, to interpenetrate so that they form one great whole, in which the national is only a decoration.”16 German national character expressed itself, in Brendel’s view, through the humanistic projects of art, science, and philosophy. Brendel’s formulation of these arguments made a deep impression on his educated readership, and helped further to elevate music into an expression of German national potential.17 He continued to believe that German national assertion was to take place through artistic production and scholarship, although his death in 1868 precluded any commentary on the actual state-driven, militarily enacted German unification. By allying himself with Liszt, Brendel implicitly signaled his belief in cosmopolitan or acculturated nationalism. Liszt himself sought to balance cosmopolitanism and nationality in various ways. His adopted Hungarian patriotism did not prevent him from striving to contribute to German culture. Although he never specifically claimed to be German, he did retain his sense of himself as a Central European German14 15 16 17

Brendel, 126. Robert Determann, Begriff und Ästhetik der “Neudeutschen Schule”: Ein Beitrag zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhundert (Baden-Baden, 1989), 211–212; Vick, 117. Brendel, 436. Bernd Sponheuer, “Reconstructing Ideal Types of the ‘German’ in Music,” in Music and German National Identity, 42, 54–55.

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speaker that had been evident in his descriptions of himself, d’Agoult and Heine in the 1830s. While touring the German lands in the early 1840s, Liszt made gestures acknowledging German nationalism, including setting Georg Herwegh’s Francophobic defense of the Rhine “Sie sollen ihn nicht haben” to music, making a sizable donation to the Beethoven monument in Bonn, and speaking German rather than French.18 In order to accommodate himself to a growing nationalist sentiment in the German lands yet retain his cosmopolitan sensibilities, Liszt joined the Frankfurt Lodge of the Freemasons in 1841. At the time, Freemasonry was booming in the German lands, where it boasted 20,000 members.19 Lodges provided their members an important realm in which to mix with those of different status, express their sociability and attain Bildung on the road to full citizenship. To this end, Masons focused on individual development and practiced civic participation and cosmopolitan tolerance through humanist values that envisioned spiritual equality.20 Most prevalent in the northern and central German lands, lodges also exhibited tensions between universality and particularity as they sought to develop citizens, and through them societies.21 Becoming a Mason perfectly suited Liszt: Masons were men with established professional lives who sought political and social standing among their peers. They saw themselves as citizens, but also as cosmopolites, tolerant of religious diversity, who believed that progress in society was to be achieved in male brotherhood dedicated to the nation.22 Masons also played prominent political and social roles in Weimar itself. Joining them served as an entré to educated German society, much like the salons had done for Liszt in Paris. Liszt’s connection to German nationalism was an intellectual one grounded in his understanding and application of Herder’s ideas, very unlike his emotional bond to Hungary. Like Brendel, he believed that educated elites were creators of nationalist sentiment, and hoped that they would be its transmitters as well. In an essay meant to evoke pride and inspire future activity for the sake of German culture, Liszt used an artisanal metaphor to explain the roles of various groups in society in creating a national culture. All had a role within 18 19 20

21 22

Gooley argues that Liszt courted German nationalists solely for the sake of his concert career. The Virtuoso Liszt, 156–86. Hoffmann, 37, 239, 242; Jacob, 95–109. Lucien Hölscher, “The Religious Divide: Piety in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” in German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870–1914, ed. Helmut Walser Smith (Princeton, 1995), 33–47, here 44. Hoffmann, 32. Hoffmann, 29–54.

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the social/aesthetic hierarchy, and needed to trust that they contributed to the nation’s forward trajectory. It was clear that the educated classes were the leaders of nationalist awareness, and only after the nation was built could common people appreciate its greatness. He asserted that  . . . in no people did culture generalize itself before their national spirit had revealed itself through great and beautiful works inspired by their own feelings. Until then all attempts to graft on another one were almost fruitless. The knowledge of foreign sciences and arts, . . . remains the exclusive property of the privileged, educated classes and does not penetrate deeper than the surface of the population. This knowledge does not extend itself . . . until national works provide a sort of comparison and introduce new works in their wake. One could believe that the different nations, like various builders who are at work on the same building, don’t learn to appreciate and contemplate its entire order such as the beauty of its diverse parts, before each, for his part, constructed a massive portal, or set an elegant pillar knob, sculpted an admirable relief, or a built an impressive monument.23 Liszt set up an image of different nations working together to construct a common expression that would transcend each of their own cultures. In his view elites would lead this process of creating a universal culture. Liszt believed that not until a particular national culture was expressed and appreciated could a more universal conception be created. Universalism, cosmopolitanism, and nationalism jostled each other throughout the nineteenth century as nationalists sought to strengthen their own cultural and social power, and to win more adherents to their cause. The three categories of belonging could blend and merge when convenient for nationalist causes: they were relational and situational. In seeking to legitimize their own efforts and their adoption of Liszt as a banner figure for the German Kulturnation, the circle of intellectuals and artists in Weimar trod a fine line between seeking to elevate and possibly alienating their potential audiences. Because Bildung was a developmental project, it could, eventually, become a universalist one that acclimated all to German values and ethics.

23

Franz Liszt, Die Goethe-Stiftung, SS vol. 3, 47.

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Responses to Revolutionary Ruptures

The revolutions of 1848–49 left an imprint on Weimar. As in other parts of Europe, at the beginning of 1848, citizens’ gatherings took place in the great halls, where stages were erected for nightly political debates. Increasing politicization fostered a wide variety of participants, from administrators to artisans and liberals to republicans, “not even excluding women and immature youths.”24 There was a substantial number of republicans in Weimar, who staged a revolt in March in Weimar’s main market square across from City Hall, calling for freedom of the press and civic equality, as well as universal suffrage. Such revolutionary fervor died down after ministers were replaced with men more acceptable to the citizenry, an action taken by Grand Duke Carl Friedrich, who did not want to use troops to calm the sharp divisions and revolts taking place in Thuringian society. A relatively high number of liberal nationalists in Weimar persisted throughout the 1850s.25 Both in the Vor- and Nachmärz eras German liberals longed for change but were divided as to how inclusive democratic freedoms ought to be, and indeed, how best to go about achieving them. In 1848 the efforts liberals had made in the Vormärz period to build an elite, literate civic culture in the German lands were supplemented with calls for economic liberalization, the writing of constitutions, and ultimately, political unification in a liberal-democratic form. The right-wing liberals eschewed open conflict and sought to implement clear political and institutional boundaries against mass political participation. Left liberals, or republicans, longed for the spirit of change to influence their work both during and after the 1848 revolutions, even resorting to revolutionary 24

25

Eduard Genast, Aus Weimars klassischer und nachklassischer Zeit: Erinnerungen eines alten Schauspielers (Stuttgart, 1903), 299. The rest of this paragraph is indebted to Genast, 298–305. Reinhard Jonscher, Kleine thüringische Geschichte—vom Thüringer Reich bis 1945 (Jena, 1995), 178; Irina Kaminiarz, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben in Weimar 1854 bis 1860 (Weimar, 1988), 9; Wolfram Huschke, Musik im klassischen und nachklassischen Weimar, 1756–1861 (Weimar, 1982). For the revolutions of 1848, see Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848–1851, second ed. (Cambridge, 2005); Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform, ed. Dieter Dowe, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Dieter Langewiesche, and Jonathan Sperber, trans. David Higgins (New York, 2001); The Revolutions in Europe 1848–1849: From Reform to Reaction, ed. R.J.W. Evans and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann (Oxford, 2000); Die Revolutionen von 1848/49. Erfahrung—Verarbeitung—Deutung, ed. Christian Jansen and Thomas Mergel (Göttingen, 1998); 1848 Revolution in Deutschland, ed. Christoph Dipper and Ulrich Speck (Frankfurt, 1998).

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activity. Hoffman von Fallersleben, a democrat who in 1853 came to live and work in Weimar with Liszt, remarked in his 1848 diary that poetry and song had suffered for the last thirty-three years, since the creation of the German Confederation and the Congress System. Rather than being subjected to suspicion and censorship, the arts could have helped rouse the spirits of freedom and unity, Hoffmann argued. He wrote a poem celebrating the revolutionary events simply entitled “1848.” The poem praises struggle and conflict, arguing that contentment is fit only for Philistines, Spießbürger (petty bourgeois) and slaves; that fighting earns freedom.26 Hoffmann and other left liberals called for active, open, political confrontation waged by broad sections of the population. Peter Cornelius, one of Liszt’s protégés, wrote to his brother, a representative at the Frankfurt Parliament, “my future is called a republic.”27 These differing views colored the attempts during and after 1848 to enact cultural reforms and renewals. Liberal dissatisfaction with the status quo expressed itself in cultural as well as political, social, and economic terms. Reformers called for a revived national art, protected and nurtured by state support, rather than constrained by censorship. Brendel petitioned the Frankfurt Parliament to create a Ministry of Culture that would provide funding for cultural production. One of the blights on the German nation, he claimed, was the elite nature of its art. This had led to a division in society and a weakening of artistic inspiration. A state ministry could help to ensure broader participation in the arts, which would in turn benefit the state in producing more independent, more moral citizens.28 Adolf Schöll, Weimar’s head librarian, argued, “a nation that explains that it has no means left over for art because of pressing needs gives up on itself. No prosperity, no courage, no discipline are sufficient to give a people the moral support that secures progress and longevity when there is no living relationship with art.”29 Liberals in Germany saw a unified state not only as a guarantor of political rights, but also of a vibrant national culture. Liszt shared many of these views, but he was not necessarily consistent in his political outlook. Liszt embraced many intellectual influences, and his 26 27

28 29

Hoffman von Fallersleben, Mein Leben: Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen (Hannover, 1868), 1. Letter of 24 December 1848 in Peter Cornelius, Ausgewählte Briefe nebst Tagebuchblättern und Gelegenheitsgedichten, vol. 1 of Literarische Werke, ed. Carl Maria Cornelius (Leipzig, 1904), 81. Franz Brendel, “Auch eine Petition,” NZfM 28, no. 30 (11 April 1848): 178. Adolf Schöll, “Ueber Förderung vaterländischer Kunst, mit Rücksicht auf Pläne für eine allgemeine deutsche Goethe-Stiftung” Deutsches Museum I (1851): 457.

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writings encapsulate the many tensions between liberal aestheticism and more communitarian or socialist views of art. That is, at times Liszt called for a democratic art to encompass broad swaths of society, and at others looked to artists like himself to model genius and thereby to gradually elevate the ­masses.30 Biographers have variously characterized him as a radical democrat, a socialist, and a conservative supporter of the ancien regime.31 One trait that he did retain throughout his life was his commitment to pacifism and suspicion of high politics as a tool of social amelioration. Liszt believed in political and artistic freedom, and had supported republican movements in Paris in 1830, primarily through the sketching out of a Revolutionary Symphony. He did not approve of violent revolution; as moderate liberals did, he believed social change should take place through parliamentary or cultural means. Although he had enjoyed the street politics and protests of 1830 in Paris, Liszt was quite shaken by Louis-Philippe’s 1848 abdication and feared a European war as a result of the upheavals.32 While en route to Weimar, Liszt stopped in Vienna in the spring of 1848. Finding barricades in the streets, he circulated among those who had built them, distributing money and cigars. He sported a red, white and green cockade, signaling Hungarian patriotism and composed a song supporting workers’ rights.33 He did not, however, publish it, fearing a negative official reaction to its inflammatory lyrics. Such behavior was common enough for revolutionary nationalists seeking sovereignty to condemn it. For instance, one Hungarian parliamentary deputy commented, “To fight for the homeland is a beautiful thing, but to parade around with a red ribbon and cockade is not.”34 Liszt’s absence on the barricades themselves provoked a sharp rebuke from his benefactor Princess Belgiojoso. She wrote to him, Your country had succumbed in that hour as mine did, and like mine it was betrayed, because the Hungarian people knew to fight, and each time they ceded without striking a blow. . . . But how, my dear Liszt, did you not take part in the struggle? Isn’t Hungary your country in fact and in 30 31

32 33 34

For a more sustained discussion of the tension between the masses and elite art, see James Garratt, Music and Social Reform in the Age of Wagner (Cambridge, 2010), 3, 50–57. For Liszt as democrat, see M. Ocadlik, “Die radikalen Demokraten—Liszt und Smetana,” in Bericht über die zweite Internationale Musikwissenschaftliche Konferenz Liszt-Bartók (Budapest, 1963), 241–47; East German musicologists sought to claim Liszt as a socialist during the Cold War; as a conservative defender of the ancien regime, Frigyesi, 33. Letter of 12 March 1848, Br IV, 27–28. János Nepomuk Dunkl, Aus den Erinnerungen eines Musiker (Vienna, 1876), 21. Pál Hunfalvy, Napló 1848–1849 (1848–1849 News) (Budapest, 1986), 159; cited in Nemes, 147. This critique was not aimed at Liszt specifically.

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choice? Didn’t you declare yourself to be Hungarian? I believed that you would be beyond the Danube [in Pest], and I am uneasy not to hear your name . . . I know that you do not take politics to heart; but what else would be worth it, if not the establishment of rights for all, peoples and individuals?35 Belgiojoso challenged Liszt to take action that would demonstrate his loyalty. For her, and more and more nationalists across Europe, patriotism was to be expressed through the taking up of arms to defend the nation’s interests: patriotism had become a political ideology. Heinrich Heine’s notorious poem, “In October 1849” laments and condemns the failed revolution, with Liszt playing a central role. Liszt shows up again, Franz,/ he lives, he doesn’t lie blood-soaked/ on a Hungarian battlefield;/ neither Russian nor Croat has killed him/ Freedom’s last chance came/ And Hungary bled to death/ But knightly Franz emerged unscathed/ His saber, too—it lies in the commode.36 Heine had lost faith in Liszt’s virtuosic career years prior and condemned Vormärz Romantic aesthetics in general in his Die Romantische Schule (1835). Liszt, however, shied away from violence: all his life he held pacifist beliefs and sought to implement change through peaceful, gradual, and cultural means. As we’ve seen, patriotism was for him a matter of emotional connection and sentiment.37 The anger of the Hungarian M.P., Belgiojoso, and Heine was but one facet of a larger political debate. Cultural expressions of national allegiance had been formulated alongside political ones at the end of the eighteenth century in Europe. Liszt’s actions in 1848 were similar to those he had taken in the 1830s, writing, for example, the Lyon piece to express solidarity with striking weavers in France, and adopting Hungarian garb in the late 1830s as he identified himself as a Hungarian patriot. Yet nationalist sentiment had become more widespread and directly engaged with political questions in the 1830s and 40s. Like 35 36 37

Letter of 15 January 1849, Briefe hervorragender Zeitgenossen an Franz Liszt, ed. La Mara (Leipzig, 1895) 104. Italics mine. Heinrich Heine, Heinrich Heine’s sämmtliche Werke: Bibliothek-Ausgabe vol. 3, (Hamburg, 1885), 122. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” Critical Inquiry 23 (Spring 1997): 619. For other examples of Liszt’s horrified responses to war, as well as his support for a republican government in France, see his letters to Sayn-Wittgenstein of 26 December 1870, 4 March 1871, Br VI, 282 and 289–290.

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other liberals of the time, Liszt hoped for change to take place in a peaceful and orderly manner and watched the unfolding events in France avidly. He wrote to d’Agoult of his hope that the provisional government in France would force other European governments to change, and that if a French Republic were to result from the upheaval, it would be one of the “greatest moments of providence of the century.”38 His friend of more than thirty years, the republican writer Fanny Lewald, remembered Liszt’s insistence on peaceful change. She recorded a tirade he indulged in at a dinner party in the autumn of 1848. Liszt criticized German revolutionaries for singing the Marseillaise, arguing that such a “bloodthirsty hymn” would not lead to social reordering (Umwälzung). He would be the first, Liszt continued, to mount the barricades, shed his blood and face the guillotine if the guillotine could bring peace to the world and happiness to humanity. Instead, Liszt argued, the task of revolutionaries was to protect individual freedoms, and to address national-economic issues. Later, Liszt said, “I do not believe in the fruits (Segen) of political revolution.”39 In its emphasis on slow, progressive change, Liszt’s attitude was compatible with the larger moderate liberal set of ideals and practices. The relationship between cultural and political nationalism is a particularly fraught one in German historiography. For decades, the Sonderweg thesis proposed that the failed political revolution and liberals’ subsequent retreat inward allowed authoritarian structures and mindsets to continue unaltered into the twentieth century. Politics and liberalism here are understood in a limited way to entail political party activity, attempts to legislate, and overt denunciation of repressive post-1848 state measures such as censorship.40 After King Friedrich Wilhelm IV rejected the proposed constitution of Germany, the Bildungs component of liberalism did not vanish, yet historians have privileged party political activity over its foundations. For example, some claim that intellectuals such as Liszt and his allies represent a broader German tendency to substitute “culture” for “politics.” “The inward realm established by German idealism, the classic literature of Weimar, and the Classical and Romantic styles in music . . . gave a special dignity to the withdrawal of the individual from politics into the sphere of culture and private life.”41 In this Sonderweg-based understanding 38 39 40

41

Letter of 30 March 1848, BMA vol. II, 393. Fanny Lewald, “Franz Liszt,” in Zwölf Bilder nach dem Leben (Berlin, 1888), 342, 353. Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn did much to unseat some of these assumptions and projections from a British model in The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in the Nineteenth century (Oxford, 1984). Wolf Lepenies, The Seduction of Culture in German History (Princeton, N.J., 2006), 9. Another well-respected scholar of this school is Thomas Nipperdey; see his “Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Gesellschaft, Kultur, Theorie:

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of German nationalism, culture compensated for political weakness and failings.42 It served as a refuge in which defeated liberals sheltered and abrogated their civic responsibilities. This argument insists on the polarity between culture and politics. The 1850s are seen as an era in which cultural matters became irrelevant as economic integration and industrialization picked up their pace. Material interests trumped socio-cultural ones, which were sidelined to an irrelevant, obsolete enclave. The retreat of the liberals allowed German political culture to become increasingly authoritarian. In the Sonderweg account, the years 1858/59 mark the end of the apolitical Dark Ages as these years heralded a new era of public activity, including the establishment of the National Verein, a liberal association created to push for a kleindeutsch form of political unity, as well as a softening of state repression. 1859 heralds the beginning of “realist” politics, with a focus on political and economic challenges, turning away from Bildung, culture and poetry as solutions. I’d like to remind readers, however, that 1859 also saw the initial steps to create the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein, the completion of Tristan and Isolde, and the stormy first performances of Brahms’s First piano concerto. The attention paid to economic integration and political retreat fails to explain the continuous and energetic cultural activity in Weimar and the German lands during the 1850s, so that, for example, the astounding number of Schiller festivals held to celebrate his centenary in 1859 seem to have appeared from nowhere, or indicate regression to Vormärz political activity. Let’s turn to reexamining the era and freeing it from the Sonderweg account. I hope to offer new ways of thinking about the rhetoric and actions of cultural elites in Central Europe that can be fruitfully applied in many different contexts. When we retain a broader definition of liberalism, to include cultural attitudes and social practices, we see that its central tenets persisted well past 1848, and that the mindset of Liszt and his allies was by no means unusual.43 In fact, “Many liberals continued to believe that their activities were educational and

42

43

Gesammelte Aufsätze zur neueren Geschichte, 1976), 133–173. Musicologists have generally cleaved to this interpretation; see, for example, Max Paddison, “Music as Ideal: The Aesthetics of Autonomy,” in The Cambridge History, 318–329; Jim Samson, “Music and Society,” in The Late Romantic Era: From the mid-19th Century to World War I (London, 1991), 10. Michael Hamburger, Reason and Energy: Studies in German Literature (New York, 1957); Hagen Schulze, Course of German Nationalism; Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 1840–1945 (Princeton, 1982), 115, 119–121; Leonard Krieger, The German Ideal of Freedom (Chicago, 1972), 346–47. Konrad H. Jarausch and Larry Eugene Jones, “German Liberalism Reconsidered: Inevitable Decline, Bourgeois Hegemony, or Partial Achievement?,” in In Search of a Liberal Germany:

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it was wrong to overemphasize material interests and issues.”44 Intellectuals retained their faith in scholarly writing as a tool to implement their dreams of national unification: their confidence in the power of the written word was unshaken, as historians, musicians, and artists debated about the meaning of the German past, the place of art in society and its role in the nation; even historical novels were engaged and political.45 Kulturpolitik played an obvious role in the founding of museums and staging of opera, but writ large it also appeared in “clashes about education, artistic freedom, and the role of church and state.”46 Liberalism encompassed much more than party politics, with which Liszt and his allies had engaged very little either after or before 1848. “When the middle classes came to social regard and ascent” during industrialization, “poets, not scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs, were the honored idols of the nation.47 Sociological and anthropological understandings of culture and politics give a different perspective on the relationship between art, liberal values and political change. Here, “culture” is understood to entail a set of shared beliefs, symbols, and meanings, the dynamic value system of a society. In such an understanding of culture, high artistic production and events take on a new depth and importance: the festivals, museums, poems, novels and monuments created in the 1850s still bespeak political activity—in which politics is understood to be an expression of power.48 Culture encompasses artistic production as well as political practices. Politics is no longer simply about political parties, forms of rule and governments, but rather, because all relationships feature a power dynamic, politics is everywhere. Indeed, “national identity combined cultural and political elements . . . in the creation of the sense of community that bound all those external markers of nationality in the spiritual whole

Studies in the History of German Liberalism from 1789 to the Present (New York, 1990), 1–24, here 13; Langewiesche, 63. 44 Sheehan, German Liberalism, 86. 45 Peter Paret, Art as History: Episodes in the Culture and Politics of Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 146; Andrew Lees, Revolution and Reflection: Intellectual Change in Germany during the 1850’s (The Hague, 1974), 184, 190; Alastair P. Thompson, Left Liberals, the State, and Popular Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford, 2000), 10, 115. 46 Thompson, 18. 47 Rainer Noltenius, Dichterfeiern in Deutschland: Rezeptionsgeschichte als Sozialgeschichte am Beispiel der Schiller- und Freiligrath-Feiern (Munich, 1984), 53. 48 Rudy Koshar, Germany’s Transient Pasts: Preservation and National Memory in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1998), 10.

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that was the nation.”49 High culture retained its politicized reputation in the German lands as revolutionaries and reformers debated about national institutions, rights, freedoms, flags, anthems, and heroes even after 1849. Despite the failure of the parliamentarians to create a national constitution, the ideals of 1848 persisted at the grass roots level and were evident throughout the 1850s and 60s. “Liberal intellectuals . . . retained, on balance, an optimistic belief in progress.”50 Larger and broader sections of the German population became politicized. Urbanization brought strangers into contact with another and gave rise to an organized working class and socialist political movements. Middle-class reformers created two liberal political parties between 1859–63, both of which were dedicated to creating a constitutional system with an elected legislature and assumed that self-help provided the answer to social problems.51 They valued reform rather than revolution and increasingly felt besieged from below as socialism grew; the granting of universal manhood suffrage in 1871 solidified this fear. In Weimar, Bildungsbürger, artists and intellectuals engaged in intense cultural production, and created many Gelegenheitsstücke—works of art intended for a specific occasion (such as a centenary or inauguration). Such works, long suspect because of their clear lack of “autonomy”, suggest that their creators took larger political and social issues into account as they composed music. Liberal and courtly interests converged in creating national institutions, monuments, and artistic movements. Historically minded individuals and groups used the past to explore and legitimate their own cultural, social, and political roles. Like liberals all over Central Europe, Liszt’s circle worked out the implications of 1848 and attempted to adapt their aims to altered conditions.52 While the intense activity in Weimar seems exceptional, such business came to characterize all of the German lands but twenty years later. Intense cultural activity characterized the new unified German state as it recognized culture’s symbolic value and sought to appropriate it for its own sake.53 Post-1848 cultural nationalism gained a new constituency in the princes as it became clear to them that national unification was an agenda item that would not disappear. New studies focus on the middle states and their princes’ 49 50 51 52 53

Vick, 20. For the role of literature, see Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Building a National Literature: The Case of Germany, 1830–1870, trans. Renate Baron Franciscono (Ithaca, 1989). Thompson, 10. Vick, 63. Dieter Langewiesche, Liberalism in Germany, trans. Christiane Banerji (Princeton, 2000), 61–63. Langewiesche, 61–63.

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deployment of cultural nationalism through sponsorship of festivals, funding and dedication of monuments, and endowments to museums. What could be considered an ancien regime-style patronage, such as Carl Alexander’s support for the Goethe Foundation, in fact differed from the older practice in which princes acquired works of art for their own pleasure or status. Margaret Menninger distinguishes between that older style of patronage and what she calls “cultural philanthropy,” in which donors and founders supported the arts and museums out of a sense of duty and obligation that accompanied the habitus of consuming high culture among Bildungsbürger and the aristocracy. This new philanthropy as practiced by Carl Alexander was driven by political and even liberal impulses.54 After 1848, rulers sought to ameliorate relations with some of their prime liberal opponents and made concessions to public opinion and demands along nationalist-commemorative lines. The mixed funding of monuments and festival activities from above and below “fostered symbolic tensions between monuments’ dynastic-authoritarian meanings on the one hand, and national and democratic ones on the other.”55 The 1850s saw such busy commemorative activity because of competition between the bourgeoisie and aristocratic institutions.56 Aristocratic participation in such activity heralded the true success of nationalism: it had arrived when aristocrats linked themselves to commoners on basis of shared nationality.57 In the 1850s and 60s states and liberals alike used the past for their own ends, appropriating a widespread belief in the contemporary relevance of historical study, which gave rise to historical associations, often funded by both public and private sources.58 Culture was a means for nationalists to achieve national integration, and for princes to soften the opposition toward their own rule. The persistent centrality of Bildung-based values, and by implication, liberalism, to German political culture influenced policy even after unification when the new Reich co-opted cultural production. German policymakers and nationalists saw that Germany’s new Great Power status lacked cultural trappings, 54

55 56

57 58

Margaret Eleanor Menninger, “The Serious Matter of True Joy: Music and Cultural Philanthropy in Leipzig, 1781–1933,” in Philanthropy, Patronage, and Civil Society: Experiences from Germany, Great Britain, and North America, ed. Thomas Adam (Bloomington, IN, 2004), 120–37, here 120–121. Robin Lenman, Artists and Society in Germany, 1850–1914 (Manchester, 1997), 18. Simone Mergen. Monarchiejubiläen im 19 Jahrhundert: Die Entdeckung des historischen Jubiläums für den monarchischen Kult in Sachsen und Bayern (Leipzig, 2005), 169; Abigail Green, Fatherlands: State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 2004), 135. Applegate and Potter, 14. Green, 109.

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and they needed to counteract the “crass materialism” of the 1860s. The state utilized high culture for authoritarian ends to legitimize its new rule.59 Figures regarding nationalist institutions illuminate the rapid growth of public activity after unification, and highlight the unusual nature of the events in Weimar during the 1850s. Before 1871, fourteen local historical museums were founded. After unification, that number grew to thirty-one between 1881–90. The last decades of the nineteenth century saw dramatic changes in urban space as it was marked by the emergence of new national statues and monuments.60 In many ways, then, Weimar was a harbinger of later events and also a source of inspiration for them. One site where this overlapping of motivations, actors and outcomes is fruitfully on display is the public festivals of the 1850s. Such festivals reached back into early Church practices and were adopted by educated elites as a tool of Bildung in the Vormärz period. Beginning in the 1820s, artistic festivals embraced and celebrated ideas of the Kulturnation and its developmental potential for future citizens. In 1848, popular festivals were at their height, and displayed the political power of cultural and social gatherings.61 After a decade of apparent dormancy, festivals returned in 1859 with a dramatic commitment and public demonstration in the more than 400 Schiller festivals that took place across the German-speaking lands, including the Habsburg Empire.62 Some of them lasted three full days, and workers, students and professors took time from their work to join together. The Schiller festivals were the largest celebration of a poet in Germany. The construction of monuments and the festivals held to celebrate their completion was a competitive and complicated process, involving donors, artists, planners, judges, critics, and the public at large in acts of remembrance, imagination, and negotiation. Their diverse participants and their multifaceted functions made it increasingly difficult to distinguish dynastic, popular, and national festivals.63 For example, one scholar sees in the Schiller festival of 1859 the celebration of a commoner rather than a statesman or warlord, and thus a more democratic expression of German

59 60 61 62 63

Lenman, 2; Esteban Buch, Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History, trans. Richard Miller (Chicago, 2003), 157–58. Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997), 44, 134. Noltenius, 74. Ibid., 239. Koshar, 4; Karin Friedrich, ed. Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Lewiston, NY, 2000), 11.

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nationhood.64 Another sees the Schiller festival as a kind of democratic plebiscite to “elect” a leader.65 Festivals functioned as sites of public reception of artists and their products, and such anniversary celebrations helped liberals derive political benefits for their larger agendas.66 Festivals helped to define new public sphere, that is, social-political spaces away from the traditional powers of monarch and church. They served as schools, places of creating a new discipline, a place where people observed each other in new rites of civic virtue.67 The next two sections of this chapter will explore the cultural commemorative events and activities of Liszt’s circle in Weimar. Their values, beliefs, actions and aims all bespeak an ongoing commitment to liberal values, such as progress in terms of binding Germans together culturally, Bildung, and reform. Their choice of using cultural production to achieve their aims was in itself a political statement, one that cleaved to past successes and re-evaluated revolutionary politics. Far from making a retreat, these intellectuals and artists worked for a more free society in which culture connected them more strongly to the people. They sought to implement it through their civic participation and contributions and their integration into and influence over preexisting institutions, as well as attempts to craft their own.

Weimar Itself—Home of the Nation?

When in 1848 ideas about the Kulturnation encountered widespread calls for political unity, nationalists faced a central problem of reconciling “belles letters with cartography”; the bounds of German Bildung extended into Czech-, Polish- and Magyar-speaking lands.68 In light of the widespread multilingualism of the region, most delegates to the Frankfurt Parliament agreed that the German nation-state’s boundaries ought to include Austria.69 In reconciling high political ideals with the cultural understandings of Germanness, they also 64 65 66 67

68 69

Lenman, 24. Noltenius, 254. Michael John, “Associational Life and the Development of Liberalism in Hanover, 1848– 1866,” In Search of German Liberalism, 161–86, here 169. The pathbreaking work on this topic is Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1991); see also Manfred Hettling and Paul Nolte, Bürgerliche Feste: Symbolische Formen politischen Handelns im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1993). Russell Berman, The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma (Cambridge, MA, 1986), 1. Vick, 161.

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faced the question of where they were in the model of a national development: was it time to embrace German nationhood writ small, or to continue with a cosmopolitan sensibility, or even attain the status of a universal culture? Cultural nationalism focuses on artistic producers and their audiences. People constitute nations—they create and appreciate the nation’s cultural treasures. Yet nations also are physically sited in space. As prolonged discussions about the political boundaries of a unified Germany at the Paulskirche demonstrated, imagining an area and idea as large as the nation itself presented difficulties for the delegates. A common approach to bringing a more concrete form to the nation was to link it to local character and customs. The function of such local loyalty was to enable larger, more impersonal bonds to develop between groups. These would forge allegiances, either through Germans meeting one another or by simply traveling through other parts of Germany, to a nation that many Germans would never see. Local loyalty and awareness of a greater polity beyond it also played an important stabilizing role in the Habsburg lands. Various regions competed for the right to be the locus of German culture. Vienna had served as the center of German music and high culture through the Napoleonic Wars. By the mid-century, however, the events of 1848 and growing urbanization suggested various alternatives to the seat of the Habsburg Empire. Berlin was another likely location for a capital, but both Vienna and Berlin, with their locations at the extreme ends of the German lands, and strong association with particular royal houses and religions, made them divisive options. For Liszt and his allies, Weimar’s past helped to lend it legitimacy as a seat of German nationhood, as did its central geographical location. While they did not dream of making Weimar the capital city of a German nation-state, they did believe that it could serve as a unifying symbol and site for nationalists’ efforts and allegiances. Thuringia, located in the middle of the German lands, was thought of as a “third Germany” between North and South, and as such, resisted the polarizing trends to which Berlin and Vienna were subjected.70 When Carl Alexander appointed Liszt his Kapellmeister, he was recalling a long and honored tradition in the duchy of Saxe-Weimar. From the late 1770s until the 1830s, Weimar had served as the center of German culture. Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Herder had been active as writers, poets and philosophers, and Hummel had served as Kapellmeister.71 Carl Alexander’s grandfather, 70 71

Blackbourn and Retallack, 9. Karl-Heinz Hahn, “Goethe und Weimar—Weimar und Goethe,” Goethe Jahrbuch 93 (1976): 11–37; Gerhart Hoffmeister, ed., A Reassessment of Weimar Classicism (Lewiston, ME, 1996); see also Hans Herbert Möller, “Die Kunst in der Neuzeit,” in Kunstgeschichte

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Carl August, had patronized the arts and sciences and also was known for his progressive political views. Under his rule, he granted a constitution to his state, the first prince in Germany to do so; he abolished serfdom, allowed greater freedom of the press than in other parts of the German lands, and his endorsement of the nationalistic Burschenschaften and granting of permission for their demonstration at the Wartburg in 1817 earned him the wrath of greater powers, especially that of Austria.72 For Liszt, as for most Europeans at the time, Weimar symbolized Enlightenment classicism: at the end of the eighteenth century, great poets and philosophers had gathered at “Athens on the Ilm,” inaugurating an age of German cultural greatness.73 Writer Adolf Stahr, a longtime friend of Liszt’s, remarked that Weimar awakened in Germans a feeling of humble patriotism, one that rested on the awareness that during Weimar’s Classical Age, shared national pride had “attained the purest expression of an all-encompassing humanism.”74 Stahr’s sentiment that Goethe, Schiller and other thinkers had achieved a transcendent expression of human greatness echoed his colleagues’ striving for a universal German culture. For the German intelligentsia of the mid-nineteenth century, Weimar symbolized a simple, more peaceful existence: Goethe, Schiller and their colleagues produced their work with the support of the Grand Duke Carl August, and were seemingly untroubled by political debates and revolutions until the Napoleonic Wars. Granted, some, such as Schiller, had openly supported the French Revolution, but on the whole, “politics,” especially violence serving political or social goals, did not intrude into the lives of these titans. Nationalists seeking to spotlight Weimar as a central component of German cultural nationhood focused on the region’s past cultural activities and longed for continuity with them. One group bemoaned, the political storms of 1847 and 1849 have broken up the Thuringian singing festivals, along with many other beautiful things, at least for the moment. The Thuringians, however, have not lost their love of singing.

72 73 74

und Numismatik in der Neuzeit, vol. 6 of Geschichte Thüringens, ed. Hans Patze and Walter Schlesinger (Cologne, 1979), 1–160; Hans Patze, “Land, Volk und Geschichte,” in Kunstgeschichte, 197–233. Jonscher, 160–63. During the Napoleonic Wars and in the aftermath of 1848–49, Carl August and Carl Alexander were both proposed as candidates for the Hungarian crown. The Ilm runs through Weimar. This title was, of course, in distinction to Berlin, “Spree-Athens.” Adolf Stahr, Weimar und Jena (Berlin, 1871), 1.

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[We] ought to . . . not only call the Thuringian festivals to life again, but also make them accessible for all of Germany.75 Such singing groups had created and transmitted national sentiment in the Vormärz period and were especially strong in Thuringia; in 1847 a large festival took place at the Wartburg.76 Singing competitions and festivals provided a historic grounding as well for Liszt’s and Wagner’s ideas about themselves as heroic national creators, expressed through their compositions. Liszt, too, wrote of the history of Thuringia, noting that the Wartburg, a medieval castle close to the town of Eisenach where Martin Luther had translated the Bible into German in 1520–21, had been an important cultural site for the region since the Middle Ages. He admired the “rich flowering of song and poetry” of the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. “The most famous names and most important memories of these two epochs are equally linked to the beautiful region of romantic Thuringia.”77 Liszt supported the Grand Duke’s restoration of the castle, suggested a revival of the medieval singing contests, and wrote his own oratorio, Die Legende der heiligen Elisabeth about the site. The importance of Thuringian history lay in the tradition of cultural greatness Liszt sought to claim; it was a legacy of the past that the present had a duty to honor and build upon. He wrote in 1850 to his colleague, Weimar’s theater director, Franz Dingelstedt, that the creation of the Goethe Foundation, “which could become the virtual center of German intelligence and talent, will mark the period of regeneration of the new generation of Weimar.”78 Weimar was to be an artistic and spiritual center, a site to which Germans from all thirty-six lands of the German Confederation and beyond could travel in pilgrimage. The strength of local practice was to become the foundation for a broader German culture. These visionaries knew that Weimar Classicism had been possible only with the sponsorship of Carl August, and most of them embraced the notion of a

75 Stahr, 9. 76 Dietmar Klenke, Der singende “deutsche Mann”: Gesangsvereine und deutsches Nationalbewußtsein von Napoleon bis Hitler (Munich, 1998); Dieter Düding, Organisierter gesellschaftlicher Nationalismus in Deutschland (1808–1847): Bedeutung und Funktion der Turner und Sängervereine für die deutsche Nationalbewegung (Munich, 1972). 77 Liszt, Die Goethe-Stiftung, 27. 78 Letter of 24 April 1850, Br VIII, 63.

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good working relationship between the court and themselves, the intellectuals.79 Liszt and Carl Alexander sought to model their own relationship on the close tie between Goethe and Carl August. As early as 1842 Carl Alexander noted to writer Bettina von Arnim that he sought to emulate Carl August’s example and gain recognition for his area of Germany.80 Part of this project entailed bringing great artists to reside in Weimar. Winning Liszt’s agreement to live in Weimar was quite a coup; along with the pianist, Carl Alexander also wooed Hans Christian Andersen and Jenny Lind, a famous soprano. Lina Ramann, Liszt’s authorized biographer, described the Duke: “he was filled with the honorable ambition ‘to be a German Medici’, who saw as his primary task to shape his small land into the central point of the nation’s intellectual and cultural (geistige) interests.”81 Ramann’s hearkening back to Renaissance humanism reveals the ambition she saw at the court—the Grand Duke sought to couple artistic patronage and political power. Stahr noted with approval that Carl Alexander and the court “protected the memory of glorious precedents without playing soldier or militaristic pomp.”82 He believed that the princes had shed their aristocratic feudal habits: the court could provide a true home for a newly invigorated Kulturnation without throwing its weight around in a repressive manner. The actual town was a kind of museum where the descendants of Classical era luminaries, Wielands, Herders, Goethes, Schillers and other local notables proudly dubbed themselves “Old Weimar” forming an oppositional bloc against Liszt and his colleagues.83 Mack Walker’s classic work on small-town life suggests that local burghers were suspicious of outsiders and particularly those without roots, wanderers who they feared would empty city coffers and threaten locals’ employment. In the 1840s and 50s such small towns sought to contain growth from immigration sparked by industrialization, frequently by intertwining marriage and residency legislation.84 Weimar fits this larger pattern: in 1843, the town’s population numbered 11,823 inhabitants and a 79 80

81 82 83 84

Eduard Devrient and Karl Gutzkow were exceptions, although the staunch republican Lewald retained a close friendship with the Duke until her death. Kaminiarz, 9. See also Carl Alexander’s letter of 8 Feb. 1850 to Lewald regarding his grandfather. Fanny Lewald and Carl Alexander, Mein gnädigster Herr! Meine gütige Korrespondentin!: Fanny Lewalds Briefwechsel mit Carl Alexander von Sachsen-Weimar 1848–1889, ed. Eckart Klessmann (Weimar, 2000), 56. BCA, viii. Stahr, 8. Ibid., 8. Mack Walker, German Home Towns: Community, State, and General Estate 1648–1871 (Ithaca, 1971), 324, 335.

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railroad line had just been completed. By 1859, the population had risen to 13, 154.85 While Liszt did not pose an economic challenge to the town, his lifestyle certainly disgusted local inhabitants, and many never accepted Liszt as one of their own. Liszt’s glamorous and somewhat shady virtuoso past, cosmopolitan connections and bohemian lifestyle conflicted with small-town life as well as with the self-conceptions and importance of the local notables; he was an unwelcome parvenu. In particular, Liszt’s open liaison with Sayn-Wittgenstein, as well as their Catholicism, which was unusual in predominantly Protestant Thuringia, offended notables. Liszt’s dangerous political proclivities—his friendships with figures such as Wagner and Hoffmann made locals suspicious as well.86 Lastly, Liszt’s relative ignorance of German literature and philosophy enhanced his initial impression of alienness among German educated elites, although he did slowly read more literature and interact with colleagues and friends about German (rather than French) texts more often in the 1850s.87 “Old Weimar” came to embody in Liszt’s and his circle’s minds the enemy they fought against with their artistic projects, the Philistine. The term’s meaning was established in the late eighteenth century by nearby University of Jena students, nobles, and the high bourgeoisie referring to local “townies.” Goethe and other neoclassicists scorned Philistines’ mediocrity, as compared to their own genius; Romantics like Liszt and his allies saw them as old, self-satisfied dullards who hindered progress.88 The Philistine could not appreciate art on its own merits, but rather looked to it as a marker of social status. For Liszt and his allies, the locals of Weimar represented a larger social and cultural milieu that seemed to block national cultural integration: their self-approving emphasis on their families’ standing as well as their narrow-mindedness symbolized aspects of the ancien regime most troubling to left liberals. Within two years of his arrival in Weimar, Liszt wrote to Wagner complaining of the difficulties they faced in forwarding their program: It remains just as true that in order to realize [art] exactly the way you understand it, it is absolutely necessary to break the old routine of criticism into pieces, as well as the long ears and short face of the 85 86

87 88

Alan Walker, The Weimar Years, 6. Fallersleben was removed from his professorship in 1842 due to his nationalist poetry, and Wagner was banned from Confederation lands because of his participation in Dresden’s 1848 uprising. Berthold Höckner, “Liszt als Ausländer,” in Liszt und Europa, 195–207, here 196. Ernst K. Bramsted, Aristocracy and the Middle Classes in Germany: Social Types in German Literature 1830–1900, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1964), 220. For the classic formulation of antiPhilistinism, see Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (New Haven, CT, 1994).

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‘Philistines,’ and the stupid talkativeness of the decisive part of the public, which believes itself to be the born judges of artworks.89 In Weimar, social divisions mirrored aesthetic and ideological ones. Many clubs and associations existed in Weimar, primarily peopled by the bourgeoisie and nobility, but there was no gathering at which the Weimar artists felt comfortable. Patriotic German men often gathered in Freundschaftsbünde, communities of “affinity”, which their proponents hoped would nurture rational, enlightened bonds between the like-minded, and in so doing, help to strengthen nationalist awareness and ties.90 Quickly after his arrival Fallersleben, who became chief mocker of the local Philistines and allaround propagandist as well as a sort of court jester, proposed the creation of such a club for Liszt’s group, and writer and music critic Richard Pohl followed through on recruitment of members. Cornelius described the first meeting in his diary as imbued with “the old German thoroughness.” Those present included Liszt, Hoffmann, Cornelius, two of Liszt’s piano students, Hans von Bronsart and Ferdinand Schreiber, violinist Alexander Ritter, the Hungarian singer Eugen von Soupper, Pohl, composer Joachim Raff, and other artists. Among the locals represented were music directors Carl Stöhr and Carl Montag, singers Edmund Singer, Bernhard Coßmann, Johann Walbrühl, and actor Eduard Genast. Wagner, in exile in Switzerland, was an honorary member. Fallersleben suggested they name the group the “New-Weimar Club,” overriding others who wanted it to be called the Liszt club.91 Hoffmann also wrote the text of the club song, which Liszt set to music. The song is a rallying call for the “new life” that those of “manly courage and desire” can bring into being. Hoffmann’s lyrics continue, We enjoy the old/that which beautifully proves itself to be/indeed to shape new things/is the spirit driving us/the standstill is at an end/ hindsight lies in the grave/we confidently take in our hands/the staff of progress.  You should not pay tribute to us/with a laurel wreath/no, what we want is our goal and prize./What we in art and life/recognize as true and beautiful/that remains our effort/until the edge of the grave.92

89

Letter of 16 September 1850 in Eduard Reuß, Franz Liszt in seinen Briefen, ed. Jeannot Emil Freiherr von Grotthuss (Stuttgart, 1911), 128. 90 Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, 69. 91 Cornelius, 184–5, 200–201. 92 Kapp, 162.

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Hoffmann’s verse called for a radical break with tradition and the past and for the progress that must accompany it, pointing out that the Philistines’ shrieks of dismay are the only barrier. The two mentions of the grave are striking: this was a sacred mission for these men, who would stake their lives on its success. Hoffmann’s fervent belief in struggle for progress was a clear carryover from his Vormärz activities, and demonstrated that such nationalist-liberal flames were by no means quenched. While the club possessed a strong social element, it also addressed politicalaesthetic concerns. The group met regularly on Mondays for meals, drinking, and whist, and gathered on Sundays at the Altenburg for musical performances. In addition to their social gatherings, the New Weimar members decided to spread their message through print. They published a newsletter dubbed Die Lanterne.93 Lanterns not only illuminate and thus enlighten; during the first half of the nineteenth century they were also associated with republican revolutionary activity, including the lynching of aristocrats.94 The club’s inclusivity embraced various guests, among them the Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein, composer-conductor Ferdinand Hiller from Leipzig, and Berlioz. The club used Romantic ideas about the Orient’s exoticism, freedom, and authenticity to emphasize their status as underdogs. These sentiments echoed the Romantic alienation Liszt had embraced during his time in Paris and while on his European tours. Questions of self-understanding and authenticity continued to preoccupy Liszt in the 1850s. Club members dubbed themselves the “Murls.” “Murl” was a combination of two German words, “Mohr” (Moor) and “Kerl” (fellow).95 This group named Liszt the padishah—their leader. Peter Cornelius’s nickname was “Murl Seraskier.” Cornelius explained to his sister that Seri-asker meant head of the navy in Persian, and translated it to mean the field marshal of the Murls.96 These military titles also underlined the group’s masculinity and combativeness. Liszt used these appellations frequently in his correspondence to club members throughout the 1850s. The sense of being embattled victims pervades the club’s writings: one of Hoffmann’s ditties states, “Old-Weimar is a big city/that has 13,000 inhabitants. New-Weimar is a small community/faced with 13,000 sneers of enmity.”97

93 94

“Die Laterne,” no. 1. GSA 59/233. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, “The Policing of Street Lighting,” Yale French Studies no. 73 (1987), 65. 95 Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 228. 96 Letter of 6 September 1854 in Ausgewählte Briefe, 160. 97 Kaminiarz, 30.

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Attempts to establish Weimar as the cultural heart of Germany depended on nationalists’ recognition of its suitability, a suitability based on the past. As Liszt and his colleagues reached back to move forward, they appropriated history for their own ends. As well as appropriating Goethe’s image in particular, Liszt sought to bolster his own subjectivity as a creative artist rather than mimetic performer through his writing and conducting of others’ works. These projects met resistance from without and within, as some believed that Berlin signaled a clearer vision of the future Germany, and locals scorned Liszt and his circle as self-important narcissists and parvenus. The New Weimarers’ activities to enshrine Goethe and Schiller as national heroes also provoked sustained discussion about which values and aesthetics those figures symbolized, and whether they were fitting for a unified, modern, liberal Germany.

The Search for Artistic Heroes

The Weimar intellectuals’ cultural-political vision played out in the 1850s in a quest for figures and places that could unify the nation. Educated elites and states embarked on public works to institutionalize the memory of past glories across Europe. This “invention of tradition” used preexisting rituals, festivals, figures, and texts, and assigned them new meanings to support new values, beliefs, allegiances, and institutions.98 Part of this process was the selection of particular memories from a myriad of past events. The remembrance evoked by monuments of cultural figures was meant to instill pride in the unity and greatness of the nation as well as allowing the viewer to feel part of it.99 The choices cultural nationalists made in their symbology can tell us much about their values and understanding of the past. Efforts at cultural commemoration provided a “symbolic representation of tradition and of the past embedded in the context of social action.”100 The question of who belonged to Germany and what “Germany” was can be seen in the debates about the German classical past, as intellectuals sought symbols that could be mobilized for their nationalist ends. These thinkers looked to high art, focusing on works of literature and music that could establish a nationalist canon. The need for national heroes was strong in the post1848 atmosphere of disarray. For many, German artistic and national identities 98 Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1–4. 99 Nipperdey, “Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal,” 150. 100 Confino, 11; Charlotte Tacke, Denkmal im sozialen Raum: Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1995).

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were linked, and artists considered themselves both the vanguard and microcosm of the burgeoning nation.101 Cults of great men constituted an integral component in nineteenth-century nationalism.102 Efforts made in Weimar during the early 1850s to commemorate, institutionalize, and build upon the classical past centered on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He had lived and worked in Weimar at Grand Duke Carl August’s invitation as a chief administrator of Saxe-Weimar. It was there that he wrote such works as Iphegenie in Tauris (1779), Egmont (1788), Torquato Tasso (1790), Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1808), and Faust (1770 to 1832). Goethe was the first literary figure in more than three centuries to win immediate international recognition for the German language. This was important for Germans’ claims of national greatness: not everyone in the German lands spoke German, and producing a vernacular literature was seen both as a sign of the language’s greatness, but also made education into it more possible.103 The commemorative efforts took the form of a centenary festival, a proposed Goethe Foundation, and the erection of a monument to Goethe and Schiller. Liszt also had a personal agenda in Weimar that dovetailed very nicely with nationalists’ own aspirations: he wanted to recreate himself as the Romantic genius—a composer of authentic creativity. His own personal hero, Beethoven, played a central role for him in creating this new subjective stance, a matter we’ll explore in the next chapter. But the figures of Goethe and Schiller also provided great inspiration for Liszt personally. During his tenure in Weimar, Liszt read Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History, which argued that a commitment to a larger cause sanctified the life and death of an individual, and that ideas themselves were higher causes.104 For the 1849 Goethe centenary celebration, Liszt composed a work inspired by Goethe’s play Tasso. In his foreword to the score, Liszt stated his desire to honor a great poet whose life was characterized by conflict, lament and triumph.105 The .

101 Lenman, 43. 102 John Horne, “Masculinity in Politics and War in the Age of Nation-States and World Wars, 1850–1950,” in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann, and John Tosh (Manchester, 2004), 28. 103 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 21, 59–62. 104 Mosse, The Image of Man, 52; Jochen Schmidt, Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik, 1750–1945, 2 vols. (Darmstadt, 1985); Peter Kivy, The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius (New Haven, CT, 2001); Drummond Bone, “The Emptiness of Genius: Aspects of Romanticism,” in Genius, 111–127. 105 Franz Liszt, Tasso, no. 448 (London). Delacroix also executed a painting of Tasso in 1824.

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piece has four themes: Tasso as poet and cultural influence, as lover, as member of the Venetian court, and as martyr. These themes trace Tasso’s journey from his life on earth to his martyrdom and transcendence of the constraints of the physical world to achieve immortality.106 The focus on the suffering and triumph of the artist could be understood as an allegory about Liszt’s personal path, or as a narrative of the nation’s struggle to overcome its long slumber, awaken, and overcome ignorance and repression. The trajectory of Tasso’s experience, and that of many others of Liszt’s protagonists, could be read in this fashion.107 Another piece Liszt wrote during the Weimar years that evokes this heroic theme is his Dante Symphony (1857). The Italian Renaissance poet had fascinated Liszt since his Parisian years and he had made several attempts to compose music honoring his hero. Dante, as a figure who innovated with form and style to revitalize art, not only served Liszt as an aesthetic inspiration, but his medieval Christianity also resonated with Liszt’s own intense Catholic faith. Three more of Liszt’s symphonic poems, Prometheus (1850), Mazeppa (1851), and Orpheus (1853–4), seek to bring to life heroic figures of myth and history. The many festivals held honoring neoclassical intellectuals offered Liszt opportunities to enact his new heroic, creative subjectivity which he expressed via the Weimar Festivals of 1850, the Herder festival and the Lohengrin premiere. He endowed these gatherings “with a world-historical perspective,” which allowed him “to weave a spiritual band around Herder, Goethe, Wagner and also in an unspoken way his own participation.”108 These occasions placed Liszt at the center of German national commemorative events and created a genealogical succession of great artists, coming to its culmination with Liszt himself. Richard Wagner, who became Liszt’s artistic brother, a key figure in heroic Romantic self-conceptions, played a central role in this script. Liszt once selfapprovingly commented that he viewed himself and Wagner as descendants and heirs of Goethe and Schiller, with himself in the role of the elder intellectual. He wrote to Sayn-Wittgenstein of the correspondence between Schiller and Goethe, “I encounter a number of sentences in it that relate perfectly to the musical situation of our time. The experiences and thoughts are exactly 106 Keith T. Johns, The Symphonic Poems of Franz Liszt (Stuyvesant, NY, 1997), 49. 107 A transcriber and translator of Liszt’s letters, Pauline Pocknell, suggest that the Byronic notion of a suffering, wounded artist in search of feminine love to redeem him was a central component of Liszt’s self-conception. Pauline Pocknell, ed., Franz Liszt and Agnes Street-Klindworth, A Correspondence, 1854–1886 (Hillsdale, NY, 2000), 14n5. 108 Gerhard Winkler, “Liszts an die Künstler,” in Liszt und die Weimarer Klassik, 93.

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relevant; only their scope is too narrow to bind us.”109 Liszt saw himself as the senior partner in the relationship: after all, he was providing the patronage and protection to the vulnerable and needy Wagner. Yet Peter Cornelius noted in his journal that Liszt and Bettina von Arnim had been locked in an unreasonable debate about the relative merits of Goethe and Schiller. Liszt preferred Schiller’s works to those of Goethe, which earned him a rebuke from Bettina von Arnim; she retorted “that his inclination was Jesuitical,” to which he shot back, “The worst Jesuit would be better than all of Goethe.”110 Even while he tried to step into Goethe’s shoes, Liszt found them an uncomfortable aesthetic fit: he related to Schiller’s views of aesthetic development and education much more than those of the openly elitist Goethe. Others agreed with Liszt that he could play a central role in building German cultural unity through artistic production. Goethe’s cosmopolitanism and suspicion of nationalism were converted into progressive attributes by Brendel and his colleagues. One music journalist wrote, far from taking offense [at Liszt’s participation in German nationbuilding], we welcome [his] appearance as a new sign of the solidarity of European peoples that Goethe had noticed and developed in his form of Weltliteratur. Nationality should not be a restriction for those who wish to create such a fine [work of art], but rather only a necessary form.111 Goethe’s literary vision that transcended national particularities was a component of the dual understanding of German nationhood. Liszt’s Hungarian nationality did not have to be a barrier to his understanding and empathy for Germanness. Through Bildung, Liszt belonged to the German nation. These aspirations to link Liszt and his circle to Weimar classicism began almost immediately after Liszt’s arrival in the small town. Liszt’s circle joined with the Berlin Associates, a group of liberal notables, to plan a celebration of Goethe’s centenary in 1849.112 Debates about its appropriateness revealed the 109 Letter of 23 July 1857 in Franz Liszt in seinen Briefen, 92. 110 Letter of 5 December 1853 in Peter Cornelius, Ausgewählte Briefe nebst Tagebuchblättern und Gelegenheitsgedichten, vol. 1 of Literarische Werke, ed. Carl Maria Cornelius (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1904), 147. 111 Ernst Kossak, “Franz Liszt über die Göthe-Stiftung,” Echo 1, no. 15 (13 April 1851): 114. See also Victor Lange, “Nationalliteratur und Weltliteratur,” in Bilder, Ideen, Begriffe: GoetheStudien (Würzburg, 1991), 98–112. 112 The Association included such luminaries as the liberal pedagogue Adolf Diesterweg, dismissed from his post at the college in Berlin in 1847, a victim of increasingly conservative

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splintered nature of the times and the fears of elites. Those opposed believed that such a celebration would be a frivolous distraction from more important political and social issues, or that it would be a useless waste of energy. Many people also were incredulous that such an event could be proposed in so tense a time. How could a festive birthday celebration be planned in the midst of the painful political and social turbulence of 1848–49? Varnhagen von Ense, wooed by the Berlin Associates to support their proposal, commented in his diary that Goethe was the “greatest [German] name since Luther.” Yet Varnhagen’s increasingly democratic political views led him to believe that a cultural celebration of the writer was inappropriate. He continued in his diary, “[They] pursue their Philistinism under the name of Goethe, as if this weren’t the year 1849. Truly Byzantines! The downfall of the nation is before them, and they think about literary celebrations!”113 Nonetheless, when the Berlin Associates proposed the creation of a Goethe Foundation later in the year, he supported it. The Weimar newspaper Deutschland published an article that questioned the event’s legitimacy. Its anonymous author wrote that the bonds between the fatigued and weakened German people were badly frayed. Did people really want to celebrate Goethe in these times of exhaustion, he wondered. The same Goethe, who admired the aristocracy and did not know the people? The one who had no heart for the fatherland, no soul for the nation, no respect from the people, who in his daily life had no concept of the political rights of the masses?114 The divided people of Germany did not need Goethe, the author argued. He represented the select few who did not take the masses into consideration. The time for such Olympian arrogance was over, and celebrating Goethe would be a step backward. Those in favor of the centenary event argued that a celebration might help to restore unity. One writer observed that a false perception about the relationship between art and politics lingered in the air. Perhaps in rebuttal to the article quoted above, the author stated that the perceived antagonism between educational policies; philosopher Alexander von Humboldt; Peter Cornelius; music critic Ludwig Rellstab; and biographer Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. 113 Varnhagen von Ense, Tagebüchern 1836–1856, ed. Ludmilla Assing. (Leipzig: 1861–62), quoted in Karl Robert Mandelkow, Goethe im Urteil seiner Kritiker, vol. II, 1832–1870 (Munich, 1977), 353. Heine also attacked the centenary celebration in “In October 1849”. 114 “Die Goethe-Feier in Weimar,” Deutschland Allgemeine Politische Zeitung no. 189 (16 August 1849): 115.

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battle and poetry did not exist in reality. The German “people at arms” were not abandoning their “flag for the laurel”; these two symbols were but different expressions of the same aim. Art had and could continue to serve as a vehicle of emancipation: “free poetry should become free action, the freedom of the artist, the freedom of the citizen, the free man to a free people. That is the mission of the nineteenth century.”115 A commemorative pamphlet of 1849 presented Goethe as a force of German cultural unification. Its author posed the question, wasn’t it Goethe, during a time when the feuding German people were divided, who united them all with a common spiritual bond, and joined and unified them in such a way that they all, without exception, recognized and honored him with pride as theirs, just as the cities of Greece competed for the honor to claim Homer as their own?116 Thus, the author argued, Goethe was a natural choice in 1849, because he had been one of the first artists to create a truly national art that all Germans could appreciate. The Goethe Festival went forward with pomp in Weimar on 28 August 1849. One of the crowning moments of the festival came with the dedication of a new wing in the ducal library that had been founded and then expanded by Grand Duke Carl August. Festival planners decorated the library with several busts of Goethe, unveiled a statue of the poet across from his house, which was opened to the public, and exhibited his manuscripts, library and mineral collection. The city was festively lit; the houses where Schiller, Wieland and Herder had lived were decorated. Plans were in place to issue commemorative coins. Liszt conducted performances of his symphonic poem Torquato Tasso and the Goethe March; the program also featured Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the march from The Ruins of Athens, as well as pieces that set texts by Goethe to music: Schumann’s Scenes from Faust, Mendelssohn’s overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage and Schubert’s Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel. The festival’s attendance was low. A critic noted, “once again Germany was too divided to create a national festival for Goethe’s hundredth birthday.” The article stated

115 “Deutschland und die Goethefeier,” Illustrirte Zeitung 8, no. 321 (25 August 1849), quoted in Mandelkow, 327–28. 116 Christian Wenig, Zum 28. August 1849, dem hundertjährigen Geburtsfeste Goethe’s Denkschrift (Weimar, 1849), ii.

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that the small festivals in Weimar, Frankfurt and Leipzig were regional or local affairs that failed to capture the imagination of the public at large.117 While the Festival did not succeed in drawing large crowds from all over the German lands, it did sustain the momentum to commemorate Goethe and establish him as a national hero, a process fully completed by 1871, when he and Schiller were “unequivocally enshrined in the canon of German national literature.”118 Concurrently with the Festival, the Berlin Associates drafted a public appeal to support the Goethe Foundation. The Foundation’s stated purpose was to build a new gathering point for the German body of thought and for all educated souls who follow progress in science and art as well as political events with serious attention. . . . the Foundation can be the most complete expression of culture and thought and dramatically influence the political events in that culture.119 Publishing the proposal in German-language daily papers, they called for an exchange of opinions that they believed would strengthen the project. Many of the major cultural newspapers printed responses to the proposal, and in both Berlin and Weimar supporters founded Goethe Associations.120 The Berlin Associates’ purpose, which found acceptance from both opponents and supporters of the actual proposal, was to “strengthen and increase German art in its spirit and its influence on the morals (Versittlichung) of the

117 “Goethefeier in Leipzig,” Europa, no. 36 (6 September 1849): 529. The success of the Festival is a matter of debate among Germanists; for those who see it as a disaster, see Wolfgang Leppmann, The German Image of Goethe (Oxford, 1961), 48; Karl Robert Mandelkow, Goethe in Deutschland: Rezeptionsgeschichte eines Klassikers, vol. 1, 1773–1918 (Munich, 1980), 87; Wolfgang Wittkowski, “Weimar Classicism and the Political Aftermath,” in A Reassessment of Weimar Classicism, ed. Gerhart Hoffmeister (Lewiston, ME, 1996), 205; for an account of the festival’s success, see Hohendahl, 185. 118 Blackbourn and Rettalack, 5. 119 Liszt, Die Goethe-Stiftung, 19. 120 For responses to the proposed Goethe Foundation, in addition to Liszt’s, see “Die Goethestiftung in Weimar,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung nos. 238, 240 (9, 10 May 1851); “Die Goethestiftung,” Die Grenzboten, no. 17 (24 April 1851); Adolf Schöll, “Über Förderung väterlandischer Kunst, mit Rücksicht und Pläne für eine allgemeine deutsche GoetheStiftung,” Deutsches Museum 1851; “Zur Goethestiftung,” Europa; Chronik der gebildeten Welt no. 32 (19 April 1851); Christian Schuchardt, Die Goethestiftung und die Goethe’schen Preisaufgaben: mit einem Blick auf die neueste Kunstrichtung (Weimar, 1861), 5.

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people.”121 The pressing need of the nation was all too clear for this group. The theme of raising citizens’ ethical, religious and social outlook was one upon which all agreed: a strong moral foundation was the first virtue of a responsible citizen. Liszt also supported the idea to develop healthy morals through the sciences and the arts: he stated that the Foundation was not meant to serve physical needs; he sought to serve the “hygiene of the soul,” as Lammenais had called on artists to do. Thus, the young, feeble and ill were not to be beneficiaries of the Goethe Foundation. Rather, “it is destined to offer glory, support, illumination and protection to those who are great in sentiment, strong in talent, pure in will and courageous in effort.” Their compassion would aid them in helping the feeble and the sick.122 The Berlin Associates and other liberals felt ambivalent about revolution as a means of effecting constructive change, and the violence they had seen intensified their wish to guard against political interests contaminating the Foundation. Like Liszt, they believed art to be above politics, even though they stated in their proposal that art and culture could guide politics. A significant aspect of Goethe’s appeal to nationalist intellectuals lay in his perceived invulnerability.123 He had enjoyed a stable and prosperous life as a civil servant, and he had exercised both worldly power and enjoyed the leisure to produce his literary works. He was opposed to the violence of the French Revolution and the vehemence of the German nationalist opposition to it. In Goethe, liberals could see a figure of inspiration. Indeed, “while every collective memory is political, the appearance of being above ordinary and daily conflicts renders it authentic, perhaps even mystical” and more effective.124 The Associates hoped that [the Foundation] will retain its own artistic purpose, that it will never be exploited for political grounds, for whichever side. . . . We should ensure that it is shaped as a foundation of German art in the name of

121 Ausschußbericht des Berlinische Vereines zur deutschen Goethestiftung, (Berlin, 1849), 5. Another component of the proposal that reveals its progressive impetus is the call for a creation of a mothers’ institute and kindergarten informed by the ideas of educational reformers Friedrich Fröbel and Johann Pestalozzi. 122 Franz Liszt, Denkschrift an Grossherzog Carl Alexander: Entwurf zu dem Plan einer GoetheStiftung. 1849. GSA, 59/2, 12–13. 123 W. Daniel Wilson, Das Goethe-Tabu: Protest und Menschenrechte in klassischen Weimar (Munich, 1999), 21. 124 Confino, 186.

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Goethe, who opposed all political discord. We must discourage all partisan views that this foundation can arouse.125 Art, and specifically that of Goethe, was seen as a guarantor of political peace and national unity. It constituted a sphere above politics; it spoke to and guided all Germans. In calling for unity, but also requesting public responses to their proposal, the Associates exhibited ambivalence about political participation and disagreement. In 1849 Liszt wrote to hereditary Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Weimar, responding to the Berlin Associates’ call for a Goethe Foundation to nurture German art. Liszt urged that such a foundation presents a serendipitous opportunity to bring some respite from political anxieties that have upset everyone in Germany. It could redirect dangerous questions that absorb [the German people] toward other, no less important, but more peaceful questions of art, poetry, aesthetics, and moral philosophy. Their influence could not be anything but beneficial in soothing bitter passions that rouse visceral struggles in the people: in spreading more light, these issues may diminish the confusions of the melee.126 Liszt feared that the political divisions so apparent in the parliamentary debates and ongoing street protests threatened the unity and productivity of the Kulturnation. In his view, political actions had failed to effect a positive change in society; indeed, they had exacerbated divisions between people and encouraged the growth of the rabble. In order to heal those rifts, he argued, people needed to be reminded of beauty, of their own pride in belonging to the German nation, and of their sophisticated understanding of art, a sign of a civilized people. Art, specifically music, would exert a pacifying influence, allowing them to come together and heal after the painful revolutions. Liszt presented Goethe as a model to follow in artistic and national achievement, linking four attributes to Goethe: order, moderation, prudence and freedom. Goethe . . . presents the moral unity of Germany in the areas of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness through his innately clear conception. Just as the 125 Ausschußbericht, 16. 126 Liszt, Denkschrift, 1–2. Carl Alexander claimed his dukedom after his father Carl Friedrich’s death in 1853.

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Olympic Games frequently interrupted the most vitriolic enmities of the Greeks, in that they awoke a common striving toward a noble and peaceful glory, may the days dedicated to the Goethe Festival grant a vision of peace and reconciliation in these sad times of fighting.127 Liszt believed that art could reconcile opponents and bring them together in a higher purpose, whereas violence served only to exacerbate disagreements. Indeed, Liszt insisted that “all of Germany is called upon to take part in this; all of Germany will turn its eyes to the results that this project will achieve.”128 In order to reach a broader audience, Peter Cornelius translated his proposal into German in 1852, after Carl Alexander observed that “a large number of our compatriots . . . do not speak French and hardly understand it.”129 Liszt responded to the Berliners’ appeal for a concrete Foundation proposal for various reasons. First of all, such an institution would reflect his beliefs and values about the importance of art, and public participation in it. It was for him a sort of cease-fire in that it challenged all the parties of the revolutionary years to come together to work on a common, higher project. Liszt explained his motivation in the foreword to his proposal. “For my part, I believed that, as a citizen (Bürger) of Weimar, tied to the princely family with bonds of gratitude, I was more obligated than another to participate.”130 Many years after they had left Weimar, Sayn-Wittgenstein recalled a statement of Liszt’s that German unification was inevitable, so he might as well contribute to it in the cultural sphere. As he published the Goethe Foundation proposal in 1849, he said to the hereditary Grand Duke that in light of the German unification he foresaw, Weimar cannot hope to conserve a part of its character and to remain autonomous, as a kind of sacred oasis of the republic of letters . . .  other than to gather into a sort of repository (mémoire) . . . [which would be] placed in the care of the noble house that formed its grandeur!131 He also wanted to make sure that Weimar was the site of the Foundation. For him, it was an obvious choice: “Weimar’s glorious past ensures a blossoming

127 Ibid., 77. 128 Ibid., 4. 129 Letter of 23 October 1852, BCA, 40. 130 Liszt, Denkschrift, 23. 131 Adelheid von Schorn, Zwei Menschenalter: Erinnerungen und Briefe (Berlin, 1901), 123.

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of this undertaking to enhance the arts and sciences.”132 Liszt wanted to make the most of Weimar’s remembered history, which he believed was celebrated by most educated Germans. Liszt’s proposal for the Foundation included sculpture, literature, music and painting as the arts to be awarded prizes in rotation of every four years. The prizes included cash, to support further artistic endeavors, and public recognition of the winning artwork.133 For example, the winning piece of music would be performed in Weimar; sculpture or painting would be exhibited in the proposed museum. He won tentative approval from the Association and Carl Alexander, and 1851 was to be the first year of prize awards for sculpture. His proposal had been strongest of all those received, the Association believed, but nonetheless, it had fueled quite a bit of criticism. Even Liszt’s fame and Carl Alexander’s power did not guarantee the success of their cultural projects. The Goethe Foundation never was realized because of a lack of funding.134 When Carl Alexander approached the state ministry and the Landtag for financing, they refused to grant it, because cultural achievements “paid for by the Land cannot be a goal, because it doesn’t gain any fame from this and does not take part in the smallest way.”135 The administrators only saw the cost of culture. Indeed, under Carl Friedrich’s rule Weimar had become impoverished, with little spending devoted to the arts, reducing them to “little more than an occasional luxury.”136 Unlike Carl Alexander, those of Old Weimar had not yet seized upon nationalism as a vehicle to raise their own status and power. Liszt became quite discouraged about the lack of local response to his proposal in particular. Fanny Lewald consoled him by saying “that the people of Weimar had made life difficult for Goethe also.”137 Her statement linked him directly to Goethe, the figure to whom he looked for inspiration as creative genius. The classical legacy also inspired Carl Alexander, who bought into Liszt’s personal and artistic program as fully as he was able; he, too, benefitted from Liszt’s presence and his own family’s illustrious legacy. He seized upon 132 Von Schorn, 23. 133 The idea to award prizes was based on annual competitions sponsored by Goethe, Schiller and their colleagues, who published drawing contests in their publication Die Propytäen from 1799–1805. Schuchardt, 19, 29–39. 134 The projected budget for the Foundation was 100,000 Reichstaler. Ries, 38. 135 Kaminiarz, 9. 136 Anna Harwell Celenza, “The Poet, the Pianist, and the Patron: Hans Christian Andersen and Franz Liszt in Carl Alexander’s Weimar,” 19th-Century Music, xxvi, no. 2 (Autumn, 2002): 135. 137 Leppmann, 102.

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­ ationalist rhetoric and sentiment to raise the esteem of his own court. For n example, he wrote to the composer in 1857 requesting a national song, observing, “My country as well as my house lacks a national hymn.” He was tired of hearing “God Save the Queen,” and implored Liszt to compose an alternative that would immortalize Liszt’s true style. “It should be something between a prayer and a folk song, it must be serious and joyful, neither too long nor too short; it must be perfect.”138 The Duke wanted a song that could serve a religiousliturgical purpose as well as a national and princely one, uniting the Christian faith with national and royal specificity. Liszt took Cornelius’ text “Weimars Volkslied” and set it to music. The song blends a march-like opening with a melody and accompaniment similar to a hymn. The melody and accompaniment to the song are fairly simple, with a surprising modal change on the first line of the chorus to heighten the tension, then switching back to C major, the contrast of which makes it sound even brighter. After its initial performance, Liszt described it to the Duke in a letter. It has been criticized as not very folksy (peu volksthümlich). I would have enjoyed responding that the poetry and the music of the song should appeal to an educated people (gebildetes Volk) and that this folk song has precisely the goal of glorifying the Bildung of Weimar’s traditions.139 Liszt’s idea about the German people diverged from Herder’s peasant-based conception of national identity: here Liszt’s audience was other Bildungsbürger. He had little interest in reaching out to the Herderian Volk. The song’s text illuminates the importance of Weimar and its history for the New Germans’ conception of their nation. Cornelius’s text begins with an evocation of the Wartburg and connects it to the Ilm that flows through Weimar, establishing Weimar’s claim to national significance. The second verse lauds the city as a “highly praised cradle of heroes, domain of noble women” whence “blessing spring[s] forth from unified tombs, where immortal comrades/wear diamonds and laurel.” The “holy graves” of Goethe, Schiller, Wieland and Herder give forth creative energy, uniting “prince and farmer!”140 The fact that both lyricist 138 Letter of 11 July 1857, BCA, 58. For other examples of princes using nationalism to their own ends, see Green, Mergen, and the essays by Unowsky and Wingfied in Staging the Past. 139 Letter of 30 December 1857, BCA, 61. 140 Peter Cornelius and Franz Liszt, “Weimar’s Volkslied,” in Einstimmige Lieder und Gesänge vol. II, vol. VIII of Franz Liszt’s Musikalische Werke, ed. Franz Liszt-Stiftung (Leipzig, 1921), 58–65.

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and composer were Catholics also hints at the ecumenical tolerance Carl Alexander and others exhibited in their vision of Germany. The confluence of local, royal and national identities and aims can be seen not only in Carl Alexander’s commission for the song, but also in the illustration on its printed cover page. The tiny, peaceful town of Weimar can specifically be identified by the three towers of the castle, the Herderkirche and the Jakobskirche. (Figure 3.1) The town is viewed from west to east as if from the Altenburg itself. Weimar’s comforting small skyline with its distinctive three towers was something to which many Central Europeans could relate to as “heimatlich.” Another much more popular project to unite Liszt’s vision of heroism, national sentiment and Carl Alexander’s ambition to reinvigorate the prestige of his court was the construction of the Goethe-Schiller monument. The monument sparked widespread interest in Weimar, and was funded in part by Carl Alexander, in addition to “contributions from all over the nation.”141 The Bildungsbürger expressed their engagement with the project through reportage and journal debates about the poets’ costumes.142 Sculptor Ernst Rietschel had proposed classical garb—draped toga-like robes. However, a contemporary depiction of the poets in frock coats, short breeches and stockings won out; people likely wanted to have their national symbols resemble themselves. One classical symbol Rietschel did employ was the laurel wreath held by the poets. The stump behind them is from an oak tree, widely recognized as a symbol of the German nation. Liszt expected that “all of Germany would participate in this family festival”143 when the monument was unveiled, on the centenary of Carl August’s birth. When he saw Rietschel’s finished work, (Figure 3.2) Liszt believed that Goethe’s statue paid tribute to his “majestic and unclouded serenity.” Schiller was “more delicate and nervous, more sensitive and excitable.” Goethe’s hand, “whose strong contours betray his strength, rests on Schiller’s right shoulder, almost unconsciously, as if an inner streak of brotherhood drove him to bind himself with the other.”144 This interpretation 141 Genast, 361. 142 This indicates, in art historian Ursula Zehm’s view, that “with the strengthening of the middle classes in the second third of the nineteenth century a shift in opinion began to take place which benefited the presentation of humans in their contemporary condition.” Ursula Zehm, “Ernst Rietschels Auffassung und deren Verwirklichung,” in Das Denkmal: Goethe und Schiller als Doppelstandbild in Weimar, ed. Dirk Appelbaum (Tübingen, 1993), 91–94. 143 Franz Liszt, “Das Septemberfest zur Feier von Carl August’s hundertjährigem Geburtstag,” Anr 2 (1857): 229. 144 Liszt, “Das Septemberfest,” 234.

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figure 3.1 Weimars Volkslied. Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Center, Budapest

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figure 3.2 The Goethe-Schiller Monument in Weimar. Author photograph

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strongly evoked Liszt’s own relationship with Wagner, and again emphasized Liszt’s seniority in it. At the unveiling of the monument, the local Gymnasium director claimed that the laurel wreath binding the two poets together was simultaneously a wreath with which the poets had royally decorated the German people in full view of all the world.145 Liszt participated in the Leipzig Schiller Festival of 1859 and was invited to compose a choral work for the celebration as well as make a toast. He wrote to Heinrich Porges, a choral director and music journalist in Munich, that “I intentionally composed it in a very simple, folksy manner.”146 Liszt’s emphasis refers back to the criticism his “Weimars Volkslied” had received. For this particular large event, he wrote a piece that he hoped would be accessible to the entire audience. For the toast Liszt linked Goethe and Schiller together, arguing that they had worked a major transformation of German culture and stood as examples for him and his allies to follow. Liszt opened his speech with the remark, I have been assigned the honorable task of naming the greatest German of the world for the Schiller Festival: Goethe! His works have stimulated the century. They offer each educated person a sure measure of his own understanding. . . . Goethe was Schiller’s friend, his equally glorious colleague in world literature, which they both raised to world communion. . . . They present us with a festive reminder of harmony, of open, noble and enduring cooperation, to righteous release of all petty discord and strife. . . . Goethe and Schiller belonged to us. Let us raise ourselves to their level in spirit and through action. Let us not damage our time. It is undoubtedly great and the hour of being satisfied with confined, exclusive imitation is over. Goethe calls to us: “the world becomes broader and greater every day, and thus it also becomes more perfect and better!” Hail Schiller’s friend! Hail Goethe!147 Romantic nationalism and heroism were major focal points of Liszt and his allies’ activities in Weimar during the 1850s. They hoped to transcend the divisions among the German people, especially liberal Bildungsbürger like themselves, through artistic production and historical commemoration. As they sought both stability and inspiration, these intellectuals and artists addressed some of the most contentious issues regarding German nationhood raised by 145 Genast, 368. 146 Letter, n.d., Br I, 336. 147 BCA, 78–79.

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the revolutions of 1848. Liszt’s belief in a cosmopolitan Germany was complementary with his own self-conception as a creator of universal music along the lines of Goethean Weltliteratur. The commemorations, foundations, and festivals were important components of Liszt’s heroic cosmopolitan vision, but the music he and longed to create was the centerpiece of his ambition. The project of creating new German music and the responses to it constitute the next chapter.

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The War of the Romantics It is not only in Vienna, but rather in all of Germany . . . that a hailstorm of articles falls on my works. In all parts of Leipzig, Berlin, on the Rhine, . . . the learned critics have declared as in Vienna that approving of my works, or even of listening to them without condemning them in advance is a crime, that of l’ese-art [sic]. In all probability this war against me will last several years.1 Liszt’s letter to a friend, written in 1854, expresses his fatigue from attacks on his compositions. His neologism lèse-art draws on the idea of lèse-majesty as he accused critics of crowning art an absolute sovereign who brooks no questioning, and presented himself as the victim of intolerance and repression. Liszt’s mournful prediction about the duration of his conflict with music critics proved to be accurate. Throughout his years in Weimar, and continuing well beyond them into the period when he alternating between living in Rome, Weimar, and Budapest, Liszt’s works were met with skepticism and hostility from critics, musicians, and audiences. As Liszt took his place as Kapellmeister in Weimar, his Romantic impulses were at last applied in the realm of creative invention: this composing subjectivity had been the impetus behind his adoption of Hungarian patriotism and German nationalist causes, and had produced works dedicated to both Hungarian and German audiences from the 1850s through the rest of his life. Liszt was the leading architect and lightning rod of the New German aesthetic movement, embracing the role for artists he had described in “De la situation des artistes.” Through a new compositional form wedded to a progressive aesthetics which he connected to socio-political developments, Liszt hoped to reinvigorate musical production and audiences, leading them to unity, discernment, and innovation. This artistic vision, shared by Wagner, Berlioz and many others, clashed with political and social conditions in Weimar and in the German lands more broadly, and continued to highlight the problems of Nachmärz artistic production.

* Walker, The Weimar Years, 338. 1 Letter of 21 March 1854, BAA, 49.

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As an alternative to New German aesthetics, “autonomists,” adherents of the symphonic tradition established by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, insisted on art music’s non-exegetical essence and claimed it existed for its own sake, rather than functioning as a tool of aesthetic and/or moral development.2 This debate about musical form and function sparked the War of the Romantics, one of the most famous episodes in music history.3 The timing of this debate indicates that a lot was at stake in the musical world: the iron frame had been introduced to piano construction, making a much larger sound that could more effectively serve a solo instrument with orchestral accompaniment, as in the case of concerti; sheet music sales continued to climb, and it was during these decades that the musical canon started to take shape. Performances of music written by living composers were being eclipsed by those of composers no longer living.4 The struggle, then, was not simply about music aesthetics, but which conception of music would leave a lasting legacy and association in the public mind about German music. The tension between the two musical factions was already shaping up in the mid-1840s as Brendel took over the editorial post at the Neue Zeitschrift in 1845, by which time its audience amounted to 1500–2000 readers.5 In 1848 Schumann, who had been admitted to a mental institution, and his wife Clara (née Wieck), also a pianist, broke with Liszt, taking offense at some of his comments about Mendelssohn’s and Schumann’s compositions. Wagner’s publications Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1849) and Oper und Drama (1851) earned him, Liszt, and their followers the pejorative label “Zukunftsmusiker.” 2 I am choosing this term over other commonly used ones such as “conservatives” or “formalists” because it addresses both the aesthetic and ideological components of the group. 3 For musicological treatments of the debate, see Detlef Altenburg, “Eine Theorie der Musik der Zukunft zur Funktion des Programms im Symphonischen Werk von Franz Liszt,” in KongressBericht Eisenstadt 1975, ed. Wolfgang Suppan (Graz, 1977), 9–26; Robert Determann, Begriff und Ästhetik der “NeudeutscheSchule”: Ein Beitrag zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhundert (Baden-Baden, 1989); Berthold Hoeckner, Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Present (Princeton, NJ, 2002); the essays by Riedel and Gut in Franz Liszt und Richard Wagner: Musikalische und geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen der neudeutschen Schule: Referate des 3. Europäischen Liszt Symposions Eisenstadt 1983, ed. Serge Gut (Munich, 1986), 13–20; Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig (Chicago, 1989); Constantin Floros, Brahms und seine Zeit (Laaber, 1984), especially the essays by Floros and Fellinger. 4 William Weber, “Mass Culture and the Shaping of European Musical Taste,” 5, 18. 5 Jens Malte Fischer, Richard Wagner’s “Das Judentum in der Musik”: Eine kritische Dokumentation als Beitrag zur Geschichte des Antisemitismus (Frankfurt a.M., 2000), 30.

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Eduard Hanslick, the preeminent Viennese music critic, joined in during the 1850s, likely in response to the failed revolutions of 1848 in Vienna.6 His important work Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854), which disavowed the notion that music had any content besides form, repudiated his earlier Idealist views, and was the most radical statement about music’s independence produced in the nineteenth century.7 The autonomists’ number grew when a student of Liszt’s, Joseph Joachim confessed his distaste for Liszt’s compositions in 1857. Johannes Brahms, despite his respect for Wagner’s works, was drawn into the public debate in 1860 when his name (along with Joachim’s) appeared on an anti-New German manifesto published in the musical press.8 In Weimar itself the conflict became quite personal and nasty. Liszt and Franz Dingelstedt, Weimar’s theater director, increasingly butted heads, to the point that Dingelstedt hired a claque to hiss the premiere of Peter Cornelius’s opera Der Barbier von Baghdad in 1858, conducted by Liszt. Even before that event, Cornelius remarked to his sister, “The dynamics here [in Weimar] are generally so unpleasant and antagonistic (häkelig)!” Cornelius described the various quarrels between Dingelstedt, Schöll, and some of the actors.9 The audience’s negative reaction to the one-act comic opera was the last straw for Liszt, who chose to leave Weimar, exhausted by his musical and personal struggles and by the financial problems that plagued the implementation of his visions. He wrote sadly to Agnes Street-Klindworth that once his departure was finalized, a torchlight procession was held in his honor and the town granted him honorary citizenship, a status, he wryly observed, conferred upon him in Pest, Oedenburg and Jena more than twenty years prior. He had lacked the necessary support for his musical projects in Weimar and felt as if exiled (dépaysé) while he lived there.10 With Liszt’s departure from Weimar, the war intensified in the musical and mainstream press, as well as expanding to include Liszt’s Hungarian and religious compositions. The tone of this “war” was violent, aggressive and, to modern sensibilities, melodramatic.

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Eduard Hanslick, Sämtliche Schriften, vol. 1, ed. Dietmar Strauß (Vienna, 1993), 266. Hiroshi Yoshida, “Eduard Hanslick and the Idea of ‘Public’ in Musical Culture: Towards a Socio-Political Context of Formalist Aesthetics,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 32 (2001): 188. See its formulation in a letter of 8 May 1860, Johannes Brahms, Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel mit Joseph Joachim, ed. Andreas Moser (Berlin, 1908), 273. Letter of end of October 1858, Br I, 293. Letter of 16 November 1860, Br III, 135.

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The musical discord was so intense because of larger political issues and music’s centrality to German nationhood. At this time, New Germans accused autonomists of betraying the revolutionary moment and settling for the status quo, political and aesthetic stagnation and national fragmentation. Secondly, music was central to German national identity, an identity firmly rooted in the sphere of culture, which cut across state boundaries both before and after creation of the Reich.11 With the outbreak of nationalist war in Italy in 1859 and war between Austria and Prussia in 1866, Germans were forced to reconsider this relationship of the cultural and political. States were dividing the German cultural nation, and the debates about German music began to raise similar matters, focused most closely on the person of Franz Liszt, as well as the question of German Jewry raised by Richard Wagner. Musicians debated the nature of German national identity, whether liberal values had a place in German political life, and what the relationship between the educated elite and the masses ought to be. New Germans valued a cosmopolitan, open conception of German nationhood, and argued that the autonomists, in their emphasis on a more pure, narrow German identity, were blocking the nation from attaining its full potential. New Germans likely wanted to continue the struggle to implement a constitutional legislative political system that granted basic civil rights to all its citizens, whereas the autonomists valued order, respect for the past, and social and political stability, representing the right wing of the liberal movement.12 The way to move forward after 1848 was, in New German minds, to reach out to the public, educate and elevate them in order to strengthen the nation and foster liberal values. Autonomists exhibited a more overt suspicion and mistrust of public capabilities. Because public life was gendered masculine, both sides used gendered language to establish their claim to participate in the public sphere as well as to weaken their opponents’ claims. Examining this discourse as it played out in questions about Germanness, liberal values, and artist-audience relations illuminates not only what Germans valued, but also what they feared.

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Chapter Five will address the North/South conflict between Prussia and Austria regarding German culture and statehood via its emergence in the General German Music Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein), founded by Liszt and Brendel in 1859. See Margaret Notley’s Lateness in Brahms: Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism (Oxford, 2007).

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Music and German Nationhood

Art music, music of elite status that was imbued with higher meanings, had gained pride of place in German cultural identity over the first half of the nineteenth century. Music played the role of first violin in German nationhood, that is, it was believed to be the purest, highest expression of the nation. The nationalization of music in the German lands had been a project not of composers, but rather of writers, educators, impresarios, statesmen, and audiences: they developed the sense of music as a central component of German cultural identity.13 Music became a component of Bildung. Its instruction became increasingly formalized through the establishment of conservatories, where students were convinced of music’s elevating potential and were taught music theory. The gap between lay audiences and music experts continued to widen even as nationalists claimed music represented the nation. By the 1850s, “Germans discovered in compositions of high-classical style the artistic treasure they required as a cornerstone of national pride.”14 Indeed, music had acquired “metaphysical qualities” similar to that of organized religion in the German lands.15 This understanding of Germanness was based in language and culture, embracing the states of the German Confederation as well as the Habsburg Empire, even the German-speaking Swiss. Throughout Europe, large-scale musical works were the primary vehicle of musical nationalism.16 French royalty had long patronized opera in order to demonstrate their power and wealth, and as the ancien regime crumbled, the new states that arose wielded cultural politics to enhance their legitimacy and authority. The dominance of Italian and French grand opera spurred smaller cities, particularly in Central Europe, to build opera houses and commission new works in order to demonstrate their sophistication in order to be counted among the civilized nations.17 Operas were performed in the local vernacular and often drew on historic narratives, thus helping to transmit national ideology. Throughout the nineteenth century in Central Europe, a broad segment of 13 14

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Applegate and Potter, “Germans as the ‘People of Music’,” 3; Abrams 50, 93–94; Max Paddison, “Music as Ideal: The Aesthetics of Autonomy,” in Cambridge History, 318. David B. Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics 1879–1989 (New Haven, CT, 1996), 3; William Weber, “Wagner, Wagnerism, and Musical Idealism,” in Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics, ed. David C. Large and William Weber (Ithaca, 1984), 39, 57, 61. Ringer, 7; Vladimir Karbusicky, Wie deutsch ist das Abendland? Geschichtliches Sendungs­ bewusstsein im Spiegel der Musik (Hamburg, 1995); Bernd Sponheuer, “Reconstructing the Ideal Types of the ‘German’ in Music” in Music and German National Identity, 36–58. Ther, 3. Ibid., 12.

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the population attended operatic performances; opera was by no means solely a socially elite arena.18 Yet in the German lands, symphonic music as developed by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had become as prestigious as opera. Many considered it the form of music at which Germans most excelled: this strong tradition of large-scale orchestral music afforded many opportunities for grandeur and ceremony, just as opera did. Symphonic music became allied with notions of autonomy early in its development; by the time the mature symphonic form coalesced in the late 1700s, it was often offered to the public at large. The German nationalist understanding of music history claimed that composers wrote “absolute music” without commissions, noble patrons, text, or other external constraints.19 Without such constraints, music’s own transcendental nature could soar, and absolute music could speak a universal tongue, wordless and accessible.20 The hegemony of absolute music among the educated elite in Central Europe won for it the status of an ideal form of expression against which other musical genres increasingly were compared. As one musicologist has observed, “the Austro-Germanic symphony, of course, was anything but innocent of implications in the game of ‘national’ meaning.”21 In particular, the works of Ludwig van Beethoven were central to the slow accretion of status to music as national expression. The Romantic generation of the early 1800s saw in Beethoven a hyper-masculine hero who refused to bow and scrape to Frenchified aristocrats (as they charged Mozart, for example, with doing).22 The composer’s notorious irascibility inspired Romantics to see Beethoven as a rebel who bucked the system. Audiences and critics particularly considered the Third, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies, as well as the Egmont and

18 19 20 21 22

Ibid., 17. Gramit, “Selling the Serious,” 87–90. Abrams, 28. James Hepokowski, “Beethoven Reception: The Symphonic Tradition,” in The Cambridge History, 434–39. Tia Denora, “Embodiment and Opportunity: Bodily Capital, Gender, and Reputation in Beethoven’s Vienna,” in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 185–197, here 186; Tia Denora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792–1803 (Berkeley, 1995); Scott G. Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton, 1995); Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (New York, 1987); Philippe Autexier, Beethoven: The Composer as Hero (New York, 1992); Mark Evan Bonds, After Beethoven: Imperatives of Originality in the Symphony (Cambridge, MA, 1996); Sanna Pedersen, “Beethoven and Masculinity,” in Beethoven and His World, eds. Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg (Princeton, 2000), 313–332. One of the strongest interpretive works remains Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven (New York, 1977).

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Fidelio overtures heroic works.23 In fact, as music production moved away from the courts and into the public sphere, pieces by Beethoven “promoted . . . an increasingly influential view of music as a discourse of ideas as much as an object of beauty.”24 Music became a transmitter of intellectual and theoretical propositions that required a literate audience: Czerny and other critics and pedagogues emphasized that Beethoven’s work was not for everyone. The symphonic form, perfected by Beethoven, also appealed to educated nationalists because it “could only be fully understood with serious effort,”25 allegedly in contrast to the easy comprehensibility of vocal or dance music. This, too, emphasized its intellectual, cerebral, masculine quality. Beethoven’s own biography and his compositions offered “unarguable greatness, a superiority that could be easily mapped on to Germany itself.”26 Liszt’s championing of Beethoven was a key expression of his selfconception as Romantic genius/redeemer. His performance of selections from Beethoven’s sonatas in the 1830s had helped to distinguish him from his two main rivals in Paris, Herz and Thalberg, and helped convince critics like Schumann that he was a different kind of virtuoso.27 Liszt wrote, Beethoven’s work is like the pillar of cloud and fire that guided the Israelites through the desert—a pillar of cloud to guide us by day, a pillar of fire to guide us by night. . . . His darkness and his light trace for us the path we have to follow; they are a perpetual commandment, an infallible revelation.28 The Biblical references indicate that Liszt saw Beethoven and himself as saviors of their people, who were lost in a hostile land and surrounded by enemies. Beethoven led his listeners toward illumination, inspiration, and transcendence. Such a view informed many of Liszt’s actions: during his virtuoso years, he regularly performed Beethoven’s repertoire, acquainting many Europeans with it for the first time. Liszt did not accept other critics’ ideas that Beethoven’s oeuvre, as serious music, was too difficult for most audiences: for him, Beethoven’s works had a universality that should be shared with all. To 23 24 25 26 27 28

Dennis, 20. Samson, “Music and Society”, 13. K.M. Knittel, “The Construction of Beethoven,” in The Cambridge History, 145. Knittel, 144. Hamilton, 38, 42. Letter of 2 December 1852, Br 1, 123–4. See also Allan Keiler, “Liszt and Beethoven: The Creation of a Personal Myth,” 19th-Century Music 12, no. 2 (Autumn, 1988): 116–131.

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figure 4.1 Drawing of Beethoven and the young Liszt. Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Center, Budapest

this end, he transcribed Beethoven’s symphonies, a project which took longer than twenty-five years. This allowed many people to get to know the works through playing them at home, if they could not attend a symphony in person. Liszt later wrote, “thanks to musical progress these works are well-used public property.”29 Not only did Liszt strive to spread Beethoven’s music throughout Europe; he owned Beethoven’s Broadwood piano and his death mask, both of which he proudly displayed in the music room at the Altenburg. He also famously provided the bulk of funding for the 1845 celebration of Beethoven in Bonn, one of his first very important connections to German music lovers. Additionally, Liszt allowed the story that Beethoven had given his blessing (Weihekuss) to Liszt as a young prodigy in Vienna to remain in his biography by Ramann.30 (Figure 4.1) Even though it wasn’t accurate, it played an important role in bolstering Liszt’s artistic authority. 29 30

Letter of 3 December 1872, UPB, 181. Lina Ramann, Franz Liszt, Artist and Man, vol. 1, 1811–1840, trans. E. Cowdery (London: W.H. Allen, 1882), 71–75.

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Since Beethoven’s death in 1827, musicians and critics felt discouraged about the status of musical production: they believed that music had fallen into a state of stagnation. They complained that no meaningful German opera had been written since Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (1821). In addition, the generation of composers that followed Beethoven, including Liszt, but also Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Wagner, suffered from a lack of confidence that was shared by music critics, who gendered them feminine: their works could not compare to Beethoven’s muscular masculinity. In any case, Schumann and Mendelssohn, two promising German composers of Liszt’s generation, had met premature deaths in 1856 and 1847. Liszt himself believed that “German composers . . . are currently the butt of others’ jokes.”31 The revolutionary impulses of 1848 lent hope to such despairing musicians. They saw in the shakeup an opportunity to resuscitate German music. In an installment series on German opera, one critic articulated a widespread desire for a “simple, healthy, German diet” to nourish the nation with opera written in the vernacular.32 Music could provide sustenance, and perhaps comfort, as food does. Another urged that the “current lively stirrings” of the German national spirit (Volksgeist) should influence musical life—especially that of public musical relationships, in that “art will step out of its cloister and reach out its hand to the entirety of the nation.”33 Brendel and other progressives wanted to enhance music’s contribution to society.34 Music was a necessary component of German national life that would sustain it and therefore ought to be more accessible to all. It seemed that a moment of greater political and social engagement had arrived for musicians. Certainly Liszt was inspired to compose works based directly on revolutionary events as he returned to the sketches of the Revolutionary Symphony, begun in 1830, to create Héroïde Funébre in commemoration of the dead revolutionaries of 1848.35 Musicians, composers, critics and educators across the German lands embraced the notion that music itself could express German national identity. In addition to opera, the symphony increasingly became the ideal form through which composers could transmit such an identity to their audiences; symphonic music required a collective undertaking of individuals united by a common purpose that could speak truths higher than language would allow. 31 32 33 34 35

Letter of 4 June 1847, BCA, 17. C.A. Mangold, “Die neuere deutsche Oper,” NZfM 28, no. 27 (1 April 1848): 157–58. Ernst Gottschald, “Offener Brief an die Redaction der Neuen Zeitschrift für Musik,” NZfM 28, no. 24 (21 March 1848): 141. Garratt, 128. Ibid., 185–86.

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By the 1840s, anxieties about the state of German music and the political fragmentation of the German lands plagued these figures. Musically, these anxieties increasingly found expression in the division between autonomists, who adhered to the notion of absolute music contained in symphonic music, and New Germans, who sought to continue formal experimentation and development of German nationhood.

Program Music and Music Dramas as Expressions of Germanness

In 1856, as the conflict between the groups was intensifying, Liszt wrote to a friend about his musical activities in Weimar. He saw the small town as a new experimental ground, where I dedicate myself to a willing and well-schooled orchestra, hold rehearsals, and . . . develop my own skills. Through this Weimar has become an active musical workshop.36 The new musical forms pioneered by Liszt and Wagner served as an antidote for the perceived sorry state of music, and by extension, of the German nation. Liszt’s answer to this dilemma of musical stagnation, inspired by Berlioz’s works, was to make innovations in musical structure, seeking to develop a new form to contain large concepts, altering the sonata-form-based symphony developed by the Viennese classicists so much as essentially to reject it. His thematic transformation fused variation technique with symphonic models of development and recapitulation, thus, in a way, blending his virtuosic practices and the high art musical world. Liszt used an extra-musical source (the program; often a poem or literary work), to provide the piece with its inspiration and much, often, of its inner logic. Wagner in turn developed his notion of the music drama, a continuous vocal work without the recitative of opera that blended all art forms into a higher synthesis (Gesamtkunstwerk), based on Wagner’s understanding of Greek tragedy.37 In order to bring about this synthesis of music, voice, scenery and action, Wagner wrote his own libretti. A further structural innovation was the leitmotif, a very short musical theme, which served as a flexible source of structure for his large-scale works. Both

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Undated letter to Constantin von Wurzbach, 1856, H.I.N. 170091, Handschriftensammlung, Wienbibliothek im Rathaus. See Wagner’s Die Kunst und Revolution, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, and Oper and Drama, vol. III and IV of Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (Boston, 2005).

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Liszt’s and Wagner’s musical innovations sought to use thematic elements to structure works in new ways. Like opera, program music was well-suited for nationalist purposes. Because programs were most frequently based on literary texts, the composer could draw upon great national works.38 Liszt argued that in the “philosophical epic poem . . . the most living reflection of the spirit of the time and of the nation” was to be found.39 In his selection of literary works, Liszt’s belief in the cosmopolitan nature of German identity becomes clear. He based almost all of the twelve symphonic poems on works by Goethe, Lamartine, Schiller, Byron, and Hugo, which “gave his music a claim to artistic stature of the loftiest and most ambitious kind imaginable.”40 The French and German Romantic texts Liszt chose to use for inspiration expressed his dual artistic influences and his sense of cosmopolitanism that could nonetheless serve national development. The selection of such works illustrated to Liszt’s audience that he was discerning and cultured: he possessed Bildung and therefore was fit to express or represent German national sentiment. Brendel wrote that Liszt’s program music presented its listeners with a “new, complete world . . . a spiritual world full of poetry, one that reaches out beyond the bounds of nationality.”41 Liszt’s compositions could both express and transcend German particularity, a dual ability peculiar to German nationhood. For Central and Eastern Europeans, Liszt provided an alternate form of “national music”: by the 1860s, composers were using Liszt’s work as a model for their own nationalist agendas; program music was free from the hegemonic overtones of absolute music associated with German culture. Unlike folk music sources, Liszt’s program music also required an educated listener to fully appreciate its integration of music and text, and so necessarily focused on a smaller listening audience. Liszt’s conviction that at its core German music embraced new ideas and talents shaped his behavior vis-à-vis other musicians, most famously his mentoring and protection of Richard Wagner. The men met in the mid-1840s, and Liszt saw in the younger composer a counterbalance to his own composition efforts: in Liszt’s view, Wagner’s works expressed a specifically German character, while his own conveyed cosmopolitan openness and tolerance, which merged into universalism. An exchange of letters early in their relationship

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Liszt’s symphonic poem Hunnenschlacht is the exception to this rule. It is based on a painting by the German artist Wilhelm von Kaulbach. 39 Liszt, Lohengrin et Tannhäuser, vol. 4 of SS, 54. 40 Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 150. 41 Brendel, Franz Liszt als Symphoniker, 22.

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illustrates that both men believed themselves to be complementary opposites. After the negative reception of his opera Rienzi in Paris, Wagner commented, I realized this [problem] came from a certain, unique, artistic aversion to the French language. You will not be able to understand this; you are a cosmopolitan, while I came into the world quite specially a German.42 Liszt replied that Wagner was wise not to try to become French, for that would be very difficult, and in any case, Wagner had a “much different, almost oppositional task: namely to Germanize the French in your sense, or better yet, to excite them about a general, inclusive, noble dramatic artwork.”43 Here Liszt encouraged Wagner to knock the French out of their national isolation. To “Germanize” the French meant alerting them to the greatness of German music, which Liszt believed addressed universal human concerns and would thus benefit the French in gaining them a higher expression and understanding of their own humanity. The composers’ vision of themselves as a heroic partnership spread quickly: by 1852 they were being referred to as one unit like that of “Goethe and Schiller.”44 Liszt’s close partnership with Wagner lasted for decades, creating an alliance dedicated to avant-garde music and resulting, Liszt believed, in a marriage of Germany’s two national traits, cosmopolitanism and “pure” Germanness, based in language and history. The working partnership between them included critiques of each other’s compositions, moral support, and on Liszt’s side, active promotion of Wagner’s works.45 While in Weimar, Liszt presented Tannhäuser and premiered Lohengrin despite the Grand Duke’s opposition, based in financial concerns. The fact that both operas portray poets known from history, draw on the stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann and the scholarship of Jakob Grimm, and rely on medieval literary sources, all thought to be quintessentially German, proved 42 43 44

45

Letter of 5 December 1849, BWL, vol. I, 48. Letter of 14 January 1850 in ibid., 52. Friedrich Kempes, Aphoristischen Memoiren und biographischen Rhapsodien (Eisleben 1852), quoted in Friedrich W. Riedel, “Die neudeutsche Schule—ein Phänomen der deutschen Kulturgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Musik und Geschichte: Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge zur musikalischen Landeskunde (Munich, 1989), 196–201, here 196. Serge Gut, ed. Franz Liszt und Richard Wagner: Musikalische und geistesgeschichtliche Grundlagen der neudeutschen Schule: Referate des 3. Europäischen Liszt-Symposions (Munich, 1986); Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music (New York, 1968); Burnett James, Wagner and the Romantic Disaster (New York, 1983); Bryan Magee, The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy, (New York, 2000); L.J. Rather, Reading Wagner: A Study in the History of Ideas (Baton Rouge, 1990).

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attractive to Liszt. Poets were the heroes of Romantic nationalism, and Liszt believed that both he and Wagner embodied this type of figure in their quest to unify literature and music.46 Tannhäuser was the first of Wagner’s operas that Liszt championed, and like the later Lohengrin, it depicts Thuringian history at the Wartburg. The historical inspiration for Tannhäuser was Hermann von Thüringen, a thirteenth-century knight and poet. The Wartburg was also a site of singing festivals, about which Wagner read in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Kampf der Sänger.47 As a combination of medieval piety and rebellious free thought in terms of both form and content, Tannhäuser promoted Liszt’s vision of German music’s renewal. He commented that at the performance of Tannhäuser “the memory of Wieland, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul and Hummel linked the glances of the [grateful] public” with the royal box, which “was built in order to appreciate the greatness that was present, to appreciate genius and to nurture its free expression.”48 Liszt’s longing for unity between patron and client, or sovereign and subjects, present in his allegiance to the Habsburg imperial regime, did not preclude nationalist sentiments as well. For Liszt, this opera was another step forward in a progression of enlightened, heroic German artists. It also united the public audience with their ruler and patron in a bond of shared experience, values, and identity. While Liszt was very clear about the universal, cosmopolitan strands of Germanness, he did not specify which “specifically German” traits Wagner’s music expressed. Music critics who later feuded on opposing sides of the War of the Romantics specified what they saw of Germanness in Wagner’s operas. Eduard Hanslick loved Wagner’s early operas and praised their characters as paragons of German virtue. In the Vormärz days, Hanslick had embraced Hegelian idealism, holding the view that music possessed a socio-political purpose.49 At this stage in his intellectual journey, Hanslick looked to music to convey extramusical content, such as expressions of national identity and pride in history. In the heroine Elisabeth’s aria, Hanslick argued, “her German character, which is preserved so truly in her entire appearance, is evident. She is so lovely, proper, deeply feeling.”50 Elisabeth’s beauty, as well as her quiet, dignified comportment and apparent sensitivity and depth were qualities he identified with 46 Simon Williams, Wagner and the Romantic Hero (Cambridge, 2004). 47 Ronald Taylor, Richard Wagner: His Life, Art and Thought (London, 1979), 74. 48 Liszt, Lohengrin et Tannhäuser, 97. 49 Yoshida, 184–88. 50 Eduard Hanslick, Musikalisches Skizzenbuch, vol. IV of The Collected Musical Criticism of Eduard Hanslick, ed. Dietmar Strauß (England, 1971), 77.

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womanly Germanness. These qualities overlapped with and complemented those he saw in Wolfram, Elisabeth’s father. Wolfram was a “poet of all that is lofty and Godly, a singer of the beautiful and the excellent, a knight defending women’s honor and virtue, a dreamer for his love and his for God. Wolfram is a German.”51 Male artistic creativity, depth, and sensitivity paralleled that of women, while men served also as defenders of women and of the shared ideals that made them German. Music, Hanslick suggested, had been a particularly German art form for centuries. Franz Brendel also saw in the two operas a statement about German national character. Tannhäuser was a human, relatable character. This strong empathy between author, singer and audience “sprang from the interior of the German heart; there is German enthusiasm in it; it is truly a national work.”52 Here again, Germanness resided in a person’s deep interior and expressed itself with passion and sensitivity. For Brendel, Wagner was an innovator who built upon German traditions. “He is the one who has at last produced a German opera free from earlier weaknesses and biases, a German opera in which the national appears in its greatness and comprehensive importance.”53 Brendel claimed that Wagner directed German music back onto its proper developmental path pioneered by the Viennese School, implying also a reinvigorated path to national unity.54 The story of Lohengrin continued the medieval emphasis, this time directly incorporating the Singers’ Wars, a theme later treated by Wagner in Die Meistersinger of Nürnberg (1868). The tale of the mysterious swan knight, Lohengrin, based on the eleventh-century poet Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival appealed to many educated Germans. In the medieval Singers’ War at the Wartburg, Lohengrin had been one of the most celebrated performers. Liszt claimed that he was one of the spiritual poets of the period.55 Here, as elsewhere, Liszt and Wagner saw in their works a reinvigoration of ancient Greek theatrical and literary traditions. They cast themselves as Homeric bards who gave the nation its mythical origins and through them, its unity. Liszt continued to support Wagner’s music after his own departure from Weimar in 1861 and after Wagner’s successful campaign of the early 1860s to win funding from Ludwig II of Bavaria. In reference to Tristan and Isolde Liszt much later wrote, “it is the glory of Richard Wagner to elevate Germany to

51 Hanslick, 77. 52 Franz Brendel, “Ein zweiter Ausflug nach Weimar,” NZfM 36, no. 11 (12 March 1852): 120. 53 Brendel, Geschichte der Musik, 558. 54 Garratt, 64–67. 55 Liszt, Lohengrin et Tannhäuser, 29.

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the supreme region of art.”56 Both men innovated with musical form in order to resuscitate German art, with Wagner actively learning from Liszt until his death: Liszt’s symphonic poems and technical solutions provided Wagner with much material in the Ring cycle.57 Liszt and Wagner became champions of musical experimentation beginning in the late 1840s, seeking alternate forms to the two collective, public forms thought to express national identity, the opera and the symphony. In creating symphonic poems and music dramas, the pair drew upon musical and literary thematic elements to give their music coherence. In doing so, they challenged the supremacy of “absolute music,” grounded in music’s abstract and non-referential nature.

Belonging and Exclusion

The questions about German national identity raised by the proposed Goethe Foundation in Weimar also informed the production and reception of music in the German lands. The process of seeking to determine which qualities and values characterized Germanness took concrete form in debates over which composers and cities most strongly represented the nation. The conception of the nature of German nationhood was split between the two musical camps: New Germans largely embraced an understanding of nationhood based in aristocratic and classical cosmopolitanism, while autonomists seemed to emphasize a more “pure” and restrictive national identity, an understanding gained from early nationalist struggles against the very kind of cosmopolitanism forwarded by New Germans. Such cosmopolitanism seemed to betray the Viennese heritage from Mozart and Beethoven with its foreign experimentation. Criticism of the New Germans conflated politics and nationality. Auto­ nomists consistently refused to recognize Liszt as a legitimate representative of German music, pointing to his early years in France, his idiosyncratic German, and his reinvigorated Hungarian patriotism. A representative essay stated that in New German music “two directions now work to bring about the ruin of poor music—one a Latinate frivolous-aristocratic [form], the other German, of heavy-handed democratic origins.”58 Here, Liszt was a relic of the old regime, shaped by French decadence, whereas Wagner was a rabid democrat. Liszt and Wagner’s experiments with combining literature and music, as well as their vigorous self-promotion in the press, earned autonomist s­ uspicion. 56 57 58

Letter of 17 June 1874, BCA, 161. John Deathridge, Wagner Beyond Good and Evil (Berkeley, 2008), 201–202. “Musikalische Leiden der Gegenwart II,” AAZ no. 354 (20 December 1857): 5653.

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For one critic, the term “Zukunftsmusik” was a translation from a fashionable French word. Such linguistic fussiness plagued New Germans: “Instead of saying, ‘the weather is nice today,’ the Leipzig brethren would much rather say in Klopstockian style: ‘the weather of the present is absolutely impeccable.”59 True Germans expressed themselves directly in a straightforward fashion, the critic suggested. Another charged Liszt with misunderstanding Schiller in his symphonic poem Die Ideale. “He understood it incorrectly and so incorrectly, that only a complete incomprehension of our classical poets can explain such misunderstandings.”60 The critic also subtly dismissed Liszt as a German, claiming the classical poets as “ours,” excluding Liszt the foreigner from that possession. Not only was Liszt’s national identity problematic: his past as a virtuoso was still a defining characteristic in the view of autonomists. Ironically, the autonomists subscribed to a much more modern identity regime than did the New Germans, who despite their progressive rhetoric were much more comfortable with Liszt’s ancien regime subjectivity. The autonomists, adhering to the modern ideal of a unified, consistent inward self, cast him a tricky entertainer who simply wanted to manipulate simple people for his own ends. Liszt’s literary self-promotion had been a main method of such manipulation. Joachim wrote to Brahms that their side was at a disadvantage because their opponents “are too accustomed to writing, too ready to spring to their own defense, too coarse, too sophistic.” He continued that Liszt knew “all too well how to stir up enthusiasm and misuse it for himself—which prevents us from fighting a real battle with these carousers and sycophants.”61 The music itself they characterized as the work of virtuoso hacks: Liszt’s and Wagner’s music “seeks applause from the crowd,” not in that they sought to elevate their listeners to the Ideal, “but rather in that they present something monstrous through the Achilles heel of their sensual passions, their spectacle-seeking rawness, their banal bad taste.”62 In July 1859, Brendel proposed an end to the conflict and called again for reconciliation of the two groups, as he had done two years prior in the pages of the Neue Zeitschrift.63 When seeking the causes of the misunderstandings propagated through the press that had become so hurtful to both sides, he said,

59 60 61 62 63

“Richard Wagner,” Echo II, no. 8 (25 February 1854): 57. G.E., “Berliner Briefe,” Echo VII, no. 14 (2 April 1859): 107–108. Letter of July 1857 in Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel, 186. “Musikalische Leiden”, 5653. Franz Brendel, “Franz Liszt,” NZfM 12, nos. 12–15 (18 Sept.–2 Oct. 1857).

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“we must almost exclusively hold the opposed party responsible.”64 Even though he blamed the autonomists for the clash, Brendel regretted their absence at the meeting, since he thought reconciliation would emerge from personal interactions rather than through the press, which had proven to be a volatile and inflammatory form of communication. Brendel also called for an end of the pejorative label Zukunftsmusiker. The very notion of music of the future, Brendel argued, was contrary to Wagner’s philosophy of the Kunst der Zukunft (art of the future), for the Gesamtkunstwerk was a blending and melting of all other art forms into one. There could, therefore, be no independent “music of the future.” In place of this label, he proposed the term “New German School.” Brendel acknowledged that his proposal might raise some eyebrows, and proceeded to defend his suggestion. Despite the fact that the New German School included two foreigners among its three main leaders, Berlioz and Liszt nonetheless belonged under this label. They both based their own compositions on those of Beethoven and worked within symphonic forms. In his book about Liszt as a symphonist, Brendel reiterated this idea of German universalism. He saw in Liszt a “universal, cosmopolitan nature, one that rises above one-sided barriers, that stands on a common height, a nature like Mozart’s . . .” and in Liszt’s Faust Symphony a “German creation” grounded in Liszt’s developing attachment to the German aspects of his own nature.65 Here, Brendel’s vision of a universalist German identity meshed with Liszt’s own cosmopolitan values and practices. The composer Felix Dräseke scoffed at critics who believed that “Liszt is a foreigner and therefore cannot satisfy the musically educated people [Volk] because of his lack of understanding of their inwardness and depth.”66 He also believed that cosmopolitanism was one of Liszt’s greatest gifts to humanity. For him, Liszt was German because of his command of compositional technique. “In regard to his intelligence, subtlety, and boldness as a harmonist, Liszt could present himself as a German and could expect a friendly reception from his artistic colleagues.”67 Dräseke linked nationalism and Philistinism, arguing that there was a close relationship between them: narrow-mindedness about national identity betrayed a lack of education and refinement. Dräseke argued, “at the time when national isolation has led partly to superficiality, partly to Philistinism and one-sidedness, and also proved itself harmful to the development of art, Liszt had accomplished a great deed in 64 65 66 67

Brendel, “Zur Anbahnung einer Verständigung,” 269. Franz Brendel, Franz Liszt as Symphoniker (Leipzig, 1859), 28. Felix Dräseke, “Franz Liszt’s neun symphonische Dichtungen,” Anr 2 (1857): 262. Dräseke, 303.

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creating a world music.”68 Liszt’s cosmopolitanism contained and could express Germanness, but was not constrained by Philistine bigotry. It may not have met overt resistance at the 1859 Tonkünstler Versammlung, but music journals published numerous articles mocking the new name. One author sarcastically commented, You would rather be called the New German School, you who have the Magyar Liszt, the Frenchman Berlioz, and Wagner, who in his musical development simply tinkers with Meyerbeer’s orchestration, and in his theoretical views . . . is analogous to the French Socialists? Go on, don’t make bad jokes!69 Liszt’s identity was ethnically based here, as the author specifically used “Magyar” rather than “Hungarian.” Wagner’s music and politics were both indebted to French styles and ideals. This author certainly did not hold with Brendel’s idea of German syncretism and universalism. The idea of Germanness being attained through cultural development was challenged by the question of Jews’ place in the nation. Liszt’s cosmopolitan vision and Wagner’s increasingly anti-Semitic understanding of German nationhood served as the two extreme poles of answers to this question. In 1848, all Frankfurt delegates had agreed Jews would enjoy citizenship rights, yet they also assumed (as liberals across Europe did) that Jews and other “outsider” or religious groups would assimilate to “mainstream” values. Because cultural and political ideas about nationality were intertwined, “liberal nationalists did not have to insist on either total exclusion or total absorption of a culturally distinct population in order to achieve a comfortable and workable degree of national and political unity.”70 This ability to live with cultural diversity for the sake of political unity started to wane post-1848. Wagner’s polemical essay “Das Judenthum in der Musik” appeared in the Neue Zeitschrift in 1850 under the pseudonym K. Freigedenk (Freethought). In it, Wagner argued that Jews lack their own culture: they adopt that of their host country and parasitize it. Therefore, they must “go under”; either assimilate or persist in sterility and inauthenticity. Wagner conflated cultural production with national reproduction, painting Jews as impotent, and by implication, 68 Ibid., 315. 69 “Zukunftsmusik,” NMZ VII, no. 41 (8 October 1859): 326. 70 Vick, 85; Michael Brenner, Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, and Michael A. Meyer, eds. Emancipation and Acculturation 1780–1871, vol. 2, German-Jewish History in Modern Times, ed. Michael A. Meyer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

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feminized. In contrast to the depth and seriousness of German national identity, Jews imitate and falsify. Wagner associated Jewishness with commercialism, a central threat to German culture.71 The text became one of the key pieces of nineteenth-century anti-Semitism. In choosing to publish the piece, Franz Brendel lacked the foresight to predict its destructive impact. He defended its publication with a liberal free-speech argument.72 Shortly after its publication, many of his peers at the Leipzig Conservatory, among them Joseph Joachim, Ignacz Moscheles, and Ferdinand David called for his dismissal as Chair of Music History and Aesthetics. Many other Jewish musicians turned against the New German School because of this notorious essay, but the debate remained confined to the relatively small musical world. The published response to Wagner’s piece was fairly modest: three articles ran in the Neue Zeitschrift, one in the Rheinische Musik-Zeitung.73 Liszt confirmed with Wagner that he was indeed the article’s author, and then clarified that he, Liszt, did not share Wagner’s anti-Semitism, although he did continue to admire the music. In response to a later rant of Wagner’s against “Philistines, Jews, and Jesuits”, Liszt urged his friend to embrace a Christian faith as a cure to the hatred that plagued him.74 “Das Judenthum”, however, remained in its readers’ memories long after they had set it aside, and its reissue in 1869 garnered much more critical attention, including from Liszt himself. He wrote to Sayn-Wittgenstein, “Far from correcting his mistakes, Wagner compounds them with a [new] foreword and an afterword.”75 While 71

72

73 74 75

K. Freigedenk, “Das Judentum in der Musik,” NZfM 33, no. 19 (3 September 1850) and no. 20 (6 Sept. 1850). Wagner was particularly targeting the music of Giacomo Meyerbeer in this piece. Liszt’s essay, DesBohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (1859), treated in Chapter Two, also employed rootless, uncultured Jews as a foil to the rootless, authentic Gypsies. Jacob Katz, The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner’s Anti-Semitism (Hanover, 1986); Paul Lawrence Rose, Wagner: Race and Revolution (London, 1992); L.J. Rather, Reading Wagner: A Study in the History of Ideas (Baton Rouge, 1990). For a balanced account of Wagner’s nationalism and anti-Semitism, see Hannu Salmi, Imagined Germany: Richard Wagner’s National Utopia (New York, 1999). See Brendel’s defense his publication of Wagner’s essay in an editor’s note in a subsequent anti-Semitic piece published by the NZfM, Eduard Krüger, “Judenthümliches,” NZfM 33, no. 27. (1 October 1850): 143. The public debate Brendel sought to encourage took place: he subsequently published E. Bernsdorf, “K. Freigedenk und das Judenthum in der Musik,” NZfM 33, no. 31 (15 October 1850), an essay protesting against Wagner’s claims. For more on reception of Wagner’s piece and the published responses to it, see Fischer, 18–32, 208–222. Letters of 30 March 1853; 8 April 1853, LWB 230–36; see also Lawrence Kramer, Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and Strauss (Berkeley, 2004), 42–74. Letter of 16 March 1869, Br VII, 212.

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Liszt may have shared some of Wagner’s ideas about Jews’ collective identity, his tone was vastly more moderate. He was never a völkish nationalist along Wagner’s lines. Such debates about national belonging gained traction after Liszt departed Weimar for Rome, and continued in the German music press well into the period when Liszt divided his time between Rome, Budapest, and Weimar, his “vie trifurquée.” The New German School did not succeed in convincing more Germans of their cosmopolitan sensibilities. Even after unification the new Reich lacked a national anthem or other symbolic markers of the nation. What the war does tell us is that music retained its centrality in terms of expressing Germanness, and anti-French and cosmopolitan elements continued to exist side by side in a cultural understanding of nationhood. Whether Germanness was an essential or acquired, developmental trait remained a matter of debate.

Macho Music

The musicians engaged in the War of the Romantics were mostly male. They were all educated professionals who hailed from the middle classes and embraced liberal conceptions of duty, morality, and selfhood. Yet they also revealed the intolerance and indeed violence that accompanied the liberal project of emancipation and self-improvement. When they were threatened, they turned to an essentialized identity in order to defend their authority: as Liszt had done when criticized for his Hungarian saber, the New Germans emphasized their masculine authority. Conceptions of national belonging and citizenship were anchored in language and culture by the New Germans. In Europe more generally, citizenship was delineated along class and gender divisions. The bourgeois claim to political participation was rooted in the idea that war and politics were male pursuits, indeed, even duties. This link was forged during the Napoleonic Wars that required massive numbers of men at arms. The assumption that only men were to act as citizens “took on a quality of self-evidence that masculinity needed not even to be mentioned” by the end of the Revolutionary era.76 Men fought to defend their countries and earned 76

Dudink, 4. For more on gender and nineteenth-century nationalism, see Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann, and Catherine Hall (Oxford, 2000); Gender and Germanness: Cultural Productions of Nation, ed. Patricia Herminghouse and Magda Mueller (Providence, RI, 1997); Mosse, The Image of Man, 3–76. See also Ute Frevert, Die kasernierte Nation: Militärdienst und Zivilgesellschaft (Munich, 2001); Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann, and

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citizenship rights in the process. In defending Liszt’s works, Richard Pohl used “Hoplite” as a pen name, evoking not only Greek democracy and citizenship, but also the citizen-warrior who possessed his own weapons and fought in battle for his polis. In an article for the Weimar paper, Pohl wrote that when musicians and singers mounted the stage to perform New German music in Weimar, they became “an excited, elect band that is ready to sacrifice all for the noble, inspiring ideas of freedom and fatherland.”77 In addition to the tie between military service and masculinity, masculine friendship, such as that enacted by Liszt and Wagner, also became a model for civic interaction. A cult of friendship in the German lands was linked to patriotism in the late eighteenth century, and the bonds between men were to embody Enlightenment ideals of autonomy and equality.78 The pair’s sentimental prose and mutual professions of admiration demonstrate that the emotional style of these ideas persisted well into the nineteenth century. The revolutions of 1848 challenged this connection between bourgeois citizenship and masculinity in two ways. First of all, women sought political emancipation through suffrage, rather than force of arms; and democracy, full male electoral participation, was discussed as well as fought for in the streets. In the wake of 1848, bourgeois men were shaken by their own failed unification attempts and by the calls for political and social enfranchisement from below. “Both conservative and reactionary forces and liberal, socialist and nationalist movements attempted to appropriate masculinity for themselves.”79 Men legitimized their own political participation by feminizing their political (or aesthetic) opponents. Lastly, the nationalist wars reanimated the value of martial masculinity. Musicians on both side of the debate employed militaristic language to describe their formal disagreements. “As I have told you,” Liszt wrote a friend, I have had very large and strong battalions of the journals mobilized against me—but their victory is uncertain enough, and it seems to me that in a few years the musical critics will sensibly change their minds,

77 78 79

Anna Clark, eds., Representing Masculinity: Male Citizenship in Modern Western Culture (New York, 2007). Richard Pohl, Franz Liszt: Studien und Erinnerungen (Leipzig, 1883), 82. See Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality, 67–68. Wagner was one of the handful of people Liszt addressed with “du.” Dudink, 17.

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and many of the important newspapers that are hostile to us now, will perform an about-face.80 Here, “victory,” “battalions,” and “about-face” served to set the War of the Romantics on the battlefield, and thus to convert musicians into soldiers at arms. Eduard Hanslick used a military metaphor in complaining about the New Germans’ use of the press. “Liszt’s and Wagner’s compositions act as army orders. The moment a work from either of these heroes appears, a small library of articles, brochures, translations appear to explain it.”81 The New Germans enjoyed superior numbers and disciplined followers who acted on the orders of their commanding officers, Hanslick implied. Mobilization, following orders, and fighting battles for victory all linked musicians to military matters, emphasizing their masculinity and ties to high politics. In Germany, such idealized masculinity was understood to feature self-control, patriotism, transparency, simplicity, and straightforwardness.82 Language about brotherhood also evoked the French revolutionary slogan of fraternity, another politicization of aesthetics. In addition to the role of warriors they adopted, the New Germans cast themselves as revolutionaries and apostles, a tight-knit group of gritty comrades. Liszt expressed such gendered sentiments about his allies and enemies in writing to his friend Louis Köhler. “I cannot, of course,” he said, “include weaklings and sissies (Hasenfüsse) among my allies. Only with high spirited, courageous and loyal comrades (hochherzigen, tapferen und wahrhaftigen Genossen) will we advance.83 Liszt needed a band of brothers to join in this important project, one that was not for the weak of heart.84 Along with military duty, artists sought to imbue their own creativity with regenerative properties. The concern about artistic fecundity was not unique to the New Germans; progressive aesthetics had long concerned itself with bearing fruit for the future. Heinrich Heine, writing as a part of Young Germany, critiqued Goethe’s masterpieces in the following manner: “One can 80 81

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Letter of 13 May 1857, Br III, 91. Italics in original. Hanslick, “Kritische Nachfeier von Bayreuth,” Musikalisches Skizzenbuch, 314. Even Ignacz Moscheles, who generally tried to keep a distance from the tensions, used a military metaphor to describe Liszt’s conducing of Les Préludes in 1856. Moscheles, 393. Karen Hagemann, “A Valorous Volk Family: The Nation, the Military, and the Gender Order in Prussia in the Time of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars, 1806–15,” trans. Pamalea Selwyn, in Gendered Nations, 184. Letter of 3 September 1859, Br I, 329. For Freudian analysis of revolutionary brotherhoods, see Lynn Hunt’s classic, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1992), 55–88.

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fall in love with them, but they are sterile: Goethe’s poetry does not bring forth action, as does that of Schiller. The act is the child of the word, and Goethe’s beautiful words are childless.”85 For Heine, Goethe was an evolutionary deadend, whereas Schiller’s works inspired creativity in others. Cornelius’s lyrics in “Weimars Volkslied” call upon those of “manly courage and desire” to bring “new life” to the nation through artistic production.86 While women contributed their biological reproductive powers to the nation, men rebirthed German culture through composition. The young composer Hans von Bronsart, however, characterized the autonomists as “impotent.”87 The autonomists’ failure to produce new works undermined their legitimacy as participants in building a German cultural unity; criticism needed creativity as a companion. Male creativity and production would create a new nation out of 1848’s ashes.

Liberal Values and the New Music

In responding to 1848 and sorting out their future actions dedicated to the German nation and music, the autonomists and New Germans reiterated many of the broader political debates occurring in the German lands. The autonomists emphasized respect for the past and for natural law, whereas the New Germans claimed to represent enlightenment, freedom and progress. These claims were subverted by the autonomists, painting themselves as orderly reformers and the New Germans as irresponsible revolutionaries. In presenting difficult, complex, chromatic, tonally challenging music, the New Germans broke several musical “laws” in which the autonomists believed. The New Germans accused the autonomists of resting on the work of previous generations, becoming conservative in the process, and therefore, of betraying core liberal values. Autonomists frequently accused the New Germans of socialist or revolutionary tendencies, as we saw in the quotation about the “heavy-handed democratic origins” of Wagner’s music. One music critic argued, “one might speak of musical sans-culottism in regard to the tone of recent articles in the Neue 85 86 87

Heinrich Heine, Die Romantische Schule, vol. 3 of Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Klaus Briegleb (Munich, 1971), 395. Kapp, 162. Hans von Bronsart, Musikalische Pflichten (Leipzig, 1858), 9. Tellingly, when Cornelius fell out with Liszt in the late 1850s, he wrote to a friend that Liszt was not “manly.” Daniel Ortuno-Stühring, “Liszt’s Heirs: The History of the New German School after 1861”, Liszt’s Legacies Symposium, Ottawa, Canada, 29–31 July 2011.

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Zeitschrift written to defend and support Wagner and Liszt.”88 He accused the New Germans of inflammatory rhetoric, which would wreak the same sort of destruction that took place during the Reign of Terror. Another critic argued that the New Germans wanted revolution: “It is generally known that under the name of ‘the Musicians of the Future’ a party has developed which opposes the representatives of quiet progress who build on the foundation of the achievements of earlier art periods.”89 Even though liberal political parties such as the National Verein drew memberships in the thousands, the word “party” when associated with politics still bore a very negative connotation, evoking scheming, distasteful discussions of material issues and problems, including, perhaps, social ones. Such issues had been studiously ignored in 1848 and continued to exist in a liberal blind spot.90 Autonomists evoked revolutionary crowds in their criticisms, playing on bourgeois fears of the rabble. Musicians of the future appear to want to find it in the loosening of each form and law . . . higher emancipation can hardly come from the freeing of passions, which is where we will end up, if we release life and art from all general moral and natural laws; such emancipation can only come from the free-willed subordination to a higher order.91 This sounds nearly Burkean in its emphasis on conservation and tradition. Another critic linked the “music of the future” to 1848: such music came to maturity, he argued, first with the roar of the barricades and the “republicanatheistic insanity” of the short German revolution. The critic then shifted metaphors, saying that, in cooking a meal for their audiences, New Germans use revolution as flavoring to produce chaos.92 The autonomists sought to stir up fears about unrest, still fresh in many peoples’ minds from 1848. Liszt and his allies disavowed charges of socialism and rebellion. They identified themselves with ideas of freedom, progress, and openness while distancing themselves from the revolutionary left. In their public relations campaigns, the New Germans presented the autonomists as musty relics, explicitly linking their own program to liberal values of progress and enlightened reform. When Wagner’s music dramas Das Rheingold and Die Walküre were to be performed in Weimar for Carl August’s 1857 centenary, Liszt wrote to a friend that 88 A.W. Ambros, “Wagneriana,” Euterpe 31, no. 4 (1872): 159. 89 “Die Zukunftsmusik,” NMZ VIII, no. 13 (24 March 1860): 100. 90 Sheehan, German Liberalism, 69, 86. 91 “Die Zukunftsmusik,” NMZ VIII, no. 13 (24 March 1860): 102. 92 “Musikalische Leiden”, 5653.

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“a sizeable portion of the audience will certainly be taken aback by it like a cow in front of a new stall. Other stalls, by the way, wouldn’t be harmed if they were to be cleaned and aired!”93 For Liszt, Wagner’s music served as air freshener in a stuffy atmosphere. Brendel argued that “quick progress, . . . now leads to new directions in music; the new terrain which it wins with musicians, the public and with critics; the powers of innovation which generate excitement” make “the doctrinaire gentlemen lose their heads, one after another.”94 For him, program music was a progressive form that appealed to audiences through its regenerative power and threatened the status quo to which the autonomists so doggedly clung. Such progress relied on innovating with materials from the past: New Germans presented Liszt’s symphonic poems as an organic outgrowth of the music that preceded him. Brendel’s Hegelian understanding of history was characterized by a dialectical teleology. In his essay on Liszt as symphonic composer, he argued Liszt’s works were the “ideal of our time . . . that which must come if true progress is to take place.”95 Brendel believed in a steady and evolutionary progression of musicians, starting with Bach, moving to Schumann, and continuing into the future. It was the purpose of art to reflect the spirit of the times: for Brendel, “progress is above all sympathy with the content of the particular present, regardless whether this is a greater or lesser one in comparison with that of the previous epoch.”96 According to New German Joachim Raff, “The interactions of art, society and other factors which reveal themselves over the course of time continually produce new results.”97 Ludwig Nohl, a fan of the New Germans and biographer of Beethoven, argued that “the ‘symphonic poems’ . . . are the legitimate children of the ‘poetic idea’ which was developed to its fullest in Beethoven’s Symphonies.”98 In the view of the New Germans, Beethoven was the creative father who granted his children, Liszt, Wagner and their followers, legal recognition, endowing them with his power and authority. The autonomists believed that in breaking musical laws, the New Germans undermined all that had gone before, defiling and mocking it. An example 93 94 95 96 97 98

Letter of 20 November 1856 in BAA, 80. Franz Brendel, “Die Grenzboten als neueste Zeitschrift für Musik: Eine psychologische Studie,” NZfM, 40, no. 9 (24 February 1854): 85. Franz Brendel, Franz Liszt als Symphoniker, 6. Franz Brendel, “Fragen der Zeit IV,” NZfM 29, no. 37 (4 November 1848): 214. Ernst Henschel, “Zukunftsmusik,” Euterpe 20, no. 5 (1861): 84. Ludwig Nohl, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner. Ein Bild der Kunstbewegung unseres Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1874), 114.

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follows: “The great learn thankfully from history, while the small run fearfully from it; they call that progress towards freedom.” The author accused the New Germans of running from the past, a rather childish response, rather than learning from it. The same article made a standard conservative argument about the current times, bemoaning the changes that were taking place. The old ways were no longer revered: the young, the critic seems to say, had no respect for their elders. Artists of the old type studied first, then created; that way they held the course together, taught the youth the old discipline. . . . The [youth] were modest and feared their teachers, and no false sympathy looked past youthful foolishness instead of punishing it. This Spartan discipline ensured that [Johann] Sebastian Bach, as well as Mozart and Beethoven, had an industrious youth.99 Not only did the New Germans lack respect for the past, but they also became soft and effeminate from lax discipline. In the autonomists’ view, they lacked the will, obedience and unity needed to produce great works. Suspicion about New German aesthetics and respect for the past extended farther East; when Liszt applied his harmonic and structural ideals to liturgical music written for Hungarian Masses, some tried to block their performance as works unfit for solemn, ceremonial occasions. Adhering to tradition amounted to, in New German minds, a cowardly retreat from the battlefield. They instead continued to emphasize freedom as a central goal of their work, and explicitly linked aesthetic and political freedoms. Writing to his sister, one of his closest confidantes, Peter Cornelius asserted that he and Wagner shared similar artistic and social commitments. “Freedom! Equal rights! . . . Public education, true religion and cultivation (Erziehung)! War against prejudice, superstition, clericalism (Pfaffentum), hypocrisy—indeed, in my case, dear Susanne, behind the poet and musician stands the social man.”100 In his 1850 work Chopin Liszt criticized the music critics who, he argued, sought to control access to new musical compositions. His discontent and clear critique justify a look at a longer passage. The exclusive flag bearers of the old masters and their compositional methods do not allow others . . . to acquaint themselves with the products of a new school. They instead busy themselves with completely 99 “Richard Wagner,” NMZ II, no. 8 (25 February 1854): 57. 100 Letter of 29 December 1861, Ausgewählte Briefe, 636.

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withholding this acquaintance from the public. If a new work written in a new style accidentally is performed, they are not satisfied to attack it in the organs of the press at their disposal, but they also seek to prevent another performance of it. They monopolize the orchestras and conservatories, the concert halls and salons in that they install a ban on any composer who is not an imitator. They do this through a system of taste that is spread through the schools for virtuosi and court conductors, in both private and public instruction, and in the circles of performers, all of which form public taste.101 The musical status quo was to be maintained through barring access to information, a tactic Liszt and his allies scorned. They cleaved to liberal values in their emphasis on civic freedoms. Conservative caution to preserve what had been so hard-won at the turn of the century was a poor tactical choice, New Germans believed. The progress that New Germans believed themselves to embody was not to stop with the status quo: to be content with the current situation and form of music was to abandon the fight for reform and aesthetic revolution. “Politics” and culture were inextricably entwined.

Artists and Audiences: Education and Elevation

In their effort to compose new, relevant music that expressed the spirit of the times, New Germans relied on positive audience reception to validate their work, since the equivalent of the academy would not do so. Questions arose during the War of the Romantics about who constituted audiences for art music. Were they educated, discerning, tasteful listeners? Social climbers who wanted some of music’s respectability? Simple-minded followers of every latest fad? In searching for the identity and composition of audiences, autonomists and New Germans legitimized their own efforts, claiming to connect with the “desirable” public, that is, those who took art music seriously, studied it, and placed high value upon it (people like themselves). In 1853 the liberal journalist L.A. von Rochau commented, “the question of the true, the real Volk is a very familiar one for all the parties, and every party finds the true, the real Volk where it finds it own points of view.”102 While Rochau had political and social movements in mind, his scathing observation applies equally well to the musical debates. 101 Franz Liszt, Friedrich Chopin, GS I, 4. 102 Quoted in Sheehan, German Liberalism, 93.

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The two groups differed in their assessments of audiences’ capabilities. New Germans embraced an optimistic, liberal didacticism based in Bildung. Willing and sincere listeners could learn to distinguish and appreciate works of quality. Liszt and Brendel believed their main obstacle to connecting with and elevating such audiences was the indifference, misunderstanding, and shallowness of music critics. In contrast, autonomists disavowed the power of music to shape morals. They believed true appreciation of art was limited to a select few, and that the intense study of musical structures was the only way to broaden the group of enlightened listeners. The autonomists were content to preserve audiences as they were. Hanslick had little faith in their ability to learn about music’s intellectual side, and believed that most listeners simply enjoyed music on a physical, sensual level.103 He scorned the New Germans’ belief in the possible moral influence of music. The New Germans’ own music was increasingly complex, making the education of audiences an ongoing necessity;104 they wanted to tap the potential of listeners in order to gain more supporters, rather than allow music’s complexity and difficulty to serve as a gatekeeper. Indeed, Liszt wrote that the program was the medium that would make music more accessible to that section of the public composed of thinking, acting people.105 Many of his symphonic poems provided textual guides for the listener to read before hearing the piece.106 Liszt believed that “most people must first read, in order to hear, understand, feel, and experience.”107 Liszt contended that a program could enhance the music’s inner structure and intensify its resonance with audiences. The program served as a support for the composer’s preexisting ideas. It was a spiritual rather than literal influence on the composition itself. The program does no more than to prepare and indicate the spiritual moments which drive the composer to create his work, which he seeks to embody through the work. . . . Why should the poetic symphonist who 103 Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful: A Contribution towards the Revision of the Aesthetics of Music, trans. Geoffrey Payzant (Indianapolis, IN, 1986), 59. 104 Hoeckner, 165. For works on the increasing difficulty of art music and the corresponding change in artists’ attitudes toward their audiences, see Thomas Nipperdey, Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866, trans. Daniel Nolan (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 483; Gay, 38; Bourdieu, 49. 105 Franz Liszt, “Robert Schumann,” NZfM 42, no. 18 (27 April 1855): 192. 106 The authorship of all of Liszt’s symphonic poem programs is a current debate among music scholars; some believe a few of the programs were written by Sayn-Wittgenstein or Pohl. 107 Letter of 29 August 1862 in Br II, 24.

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sets himself the task to clearly present a picture from his spirit . . . not use the help of a program to strive for full comprehension?108 The fact that Liszt chose a loosely symphonic form in order to resuscitate German music indicates something about his vision of the audiences for his music, and indirectly of his vision of the nation. Instrumental music takes many forms, from chamber music to concerti to symphonies. Liszt and the New Germans were not writing Hausmusik to be played by families and social circles, nor for the most part were they writing choral pieces, which in the Vormärz period had played such a vital nationalist role via the singing societies.109 Symphonic music and its offspring, program music, demanded educated audiences. Such music was seen by critics and audiences as a communal experience, and indeed, as communal expression of their shared identity.110 Liszt actually apologized in several letters to different friends for the simplicity of various works, including the Festlied for the Schiller festival, seeming to fear being misunderstood as a hack popularizer. He emphasized that the piece was meant for large singing groups.111 As such, he implied, it was a throwaway and not “true art;” he intended loftier music than this to accomplish his true goals. The choice of large-scale instrumental music presumed a certain type of audience and experience, one that was communal and fairly passive. The people were not agents interpreting and creating on their own; they were receptors of great ideas from above. They were united in a public, communal experience akin to Greek tragedy or, even more aptly, the Catholic liturgy, led by a priest. In order to implement his vision of Weimar, Liszt suggested other ways to improve audiences, including higher-quality performances, technical excellence, fidelity to the score, and presentation of new works.112 Above all, Liszt argued, freedom for new talent and tolerance of new ideas were vital to an excellent court opera. He believed that he could “gradually educate a capable public through the spread of musical education, a public whose taste and correct judgment will see a good and beautiful repertoire as a lasting necessity.”113 The relationship between artist and audience was symbiotic: audiences needed the guidance of the artist, who needed audiences to appreciate and 108 Liszt, GS 4, 50. 109 Liszt did compose a large amount of religious choral music, some of which will be addressed in the next chapter on Liszt’s activities in Hungary. 110 Bonds, xx, 88–92. 111 Letter of 2 November 1859, Br I, 338. 112 Letter of 4 June 1847, BCA, 17. 113 Ibid.

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support his new works. This process of building trust and honing discernment required patience and care: when he wrote to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna about the state of Weimar’s theater, he presented her with a choice between a theater that was merely a commercial enterprise, driven by receipts, or a royal or national theater that protected the fine arts through its authority.114 In order for Weimar’s to remain a true court opera, Liszt argued, the practice of paying more attention to the number of tickets sold than to the quality of performances had to stop. Catering to local tastes was a shortsighted policy. He warned that if funding was not found for excellent works “without taking into consideration what the locals will say and the chances of their returning, Weimar will never be anything more than mediocre.”115 Commercial theaters stood no chance of attaining good results, Liszt argued, because their profit motive lowered standards and therefore did not educate audiences. Such theaters “waste their entire stock of seed, even that necessary to sow, on money— and they will futilely wait for the harvest, because they did not entrust any seeds to the earth.”116 Audiences were vulnerable young plants that needed water, light and rich soil to flourish. One of Liszt and Wagner’s staunchest champions, the court conductor of the tiny Thuringian town of Sondershausen, took Liszt’s didacticism to heart. Eduard Stein offered weekly Sunday concerts in the park, truly accessible to the public, often featuring Liszt’s or Wagner’s works. Before these performances, Stein regularly published articles about the pieces to prepare the ground. He reassured his readers, “it’s not shameful to confess that one cannot follow this or that work.”117 Stein’s careful rehearsals and guidance of his listeners produced results that pleased and ultimately impressed Liszt as well as the visitors he brought to the concerts, among them Cornelius, Brendel, Bülow and others. Indeed, Bülow raved that the quality of the performance he attended in 1856 was better than those of most big-city orchestras.118 As Stein’s practice demonstrated, thorough rehearsals were vital to the success of new, challenging music. For the premiere of Lohengrin, Liszt worked diligently to produce a performance true to Wagner’s intentions, cor114 Letter of 14 January 1852, BCA, 33. 115 Ibid., 35. Wagner’s dissatisfaction led to a more radical solution: the construction of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, where Wagner had complete control over production of his music. 116 Franz Liszt, Dramaturgische Blätter, GS 3, 21. 117 Hans Eberhardt, “Franz Liszt und Sondershausen,” in Musikerleben: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur thüringischen Musik- und Musikergeschichte, ed. Volker Wahl (Rudolstadt, 2000), 130. 118 Eberhardt, 132.

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responding with Wagner about the production and rehearsing the orchestra relentlessly. He also published an essay about the opera in the Leipzig-based Illustrirten Zeitung, which enjoyed a broad circulation, providing Liszt and Wagner a sizeable audience of middle-class listeners. While Lohengrin is a romantic opera and still includes recitative, such experts as Robert Schumann could not understand the musical form Wagner’s libretto implied, as it lacked provisions for individual musical numbers. Wagner was already experimenting with the leitmotif and the idea of continuous music.119 Indeed, Weimar actor Eduard Genast wrote of the Lohengrin premiere, “How can one expect a quick understanding and interpretation of an audience that encounters such a music drama for the first time!”120 These defensive claims came to characterize the New Germans’ tactics in the War, claims they supported with the fact that Beethoven’s music had, at first blush, had also faced negative reviews and misunderstanding. If the great German hero’s works had been dismissed, posterity would also recognize Liszt and Wagner’s achievements. In contrast to the New Germans, Hanslick believed that very few listeners could truly be Kenner, that is, experts. Most people enjoyed music solely at a sensuous level without any higher cultivation or sensitivity, condemning them to the status of Liebhaber, dilettantes.121 Hanslick disavowed the idea that music had any ideological power, and argued that its appreciation was either a sensual activity, which was most peoples’ experience of it, or it was a genuine artistic appreciation, based in intellectual exercise. It could not elevate or improve its listeners. It existed solely for its own sake. Hanslick argued that the disadvantage of program music was the relationship it established with the audience. “The composer who uses a program expresses mistrust about the audience’s discernment.”122 After all, another critic argued, Mozart had never explained his music; if music was not comprehensible or enjoyable on its own, the composer had failed to communicate with the audience.123 Far from seeking to serve audiences, autonomists believed, composers of program music condescended to them, and thus created new enemies for themselves. 119 Charles Osborne, The Complete Operas of Richard Wagner (North Pomfret, VT, 1990), 106, 113. 120 Genast, 324. 121 Geoffrey Payzant, “Hanslick, Heine, and the ‘Moral’ Effects of Music,” in Gerald Chappel, Frederick Hall, and Hans Schulte, eds. The Romantic Tradition: German Literature and Music in the Nineteenth Century (Lanham, MD, 1992), 88. 122 C. Kossmaly, “Programm oder nicht Programm?,” Echo 11, no. 42 (14 October 1857): 332. 123 DIXI, “Liszt’s ‘An die Künstler’,” NMZ III, no. 52 (29 December 1855): 409.

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Program music constituted simply the latest fad, or even a potentially corrosive trend. Critics saw that trying to reach more listeners and educate them was a losing proposition. Uncultured audience members “push to the ticket box and storm into their seats for new operas from Meyerbeer and Verdi as well as for Wagner—they cheer at the effects in Lohengrin today,” while tomorrow some other short piece or overture; “the larger public loves everything new, whether it’s good or bad.”124 In autonomist opinion, Wagner’s music dramas were no different than French or Italian grand opera: spectacles to titillate the undiscerning mob. Wagner’s fame was a passing fancy; with its “natural” structure and established status, symphonic music was true art, even if only a select few could appreciate it. Attempts to reach out inevitably degenerated into flashy entertainment that pandered to the lowest common denominator. Brahms wrote to Joachim, “I am expecting to see Liszt’s next symphonic poem and am angry that the blight continues to spread and lengthens the asses’ ears of audiences still more.”125 When New German compositions received negative reviews, Brendel and others chalked them up to incomprehension and close-mindedness rather than poor quality. Predictably, Brendel called for Bildung and study of the scores to overcome differences of personality and nationality so that this new music could be better appreciated. The audience’s good will was not enough to generate true understanding.126 A warm reception of the Tannhäuser overture at a music festival convinced Richard Pohl of the piece’s value. He argued that the negative reviews from critics only underlined the stagnation of the profession and eagerness of the public to hear and embrace new, progressive works. “This great overture has the peculiar fate of meeting the animosity of the ‘absolute music’ critics, but is taken up by the whole educated public with participation and enthusiasm.”127 Pohl’s qualification of the public as “educated” further legitimates the New German project as one of serious highmindedness, important given the attacks made by autonomists. The New German project resounds with idealism; indeed, at times this was a utopian undertaking. Art could heal divisions: Pohl wrote that Liszt’s Entfesselter Prometheus inspired by Herder’s essay addressed the “continuing education of humanity in every culture and the striving to awaken the godlike

124 In Monatscrift für Theater und Musik 4 (1858): 569. 125 Letter of 31 January 1860 in Johannes Brahms im Briefwechsel, 254. 126 Brendel, Franz Liszt als Symphoniker, 9. 127 Pohl, 18.

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spirit in people in all its power.”128 Art’s sacralization elevated musicians to the status Liszt had delineated in “De la Situation des artistes”, one of redeemer, visionary, and prophet. He reiterated the relationship between artist and audience: When we enter the concert hall, the feeling should not leave us that we stand somewhat higher than the audience through our conscious, earnest striving; we represent our part of “human virtue” as Schiller says. . . . The artist in our sense should be neither the servant nor the lord of the audience. He remains the carrier of the beautiful in its inexhaustible variety.129 Cultural nationalism was underpinned by claims about the moral power of art. Ideas about proper comportment and sound ethics, human social creations, can also serve as naturalized boundary markers. Those who get to determine what exactly those boundaries are in a place of power; they can legitimate their own projects through this device.130 In this particular moment, both sides bandied the word “morality” about without ever specifying what it was in a concrete way: they didn’t need to, as they shared an understanding of it. Both sides wanted materialism to be banished as a pursuit in public and especially musical life. Music and public life in general continued to be imbued with sacred elements. For example, Peter Cornelius approved of the decision to prevent Lola Montez, a popular dancer, from performing directly after a concert featuring Beethoven’s Fidelio. Such a performance would have besmirched the greatness of Beethoven’s opera by demeaning it with physical, sexual, and overtly popular, and by implication, commercial elements.131 Taking the view that art could influence morality, Brendel and Pohl ran brief articles in their journal Anregungen für Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft, which they founded in order to raise interest and knowledge in the arts, and to begin to heal the split in German culture.132 Brendel sought to reveal and dismantle the false aspects of morality that no longer served society. He started with a description of humility. In times past, people were to “admit the inadequacy of his own accomplishments, examine them, and find something 128 129 130 131 132

Pohl, 233. Letter of 11 February 1857, Br I, 263. Giesen, 72–73. Peter Cornelius, “Weimar,” Echo 7, no. 21 (31 May 1857): 167. Franz Brendel, “Einleitung,” Anr 1 (1856): 1–2.

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more meaningful,” a practice that guarded against “presumption.”133 Brendel stated that all people were equal and that relationships ought to follow from that; he did not want the New Germans continually to be accused of arrogance. In criticizing false modesty, he bolstered the New German program of self-propagandizing. Brendel saw a connection between false modesty and insincerity towards others, both of which he associated with outdated aristocratic mores. He wanted people to respect each other and to tell the truth. New morality was needed for new times, just as new art ought to reflect the spirit of the moment. “That which has been has outlived itself. Now it is only an empty superficiality that escaped an earlier spirit.”134 Brendel’s discussions detailed behavior in everyday life. He called for authentic greetings on the street, and true connection between people. In requesting more genuine relationships, Brendel wanted an end to noble codes of behavior, to be replaced with a more authentic code of the (masculine) Bildungsbürgertum. Some New Germans feared that the War would simply tarnish their image as solid, respectable citizens, and thus, weaken their credibility as public servants. Cornelius wrote to Sayn-Wittgenstein, “all the uncomfortably passionate partisan voices are repugnant to me. It reads as if written in a hall full of drunken, hoarse, screeching voices. . . . . Is it good that we show the public that we are so passionately abandoned? I doubt it.”135 For him, men had a responsibility to restrain themselves and comport themselves in a dignified manner. “Abandonment” is the opposite of masculine reason, a state of passion that might seize women or workers. The line between passionate conviction, fine feeling and feminine excess was a fine one to tread. At another time, Cornelius wrote to his sister, “when I play music by Liszt or Wagner, tears course down my face. A world of sharks and grubs (Haifischen und Larven) surrounds us and we are the only feeling people among them.”136 The autonomists were chillingly heartless and predatory, lacking compassion and feeling. They could not truly appreciate music, nor were they fully realized men: the project of Bildung was to train men not only intellectually but also aesthetically, emotionally, and ethically.

133 Franz Brendel, “Bescheidenheit,” Anr 1 (1856): 98. 134 Franz Brendel, “Die Formen des geselligen Umgangs,” Anr 1 (1856): 148. 135 Peter Cornelius, letter to Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein of 16 Feb. 1858, Ausgewählte Briefe, 268. 136 Letter of 22 March 1862, Ausgewählte Briefe, 645.

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Liszt also believed there was a connection between morality and music. He observed in his essay on Lohengrin that Wagner, dissatisfied with the powerful force music exerts on the heart in awakening the whole spectrum of human emotions, makes it possible for music to stimulate ideas in us, to speak to our thoughts, to appeal to our reason, and with this endows music with an intellectual and moral sense.137 Liszt conceded that Wagner’s compositions were difficult for the audience to understand. In making strong demands on the listener, the composer was nonetheless contributing to the moral “uplift” of those listeners who could appreciate the music. Self-improvement did not come without hard work or difficulty. Such hard work was required to understand Wagner’s music dramas, Hanslick retorted to such ideas, that no one was capable of it. He scoffed, “The driving motives in Rheingold are betrayal, lies, violence and animalistic sensuality; even among the gods, we see greed, treachery, and broken promises. Not a ray of a noble, moral emotion breaks through this breathtaking fog.”138 Hanslick claimed that Wagner did not understand innocent, genuine joy at all, as his music dramas were characterized by false and perverted emotions. Again, if “the people”, i.e. the uneducated or susceptible were exposed to this artwork, Hanslick feared, they would fall victim to its violent and passionate message, because they lacked the knowledge to read Wagner’s music dramas as allegories. Hanslick held himself above audiences just as the New Germans did, and like them feared moral decline and its possible result, social unrest. The War of the Romantics coincided with massive social, economic and political upheavals in the German lands. It was fought primarily over whether the liberal nationalist cultural project of defining Germanness through a shared culture, education and values was still viable, already accomplished, or no longer relevant. As the New Germans saw that the musical establishment had closed its ears and doors to them, they sought alternative solutions and institutions to change their underdog status. These new institutions would continue to provoke controversy about the geographical form of Germany as well as its religious identity. As in his thinking about Hungarian nationality, Liszt linked national belonging and audience appreciation: the former was

137 Liszt, Lohengrin et Tannhäuser, 35. 138 Hanslick, Musikalisches Skizzenbuch, 220.

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dependent on the latter. The conflict over the ideal form of music and its architects’ relationship to their nations and audiences continued: indeed, it followed Liszt to Hungary in the 1860s and 70s, where he not only continued to support the New German project, but also dedicated himself to reinvigorating the relationship of Church and people through religious music.

chapter 5

Composing a Nation-Church Bond in Hungary In 1856, Liszt characterized himself as “half Franciscan, half gypsy.”1 He had been visiting Gypsy bands while he was in Hungary for the consecration of a basilica, for which he had composed a Missa Solemnis. Despite the fact that he was living in Weimar at the time, involved in German nation-building projects and seemingly distant from a religious or itinerant life, his phrase indicates a renewed focus on religion and Hungarian patriotism which he balanced with his New German projects. During the same year, Liszt composed his first of a series of large-scale liturgical works associated with Hungarian nationalist events; he was also working on the first edition of Des Bohémiens. Just one year later Liszt joined the Franciscan order as a confrater, forging a formal link to the order of his namesake, participating in a groundswell of burgeoning religious piety that swept through Europe in the last half of the nineteenth century. This action signaled a last shake of the same kaleidoscope that had already produced the Romantic virtuoso, Hungarian patriot, and German nation-builder; he now synthesized his patriotic and religious/redemptive impulses as a churchman, composer, and eminence grise. In doing so he associated himself with yet another group of cosmopolitan elites, this time focusing his activities in Rome and Budapest among Catholic dignitaries. The mid 1850s were a key moment in Liszt’s life, as he began to be associated with the New German movement and revisited Hungary after a ten-year absence. Liszt wrote to Anton Augusz from Weimar in response to the 1859 Habsburg war against the French and Italians, hoping that a defeat of Austria would result in a favorable solution to Hungary’s continued oppression. He also vowed that his art would serve as his tribute to Hungary, and to the Emperor.2 Liszt’s imperial loyalty and Hungarian patriotism continued to exist simultaneously and without conflict. This period of Liszt’s life was a time of nation-state building for the countries among which he divided his time: he found himself in the middle of the processes of Italian unification, German unification, and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. He continued to promote a cosmopolitan cultural view of nationhood and to eschew nationalism’s exclusivist and violent tendencies through his participation in n ­ ational-religious festivals

1 13 August 1856 Br IV, 316. 2 Letter of 14 January 1860, BAA 95.

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throughout the 1850s and 60s, supporting the reconciliation of Church, state and empire in the Habsburg lands. One complication regarding Liszt’s nationalist activities derived from the fact that he lived for significant periods of time in Rome. While Rome served as an important haven for Liszt, where he spent much time composing as well as interacting with Church elites, Liszt lived a fairly withdrawn life and did not engage with larger Italian cultural, social, or national matters as he did in an ongoing manner in both Weimar and Budapest; the Eternal City also lacked a thriving musical life, driving Liszt to find it elsewhere.3 In Rome, Liszt sought to rejuvenate instrumental music: he presented himself again as a champion of Mozart, Beethoven, and other symphonists, continuing the project he had begun as a virtuoso in Paris.4 He also granted requests for concert performances, including two from Pope Pius IX in 1864. In the Easter concert which featured interpretations of the Ave Maria and Rossini’s Stabat Mater, a listener claimed, Liszt “prove[d] himself fanatically Catholic.”5 The welcome he received in Rome, plus the abandonment of his marriage plans to Sayn-Wittgenstein were short-term spurs to his interest in the Church. This period of Liszt’s life befuddled his contemporaries. Was this truly the man who had taken Europe and its women by storm just twenty-five years earlier? When Liszt joined the minor orders in 1865, he took great pains to contextualize and explain the step to his closest friends, among them Franz Brendel, Prince Konstantin von Hohenzollern-Hechingen, and Cardinal Gustav von Hohenlohe, who was related to Sayn-Wittgenstein through the marriage of her daughter and had originally invited Liszt to Rome. In his explanations, Liszt insisted on his lack of vocation to be a monk or priest; he believed rather that he was “following the old Catholic yearning” of his youth.6 Even after joining the order, Liszt continued to point out to friends and peers that he had 3 Walker, Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 36. 4 Kurt von Schlözer, Römische Briefe 1864–1869 (Berlin, 1924), 293. For more on Liszt’s life and activities in Rome, see Dezső Legány, “Liszt in Rom, nach der Presse,” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 19, Fasc. 1/4 (1977): 85–107. 5 Walker, 68–69; quotation from Gregorovius, 176. While his correspondence does not indicate this, the deaths of his children Daniel in 1859 and Blandine in 1862 could well have contributed to this decision. A letter to Augusz written 14 January 1860 does mention that Daniel was thinking about entering the Church; perhaps this was a small factor in Liszt’s later action. BAA, 94. A 14 September 1860 letter to Sayn-Wittgenstein mentions Liszt’s desire to join the Church as a seventeen-year old. Br I, 365. 6 Br VII, 258. Hohenlohe offered Liszt a “modest habitation” at the Vatican, asking to hear of Liszt’s plans for church music. Letter of 28 September 1859, Briefe an Franz Liszt, Vol. II, 250–251.

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s­ eriously considered a clerical career in his teens.7 And although Liszt was a Franciscan, the minor orders did not require the vows of chastity, nor even poverty, although Liszt did live a simple life and kept only enough of his money to support a modest lifestyle, donating the rest and giving piano lessons for free. Liszt’s investment into Catholicism was, upon closer examination, not as paradoxical as it seems. Despite his decision not to join the clergy in his youth, he remained a faithful Catholic in his adulthood. This turn to the Church has been understood as the culmination of Liszt’s reactionary tendencies and a rejection of the modern world, or as act of repentance for his profligate life.8 In fact, Liszt used modern marketing techniques that relied on mass literacy, traveled extensively, and his “return” to the Church was one embraced by millions of Europeans in the reconfessionalization of Europe. Joining institutionalized Catholicism as an abbé, his last reconfiguration of the subjective kaleidoscope, served three of Liszt’s needs and inclinations. This was a new inflection of his redemptive impulse first expressed in Paris and carried through to Weimar as a Romantic hero. First of all, it allowed him quiet and solitude in which to compose. Secondly, Catholicism has long been known for its theatricality and sensuality, both important attributes of Liszt’s character that in an increasingly “realistic” age were thought to be of less value in the wider world. Lastly, the Church, as a kind of “religious International” allowed Liszt to continue as a cosmopolitan in an increasingly exclusive nationalist world.9 Petty nationalist quibbles frustrated Liszt, and because Catholicism had long allowed for local expression, Liszt found in it an ideal sphere to cultivate connections among a new set of elites. As he prepared to leave Weimar in 1860, he wrote to Street-Klindworth,

7 Such statements may have been motivated as defenses against other interpretations. For example, an obituary claimed that Liszt had joined lower orders “to gain access for repentence for a life strongly strewn with incidents that did not conform with Christian morality.” “Franz Liszt,” Annales Catholiques: Revue hebdomadaire de la France et de l’Église vii (7 August 1886): 317. 8 For political condemnations of Liszt’s religiosity, see Cornelia Knotik, Musik und Religion im Zeitalter des Historismus: Franz Liszts Wende zum Oratorienschaffen als ästhetisches Problem (Eisenstadt, 1982), and Ernst Günter Heinemann, Franz Liszts Auseinandersetzung mit der geistlichen Musik (Munich, 1978). For those who see his joining the Church as a withdrawal from public life, see Martin Geck, Von Beethoven bis Mahler: Die Musik des deutschen Idealismus (Stuttgart, 1993), 256; Watson, 117. 9 Danièle Hervieu-Léger, “Faces of Catholic Transnationalism: In and Beyond France,” in Transnational Religion and Fading States, 104–118, here 104.

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my conviction is too sincere, my faith in the present and the future of art too ardent and positive for me to be able to accommodate the empty formulas of entreaty of our pseudo-classicists who strive to cry out that art is losing itself, that it is lost.10 Rather than being a failure, retreat or withdrawal, Liszt’s dedication to religious music allowed him to transcend national and confessional differences, as well as social ones. It also allowed him to pursue his aesthetic aims through other avenues. He wrote to Brendel from Rome with relief, “certainly I no longer have to worry about German, French, English, Russian or Italian idiots (Laffen) and can now fully devote myself to my quiet work.”11 In Hungary Liszt played an important role in helping to buttress the power of Church and state institutions by participating in festivals that were meant to reach out to the people with a new celebrity monarchism grounded in Catholic traditions. Liszt moved among cosmopolitan elites and sought to provide the country with institutional frameworks to nurture its national self-expression. Liszt was an aesthetic modernist who nonetheless supported traditional institutions, calling for much-needed reforms to occur within the existing religious, musical, and political institutional frameworks. In 1873, Liszt committed to an official tie to Hungary, via his participation on the administration and faculty of the newly founded Academy of Music. This commitment did not translate to national exclusivity; Liszt continued to support German nation-building projects, and spent two-thirds of his time outside Hungary in the Italian and German lands. In these years Liszt found that he still faced nationalist scrutiny and criticism for his musical works, his absence from Hungary, and the reissue of Des Bohémiens in 1881.

Church-State Conflict in Post-Revolutionary Hungary

The revolutions of 1848, which ended in Hungary in 1849 with a humiliating military defeat, ushered in political repression and military occupation of the country by Habsburg troops. By the mid-1850s, as in the German lands, state control began to loosen as the regime sought to reinvent itself in the eyes of its subjects by creating a new form of authority. State and Church co-opted mass movements for their own purposes through large festivals designed in part to gain mass approval. For the Habsburg state, bringing nationalist and 10 11

16 November 1960, Br III, 136. 22 January 1864, Br II, 64.

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liberal protest movements to heel entailed binding the national Churches back to Vienna and to the Vatican. In seeking to create a new unity in the lands of its rule, the regime faced particular challenges in Hungary, where religious plurality made centralization challenging. The confessional mix consisted of 47.8% Catholics, 14.6% Calvinists, 13.6% Greek Orthodox, 10.9% Greek Catholics, 7.8 Lutherans, 4.7% Jews, and others .1%, a distribution which also cleaved to geographical distinctions, with Catholics concentrated in the north and west of the country.12 Confession also related to status distinctions, with most magnates being Catholic while the gentry were Calvinist. Not only did the Habsburgs seek reconciliation with the Catholics in their lands; they also paid Protestants serious attention, creating a separate Concordat to regulate Protestant clerical powers. Further complications regarding the roles of church and state arose in debates between liberals and conservatives about mixed marriage and schooling, as well as Jewish emancipation.13 The Hungarian church itself was seriously compromised after the revolution, as revolutionaries in Hungary had sought to bind the church to their project by filling many vacancies with reformist clerics. After 1848, the Habsburg regime sought to soften and bridge ethnic, linguistic and historical differences and conflicts through the strength of religious unity. The Hungarian Church was to be fully incorporated into the Austrian administration. The loyalist János Scitovsky, former archbishop of Pécs, was named Prince Primate Cardinal, whom church figures in Esztergom, seat of Catholicism in Hungary, met with chilly reserve because of his Slovak background and close ties to the Vatican and Vienna.14 Later, the Habsburg state made concessions to gain the support of the Vatican. They allowed the Jesuits to return to Hungary in 1853 and created Concordats between the Vatican, Vienna, and Esztergom.15 The 1855 Concordat ceded almost all state power over religion, marriage, and church discipline to the Papal See. Liszt’s tie to these issues was relatively weak at the time; he still resided in Weimar and was busily composing symphonic poems, which he was starting to supplement with new church music. 12 13

14 15

Moritz Csáky, “Die Römisch-Katholische Kirche in Ungarn,” in Die Konfessionen, vol. IV of Die Habsburgermonarchie, 282–83, 302; Nemes, 316. Robert Nemes, “The uncivil origins of civil marriage: Hungary” in Culture Wars: SecularCatholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge, 2003), 313–335. For Jewish emancipation, see Kati Vörös, “A Unique Contract. Interpretations of Modern Hungarian Jewish History,” in Jewish Studies at the CEU III (2002–2003): 229–255. Freifeld, 122. Peter Leisching, “Die Römisch-Katholische Kirche in Cisleithanien,” in Die Konfessionen, 30.

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Because the Concordat of Hungary threatened the autonomy of Hungarian bishops in tying them more closely to the Vatican, they protested vociferously. The church hierarchy turned first to a powerful nationalist opposition as a new ally to protect their interests. Scitovsky’s allies, the “Old Conservatives,” were magnates such as Gyula Andrássy and György Apponyi who wanted to regain rule of Hungary under the 1847 constitution, erasing new territorial divisions imposed by Vienna and ending the military occupation.16 Esztergom, northwest of Budapest along the Danube, quickly became the home of Catholic nationalism and was known as the “Hungarian Zion,” boasting its own newspaper of the same name.17 In defending their traditional privileges, Scitovsky and his conservative allies emphasized the uniqueness of Hungarian Catholicism. After Italy defeated Austria in 1859, Hungarian nationalism became more overt, public, and inclusive. Scitovsky earned credibility with many nationalists, conservative and liberal alike, when in 1860 he performed a requiem mass for István Széchenyi, who had committed suicide after a long bout with mental instability. Scitvosky’s override of Church condemnation led to a very public demonstration of support when 80,000 mourners participated in Széchenyi’s funeral.18 Although he was still in Weimar, Széchenyi’s death shook Liszt, who had greatly admired the liberal nationalist reformer. Thoughts of Széchenyi remained with Liszt until late in his life when he composed “Hungarian Historical Portraits,” which included a piece named after Széchenyi. In 1861, Catholic bishops met in Esztergom for a conference that quickly became a protest gathering against Habsburg centralizing policies. At this conference, the Hungarian bishops withdrew their support from Franz Joseph, and joined with the independence movement that in the same year was waging a tax revolt, with 89% of taxpayers in arrears.19 These efforts contributed to a recommitment to national independence and helped lead to the Compromise of 1867, which was welcomed as a victory by moderate nationalists in Hungary, winning them autonomy within the larger Imperial framework.20 They were happy to accept Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth as their monarchs, as was

16

17 18 19 20

Kontler, 269–271. See also Iván Zoltán Dénes, “The Political Role of Hungary’s NineteenthCentury Conservatives and How They Saw Themselves,” The Historical Journal 26, no. 4 (1983): 845–65. Csáky, 262–64. Freifeld, 178; Lajos Lukács, The Vatican and Hungary 1846–1878: Reports and Correspondence on Hungary of the Apostolic Nuncios in Vienna, trans. Zsófia Kormos (Budapest, 1981), 133. Freifeld, 195–98. Csáky, 262.

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Liszt himself. In light of the Kulturkämpfe being waged in both Germany and Austria, Hungary seemed to be a stronghold of Catholic freedom.21 Not only did Catholic authorities in Hungary engage in struggle with their colleagues in Vienna and Rome; they also faced criticism from their Hungarian compatriots. Liberalism was associated with Protestantism, especially in Hungary. However, there were also liberal reforming Catholics who sought to improve the Church from within.22 The most notable was Bishop Mihály Horváth, who modeled the ideal of a patriotic priest and had served as Minister of Culture for the revolutionary government. Another important reformer, Baron Jószef Eötvös, who became Minister of Education in Ferenc Deák’s reformist cabinet, shared Horváth’s goals. Eötvös, who was also a Freemason, counted the Abbé Lammenais and Charles de Montalembert, author of Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie, among his friends. Eötvös’ correspondence with Montalembert in the 1860s expressed political-national views similar to Liszt’s. He claimed that “the largest part of our spirituality . . . is its faith in love of fatherland and civic virtues.”23 Such visionaries were part of a larger movement inspired in part by Daniel O’Connell’s leadership in Ireland, which sought the freedom of oppressed Catholic nations, including Poland and Hungary.24 These figures and their movement informed some of Liszt’s compositions, including the Elisabeth oratorio and the Masses, as well as the Hungarian Historical Portraits. Liszt’s friends, in particular Hohenlohe, were well known within the Church hierarchy for their liberal views; Hohenlohe died under suspicious circumstances during the inner upheaval that wracked the Church in the late nineteenth century.25 Religious change also occurred from below in the last half of the nineteenth century. The reconfessionalization of Hungary occurred as popular piety gained new public forms of expression. Saints like Francis, Elisabeth, and Stephen gained many passionate adherents in the course of the nineteenth century: many Romantics saw Francis, Liszt’s patron saint, as a proto-Socialist, 21

Friedrich W. Riedel, “Franz Liszts Verhältnis zur Kirche und zur Kirchenmusik seiner Zeit,” in Musik und Geschichte, 202–207, here 204. 22 Peter László, “Hungarian Liberals and Church-State Relations (1867–1900),” in Hungary and European Civilization, ed. György Ránki (Budapest, 1989), 79–138, here 79. 23 Letter of 4 September 1867 in Concha Gyözö, Eötvös és Montalembert barátság Adelék a Magyar Katholikusok autonomiájának Kezdeteihez [Eötvös and Montalembert’s Friendship and its Contribution to Hungarian Catholics’ Autonomy] (Budapest, 1922), 303. 24 Árpád von Klimó, Nation, Konfession, Geschichte. Zur nationalen Geschichtskultur Ungarns im europäischen Kontext (1860–1948) (Munich, 2003), 48–51. 25 Hohenlohe also participated in the negotiations with Bismarck to end the German Kulturkampf.

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as a fighter for the poor and weak, or as a chivalrous bard.26 Elisabeth played a particularly central role in Hungary, which I will address later in this chapter. Starting in 1860, nationalists reclaimed Stephen, the thirteenth-century king and bringer of Christianity to the Hungarian tribes, as a symbol of Catholic piety and Hungarian patriotism. The Habsburgs had cultivated his status as defender of the Christian faith in order to bind church elites more closely to the state, and now nationalists turned that connection against the imperial regime. The St. Stephen’s Society, founded by Ferenc Deák and other nationalists, headed by János Danielik, was seen by the Papal Nuncio in Vienna as part of the nationalist opposition movement.27 In 1860, Scitovsky declared Stephen’s relics national treasures. St. Stephen’s Day changed from a celebration of a divinely sanctioned dynasty to that of a divinely blessed nation, although the older associations with the imperial regime never were completely erased. Liszt participated in the renewal of popular piety in his devotion to Francis and Elisabeth, expressed through such works as St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds and St. Francis of Paola Walking on the Waters, and also through his ownership of a travel crucifix.28 The use of such objects and the erection of shrines, as well as pious practices, including pilgrimages, more daily masses and other displays of devotion, helped to revitalize religious life. The revival of spiritual and devotional piety was aided by the creation of new communications and travel networks.29 Liszt’s relationship to Catholicism was complex. In 1870 the Pope issued a statement of Papal Infallibility, which Liszt supported, remarking to his Prussian friend Adelheid von Schorn, “Our Church is not strong, and she must exact total obedience. We must obey . . .”30 Liszt enjoyed relationships with powerful church figures: he knew Pius IX personally, lived in Hohenlohe’s Vatican apartments for a period, and in 1879 was made an honorary canon of 26

27 28 29

30

V.J. Gajdoš, “War Franz Liszt Franziskaner?,” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 6, Fasc. 3/4 (1964): 299–310, here 300. For popular piety in Germany, see Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, 1984), especially 55–98. Lukács, 131; Klimó, 92–94, 110. The crucifix has recently been donated to the Liszt School of Music in Weimar. http:// www.hfm-weimar.de/v1/foerderer/foerderer/liszt_kruzifix.php?lang=en. John W. Boyer, “Catholics, Christians, and the Challenges of Democracy: The Heritage of the Nineteenth Century,” in Christdemokratie in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Michael Gehler, Wolfram Kaiser, and Helmut Wohnout (Vienna, 2001): 23–59, here 40; Christopher Clark, “The New Catholicism and European Culture Wars,” in Culture Wars, 11–46, here 14–16; Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch, 18. Schorn, 258, 313.

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Albano. While he was an ultramontane in his unswerving support of Papal authority, Liszt was a liberal reformer in his convictions and relationships: Sayn-Wittgenstein’s lengthy treatise Des causes intérieures de la faiblesse extérieure de l’Église critiquing the Church and calling for internal reform was put on the Index of banned books, and all of Liszt’s clerical friends were of similar mindset, that the Church needed reform.31 Géza Zichy, one of Liszt’s friends and a fellow pianist remembered a conversation about the Church he had with Liszt. Liszt observed that much injustice had been committed in the shadow of the cross, but I hope for a regeneration of the Catholic hierarchy. It’s possible that the holy teachings from Jerusalem could be proclaimed and the golden vestments of the clergy replaced with the simple garments of the fisherman of Galilee.32 Liszt’s longing for the simplicity of Franciscan humility grew greater as he aged, but still came into conflict with his love of the good life. Liszt’s Catholic sensibilities were shaped in his youth by his exposure to radical Catholicism in France, most notably that of the Abbé Lammenais. His activities and compositions of the mid-1850s onward demonstrated his commitment to his faith and his reformist tendencies. Yet Liszt’s unconditional acceptance of Church authority also reveals his respect for hierarchy and powerful institutions. In participating in Hungarian religious-nationalist festivals, both parts of Liszt’s religious convictions came into play as he composed some of his largest works in terms of performer and audience participation for official state and Church occasions.

Liszt’s Public Liturgy

Liszt’s dedication to church music was a fitting culmination to a long career. While Liszt’s Catholicism possessed a theatrical component, it was by no means insincere. Liszt was the most prolific composer of sacred music in the nineteenth century.33 He observed to the court conductor of Vienna, “the reli31 32 33

Merrick, 36–37; Nicholas Atkin and Frank Tallett, Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750 (Oxford, 2003), 108. Géza Zichy, Aus meinem Leben: Erinnerungen und Fragmente, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1913), 28. Pauline Pocknell, “Liszt and Pius IX: The Politico-Religious Connection,” in Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe, 61–104, here 90.

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gious composer is also preacher and priest, and where the word falls short of full expression, music accompanies and clarifies it.”34 First expressed in his short pamphlet “De la musique religieuse,” written in 1835, Liszt’s vision of aesthetic and moral leadership had informed his activities in Weimar as they did now in Budapest. The pamphlet called for the extension of art into the greater world, now that the Church did not express or serve all of peoples’ beliefs or interests. In earlier times, art had served its purpose in alliance with religion. In Liszt’s lifetime, he believed, art could help return people to faith. He later wrote, “Art is not a religion in itself; rather, it is the formal embodiment of the true Roman Catholic apostolic faith.”35 The “humanist” music he strove to create unified theater and church and was both “dramatic and holy, glorious and simple, celebratory and serious, ardent and unbridled, stormy and calm, clear and profound.”36 Unlike his symphonic poems, this new music was to be written for the people, taught to them and sung by them. Liszt’s youthful vision could find some outlet in Hungarian religious festivals: participating in such large-scale public religious-nationalist events allowed Liszt to express his Catholic convictions and his patriotism in a dramatic fashion. By the mid-1850s Liszt had seriously devoted himself to the regeneration of church music. He had long avoided attending High Mass because, as he wrote to Sayn-Wittgenstein, “the music of our Catholic Church, and in particular of the organist, grated on my nerves . . . I feel completely incapable of collecting myself during an hour of such discordant sounds.”37 Like many of his contemporaries, including Lamennais, Liszt believed that the path to renewal lay in the chant that had accompanied Masses since the Middle Ages. For Romantic thinkers, plainchant was a remnant of ancient Greek music, a diatonic vox populi that was a natural mode of expression.38 If plainchant could be embellished with harmony, Liszt hoped church music could speak to the people more clearly in a musical language they would understand. In order to craft such music, Liszt studied plainchant manuscripts and sought to modernize the notation. He used Joseph d’Ortigue’s theoretical work as a basis

34 35 36 37 38

12 January 1857, Br I, 261. Riedel, 201. Franz Liszt, “Über zukünftige Kirchenmusik,” GS II, 55–57, here 56. 19 April 1851, Br IV, 96. Conrad Donakowski, A Muse for the Masses: Ritual and Music in an Age of Democratic Revolution, 1770–1870 (Chicago, 1972), 135–52, especially 140, 149; Helmut Mathy, “Aspekte katholischer Kirchen- und Musikgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Studien zur Kirchenmusik im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Christoph-Helmut Mahling (Tutzing, 1994), 1–12.

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from which to begin his own compositions.39 For Liszt and other musicians, Giovanni Palestrina’s oeuvre provided the foundation upon which to modernize church music. Indeed, Brendel’s Geschichte der Musik begins with Palestrina as the first great composer who mastered spiritual expressivity.40 While reading a biography of the sixteenth-century composer, Liszt had underlined the description, “this untiring Homer of music.” As with his Weimar activities, Liszt was inspired by the idea of bards telling stories upon which to base national cultures.41 Palestrina not only produced a prodigious amount of church music; legend also tells of how one of his Masses written for a pope saved church polyphony during the Counter-Reformation. Liszt’s project was well known to his intimates: both Pius IX and Sayn-Wittgenstein called him “Palestrina.”42 Harmonization of plainchant and the revival of Renaissance forms were to be the basis of new church music. As he had earlier committed himself to the dissemination of new music like Beethoven’s, Liszt now dedicated himself to the re-appreciation of church music. In doing so, he worked with the Society of St. Cecilia, which was founded in 1867 and soon grew to number many branches in the Habsburg lands. Named after the patron saint of music, the group meant to usher in a renewal of church music in which the church would resume its function of unifying faith and art, via a renewed appreciation of Palestrina’s works. They focused on choral polyphony and were led by Franz Witt, who grew to be a close friend of Liszt’s. In light of his project of church music renewal, Liszt observed to Hohenlohe that Protestants possessed a number of choral books (collections of church music, including that of J.S. Bach), but Catholics lacked such a volume. “Religious music, ordinarily very defective in our churches, is missing completely from our homes.”43 He also shared his concern with the publisher C.F. Kahnt that current editions of Palestrina lacked proper tempi and dynamics markings, and suggested the publishing house undertake new

39 40 41 42

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Letter to d’Ortigue, 28 November 1862, Br VIII, 155–159; Merrick, 89–91. Taruskin, 413. Merrick, 95. Ibid., 69. For Palestrina’s influence on Liszt’s compositions, see Peter Ackermann, “Ästhetische und kompositionstechnische Aspeckte der Palestrina-Rezeption bei Franz Liszt,” in Palestrina und die Kirchenmusik im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Winfried Kirsch (Regensburg, 1989), vol. 1, 243–256; Anselm Hartmann, Kunst und Kirche. Studien zum Messenschaffen von Franz Liszt (Regensburg, 1991); James Garratt, Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music (Cambridge, 2002). 12 April 1875, Br II, 290.

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ones.44 In order to revive church music, Liszt turned to historicist allies to provide a sound foundation in understanding of past forms while embarking on his compositional experiments. Liszt’s first opportunity to demonstrate his interest in Catholic music and its potential reform arose while touring Hungary in 1846, and by the time it came to fruition, both Liszt’s life and that of the Hungarian church had radically changed, largely because of 1848. After Liszt had performed in Pécs, Archbishop Scitovsky had approached Liszt and commissioned him to write a Mass for the consecration of the restored basilica there. When Scitovsky became Prince Primate in 1849, he relocated to Esztergom. In 1855 Liszt heard via Anton Augusz that Scitovsky would like the Mass he had commissioned previously now to serve as a consecration mass for the new basilica built on a hill overlooking the Danube in Esztergom. The church, whose monumental 100-meter tall structure was meant to signal national independence and the importance of Hungarian Catholicism, was one of the largest in Europe after St. Peter’s in Rome and the Cologne Cathedral. Its association with the Hungarian nation came through its connection to St. Stephen, who was born in Esztergom, and whose figure dominates the mural on the interior wall of the church.45 Liszt was so excited about the commission that he began work on it immediately, writing to Augusz that he was going to “pray rather than compose my Mass.”46 He meant that the composition of the work was to be an act of piety for him, of faith rather than of intellect. Liszt composed the work in nine weeks, then learned from the newspapers the work would not gain a performance after all. Liszt’s reputation as a composer of the New German school and the negative press associated with it had spread to Hungary, where Liszt’s 1839 sponsor Leo Festetics feared it would harm the consecration festivities and Hungary’s status in Europe. Festetics had written to Scitovsky and convinced the archbishop of the Mass’s unsuitability. In writing to Augusz for help, Liszt indicated that Scitovsky told him the reason for this change was that the Mass was too long.47 The correspondence between Scitovsky, Festetics, Augusz and Liszt became more heated and convoluted over the course of a month, with the press catching wind of the conflict. The Neue Zeitschrift reprinted a frustrated article from the Magyar Sájto (Magyar Press) that claimed the “entire 44 45 46 47

30 May 1878, Br II, 329–330. Klimó, 105. Letter of 1 April 1855, BAA, 52–53. Letter of 2 June 1855, BAA, 54–55. For a detailed explanation of the conflict, see BUS, 315–322.

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nation” waited for a resolution to the matter and implied that Festetics was trying to get one of his own compositions performed in the place of Liszt’s.48 Augusz called on the expertise of other musicians and gained their support for Liszt’s Mass. Liszt’s embroilment in the controversy had pitted him as a patriotic underdog against the high-ranking and “foreign” Scitovsky in the eyes of the press. One reason that the Hungarian press became so upset about Festetics’ machinations was that church music was in its very nature public music intended to reach a broad audience, and so possessed much potential political power. Like symphonic music, church music was also produced by a collective of many individuals striving to produce a coherent, harmonious whole. Choral music presented “massive utterances of collective [will],” a will dedicated to spiritual renewal, humility, worship and praise.49 Liszt’s choral music made a “figurative attempt to employ ‘the people’” as both a guiding muse and as participants.50 Liszt’s choruses were some of the most democratic, participatory works he composed: they required many people to work together, sublimating themselves to a higher, greater good—one that transcended all human divisions. Liszt’s choral pieces exemplified the idea that Masses of the second half of the nineteenth century mediated between sacred and secular realms and critiqued dehumanizing ideologies such as exclusive nationalism.51 In employing the participation of choral societies, Liszt included larger numbers of people in producing his art than ever before. Furthermore, these choral societies often became important sites of nationalist and political activity as active participants in the public sphere. Surely it’s no accident that the embattled nation sought to demonstrate its existence and viability through these mass gatherings: the nation had to be performed in order to exist.52 Three of Liszt’s four large-scale choral works composed in the 1850s and 60s the Gran Mass, Die Legende der heiligen Elisabeth, and the Coronation Mass connected directly to Hungarian nationalism; the fourth, the Christus Mass, is based on Jesus’ life and was first performed in 1873 in Weimar. Choral music possessed a similar public power to that of the symphony. When he turned to composing the Gran Mass, the first of his major church compositions, Liszt faced structural issues, which he resolved in ways similar to those he employed in symphonic poems. Both symphonic poems and 48 “Aus Ungarn,” NZfM 45, no. 5 (25 July 1856): 46–47. 49 Steinberg, 163–166. 50 Minor, 114–116. 51 Steinberg, 166. 52 Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 237.

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c­horal music were inspired by textual sources, sources which helped Liszt develop thematic material to structure the works. In the Gran Mass, Liszt constructed themes that he then could repeat, develop and transform, much as he had treated symphonic thematic material. This development and transformation of the themes in the Gran Mass was both subtle and thorough: “paradoxically for a composer whose aim was to be popular, only the initiated were likely to discover the true significance of these transformations.”53 The dual aims of Liszt’s project, gaining respect as a composer of art music and reaching the masses, continued to be evident and somewhat in conflict in his turn to sacred music. Liszt’s tonal experimentation gained much comment and led many reviewers to talk about the future of religious music.54 Even in Der katholische Christ, a popular Catholic paper, the reviewer commented on the modernity of the Gran Mass. In good and in bad a son of our times, Liszt has dared to plunge himself into the mystery of becoming human and redemption with body and soul, has allowed his joy and suffering to be seen and expressed in a language that belongs to us, in order to announce his religious feelings. The author continued, “What is most noteworthy about this Mass is its unfeigned modern stance, the consistent tone of the times that lets us feel that we have not forgotten how to praise God with today’s musical means.”55 Liszt noted, “the end fugues of the Gloria and Credo were not run-of-the-mill sections (aus dem üblichen Secter gegossen).56 Liszt hoped to forge a new, invigorating path for church music. Because church music was unfamiliar to critics and audiences as an art form, reviews often featured fairly lengthy historical summaries of church music, which were not thought necessary in the case of symphonic music or opera. Such narratives often began with Palestrina, following to Scarlatti, Bach, Haydn, Händel, Mozart and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.57 Summaries and 53 54

Merrick, 114. For musical analysis of Liszt’s modernist experimentation, see Allen Forte, “Liszt’s Experimental Idiom and the Music of the Twentieth Century,” 19th-century Music 10, no. 3 (Spring, 1987): 209–228; Rossana Dalmonte, “Liszt and the Death of Old Europe: Reflections on ‘La lugubre gondola’,” in Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe, 301–322. 55 “Franz Liszt’s Graner Festmesse,” Der katholische Christ no. 15 (15 April 1868): 114. 56 Letter to Mosonyi, 29 April 1857, BUS, 98. 57 See PL, “Liszt’s Messe und deren Aufführung;” LA Zellner, Ueber FL’s Graner Festmesse und ihre Stellung zur geschichtlichen Entwicklung der Kirchenmusik (Vienna 1858), 3–9.

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narratives also implied a teleological lineage for Liszt to inherit. The obscurity of the genre for nineteenth-century audiences spurred Liszt’s interest in writing church music that spoke more directly to the people. The performance of the Gran Mass in 1856 as part of a national-religious festival provided Liszt a large arena in which to herald his intentions.58 Pilgrims from all over Hungary arrived in Esztergom, even sleeping outside in the open air, covered by a “tent of stars as a blanket,” as the establishment paper the Pester Lloyd, founded just two years earlier, reported.59 At four in the morning a cannon shot awoke the town, and long before the ceremonies were to begin, throngs of people lined the streets from the Primate’s residence to the basilica. Liszt conducted the Mass before an audience of 4,000, including the Emperor and Hungarian magnates.60 The celebration lasted until three in the afternoon, and was followed by a banquet with many toasts. At six the meal ended and celebrants proceeded to the Georgi field near the Danube, accompanied by several thousand people. A tent stood there for dignitaries, containing a table laden with bottles of wine and carts with rolls and black bread. Young people clad in red skirts and shoes, as well as other nationalist costumes, performed dances, led by their schoolmasters. People danced csárdás, polkas, and played marches. Beyond its offering celebrants a good time, the Lloyd’s reporter saw many positive results from the festival. He noted that the city benefitted materially from the festival: main streets had been repaved, as well as been provided with more streetlamps. Local shopkeepers and artisans, like the engravers who fulfilled the large order for the many commemorative coins issued, also profited from the festival. Regarding Liszt’s participation, the Lloyd noted with satisfaction, “it is advantageous to play host to a genius.”61 The festival brought together elite and humble Catholics from the Hungarian lands as well as a convergence of religious, nationalist and commercial interests. The occasion’s theatricality and piety provided a dramatic backdrop for Liszt and his new religious subjectivity. The day before he was to conduct the oratorio, Liszt visited the Franciscan tailor Hubert Hatos, and was fitted for a soutane, whose theatrical overtones were not lost on observers: “Liszt’s tall form

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Another’s proposed lineage was Haydn, Beethoven, Cherubini. Franz Ney, Über Franz Liszts Messe (Pest, 1856), 4. Pocknell, 65. “Die Feier in Gran,” PL no. 204, 2 September 1856. This article provided all the descriptive material regarding the event unless otherwise noted. Merrick, 111. “Liszt’s Messe und deren Aufführung in Gran am 31. August,” PL, no. 206, 4 September 1856.

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was heightened even more by the pressed monochromatic habit.”62 Indeed, an obituary for Liszt later recalled “often seeing Liszt wearing religious vestments that suited his thin, tall form very well.”63 He had stepped into the role he had longed for since youth, that of spiritual and artistic guide. Again, his Hungarian identity required him to don a special kind of clothing to distinguish the occasion and the nation itself. Liszt articulated his clerical subjectivity through a physical, visual demonstration. Liszt wrote with great pleasure of the success he enjoyed in Esztergom. He contended that the discerning members of the clergy had already claimed him and their number would grow. He continued, “the Archbishop of Udine has named me the ‘glory of Hungary’. . . . I have taken a serious position as a religious and Catholic composer.”64 To his cousin Eduard he described the audience response to a second performance of the Mass: Yesterday’s performance of my Mass was really just as I had wanted it and by far much more successful than previously. Without exaggeration and in all Christian modesty I say to you that tears were flowing in the very large auditorium . . . and the performers all threw themselves into my interpretation of the holy mysteries . . . everything was a humble prayer to the all-powerful and the savior!65 He later indicated to Eduard that such works were important enough to him to consider taking on more fixed responsibilities, which he had wanted to avoid since leaving Weimar. “Someone could entrust the composition of a Te Deum or something similar to me. For that I would happily do my best, and only in this way would I find it appropriate to return to Hungary.”66 The fact that Liszt now was writing liturgical music gave a new defensive tactic to his supporters in the War of the Romantics. One suggested, “one should not listen with the ears of an art lover, nor with those of a music critic, but rather with ears of devotion (Andacht).”67 The pious listening suggested 62

63 64 65 66 67

“Das Pester Musikfest, aus Anlaß des funfzigjährigen Bestandes des Conservatoriums” [sic], Blätter für Musik, Theater und Kunst XI, no. 66 (18 August 1865). See also Marco Beghelli, “Liszt and Franciscan Fashion at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” in Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe, 47–60, for a discussion Franciscan fashion as fetish. “Franz Liszt,” NFP, no. 7878 (2 August 1886). Letter to Agnes Street-Klindworth, 16 September 1856, Br III, 80. Italics in original. 5 September 1856, Br I, 238. 19 November 1862, Br II, 33. Ney, 2.

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here precluded any intellectual engagement or criticism; the reviewer hoped that Liszt’s religious compositions would end the vituperative debates in the newspapers regarding the future course of art music through an influx of faith and acceptance. Leopold Zellner, a New German enthusiast, continued this line of argumentation in his Viennese paper, Blätter for Musik, Theater und Kunst. When the Gran Mass was performed in Vienna in 1858, he noted that its success was all the more noteworthy given the hostile climate in his hometown. He characterized it as a work, given its nature as religious, contemplative music, that is ill suited to provoke sensual excitement and subsequent lively applause. But through nothing more than its power, its great intentions, in short through its internal ability, it achieved a completely spontaneous success that blew over the old scaffolding of prejudiced opinions built long ago with effort and intrigue like a house of cards. Part of its success, Zellner continued, was due to the willingness of the Hungarian singers to make the voyage to Vienna for the performance. It was risky to blend “religiosity, knightly splendor and national essence (Wesen) into one.”68 In Ludwig Nohl’s view, Liszt’s religious compositions were successful because the composer understood their humble purpose, which was to follow the service and modestly support its progress.69 Liszt’s supporters hastened to his defense in articles that assert the Gran Mass was imbued with Catholic piety. For example, one critic writing in the Neue Zeitschrift described the text as “truly Catholic, genuine (wahr), sublime;” and the Mass itself as “without any doubt a profession of faith.”70 Not all thought that the blending of religiosity with other components yielded positive results: another critic charged in an obituary that Liszt’s compositions lacked the appropriate contemplative, calm devotion required in church music because of their theatrical, dramatic character, which revealed a larger character flaw in Liszt himself.71 This kind of skeptical reception was another

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“Die Aufführungen der Graner Festmesse,” Blätter für Musik, Theater und Kunst 4, no. 25 (26 March 1858). Ludwig Nohl, “Die religiöse Tonkunst unserer Tage,” PL Beilage no. 257, 8 November 1873. “Aus Gran,” NZfM 45, no. 12 (12 September 1856): 120. The phrase “profession of faith” likely reveals the author’s Protestant perspective: such statements were common testaments written by nineteenth-century Protestants in their own form of popular piety. “Franz Liszt,” NFP no. 7884, 8 August 1886.

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consequence of Liszt’s virtuoso past. The Protestant historian Ferdinand Gregorovius remarked, “Yesterday I saw Liszt clothed as an abbé—he climbed out of a hired carriage; his black silk jacket fluttered ironically behind him— Mephistopheles in abbé’s clothing.”72 It’s doubtful that with the soutane Liszt wanted to reawaken the diabolical image he had cultivated in his early virtuosic years. The question of authenticity was compounded by liberal suspicion of religion in general: “the nineteenth century, as a secular age, could not take seriously a mammoth work devoted ostensibly to religion and the Church, particularly from a man as worldly as Liszt was supposed to be.” In regard to the Christus Mass, listeners and critics assumed that “his religion must be insincere, a mere theatrical gesture made by a hypocrite.”73 Even after Liszt died, this perception persisted. In an obituary, one writer claimed that other devout Catholics did not go to the extreme of joining the lower orders in order to profess their faith, and that Liszt had done so merely because of his “aesthetic-theatrical” nature. He reported that when a colleague saw Liszt in the soutane for the first time, Liszt asked, “Doesn’t it look good on me?” The author concluded that being a cleric was not Liszt’s profession, nor his lifestyle, but rather simply a change of clothes.74 Liszt’s ancien regime sensibility regarding subjectivity collided with the newer, inward conception of self that insisted on coherence, consistency and authenticity. During the 1850s Liszt dedicated himself anew to demonstrations of Hungarian patriotism and Catholic piety. These activities complemented his attempts in Weimar to reform German music and to inspire national pride in Germans based on their historical achievements. The Hungarian case presented more difficulties in that the revolution of 1849 had ended violently, the population embraced more confessional diversity, and Liszt knew little about Hungarian history and culture, as Des Bohémiens revealed, despite claiming to be Hungarian himself. His activities in producing official liturgical music were met with warm reception from most nationalists and cautious resignation from those suspicious of the New German direction of Liszt’s compositional efforts. When he dedicated himself to binding together Church and State in a nationalist festival, however, Hungarians of most political backgrounds embraced him as they did the new Compromise that his music represented.

72 73 74

Gregrovius, 195. Merrick, 185. “Franz Liszt.”

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Popular Piety Meets the State

In addition to support of religious festivals, the imperial state sought to cultivate loyalty among its subjects through focusing attention on the dynasty and the personalities that comprised it. This “celebrity monarchism” began with Franz Joseph’s first official visit to Hungary in 1848, followed by Imperial tours of the Habsburg lands in 1851–2 and 1857.75 The tours were meant to inspire popular imperial nationalism and provided an important outlet for crowds, building on the traditions of carnival and pilgrimages, helping to give rise to a wave of peasant piety that found full expression at the consecration of the Esztergom basilica.76 These religious-imperial festivals continued throughout the 1860s with the 1865 Music Festival and the Coronation ceremonies. Beginning in the 1850s, during the time of “normalization” and Habsburg recentralization, Empress Elisabeth started becoming associated with Hungary. In 1857 Ferenc Erkel composed the opera “St. Elisabeth” for an official state visit, and after 1859 the Empress emerged as a champion of Hungarian interests, learning Magyar and residing in the country for months at a time. She promoted the association of herself with St. Elisabeth.77 Princess Elisabeth of Hungary (1207–1231) embodied medieval Catholic universalism. She was brought to live at the court of Thuringia by her father, King András II, when she was four years old, and married Ludwig (who became Ludwig IV) ten years later. When she was sixteen, Elisabeth came into contact with itinerant Franciscan monks, who inspired her to follow their example and spread the Franciscan values of poverty and charity. She began to give her husband’s wealth to the poor, though he had tried to curtail her generous alms. While she was secretly delivering bread to the poor on her husband’s lands, Ludwig interrupted her and asked what was in the pouch she carried. She opened it, revealing a bunch of roses: this miracle of transformation allowed her to continue distributing alms under Ludwig’s nose. When Ludwig departed for the Sixth Crusade, Elisabeth took over the administration of his realm, distributing alms over all of it, even giving away state robes and ornaments. She also built a hospital at the Wartburg, where she tended to at least twenty-eight inmates daily and provided alms for 900 petitioners. Ludwig died of plague when Elisabeth was twenty. After quarrelling about the disposition of her

75 Alice Freifeld, “Empress Elisabeth as Hungarian Queen,” 13–45. 76 Freifeld, Nationalism and the Crowd, 131–39. 77 Freifeld, “Empress Elisabeth,” 148.

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dowry with her mother-in-law Sophie, Elisabeth moved to Marburg, where she died three years later. She was canonized in 1235. When Liszt began to write his oratorio in 1854, he was directly inspired by the parallels he saw between his own life and the story of St. Elisabeth. The narrative form of autobiography based on a saint’s life was common among Catholic chroniclers.78 “Like her,” Liszt later observed, “I was born in Hungary, spent twelve important years of my life in Thuringia, near the Wartburg where she lived.” Elisabeth’s passionate adherence to Franciscan principles must also have resonated with Liszt. He wrote with earnest joy of his relationship to Elisabeth as a reencounter with a dear old friend from whom he could not bear to part.79 In preparing to compose the oratorio, Liszt consulted two Elisabeth texts written by reformers, even liberals, within the Church: Montalembert’s Histoire de Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie (1836), and Danielik’s Magyaroszági Szent Erzsébet Legendája Mai Irásmóddal (The Life of Saint Elisabeth of Hungary) (1857). Montalembert’s popular text helped to spread the renewal of saint-centered piety. Although Montalembert supported social reform à la Lamennais, he, like Liszt, was also an ultramontane who believed that such change needed to start at the top with the Pope. Montalembert’s text provided Liszt the six-part structure for his oratorio, a dramatic piece meant to inspire faith and devotion in listeners. The oratorio form is an extended dramatic one based in religious subject matter. The oratorio was intended for performance without scenery, costumes, or action. Most oratorios emphasize narration and contemplation, and make extensive use of the chorus because they are not performed as theatrical works. However, in the nineteenth century more and more oratorios borrowed content from worldly sources, and particularly in Central Europe, oratorios started to feature nationalist topics along with a growing body of other religious music conscripted to serve the nationalist cause.80 Liszt returned to the idea of the oratorio as an expression of religious piety, and rejected the sharp contemporary distinction between it and opera.81 Liszt wrote of his own undertaking, “It is dedicated

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Lucian Hölscher, ‘The Religious Divide: Piety in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” in Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, 37. Letter of 2 Dec. 1862, Briefe an seine Mutter, 146. Taruskin, 165. Detlef Altenburg, “ ‘Die Erde berührte in diesem Moment den Himmel’: Franz Liszts ‘Legende von der Heiligen Elisabeth’,” in Elisabeth von Thüringen, 583–590, here 583.

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to listeners, not watchers; the dramatic plot will not come to expression from costumes and gestures.”82 In writing a Catholic religious piece, Liszt attempted to compose a universal yet national text. It was almost certainly a rebuttal of sorts to Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. In his essay “Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft,” Wagner, a notorious anti-Catholic, had characterized oratorios as “unnatural monsters.”83 Liszt’s Romantic background, however, told him otherwise: Herder himself had argued that oratorios served the same function that tragedy did for the ancient Greeks in uniting poetry and music to express the thoughts of a group.84 Elisabeth’s inspiration was drawn from more than Hungarian sources: the oratorio’s text was written by the German poet Otto Roquette, and Liszt was also heavily influenced by Moritz von Schwind’s frescoes in the Wartburg, also based on Montalembert’s text. In the name of authenticity, Liszt wrote to Danielik, Mihály Mosonyi and other Hungarian friends and acquaintances, asking them to gather Hungarian folk melodies, which Liszt then used in a leitmotivic fashion to compose Elisabeth’s and her father’s music. After writing to Montalembert and d’Ortigue, as well as studying plainchant texts, Liszt also incorporated traditional Catholic music such as Gregorian chant as used in the Magnificat of the Mass.85 Another way in which Liszt’s cosmopolitan sensibility countered Wagner’s solely nationalist vision of the medieval past was in his sympathetic treatment of the Hungarians, whom Wagner had portrayed as foreign enemies in Lohengrin.86 The 1865 premiere of the Elisabeth oratorio took place in Pest as the culmination of a music festival celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the national music conservatory, which drew very large crowds to the city.87 This was a festival that signaled a new reconciliation between the imperial state and Hungarian government, which culminated two years later in the Compromise. The concomitant performance of Liszt’s rendition of the Rákóczy March also indicated a new imperial tolerance of Hungarian nationalism. For the performance of Liszt’s oratorio, more than 1000 singers gathered from around 82 83 84 85 86 87

Gajdos, 144. Richard Wagner, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, vols. 3, 101, 119, quoted in “‘Die Erde berührte in diesem Moment den Himmel’,” 583. Donakowski, 122. Altenburg, 586; Nicolas Dufetel, “Liszt’s Religious Workshop and Gregorian Chant: How to Make New with the Old,” Liszt’s Legacies Symposium, Ottawa, Canada, 29 July 2011. Ther, 366. NFP no. 350, 20 August 1865.

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Hungary to participate.88 They were joined in the orchestra by Imperial court violinist Ede Reményi and Mosonyi. Pianist, composer, and critic Kornél Ábrányi provided the translation into Magyar, and Erkel helped with rehearsals. The mass was performed on August 20, St. Stephen’s Day. (Figure 5.1) The newspaper illustration shows Liszt’s long figure dramatically heightened by the soutane. The imperial regime attempted to retain St. Stephen’s Day as a holiday of Habsburg Catholicism as well as of Hungarian nationalism even as the popular festival grew with the appearance of rail transport after 1867. 89

figure 5.1 Liszt conducts Elisabeth in the Redoute. Házank, 3. September 1865, Metropolitan Ervin Szábo Library, Budapest, Budapest Collection89

88 Freifeld, Nationalism and the Crowd, 207. 89 The author of this volume has made all reasonable efforts to trace the copyright holders for this figure. Communications from copyright holders are welcome, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters.

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Liszt was overjoyed with the positive reception Elisabeth garnered, writing to Sayn-Wittgenstein that even the Pester Lloyd, which had not supported him in the past, now seemed to.90 The success of the oratorio provided him an opportunity to restore his damaged reputation after the 1859 public relations debacle Des Bohémiens had unleashed in Hungary. He wrote to Mosonyi, “if my wish comes true, this work will later be an integral contribution to a new Hungarian musical literature.”91 In many ways, the oratorio was Liszt’s crowning achievement. It was a synthesis of his musical, national, and spiritual sensibilities. He wrote to Brendel upon its completion, it should not remain in isolation, and I must make sure that the corresponding audience (gehörige Gesellschaft) expands (heranwachst)! Other people may see this concern as something petty, useless, thankless and hard to bear; for me it is the only point of art (Kunst-Zweck) that I must strive for and for which I must sacrifice everything.92 He also insisted that, despite its broad appeal and dramatic narrative, it remain a religious work: he refused to allow staged productions.93 The last of Liszt’s major liturgical public works, the Coronation Mass, cemented his role as national composer in Hungary. Archbishop János Simor, Scitovsky’s successor, commissioned it for Franz Joseph’s adoption of the Hungarian crown. Liszt happily wrote, “It is my loyal ambition to . . . write the Coronation Mass, and to show myself worthy of it as a Catholic, a Hungarian, and a composer.”94 It was to be not only a spiritual and religious piece, but also one that reflected the fire and passion Liszt believed characterized the Hungarian people. The national components that Liszt featured in the Mass included the verbunkós style, the “Hungarian scale” with augmented fourths and seconds, as well as a quotation from the Rákóczy March in the Gloria section, no little irony considering its long-reviled status in the Habsburg lands.95 90 23 August 1865, Br VI, 86. 91 10 November 1862, BUS, 113. 92 Letter of 8 Nov. 1862, Br II, 28. 93 Merrick, 168. 94 Letter of 20 February 1865, BAA, 101. 95 Walker, The Final Years, 149. In 1884, Liszt was invited to compose a work for the opening of the Budapest Opera House, to be performed in the presence of Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth. Liszt’s work included material from the Rákóczy Song and was blocked because of its potential for disruption, even though it was unrelated to the Rákóczy March. Walker, 410.

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Upon hearing of Liszt’s participation, some Austrians objected that all aspects of the coronation music should fall to the Imperial Chapel. The Hungarian press leapt into action as they had for the performance of the Gran Mass and forced the Austrians to make some concessions. One Austrian demand that bent nationalist noses especially out of joint was their insistence that Hungarian musical participation be limited to Liszt’s compositional contribution. A journalist writing for the Lloyd “could not suppress a feeling of regret” about this.96 The more partisan Zenészeti Lapok (Musical Pages), founded in 1860 by Kornél Ábrányi, asked if the new political arrangements were a “Compromise,” why couldn’t a compromise be reached in the artistic sphere? Rather than “German musicians wearing purple pants,” musicians from the Hungarian National Theater should perform the Coronation Mass.97 If this petition were to be denied, the author suggested, an alternate performance of Elisabeth should be conducted by Liszt for the royal couple at another time.98 The indignation felt by Hungarian nationalists lingered for a long time: this matter was raised again in 1886, when József Székely remembered that a Mr. Török, a reporter covering the coronation, was threatened afterward by the police because he wrote that some of the girls’ Habsburg black-and-yellow dresses clashed with the “beautiful Hungarianness” (szép magyarság) of the festival, nor Török’s patriotic views.99 In the end, Liszt was not invited to the coronation itself, despite an official request by Count Gyula Andrássy, Hungary’s Prime Minister, that he conduct the Coronation Mass. In order to hear his work, Liszt ensconced himself in the choir loft of the Matyás church. Nonetheless, Liszt’s contribution to the coronation, and by extension his implicit endorsement of the Compromise lent Hungarian liberals confidence that they could create a true partnership between Pest and Vienna, and that Liszt’s “patriotism represented a conciliation with Germanic, Catholic Austria.”100 The coronation ceremony provided spectators with a “theater of religiousnational character,” shaped by centuries-old ritual.101 The ceremony consisted 96 97

“Franz Liszts Kronungsmesse,” PL no. 139 (13 June 1867). This matter was addressed again at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Coronation. See Kornél Ábrányi, “A Koronázási mise torténetéhez,” [Additions to the History of the Coronation Mass] Vasárnapi Újság [Sunday News] 39, no. 25 (19 June 1892): 434. 98 “Művészeti újdonságok,” [“What’s new in music”] Zenészeti Lapok 12 May, 19 May, 2 June 1867. 99 József Székely, “Liszt Ferencröl,” [With Franz Liszt] Vasárnapi Újság 33, no. 32 (8 August 1886): 517. 100 Freifeld, 207. 101 AAZ, no. 163 (12 June 1867): 2657.

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of a private component, during which Liszt’s Mass was performed and Franz Joseph was crowned, and the public celebration afterward. The public celebration was part of the Habsburg regime’s attempt to bond with the Hungarian people via celebrity monarchism. The state had become aware of its new dependence on crowd participation and approval. The traditional, private portion of the ceremony, which gained even the conservative Augsburger Allgemeine’s condemnation for its exclusion of the people, took place in the Matyás Church on Castle Hill in Buda.102 The presence of huge crowds thronging the hill brought home to the aristocracy gathered in the church that “the ‘nation’ was [now] a much larger entity” than it had been even fifty years earlier, in the Hungarus era of nationalist thinking.103 Liszt was a crowd favorite, receiving “emotional ovations everywhere he went.”104 Janka Wohl enthusiastically recounted his departure from the Church: “As he walked bareheaded, his snow-white hair floated on the breeze, and his features seemed cast in brass. . . . Soon a hundred thousand men and women were frantically applauding him.” This jubilation carried to the other side of the Danube, where spectators believed it was the King himself being applauded.105 After the coronation Franz Joseph also emerged from the Matyás church, gathered soil from all the Hungarian counties that had been heaped on Castle Hill, bearing St. Stephen’s sword in his right hand, and rode over Széchenyi’s chain bridge to the Pest side of the river. There, he flung the soil into the wind, facing each of the four cardinal directions, blessing the Hungarian lands.106 Hungarians embraced the Mass, with its particular “Hungarian” components, eagerly. Ábrányi asserted that even in church music, reform and progress were necessary and appropriate. “We require, on top of everything else, in agreement with the spirit of the times, the right to express our nationality in art.”107 Such was the people’s right: cosmopolitan music would have been inappropriate for such an occasion, he insisted.108 He was defending the Mass against Viennese critics who found it poorly organized and thought the Hungarian rhythms and scales were gimmicky. The Mass became a 102 103 104 105

AAZ, no. 164 (13 June 1867): 2675. Freifeld, 214. Freifeld, 217. Wohl, 20–21. Surely she exaggerated the size of the crowd. She also claimed that Liszt conducted the Mass. 19. 106 Klimó, 115. 107 Kornél Ábrányi, Franz Liszt’s Ungarische Krönungs-Messe: Eine Musikalische Studie, trans. Heinrich Gobbi (Leipzig, 1871), 7. 108 Ábrányi, 12.

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favorite in Pressburg, where it was performed liturgically thirty-nine times between 1874–1910.109 Liszt himself remarked, “the Coronation Mass has met with the most kind reception. None of my works up to the present time had been so favorably accepted.”110 The very warm response to Liszt’s departure from Castle Hill after the Coronation, and Franz Joseph’s grand ceremonial gestures, indicate the convergence of elite ceremony with popular celebration. Liszt was in the middle of these, negotiating between them in seeking to compose more accessible music for official church and state occasions. Liszt’s presence highlighted the new power of nationalist piety in the Habsburg lands. His church music reforms met with generally warm approval, although some critics continued to see his theatrical, virtuoso past behind his compositions and his membership in the Church. The new Hungarian state sought allies where it could find them, however, and Liszt’s international fame made him an attractive figure to bolster the state’s legitimacy and evoke patriotism from a larger section of the Hungarian population than had previously embraced it.

Liszt as Absent Father

When Hungary gained autonomy in 1867, it asserted itself as a political entity ready to rule itself. The idea of sovereignty has long been linked with fatherly roles and responsibilities. The king as father of his people shifted with representative government, relegating more power to citizens and men as paterfamilias. As we’ve established, citizenship was linked with male virtues. New states need to establish their legitimacy and authority not only on the world stage, but also with their own citizens. Liszt’s renewed attention to Hungary converged with the state’s need for legitimacy, and Liszt was scripted to play a leading role as a moral and spiritual guide as well as protector and agent of the nation’s interests. Since Liszt’s tours of Budapest and other Hungarian cities in 1839–40 and 1846, many music-lovers and nationalists had found in him a national savior. When Liszt chose to end his virtuoso career to settle in Weimar, this constituency was very disappointed. The Hungarian press, as well as memoirs and essays written about Liszt reflect a sense of abandonment by a father figure

109 Merrick, 129. 110 Letter to Eduard, 20 June 1867, Br II, 100.

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throughout the rest of Liszt’s life.111 As early as 1856, papers expressed a desire for Liszt to settle in Hungary. Papers like the Pester Lloyd saw in Liszt’s presence and compositions a possibility for a “glorious musical future,” one that could even “bind” him to Hungary.112 Rumors swirled around in the early 1860s that Liszt was going to return to Hungary. In 1864, a year before Liszt joined the church, Zenészeti Lapok claimed that Liszt was ready to return to Hungary and waited only for a proper position to be offered to him in Pest, condemning as “pure speculation” the news that Liszt was going to take an ecclesiastical position. Its author called upon a patron to offer Liszt a place so the composer could contribute to the “progression of Hungarian art and culture.”113 This article also was a form of pressure exerted by musicians and critics on the state to support the endowment of national music institutions. One moment of national pride during which nationalists attempted to fix Liszt in place as a Hungarian hero came in 1873. In celebration of Liszt’s 50-year career as a performing artist, his friends in Budapest published an announcement of the planned festivities. Even a paper edited by Adolf Ágai, usually opposed to Liszt and his music, published a favorable article regarding the jubilee.114 Others published commemorative texts. One such characterized Liszt as the “living idol of the world” who made his nation proud, but also provoked tears of pain. “Where could a more worthy cause of tears be, than in the case of this poor nation, to which Liszt has stated he belongs, but which nonetheless does not possess him and cannot name him her own?”115 In seeking to cement Liszt’s connection to the nation even more firmly, József Kádas rewrote history regarding Liszt’s tours and claimed that “the longing for his fatherland, Hungary, where his cradle had been, drove him powerfully homeward” in 1839. A similar plea was published in the Gazette de Hongrie, which called for Liszt to compose music that would heal the nation. “Musician famous the world over, wherever you go, we remain faithful to you. Tell me, do you yearn for this 111 Liszt had very little interaction with his own children, and the deaths of Blandine and Daniel at the ages of twenty-six and twenty doomed any adult closeness. For the impact of Liszt’s absence on his daughter Cosima, see Oliver Hilmes, Herrin des Hügels: Das Leben der Cosima Wagner (Munich, 2008), as well as Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebücher (Munich, 1977). 112 “Liszt’s Messe und deren Aufführung.” 113 “Egy Látogatás Liszt Ferencnél” [A Visit to Ferenc Liszt], Zenészeti Lapok IV (31 March 1864), 210. 114 “Liszt Ferencz,” Magyarország es a Nagyvilág [Hungary and the World] IX, no. 45 (9 November 1873). 115 József Kádas, Zur Erinnerung an Franz Liszt und dessen fünfzig-jährige Künstler-Jubiläum (Pest, 1874), 21.

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sick homeland?”116 Another admirer exclaimed that the jubilee was a moment “whose importance has been embraced and recognized, acknowledged even outside the boundaries of the fatherland, in the entire Monarchy.”117 The author continued that Liszt’s absence from the country may have led some to challenge his patriotism, but his great nurturing of artists in Hungary was a major contribution to the nation. It appeared in 1873 that nationalists had won a permanent victory in anchoring Liszt in Hungary. Liszt’s jubilee came on the heels of the news that he would join the teaching staff and administrative board of the newly approved Academy of Music. This appointment required a steady presence in Budapest and gained Liszt 4000 forints monthly for expenses as well as rooms provided by the Academy. Liszt retained the power to appoint the other teaching staff per his stipulation to the Minister of Culture Ágoston Tréfort. Liszt became an integral part of building a Hungarian music culture through this institution, training countless musicians, conductors and composers.118 For professional musicians, lineage is an important way to contextualize and validate an artist’s style and strengths. Through his pupils, Liszt “fathered” many pianists. Some pianists today still trace their lineage back to Liszt. Nonetheless, he did not settle exclusively in Budapest; he continued with his “vie trifurquée” between Rome, Weimar, and the Hungarian capital, balancing his priorities, obligations, and passions between the three sites. As conceptions of national identity started to emphasize ethnicity and language more than culture, and as mass political movements began to form, Liszt’s understanding of his Hungarianness began to seem dated. Supporters called upon Liszt’s actions and his spirit to define his national identity. Many pointed out that since Liszt was born in Hungary, he was Hungarian; this concept of nationality based in the soil had also undergirded the early nineteenthcentury Hungarus ideology. Janka Wohl pointed out that Liszt belonged to a generation of “old men” who could not speak a difficult language, Magyar, and that his spirit and love of the country would have to serve as evidence of his belonging; he had chosen to identify himself with Hungary, Wohl concluded, when most Western Europeans had known more about China than they had about Hungary. She and others exhibited a sense of Liszt being

116 “À Franz Liszt,” Gazette de Hongrie 1, no. 36 (9 December 1880). 117 “Franz Liszt’s fünfzigjährige Jubiläumsfeier in Pest,” NZfM 69, no. 48 (21 November 1873): 485. See Wohl’s memoir for similar sentiments. 118 Legány, Ferenc Liszt and His Country 1874–1886, 180; Tibor Frank, “Liszt, Brahms, Mahler: Music in Late 19th Century Budapest,” in Hungary and European Civilization, 343–360.

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misunderstood and overlooked, and argued that his patriotism had therefore been an act of courage as well.119 Explaining Liszt’s absence from Hungary continued to present a major focus of reception, even in obituaries. The Pesti Náplo, for example, brought up several points. The piece remarked that Liszt did not enjoy an intimate relationship with his homeland, which until recently had not fully appreciated him in any case. It also said that his great virtuosic talent found Hungary too small— and the lack of attention was one factor to account for his absence.120 Another way in which the country was too small for Liszt is that when Liszt was born, Hungary was still sleeping: “Liszt flew rapidly while the nation went steadily” forward. Liszt was not the only artist to leave Hungary for better opportunities elsewhere.121 It’s possible that if a sphere of activity had been prepared for him five or six years earlier, it would have been much easier to adapt to living in Hungary.122

Liszt’s Lack of Understanding

After 1867 the unity of opposition to the Habsburg state fell apart in the political, religious and cultural realms. As Deák’s reformist government sought to modernize the country, Budapest’s population grew exponentially, putting new demands on the state, promoting a rapid growth in the bureaucracy and contributing to the rise of mass politics. Now that it was completely responsible for its own domestic policies, a heightened insecurity in cultural matters and an intensified search for a national identity arose in Hungary. After the Compromise, economic growth and a shift to a more industrialized, urban, capitalist society left the gentry scrambling for bureaucratic or military posts as they could no longer live off their land; an important number of them turned to nationalism with a renewed commitment to Magyarization. As historian Judit Frigyesi observes, nationalists’ anxiety over their national identity was expressed in the “tremendous effort to assert their presence on the map

119 120 121 122

Wohl, 224–25. “Liszt Ferencz,” Pesti Napló 37, no. 212 (2 August 1886). Liszt Ferencz hazájában,” [Franz Liszt at Home] PN 37, no. 213 (3 August 1886). Legány suggest that lack of a thriving musical culture that could inspire and support him is the reason Liszt did not live in Hungary. Ferenc Liszt and His Country 1869–1873, 62.

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of Europe as ‘Hungarians’ while hoping to create a ‘truly European’ society and culture.”123 Liszt, who had served a vital ambassadorial function for Hungary since 1839, could not satisfy various nationalist needs. His love of Hungary did not eliminate his ignorance about the lives of ordinary people who lived there. Liszt did not have access to the lower strata of society; he did not reside in Hungary for long durations; he didn’t fully understand the language. He also failed to grasp the growing power of the “politics in a new key”, that is, mass political movements such as socialism or political anti-Semitism.124 This ignorance, plus his cosmopolitan outlook which sometimes led him to dismiss or minimize the importance of a fixed, stable national identity for his contemporaries, caused another public relations disaster. As a member of a privileged elite, Liszt was insensitive to the perceptions of smaller oppressed groups such as Hungarians in 1859 and Jews in 1881. This blindness was mirrored by the Hungarians themselves after 1867 as they continued to oppress other nationalities such as the Slovaks.125 Linguistic policy became a hot-button issue in attempting to define and fix individuals’ national identity. While the constitution of 1867 granted equality to all citizens regardless of “nationality” and also granted opportunities for the use of languages other than Magyar in the courts, administration, education and religious life, starting in the 1880s the government pursued a Magyarization policy that violated some of those rights. Several of the papers which Liszt read regularly featured stories about German-Hungarian tensions. The Gazette de Hongrie and the Pester Lloyd both attacked an article printed in a German weekly illustrated, Die Gartenlaube, in which an “AllemandHongrois” decried the discrimination he faced in Hungary. Not only did the Hungarian papers denounce the piece as false and dangerously misleading for German and Austro-Hungarian readers; they also engaged in a deconstruction of the Gartenlaube itself, questioning its authority on such important political matters and taking it to task for irresponsibility.126 The reason why the author 123 124 125 126

Frigyesi, 3. Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Culture and Politics (New York, 1980), 116–180. Freifeld, 60. “Les Allemands en Hongrie,” Gazette de Hongrie 1, no. 13 (1 July 1880); A. Neményi, “Die magyarischen Terroristen und die Gelehrten der ‘Gartenlaube’,” PL 27, no. 175 (26 June 1880). See also Péter Hanák, “The Image of the Germans and the Jews in the Hungarian Mirror of the Nineteenth Century,” in The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest (Princeton, 1998), 44–62.

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of the Gartenlaube article was suffering as a German in Hungary, the Gazette suggested, was because he was one of those who hadn’t been successful. The Gazette claimed that whenever German-Hungarians faced setbacks or unpleasantries, they wrapped themselves in the mantle of Deutschtum, failing to take personal responsibility. The article accused German patriots in Hungary of arrogance and ignorance, in short, of an imperial attitude. In a collection of essays about Budapest, Albert Sturm characterized the German-Hungarian as an individual in conflict, possessing two souls in his body, both of which demanded a clear and complete expression. The German-Hungarian, Sturm argued, was torn between the military glory of his father’s day and the spiritually uplifting song of his mother. Sturm cast Liszt as a figure who struggled and veered between the two extremes, yet his [Hungarian] fatherland called to him and drove him incessantly to the national hearth (heimathlichen Scholle).127 Sturm recognized Liszt’s cosmopolitan background, but still hoped that it would be trumped by true Hungarianness. These texts reflect the increasing divisions in Hungarian society and the new emphasis on collective identities and collective rights based in national belonging. The flip side of Magyarization and an emphasis on national unity arose in a display of cultural insecurity. While nationalist fears about the viability of a national culture were by no means new, the fact that Hungary now governed itself also meant they were responsible for any weaknesses or failings. Fear about national insignificance reared its head regarding Liszt’s reputation and activities abroad, giving rise to a feeling of abandonment. These fears also, however, nurtured overcompensation, even arrogance in seeking to account for such perceived failings. For the Beethoven Festival of 1870 in Pest, Liszt conducted an all-Beethoven concert (after declining to participate in Vienna). This occasion was attended by Hungary’s artistic and intellectual elite, and Ábrányi’s paper boasted, “the celebration not only achieved European significance but also aroused the envy of other nations.”128 The author was pointing out the importance and value of the Hungarian nation. The reception of Liszt’s music as well as of other musicians was colored by a nationalist need.129 An article in Zenészeti Lapok by Sándor Bartha asked, “Is Music National or Cosmopolitan?” and argued that urbanization and urban life, 127 Albert Sturm, Culturbilder aus Budapest (Leipzig, 1876), 127–129. 128 Zenészeti Lapok, 1870–71, 134–35, quoted in Walker, The Final Years, 227. See also Klimó, 135. 129 Mária Eckhardt, “Die Zeitgenössische Rezeption der symphonische Werke Franz Liszts in Ungarn,” in Liszt und Europa, 245–264, here 248; Zoltán Roman, Gustav Mahler and Hungary (Budapest, 1991), 31–32.

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where most music was produced, was driven by an audience “which emulates foreign tastes”. For Bartha, national music by default originated in the timeless countryside and cosmopolitanism was a foreign import of imperial power.130 Bartha embraced Herderian ideas about authentic national culture residing in climate and environment.131 In short, Hungarian music could only come into being if “foreign gods” were discarded. Like Ábrányi’s piece on the Coronation Mass, Bartha’s article sought to assert the value of Hungarian music as opposed to “cosmopolitan” music, which both authors associated with German “universal” musical forms. This article may in part have been inspired by Liszt’s book Des Bohémiens. The reissue of Des Bohémiens in 1881 was ill timed and ill considered. SaynWittgenstein added material to the original and Liszt conceded to its republication. He corresponded regularly with her about the revision and reissue of Des Bohémiens, although he did not read any of the manuscript itself.132 The first edition had contained anti-Semitic material that was overshadowed in Hungary by the nationalist outrage Liszt’s claims about the Gypsy origins of Hungarian music engendered. Also, the German translation of the original text by Peter Cornelius omitted much of the text about Jews. The 1881 German edition was unexpurgated, and in fact Sayn-Wittgenstein embellished the antiSemitic material. Not only did the second edition stir up smoldering embers of Hungarian nationalism in regard to the origins of Hungarian music; it also provoked the ire and outrage of its Jewish readers. Given his 1869 letter to her criticizing Wagner’s reissue of “Das Judenthum,” one would think Liszt could foresee the public relations disaster that awaited him. Its release pre-dated an anti-Semitic blood libel trial in Hungary by mere months, and anti-Semitic political parties were beginning to emerge in the Habsburg lands. Although liberal reformers like Deák and Eötvös and romantics like Petőfi had long called for Jewish emancipation, this emancipation was almost always coupled with an assumption that Jews would then assimilate to Magyardom.133 Apologists defend Liszt’s misstep by emphasizing that Sayn-Wittgenstein was the author of the anti-Semitic material, and state that Liszt didn’t want to 130 Sándor Bartha, “Eszmék a zenészeti Kosmopolitsmusról,” [Ideas about musical cosmopolitanism] Zeneszéti Lapok 2, no. 6 (7 November 1861): 41–42. 131 Bartha, “Eszmék a zenészeti Kosmopolitsmusról,” [“Ideas about Musical Cosmopolitanism”] Zeneszéti Lapok 2, no. 5 (31 October 1861): 32–35. 132 Klára Hamburger, “Understanding the Hungarian Reception History of Liszt’s Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (1859/1881),” Journal of the American Liszt Society (2003): 80. See also 83n10. 133 Raphael Patai, The Jews of Hungary: History, Culture, Psychology (Detroit, 1996), 310.

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hurt or offend her and so allowed the bigoted sections to remain.134 This line of reasoning ignores the original text’s softer but still evident anti-Semitism. Another strategy focuses on the claim that the furor concerning the 1881 reissue was not really about anti-Semitism per se but was about anti-modernist aesthetics and fear of Hungary’s reputation abroad.135 As a public figure of high stature, and especially since he joined the Church, of moral stature, Liszt’s book besmirched his reputation and weakened Hungarians’ support and endorsement of him; some felt betrayed by one who had once represented the nation in an honorable fashion. Even though he expressed sympathy and concern for a homeless and persecuted people (as he did for the Gypsies), the passage bemoaning the medieval persecution of the Jews did not soften readers’ outrage. Liszt’s written hope that medieval violence against a vulnerable people would not return was undermined by his support for Jewish emigration to Palestine, a common stance in Hungary, embraced by certain Jews as well.136 The reissue of Des Bohémiens was met with vehement disgust, and as the Neues Pester Journal asked, Was it really necessary for this glowing name to dirty itself with antiSemitic incitement?. . . . If this book originated with an unknown, it would simply be a bad book; if it comes from an artist, it’s unworthy; if it originates from a priest, it’s low; and since it comes from Franz Liszt, it’s sad. After all, what reason did he have to write such a thing, the article asked. “He, whose life was without deprivation, whose happiness was without disillusionment, whose independence was unchallenged, whose success remained without bitterness,” what grounds did he have? Who really wrote the book—the artist, or the abbé?137 The book’s viciousness permanently damaged his reputation as a cosmopolite and as a Christian. One particularly outspoken article, published in the Viennese satirical paper Der Floh, saw Wagner’s hand in the book’s ideas and uneven tone, tying Liszt to the extreme anti-Semitic German nationalism being propagated out of Bayreuth by Cosima Wagner and Hans von Wolzogen’s

134 Walker, The Final Years, 405–06; Hamburger, 80. 135 Eckhardt, 253. 136 Fischer, 88–89, Patai, 348. 137 Neues Pester Journal no. 324 (23 November 1881).

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Bayreuther Blätter.138 It even accused Liszt of favoring vivisection and deportation of Jews. A former critic for the Pester Lloyd, Miska Schütz, devoted a whole book to the issue and pointed out, “Franz Liszt understands current tastes and fashions very well and he possesses a keen ear for the voices of the day and knows how to listen to them very closely.”139 His conclusion, however, that Liszt was sympathetic to virulently anti-Semitic thinkers such as [Adolf] Stöcker, [Ernst] Henrici, and [Győző] Istóczy was false. The caricature that accompanies Schütz’s piece depicts Liszt in his soutane and medals playing a portable Bösendorfer keyboard, accompanied by Wagner on a drum and Hans von Bülow on the cymbals. Liszt rides a donkey as Jesus did when entering Jerusalem, and they are followed by a large, excited mob. (Figure 5.2) Liszt’s unawareness was pathetically on display in letters to SaynWittgenstein as his dismay over the furor grew. In despair he argued that the press was controlled by Jews and he only wrote what acquaintances like George Eliot told him about Jewish emigration to Palestine. Liszt ended up apologizing in the Gazette de Hongrie and the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikzeitung, but it was too little too late.140 But in private he wrote a distasteful letter to SaynWittgenstein, talking about the “insolence” of the Pester Lloyd, responsibility of the editor in chief, “Mr. Falk, Israelite.” He bemoaned the hostility of Jewish journalists and retraced the reception of the book: “the first edition of this book earned me the indignation of Magyar chauvinists, with the second edition it’s even worse: Israel, more than three quarters of it, would happily stone me.”141 Liszt’s indignant tone and befuddlement about the anger the book provoked continued in his private correspondence with close friends. In a letter from the early 1880s to his protégé Ödön Mihailovich, Liszt wailed,

138 “Der allerneueste Messias der Juden,” Der Floh 13, no. 48 (27 November 1881); a similar claim was made in “Liszt antisemitasága,” [Liszt’s anti-Semitism], Fővárosi Lapok no. 269 (25 November 1881): 1602. See a more moderate commentary in “Franz Liszt über die Juden,” PL 28, no. 323 (23 November 1881). Lastly, see Sagittarius, Liszt über die Juden (Budapest, 1881), 11, for the connection the author draws between Wagner and Liszt. For anti-Semitism from Bayreuth, see Annette Hein, “Es ist viel Hitler in Wagner”: Rassismus und antisemitische Deutschtumsideologie in den Bayreuther Blättern (1878–1938) (Tübingen, 1996). 139 Schütz, 5. 140 Liszt wrote several letters to Sayn-Wittgenstein about the debacle; see their complete versions GSA 59/211, 9 February 1882, 5 March 1882. See also Hamburger, “Understanding the Hungarian Reception,” 82; letter to editor, 6 February 1883, Br II, 314–15. 141 12 March 1884, GSA 59/211.

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figure 5.2 The most recent Jewish Messiah. Der Floh, 27. November 1881 ANNO/ Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

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Everyone is against me. Catholics because they find my church music profane, Protestants because to them my music is Catholic, Freemasons because they think the music too clerical; to conservatives I am a revolutionary, to the ‘futurists’ an old Jacobin. As for the Italians, . . . if they support Garibaldi they detest me as a hypocrite, if they are on the side of the Vatican I am accused of bringing the Venusberg into the Church. To Bayreuth I am not a composer but a publicity agent. The Germans reject my music as French, the French as German; to the Austrians I write Gypsy music, to the Hungarians foreign music. And the Jews loathe me, my music and myself, for no reason at all.142 Liszt felt trapped within the binary polarities he described to Mihailovich. He did not fully understand, much less embrace, exclusivist nationalism or doctrinal religion; the strain of negotiating a decades-long path between social and cultural dichotomies was beginning to tell. Liszt’s feeling of being unknown, of being a pawn or figurehead for others’ interests, was not assuaged by his membership in the Church. Despite his warm welcome among the Catholic celebrants at festivals and his acceptance among nationalists as a fit representative of Hungary during the Compromise, Liszt’s cosmopolitanism continued to provoke feelings anger and betrayal from some of his supporters. One last institution, one of his own making, however, seemed to afford him a community of like-minded colleagues who respected his music as well as his cosmopolitan approach to national identity. 142 Cited in Walker, The Final Years, 411.

chapter 6

The General German Music Association In 1859, the organizers of a Tonkünstler-Versammlung in Leipzig distributed 3,000 tickets for a performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, to be conducted by Liszt in the Thomaskirche.1 In his review of the event, Richard Pohl reminded his readers that this very church had been the site of J.S. Bach’s compositional activity in Leipzig, drawing a historical connection to one of the first great German composers. While for some the church represented a unified German culture that hearkened back for centuries, for others it represented a portion of that culture, one that was becoming increasingly dominant: northern Protestantism. The organizers of the Tonkünstler-Versammlung sought to reconcile two deep rifts in German musical culture: the confessional gap (to be bridged with a Catholic conductor leading a Catholic Mass in a Protestant church and city), and the divide between autonomists and New Germans, in offering a “classic” work from the musical canon that had been taking shape over the past decades. Through this event, Franz Liszt and Franz Brendel sought to unite German musicians on a national level. Regional music associations abounded across the German lands, in cities such as Dresden, Berlin and Leipzig; they had served an important purpose of strengthening local and regional communications and participation in the public sphere. None of these had attempted thus far to unite musicians into one organization. Now, Liszt and Brendel argued, was the time to join these groups together on a national level. Between 700 and 800 people attended the 1859 meeting.2 The Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (ADMV), formed at the Tonkünstler-Versammlung, was in part a response to the War of the Romantics that had created a rift in German musical life. Its founders and members believed that the Association could resolve that conflict and ameliorate conditions for German musicians, as well as bring cultural unity to the nation. Liszt became the symbol of what the ADMV wanted to achieve. As Peter Cornelius said, “Liszt’s fierce struggle for his own hard-won dignity 1 Richard Pohl, “Die Leipziger Tonkünstler-Versammlung am 1–4 Juni 1859,” NZfM 51, no. 1 (1 July 1859): 3. 2 Louis Köhler, “Die zweite Tonkünstler-Versammlung zu Weimar,” NBM 15, no. 37 (11 September 1861): 291. See also Irina Lucke-Kaminiarz, “Die Tonkünstlerversammlungen des ADMV—ein internationale Forum zeitgenössischer Musik?” in Liszt und Europa, 63–75, for more details about membership, meeting locations, and programs.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004279223_008

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inspires others to emulate him.”3 Articles regarding the Association frequently described Liszt as its spiritual father. Indeed, he was so central to the Association that he was named Honorary President in 1873, the year of his artistic golden jubilee. Liszt participated in the annual Tonkünstler-Versammlungen until the end of his life, taking an active part in their planning and production. His own compositions formed a cornerstone of the ADMV’s musical offerings. Historians see the posthumously named Gründerzeit, the era immediately preceding the establishment of a unified German state, as one when regional and confessional identities became more contentious. In the ADMV, I see instead a rhetoric of tolerance and cosmopolitanism as well as real efforts to transcend regional, political, confessional and aesthetic divides. The ADMV’s founding coincided with other German attempts to unite people into larger institutional frameworks, and faced many of the same thorny questions as did political activists. The fact that the ADMV was a cultural and professional organization, however, lent it a different possibility for the articulation of German nationhood. For these musicians, German identity still rested on a cosmopolitan understanding of the German nation, an understanding that necessitated their active outreach to each other and to the broader Volk at large. In doing so, musicians confronted each other’s regional, confessional and aesthetic loyalties, often projected onto Liszt himself, that threatened to trump their national mission.4 Historians portray associations in the 1860s onward as exclusive gatherings of like-minded individuals; even when associations claimed to be neutral in terms of confessional identity, their membership rarely bridged the Protestant/Catholic divide.5 While it’s true that the ADMV did represent the Honatorien, it did seek to actively improve the lot of young musicians, to unite formerly divided groups and spread the appreciation and love of music to a broader audience. Musicians were aware of the associational activities of other professions and social classes. A music critic called upon his readers, “may [musicians] always succeed in belonging to a whole. . . . Or do they want to be shamed by the handworkers and day laborers, who see in the idea of

3 Peter Cornelius, “Das Fest des Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins in Meiningen,” Alm I (1868): 180. 4 Musicologists have paid little attention to the organization. However, James Deaville is currently working on a monograph about the Association. 5 Smith, 98.

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a­ ssociation a great task of the present?”6 In this and its consistent elision of the confessional divide the ADMV proved to be the exception to the rule.

The Leipzig Tonkünstler-Versammlung

Associations contributed to building a thriving public sphere in the ­nineteenth-century German lands. Starting in the 1840s, associations began to command the allegiance and attention of public-minded Germans. The numbers of such groups and their individual memberships continued to grow until 1870, when it is estimated, one in every two Germans belonged to an association.7 As products of the dissolution of the corporate order, plus increased mobility and extension of print communications, associations filled the need for individual and group identity. Such groups most often were dedicated to social or moral improvement, or to fostering cultural activity. As in the case of the Freemasons, association members believed their groups to be microcosms of society and the nation: what members learned and experienced in these smaller groups helped to build a larger civic foundation.8 Such associations were subject to intense scrutiny after 1848, and easily aroused suspicion among conservative rulers. Yet because the sphere of their activities lay in the public realm, associations played a role in public life, and the “line between state and voluntary activity became blurred and a citizen’s initiative in public affairs gain[ed] importance through the activities of the societies.”9 The Leipzig Tonkünstler-Versammlung, which took place in 1847, was an important precursor to the ADMV. It was Brendel’s first attempt to bring German musicians together for the purpose of unifying their efforts for the elevation of German culture. He thought that the old pre-revolutionary order had been one of greater unity and community than the present time. The spirit of the nineteenth century had broken those earlier bonds, and now it was time to reforge them. “The Gatherings that modern times have called forth are an expression of this new spirit; we see in them the striving of all to a conscious

6 Ernst Henschel, ‘Die dritte Versammlung des deutschen Tonkünstlervereins in Karlsruhe am 23.–27. August 1864,” Euterpe 23, no. 10 (October 1864): 80. 7 Blackbourn, Fontana History of Germany, 278. 8 See the essays by Ralf Roth and Michael Sobania in Bürgerkultur im 19. Jahrhundert: Bildung, Kunst und Lebenswelt, ed. Dieter Hein and Andreas Schulz (Munich, 1996); Sheehan, German Liberalism, 14–15. 9 Nipperdey, 236.

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unity.”10 Looking back at the event in 1868, he noted, “already in the 1840s I had seized the initiative for such an undertaking, starting from the outlook that personal contact between artists, collegial cooperation and a lively communal spirit would have a great influence on the artistic circumstances of the present.”11 Liszt and Brendel had dreamed of such a society for decades. Liszt had written in “De la situation des artistes” in 1835 of the need for musicians to gather together in professional associations. During his tours of the German lands in the 1840s, he witnessed many musical festivals. He excitedly wrote to his French readers: You have nothing but an imperfect idea of what these great musical occasions can be. They touch all of a population, unifying all the classes of society for at least a few days in a community of joy and elevate them above the monotony of their work or of their idleness through a spontaneous rush.12 Through his activities in the German lands, Liszt sought to foster a collective artistic ritual. Liszt and Brendel shared a common goal: uniting German musicians around avant-garde music and a shared sense of national identity. In order to achieve their goal, Liszt and Brendel were aware of the importance of publicity. They sought to broaden support for music in the German lands while retaining lofty standards: nomenclature played an important role in creating favorable reception for the ADMV. For example, the term “Tonkünstler” (tone artist) had a loftier connotation than the more pedestrian “Musiker.” The 1847 meeting led to the founding of the Tonkünstler-Verein in Leipzig, which became the basis for the ADMV. One hundred of the attendees signed a document and a committee of five was formed to plan another Gathering the following year, 1848. This did not come to pass: Brendel noted, “the upheaval in the political arena at the time had created difficulties in continuing the meetings.”13 This is understandable, but it is unclear why it took twelve years to reestablish the Musicians’ Gatherings. One can, however, speculate that political currents at a regional level combined with a scarcity of resources on 10 11 12 13

Franz Brendel, “Die erste Versammlung deutscher Tonkünstler und Musikfreunde in Leipzig,” NZfM 27, no. 16 (23 August 1847): 95–96. Franz Brendel, “Der Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein: die Organisation, bisherige Thätigkeit und Weiterentwicklung desselben,” Alm I (1868): 96. Franz Liszt, “Lettre d’un bachelier ès-musique,” RGMP 8, no. 31 (19 September 1841), 417. Brendel “Der Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein,” 96.

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Liszt and Brendel’s part were responsible. In the German lands the 1850s were a decade during which censorship and restrictions were first imposed, and then lifted. Many national associations formed in the late 1850s and early 1860s, such as the National Verein, constituted mainly of Prussian liberals. These years were also a time of intense activity for Brendel and Liszt, who both wrote several large works. While Liszt composed copious amounts of music, Brendel edited both the Neue Zeitschrift and Anregungen. When he deemed that the latter journal had laid enough groundwork, he discontinued it and founded the ADMV. The rift with autonomists which the New Germans had helped to create must also have provided increased motivation to found a national association. The Neue Zeitschrift celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1859, and Brendel, as its editor, seized this milestone as an opportunity to pick up where the Musicians’ Gathering of 1847 had left off. The ADMV In naming their group the “General German Music Association”, Brendel and Liszt sought to legitimate it through historical and ethical overtones. The term “General” bespoke a lofty commonality, even universality, and echoed the name of the leading and oldest music periodical in the German lands, the Allgemeine Musik Zeitung.14 The term also implied an end to the aesthetic partisanship—an idea which both autonomists and New Germans initially met with enthusiasm. The purpose of the Association, according to its statutes, was to unify German musicians. Brendel observed, “It is time for German musicians . . . to finally unite for their own advantage and undertake a project for the best of their art. . . . The purpose of the Association is the nurturing of music and support of musicians.15 Brendel saw that music had become much more a part of everyday life, and that with that change, more people chose to become professional musicians. There was such growth in the profession that there was an oversupply of musicians, Brendel believed, despite the growing interest of the public in music. This made it difficult for the individual composer to gain recognition for his works.16 The professionalization of music in the nineteenth century entailed the development of music journals and schools, as well as 14 Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 88–89. 15 Franz Brendel, “Statuten des ADMV,” NZfM 53, no. 11 (7 September 1860): 89. 16 Youry von Arnold, “Die Dritte Allgemeine Tonkünstler-Versammlung in Carlsruhe,” NZfM 60, no. 36 (2 September 1864): 310. The author was summarizing a talk Brendel gave at the Gathering.

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of performers’ increasing engagement with the commercial market.17 Given the heightened competition, Brendel hoped that the ADMV would give novice composers a chance to have their works performed and publicized. Liszt, too, wanted to provide up-to-date, unpartisan support of music and musicians.18 In order to achieve these ends, Brendel was convinced that an institutional framework was necessary. Given the lack of a unified German state, musicians needed to create an institutional body to support their own efforts independently. Composer Carl Riedel, Brendel’s successor as chairman of the ADMV, observed, “Germany can advance only haltingly because of the material plight of most of its artistic institutions and the resulting dependence on the public, the princes etc.”19 Many musicians believed that the German lands’ greatest weakness lay in their lack of financial support for music both in institutions and among the general public. The ADMV, critics hoped, would right this wrong and provide support for artists, as well as educating audiences about their responsibilities. To agree to disagree was an important part of Brendel’s vision. He knew that to desire to reconcile differing views of art would be foolish. . . . The individuals involved are very different and accordingly are of entire schools of thought (Geistesrichtungen) and views. But people can be of different opinions and still treat each other politely. In the difference of opinions themselves there is no reason for immoderate spite and blind passion.20 He wanted to create a place for disagreements and conflict to be absorbed into public opinion. The decade of censorship after 1848 and the War of the Romantics were likely on Brendel’s mind as he wrote this article. He argued that a conciliatory music criticism would undermine the nation. Such a form of criticism is no victory for the spiritual life of the nation, however nurturing of art this may seem to be. On the contrary, it would be a poison, a canker (Krebsschaden). It would be much more advantageous to go too far . . . rather than to suppress and hinder [criticism], which would indeed be spiritual murder.21 17 18 19 20 21

Samson, 5. Letter of June 1882, Br II, 328. Carl Riedel, “Chronik der Ereignisse,” Alm III (1870): 109. Franz Brendel, “Zur Situation,” NZfM 53, no. 1 (1 July 1860): 2. Ibid., 3.

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At the same time, however, Brendel’s agenda was meant to soothe tensions and anxieties in a “chaotic time of thousands of clamoring voices.”22 He was not alone in his assessment of the situation; countless authors refer to the fragmentation (Zersplitterung) of the German musical situation. His colleague Louis Köhler, too, wanted more social connections and exchange of ideas through presentations, to nurture and unite in common progress the “harmony of minds (Geister) through social interaction.”23 The ADMV was explicitly linked to ending the War of the Romantics in Brendel’s article “On the Creation of an Understanding” published in the Neue Zeitschrift.24 Liszt himself felt some urgency about the Association’s importance. As Richard Pohl reported, he spoke at the 1859 Leipzig Versammlung, exhorting the musicians to join together in an association of “independence and unity.” Liszt observed that other countries such as Holland, England and France possessed national musical associations, and it was vital for German culture that its musicians do the same.25 Liszt stated was time to stop speaking about unity and to take action.26 A year later he wrote to Bülow about the next year’s Gathering. “It is necessary to . . . advance it rather than back away from it, in order for our conference to have the effect of ‘creating an understanding’!”27 Liszt’s quotation of Brendel’s phrase reinforces their point about uniting musicians around a common cause. Even after he had retired his post as Kapellmeister in Weimar and moved his primary residence to Rome in 1861, Liszt returned to the German lands for several months each year, primarily to participate in Association activities. His stature as a teacher, conductor, composer, author and performer lent great visibility to the ADMV and he quickly became the public symbol of its efforts. In 1870 he wrote to Sayn-Wittgenstein about his involvement with the ADMV. “Many visitors from Leipzig are arriving. I am counting on a brilliant success of the Musicians’ Gathering at the end of May—I am doing my best to help.”28 In 1872 he told her that the ADMV was “the principal reason that I continue to stay in Germany. I am sending you a small 22 Ibid., 2. 23 Louis Köhler, “Die zweite Tonkünstler-Versammlung zu Weimar,” NBM 15, no. 37 (11 September 1861): 289. 24 Brendel, “Zur Anbahnung einer Verständigung,” 267–272. 25 Richard Pohl, Die Tonkünstler-Versammlung zu Leipzig am 1. bis 4. Juni 1859 (Leipzig: C.F. Kahnt, 1859), 13. 26 Richard Pohl, “Die Leipziger Tonkünstler-Versammlung,” NZfM 50, no. 26 (24 June 1859): 296. 27 Letter of 26 July 1860 in Briefwechsel zwischen Franz Liszt und Hans von Bülow, 291. 28 Letter of 20 April 1870, Br VI, 239.

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summary of its activities since 1859. . . . This is what I work on with perseverance, convinced of the good in it.”29 The actual membership list of the ADMV was quite small: the inaugural meeting in 1861 hosted more than 700 musicians.30 Its members, however, were always optimistic about their future; each article that mentions membership also comments that it was growing. In 1868 the membership rolls reached almost 500, with forty-eight new members that year. Members hailed from more than 160 cities in Germany, and several other countries.31 In 1870 140 new members joined.32 While the majority of its German-speaking members were Protestants, two of the leading figures of the Association, Liszt and Peter Cornelius, were ardent Catholics.33 The membership rolls were built up from preexisting networks, including the Leipzig and Berlin Tonkünstler-Vereine and Riedel’s Singing Association.34 All of the Musicians’ Gatherings were dependent on noble support: the annual meetings and the administration of the Association were undoubtedly quite costly, with all the performance halls and meeting rooms required for the events. Members’ dues did not suffice to meet these expenses. Grand Duke Carl Alexander served as the Association’s sponsor. Liszt was largely responsible for this: his long relationship with the Grand Duke and the court’s tradition of support for German culture were mainstays of the Association. Liszt retained a close connection with the Grand Duke in the decades after his resignation as Kapellmeister, describing to his correspondents the Duke’s generosity and his own success in raising funds for the Gatherings. He wrote optimistically, the intention and the goal of the ADMV are excellent; many of its members belong to the elite of artists, professors, critics, composers and writers of Germany; the Grand Duke of Weimar has accepted the title of ‘Protector’ of the Association; without more enumeration it appears that it will simply move forward.35

29 30

Letter of 21 April 1872 in ibid., 342. Irina Kaminiarz, Richard Strauss: Briefe aus dem Archiv des Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins (Weimar, 1995), 12. 31 Franz Brendel, “Der Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein im Jahre 1868,” Alm II (1869): 100. 32 Alm IV (1870): xxiii. 33 Letter from Liszt to Cornelius of 4 Sept. 1852, Br I, 112. 34 Beilage, Echo 18, no. 18: 69. 35 Letter of 17 June 1864, Br III, 171.

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Carl Alexander used his connections with other princes to gather interest for the Gatherings. Ducal sponsors stepped forward from Baden-Baden, SaxeCoburg-Gotha, and other areas of Germany.36 The German Emperor and his family also supported the Association, which many ADMV members believed necessary for the success of their project. The Queen of Prussia donated 200 thalers to the ADMV and Wilhelm I granted a subvention of 1000 thalers in the 1870s. After some initial hiccups in the early 1860s, the Association managed to meet every year, despite high costs, from 1864 until Liszt’s death in 1886, except when war overshadowed cultural events in 1866.37 The ADMV used its musical programming as a primary means of achieving its goal to unite musicians and support young artists. A music pedagogue reported for the Berlin-based music paper Echo of his pleasure and surprise at the 1859 Tonkünstler-Versammlung: not only were the most contemporary works by Liszt, Wagner, and Robert Franz, a promising young composer, on the performance program; it also featured pieces by Bach, Händel, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms, composers of the classical era and of the autonomist camp. In addition to Liszt, Bülow, and Bronsart, the autonomists David, Moscheles, Alfred Jaell, and Franz Riccius also appeared as performers. The author concluded that the Gathering represented no “special interests.”38 For the same paper, another writer reported in 1864 that the musical program presented works by a wide variety of composers, and academics from Berlin were in attendance. The author found comfort and hope in the idea that the “use of the term ‘general’ grew to a more and more inclusive stance.”39 By 1865, however, the pro-autonomist Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung cast the ADMV as a special interest group by using quotation marks around the word “allgemeine,” indicating their distrust of the inclusiveness of the Association.40 The Musicians’ Gatherings’ programs were explicitly avant-garde. In 1861, the first performance was Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. The second consisted of Liszt’s Faust Symphony and his Prometheus tone poem. The third concert featured Germania for choir and orchestra by the young Felix Dräseke. 36 37 38 39 40

Letter to Brendel of 24 February 1865, BUS, 120. Liszt wrote to Brendel of “war cries, bayonet- and cannon-symphonies” that replaced the Gathering. Letter of 19 June 1866, Br II, 91. Dr. Schwarz, “Die allgemeine Tonkünstler-Versammlung in Leipzig,” Echo 9, no. 26 (3 July 1859): 205. “Die dritte Versammlung der deutschen Tonkünstler in Karlsruhe from 23. bis 26. August,” Echo 14, no. 40 (9 Oct 1864): 313. Selmar Bagge, “Ein Wort in Angelegenheiten des ‘Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins,’ ” AMZ II, no. 24 (14 June 1865): 398.

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Many other works by Hans von Bülow, Eduard Lassen and other contemporary German composers, performed by some of the most famous musicians, including Carl Tausig, a student of Liszt’s, and the singer Eduard Genast were included in concerts. This program was fairly representative of those in the years to come. Other little-known composers featured over the years were Leopold Damrosch and Robert Volkmann. Almost all Musicians’ Gatherings presented one of Liszt’s large works such as the Elisabeth or Christus oratorio, or the Faust Symphony. The commitment to new and unknown composers’ works met with criticism in several music journals; journal editors did not share the agenda of the New Germans, nor their attitude toward the public. For some, the ADMV’s intention to present contemporary works allowed for “failures and unproductive works to sneak onto the program in addition to meaningful, valuable works.” In light of this problem, the critic suggested, an older great work [should] be performed next to the more modern, untried and problematic works. Such a work’s undoubted artistic value and permanent beauty would excite old and young, conservative and progressives, classicists and musicians of the future and provide a correct measure for the evaluation of these newer efforts.41 Such compromises could reach broader audiences and help to educate listeners. These questions regarding the musical repertoire reflected the larger process of canonization that was taking place at the time. Not only was music becoming more professionalized for the performers, with music schools emphasizing a standardized training; the repertory was also being standardized. Ludwig Nohl had written a biography enshrining Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner as canonical German composers, counter to the more prevalent (and durable) Bach, Beethoven, Brahms trinity.42 In addition to its mandate to forward new music, the ADMV took pride in its cosmopolitan outlook, praising artists and compositions that transcended national boundaries. For the more active members, this cosmopolitanism was a key component of Germanness. One member observed, “Because all musical directions are valid, Liszt stands with his powerful following clearly in the foreground. The names [Nikolay] Rimsky-Korsakov, [Bedrich] Smetana, 41

A. Niggli, “Die Tonkünstler-Versammlung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins vom 8. bis 12. August 1882,” AMZ XVII, no. 33 (16 August 1882): 525. 42 Nohl, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner.

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[Sigismund] Noskowski, . . . etc. indicate with clarity their eastern homeland and their close relationship with their great leader Liszt. Of course not all Slavs belong to the new direction and not all Germans are estranged from it . . . the whole developmental process is nourished here . . . the whole movement is therefore a truly German one.”43 The Neue Zeitschrift presented the view that Germanness was defined by the process of discovery and openness to the new, including other national cultures, indicating a debt to Weimar Classicism for this idea. From the heroes of our second great blossoming of literature, from Schiller and Goethe, the Association learned not only to honor the German, but also to add to its art the good that is offered from foreign lands. So the ADMV has not narrow-mindedly proved itself German through the German nationality of its members, composers and performing artists, but also through the international stance of its concert programs. It has taken the greatest effort to prove itself German through presenting the most valuable and interesting new things in the musical world literature in its concerts.44 Some popular journals shared the ADMV’s emphasis on cosmopolitanism and supported it. Die Gartenlaube argued that the long list of non-German composers whose works were performed at ADMV gathering “shows how stimulating German music has been for non-Germans. Germany is ready to recognize all that is good from outside its borders without envy.” The article concluded, “it is right that Liszt, who synthesizes so many contradictions, is the soul of the ADMV.”45 While cosmopolitanism embraced many cultures and forms, it also harbored an imperial viewpoint. Hermann Zopff wrote for the Neue Zeitschrift about Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, performed at the 1878 Erfurt Gathering. He argued that it was difficult for Germans to embrace, understand and value the spirit of musical works by not quite “accredited” nationalities. However, national music of foreign origin (Volksstamme) brought a refreshing, invigorating element to German music, as once Italian melodies and French 43 44 45

“Tonkünstler-Versammlung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins in Magdeburg,” Euterpe 40, no. 10 (1881): 171. “Die neunzehnte Tonkünstlerversammlung in Zürich,” NZfM 78, no. 29 (14 July 1882): 313. “Der Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein und dessen historische und ethnographische Ausstellung in Leipzig,” Die Gartenlaube no. 22 (1883): 357, 360.

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rhythms had done, and the German harmony and structures of German music favorably influenced that of Italy and France.46 For Zopff, German music was superior, cherry-picking from other cultures in a discriminating manner, as a gourmet at a buffet. Association authors repeatedly praised Liszt as a voice of cosmopolitanism, as a figure of the avant-garde, and for his courage and perseverance like Beethoven’s in the face of adversity (a hostile public and critical reception of his compositions). Peter Cornelius wrote in 1867, “the feeling went through everyone that one saw a man become the living focal point of the festival.” Cornelius continued, [Liszt’s] personality, conciliatory, egalitarian and unifying, is the right one to reign over the mass of artistic individuals. . . . In Liszt younger artists can see consolation for long underestimation, encouragement for solid endurance, a model of self-sacrifice and justice towards others, a reminder of the fulfillment of both artistic and human duties.47 Liszt was a fitting figure for this group to unite around; they saw his congenial personality as a model for themselves in trying to heal the divisions with the autonomists. Liszt’s centrality to the ADMV also drew much criticism from outside the group. A critic commented that the Association’s purpose had changed in recent years. He saw the group becoming a cult and a place for personality contests. Protectionism [Protektionswirthschaft] and self-promotion have gained the upper hand in the ADMV so that the intentions that the noble Brendel had for his creation are almost gone. The purpose of the ADMV now is personal worship, is flaunting the glory of famous names.48 The author accused the ADMV of behaving in a fashion similar to guilds, interfering with the market and the freedom so valued by liberals. In doing so, the Association revealed itself as a relic of the ancien regime, not the organization 46 47 48

Hermann Zopff, “Die 15. Tonkünstler-Versammlung,” NZfM 74, no. 28 (5 July 1878): 292. Peter Cornelius, “Das Fest des Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins in Meiningen,” Alm I, 180. Otto Reinsdorf, “Die Tonkünstlerversammlung in Halle,” ADMZ I, no. 23 (4 September 1874): 205.

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of progress that it claimed to be. Liszt’s visibility, based on his fame as a virtuoso, drew accusations that the ADMV was simply a cult of personality. The ADMV organized and presented several important music festivals in the name of the German nation. Since 1861, members had planned the 1870 Beethoven Festival to celebrate the composer’s centenary. The board had decided to hold the Festival in Weimar, which was a highly symbolic choice that communicated their understanding of Beethoven’s importance. In locating the Festival in Weimar they emphasized their belief that the New Germans were Beethoven’s successors; Weimar was also centrally located and could be considered regionally neutral. The ADMV’s indebtedness to Liszt enhanced its cosmopolitan stance on German national identity, one that was challenged not only by detractors of the Association, but also by its own members’ unwitting, or at times conscious, regional prejudices. Several other Beethoven festivals were planned in 1870; they were slated for Bonn, Berlin, Pest and Vienna. The Viennese festival planners seemingly forgot about the conflict in the German music scene, because they invited Brahms, Joachim, Clara Schumann, Liszt and Wagner all to take part. The organizing committee wanted Wagner to conduct the Ninth Symphony, Liszt the Missa Solemnis, and Clara Schumann to perform the Emperor Concerto.49 In selecting these musicians to play leading roles, the committee may also have sought to end the New German/autonomist feud. The Committee of the Beethoven Festival made a personal request to Liszt: they wanted the “greatest composer in the greatest German musical city to unify the greatest musicians of the present.” They added that they would like him to direct his Festcantate composed for the Beethoven festival in 1845 as a prologue, with the best musicians. The committee pled, “You made the sacrifice for Weimar, which you called home for a while, to end your seclusion; do we not have an even greater right to call you ours? Or did the Leitha also draw a line across her heart?”50 These questions of where and to whom Liszt belonged only intensified with his aging and death, as we saw in Hungary and in the controversy about his burial. The reconciliation yearned for by the committee did not take place, as Liszt was already committed to the ADMV’s event, and the autonomists boycotted the Festival. Liszt ended up celebrating in December in Pest as well. Liszt took an active part in the planning and rehearsals for the Weimar festival, and the ADMV honored him as a German composer who continued Beethoven’s work. Three of the five concerts were dedicated to Beethoven and the other two to new works. The Missa Solemnis began the Festival, and 49 50

Buch, 158–59. Written from Vienna, 12 October 1870, BHZ II, 350.

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the Ninth Symphony, conducted by Liszt, ended it. The three Beethoven concerts did not feature his works alone; New German compositions were also performed. One participant thankfully observed that Carl Riedel “made it clear that the still-misunderstood third period of the master stood closest to the intentions and goals of the ADMV, and therefore pieces from that period would principally form the program.”51 Beethoven’s “third period” is traditionally demarcated as beginning in 1812–13, and is considered his most spiritual. It is characterized by a new devotion and search for transcendence. The Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony, and the late string quartets are the principal works of this period. The ADMV’s Beethoven Festival did not meet with unanimous approval. Liszt’s very visible presence on the Festival program as conductor and as a large bust decorated with flowers that stood in the dining hall raised suspicions about the Association’s motivations. An anonymous author accused the ADMV of false advertising. He asked, “What do you say to the fact that in the great hall used for the Sunday evening dinner, there was a bust of Liszt covered with flowers? At a so-called Beethoven Festival! Isn’t that disgusting?52 The struggle over Beethoven’s legacy still continued between the New Germans and the autonomists, and rather than heal that division, the ADMV exacerbated it. The ADMV was Liszt’s last public attempt to engage the interest of German audiences in avant-garde works. He wrote in 1878, I have promoted the ADMV for nearly twenty years as the only institution that takes constant interest in new works for orchestra and choir—a difficult and costly enterprise because the majority of people don’t want anything more than to hear the duet of Don Giovanni sung again by the fashionable celebrities and to drink Champagne, without or without Mozart’s music, or some classical work.53 Liszt retained his disgust with undiscerning audiences: the aria from Don Giovanni was a work of generations ago, and he believed it served as aural wallpaper for social gatherings. The effort required by his threefold life made him impatient with audiences, particularly as he saw the ADMV as his last effort to contribute to the development of German art.

51 52 53

Otto Blauhuth, “Die Tonkünstlerversammlung zu Weimar,” NZfM 66, no. 23 (3 June 1870): 218. “Aus Weimar,” AMZ V, no. 24 (15 June 1870): 191. Letter of 3 June 1878, Br VIII, 332.

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North versus South, Protestants and Catholics

The nationalist project embraced by German musicians—of spreading high culture and its moralizing component to the lower classes—promoted an uneasy relationship with the Volk, as we have seen in previous chapters. The ambivalent view among musicians vis-à-vis their audiences was a particular expression of a broader current. Liberal nationalists sought to educate and rationalize the nation, which included an acceptance of Protestantism and a shedding of Catholic and Jewish religious beliefs and practices.54 German unification, led under Prussian Protestant auspices, was in some ways an internal civilizing mission. As Germany’s external borders solidified in 1871, “the rich diversity that characterized life in Germany’s sub-national spaces became more, not less, disturbing for contemporaries.”55 The unified Reich was twothirds Protestant; it became the unmarked category of normalcy. In working toward a unified Germany, both before and after the creation of the Empire, nationalists sought to understand the confessional divide historically. The Catholic revival that began in the 1840s also looked to the past for an indication of what Germanness was. Unlike their Protestant counterparts, Catholics who sought a unified German state called for diversity and hearkened back to the Holy Roman Empire as a model of toleration and Catholic universalism.56 Catholic Germans envisioned a nation that was rooted in past traditions and drew strength from its diversity; they believed that identities that predated the national state, such as regional, confessional, or kinship ties—still possessed legitimate forms of self-identification and social order. On the other hand, the Protestant nationalist Heinrich von Sybel saw the Middle Ages as an “arid period of German history, a time when the soul of the German people languished.”57 He believed that not until the Reformation did the creativity of the truly German character become evident again. Such Protestant 54

Smith, 21; Dagmar Herzog, Intimacy and Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton, 1996), 55–58; Michael B. Gross, The War Against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor, 2004); Olaf Blaschke and Frank-Michael Kuhlemann, Religion im Kaiserreich: Milieus—Mentalitäten— Krisen (Gütersloh, 1996); Wolfgang Altgeld, Katholizismus, Protestantismus, Judentum: Über religiös begründete Gegensätze und nationalreligiöse Ideen in der Geschichte des deutschen Nationalismus (Mainz, 1992). 55 Blackbourn, Locality, 9; Frank Becker, “Konfessionellen Nationsbilder im Deutschen Kaiserreich,” in Nation und Religion in der deutschen Geschichte, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Dieter Langewiesche (Frankfurt, 2001), 389–418. 56 Smith 65, Langewiesche, Kulturelle Nationsbildung, 47–48. 57 Smith, 30.

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nationalists feared that the confessional conflict was backward-looking and would hinder the progressive forward motion they had established. For them, there was an inherent tension between German nationhood and Catholicism.58 Confessional tensions were intertwined with regional diversity in the German lands. While the general consensus understood the south and west to be Catholic and the north and east to be Protestant, confessional and regional identities and loyalties did not always neatly overlap. Nor did political allegiances; scholars speak of liberals as Protestants, implying that Catholic nationalist liberals did not exist.59 However, this political taxonomy, too, breaks down when we examine the rhetoric and actions of ADMV members. The Association received significant funding from both Catholic and Protestant princes. Liszt’s Catholicism was directly influenced by radical French Catholic reformers like the Abbé Lamennais. However, Peter Cornelius was also a democrat and devout Catholic. Liszt rarely discussed religious politics with his German friends; the Kulturkampf gets no explicit mention in his correspondence. When he did mention religious differences, it was only to his closest confidants, his cousin Eduard and Franz Brendel.60 The confessional question was one made immediately relevant by Liszt’s taking of minor orders in 1865. Weimar’s and Leipzig’s central locations in the German lands endowed them with a resistance to polarizing trends.61 The fact the Weimar and Leipzig were front-line battleground cities in the War of the Romantics both revealed and confounded regionalist stereotypes. Vienna, the seat of the autonomists’ power, was a bastion of the old regime politically speaking, and one that had enjoyed an international musical reputation for well on a century. The manifesto by Brahms and Joachim of 1860 characterized the New Germans as North Germans, despite the fact that Brahms himself hailed from Hamburg and moved to Vienna only in 1872. Another locus of autonomist sentiment lay in Leipzig, just fifty miles from Weimar. Leipzig was the center of publishing, including music publishing, of the German lands and had also been the residence of Felix Mendelssohn, who had served as conductor of the prestigious Gewandhaus orchestra and the founder of the Leipzig Conservatory, which quickly became a leading music school in Europe. It was also the home of Robert and Clara Schumann. Personal and aesthetic tensions between Liszt, Mendelssohn and the Schumanns had led to informal ban on Liszt’s music by 58 59

Ibid., 31. Ibid., 64. See Blackbourn, Populists and Piety, 143; Langewiesche, Bildungsbürgertum und Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert, 100. 60 For example, 12 June 1862, Br II, 10–11; 11 Nov. 1863, Br II, 58–59. 61 Blackbourn, Locality, 9.

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the Gewandhaus during his lifetime.62 Leipzig was also the home of the Neue Zeitschrift and Brendel held a post as music historian at the Conservatory, but his presence did nothing to soften the city’s reception of the New Germans. Leipzig, as centrally located as Weimar, was claimed by both sides during the war. In claiming to represent Germany in general, the ADMV sought to speak for Germans’ commonalities and a historically based federal national consciousness. Like national singing festivals in which Belgians, Dutch, and Swiss participated well into the 1850s, the ADMV resisted the current of Protestantizing and narrowing of German national identity.63 Given the lack of a unified political state, such an identity was difficult if not impossible to define. In a strategic choice of inclusion, the Association’s statutes required that the annual meetings move from city to city in Germany. This was decided after some debate about the difficulty of implementation, both logistically and financially: the board decided that the advantages outweighed the inconveniences. Traveling meetings would serve the purpose of allowing musicians to see different parts of Germany, and for different cities to have the experience of hosting a large gathering. This proved to be the case, as local orchestras were often enhanced with Gewandhaus musicians or other musicians from Leipzig or Weimar. This allowed the board to get acquainted with local musicians and ADMV members, and for them to gain some experience in planning and working together. Reports in the Neue Zeitschrift about this aspect of the ADMV were satisfied and laudatory. Brendel noted that “it is [the ADMV’s] task . . . not to suppress the uniqueness of local viewpoints, but rather to advocate unity in addition to this variety, to represent a national agreement on the foundation of clearly recognized, sure, progressive efforts.”64 Most of the meetings were held in central German towns such as Altenburg, Sondershausen, Wiesbaden, Erfurt, Weimar, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Halle, and Dessau. There were more far-flung meetings, however, in Zürich, Karlsruhe, Baden-Baden, and Hannover. Liszt and Brendel even considered Prague as a meeting site for 1863.65 Despite the importance of confessional difference in the German lands, New Germans and ADMV members only very rarely explicitly mentioned religion, although their attitude toward southern Germany expressed an encoded set 62 63 64 65

Hans Eberhardt, “Eduard Stein: Ein Sondershäuser Hokapellmeister als Vorkämpfer für Franz Liszt und Richard Wagner,” in Musikerleben, 99. Langewiesche, “Kulturelle Nationsbildung,” 48. Franz Brendel, “Der Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein,” 131. Letter of 29 August 1862, Br II, 22.

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of prejudices. The ADMV’s members harbored a belief that southern Germany had a different musical culture than the North, and that it was inferior—that the South represented the backward-looking adherents of Catholicism and of authoritarian political traditions. In southern Germany, one author argued, “there are only very few artists whom one could characterize as thoroughly refined and educated. I do not wish to imply with the word ‘refined’ that empty, common, aristocratic-salonlike meaning.” The author argued that southern musicians knew nothing of spiritual development, but rather were solely concerned with appearances and shallow sentiments.66 “The German Southerner does not know the excitement of thought. The southern German is wholly a creature of the moment.”67 This critique was written in 1868, shortly after the war between Austria and Prussia that established Prussia’s dominance. Perceived regional differences, particularly southern inferiority, played into the ADMV’s “civilizing mission.” Observers believed that the difference between the Musicians’ Gatherings and other, particularly Southern, musical festivals could be detected in their choice of anthem. For several years the Association used Wagner’s 1871 Kaisermarsch to either open or close the Gatherings. Not only was this a piece irrevocably associated with the New Germans; it also celebrated a kleindeutsch, Protestant conception of nationhood. Ernst Henschel, editor of the music teachers’ journal Euterpe argued, “with this a double belief is expressed: a political and a musical one. When, on the other hand, the Lower Rhine Music Festival uses the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus of Händel in a similar way, here lies the characteristic distinction between the festivals. With us the present and future are represented, with them the past.”68 The ADMV represented progressive, [Protestant] Germanness, as opposed to the backward-looking Southern music festivals. When the Gatherings met in southern Germany authors made special efforts to provide more detailed descriptions of the physical setting and praise its beauty. An imperial gaze from the center onto the periphery often produced a tourist-guide tone. In writing lengthy descriptions of southern German lands, authors engaged their reading publics with internal civilizing enterprises and articulated Germany’s values and geographical boundaries through denigrating southern culture. The cultural and geographical borderlands helped to 66 Dr. Laurencin, “Der süddeutsche Musiker,” NZfM 64, no. 2 (3 January 1868): 9. 67 Dr. Laurencin, “Der süddeutsche Musiker,” NZfM 64, no. 3 (10 January 1868): 18. 68 Richard Pohl, “Die zweiundzwanzigste Tonkünstler-Versammlung des Allgemeinen Deutschen Musikvereins,” NZfM 81, no. 24 (12 June 1885): 261.

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construct a consensual German identity.69 In 1864 the ADMV ventured south to Karlsruhe, their first and only meeting in southern Germany for the first two decades of the Association’s existence. In a report on the event, a New German wrote optimistically that in traveling south, “the ADMV will be active in more distant musical regions of Germany, and will carry the lively, refreshing musical progress to even the more remote districts.”70 Clearly, Karlsruhe lay far off this New German’s beaten path. Franz Brendel made a special effort at the Karlsruhe Musicians’ Gathering to introduce the ADMV and its purpose to the audience, because he assumed they were not familiar with it. One such southern German wrote proudly of how they presented difficulties for the New Germans. The New Germans were scribbling madly, he wrote, in order to soothe the pain of the failed Karlsruhe music festival of 1853.71 This event, combined with a folk festival, was sponsored by regional musicians and was not an Association event. The organizers invited Liszt to come and conduct for it, and he worked devotedly to make the festival successful. It failed to attract a substantial audience, however, and a critic wrote of that failure with sarcastic glee. The music festival at Karlsruhe—that is the bad, bad thorn that sticks in [the New Germans’] eyes, and it is so deep, so painful! Deep regret grips us southern Germans, may we also be so deeply sunken in the ‘dullness of emotion’, we see them suffer, the ‘intelligent’ representatives of north-German music of the future; . . . The Karlsruhe music festival— that began so beautifully, everything was so well planned, everything in order, in order to win us southern Germans with one stroke for the music of the future! They were so certain of their success that everything was placed on this one throw. Now that it failed, the fathers of the music of the future have gone into a rage that is delightful to see. Whole lakes of

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Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, 1992). Youry von Arnold, “Die Dritte Allgemeine Tonkünstler-Versammlung in Carlsruhe,” NZfM 60, no. 36 (2 September 1864): 310. Autonomists’ consistent characterization of New Germans as scribblers also can be understood as a regional cultural difference. Early in the eighteenth century, the arrival of print culture highlighted the differences between North and South: most music journals were based in Hamburg, Leipzig, or Berlin. The Protestant emphasis on literacy and intellectual endeavors was a target of autonomist mockery throughout the War of the Romantics. See Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 84.

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ink have been spilled in order to bring the little boat of the music of the future afloat again.72 Not until 1880 did the ADMV again venture south. The Gathering met in BadenBaden, which Ludwig Nohl found worthy of a lengthy description, as his audience, he assumed, was unfamiliar with it. The beautiful land of Baden is already visited from near and far, and Baden-Baden itself is a pearl of its beauty. The city’s status as a sort of social focal point for all of southwestern Germany is even more important. What people seek in Strasburg, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Basel and Bern, is commonly found here. During the virtuosic era, this eminent spa became a type of ‘small Paris’ in southern Germany, and now more serious and tasteful musical gifts are offered, and the large spa hall often hosts concerts that are among the best one can hear. For this meeting the site was well chosen for the broad and international purposes; it was sold out because of the enormous attendance from the surrounding areas of Swabia, Switzerland, Alsace, and the Rhineland.73 Nohl believed that although Baden used to be a cosmopolitan, aristocratic “small Paris,” it had progressed to embrace a more progressive spirit in offering more “serious and tasteful,” that is, “German” music to audiences. With this visit to Baden the ADMV claimed victory over the south. Pohl commented that after two failed attempts in 1854 and 1864 to win Karlsruhe over, the New Germans and ADMV retreated north of the Main river. Given that the ADMV’s purpose was to unify German musicians, “however, we couldn’t give up on southern Germany. We kept it in mind for better times when musical progress, however slowly, would have spread itself south as well. And this time has now arrived.”74 Pohl did not account for what had changed to make Karlsruhe more receptive to the ADMV. While a meeting did follow in Zurich, which could be considered “southern,” the ADMV’s Gatherings still mostly took place in central Germany. When the kleindeutsch solution to political unification took place, it made very little impact on either the aesthetic divisions among musicians or on the activities of the ADMV. “Political unification in 1871 proved initially at least to 72 73 74

J.B., “Die Opposition Süddeutschlands gegen die Zukunftsmusik,” NMZ II, no. 4 (28 January 1854): 29–30. Ludwig Nohl, “Die Tonkünstler-Versammlung in Baden-Baden,” ADMZ VII, no. 24 (11 June 1880): 187. Richard Pohl, “Die 17. Tonkünstler-Versammlung,” NZfM 76, no. 23 (28 May 1880): 242.

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be irrelevant to the strengthening of the links between music and a broadly defined German identity that embraced a grossdeutsch understanding of the cultural nation.”75 Eduard Hanslick ignored the new political realities separating Viennese from Northern Germans in his praise for “the new symphony of Brahms, . . . a possession of which the nation may be proud.”76 The staunchest supporter of autonomous music certainly meant the greater German nation, not the German or Austrian Empires. Among Liszt’s friends and acquaintances, many were fervent German nationalists. Adelheid von Schorn and Hans von Bronsart proudly hailed from Prussia; Bronsart had volunteered in the war against France. Liszt’s biographer Lina Ramann recounted that Liszt visited the painter Wilhelm von Kaulbach after the battle of Sedan and had a very unusual conversation. Kaulbach greeted him happily with comments about “our fatherland” and “Germany’s glory,” to which Liszt responded, “Oh, what is fatherland . . . ” Like many Catholic Germans, Liszt refused in later years to celebrate Sedan Day at all, as his allegiance lay with France.77 Kaulbach screamed, “Germany is not your fatherland! You—you don’t have one! You are a Gypsy!” This ended the friendship as Liszt took his hat and left.78 It’s noteworthy that Kaulbach at first was willing to include Liszt in a shared identity, but when he was rebuffed, he accused Liszt of the worst wrong thinkable to nationalists: rootless cosmopolitanism. While Kaulbach’s outburst represented some nationalist sentiments, Liszt’s centrality to the ADMV made it impossible for the Association to take a completely pro-Northern line. Because Liszt was a Catholic and Hungarian, members of the ADMV identified him as “southern.” He was always depicted in clerical garb during this time. His liturgical works, the Gran Mass and Christus, met with acclaim from the ADMV. While they favored the Northern German conception of culture, ADMV supporters had to celebrate the southern as well. After discussing Mozart’s southern greatness, Ludwig Nohl commented,

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Applegate and Potter, 17. Comini, 310. Hanslick, Music Criticism, 1849–99, 127. Alan Walker, Living With Liszt: The Diary of Carl Lachmund, an American Pupil of Liszt, 1882–1884 (Stuyvesant, NY, 1994), 135–36, quoted in Walker, The Final Years, 420; Blackbourn, Populists & Patricians, 153. Lina Ramann, Lisztiana: Erinnerungen an Franz Liszt in Tagebuchblättern, Briefen und Dokumenten aus den Jahren 1873–1886/87 (Mainz, 1983), 40. Irina Kaminiarz asserts that the Franco-Prussian war did not disrupt the ADMV’s cosmopolitan stance as its programming continued to include composers and performers from France; 13.

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Isn’t Franz Liszt a son of Austria? Most specifically, in that he possesses this internal warm tone of life in its intense wholeness, he has not yet eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, which would drive him out of the paradise of unconscious inner harmony, without at least to have traded so little as the rest of us the peace of conscious and desired reconciliation.79 When the ADMV committed its resources to a performance of Liszt’s Christus Mass in 1881, the confessional question arose, and reviewer Bernhard Vogel’s article articulated the struggle to embrace confessional difference while holding a Protestant sense of superiority. He flipped the idea of universalism and particularity on its head, seeing Catholicism as a marked, unusual category to be transcended into Protestant universalism. He was pleased and surprised that, despite that the Mass was intended for a Catholic audience, the Protestant listeners of the ADMV also gained a deep and lasting impression from it. That the Mass was able to transcend its “dogmatic-ethical meaning” and the “confessional, ritual element” of the Catholic liturgy was for him a sign of its authentic artistry. For Vogel, the artist’s own statement of faith, even if it deviated from Church doctrine, was what determined the work’s value: doctrine was to never “smother the artist’s individuality.”80 Statements of faith became increasingly common Protestant forms of piety across the nineteenth century. Here, Catholicism is equated with outer forms of ritual and obedience; these have a potential to interfere with artistic expression and authenticity. Liszt, however, successfully wrote a meaningful work, because he “approached Him with a fervent soul.”81 The ADMV celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1884, and the celebration offers another example of the Association’s stance toward Liszt as a Southerner. The Neue Zeitschrift published a special edition on which Liszt graced the cover. He was depicted in three-quarter silhouette in his clerical garb, along with a lyre, a symbol of art and inspiration. The lyre also suggests the myth of Orpheus, the Argonaut who could charm all living creatures with his music.82 He is surrounded by laurel branches, indicators of artistic greatness. The swan was a very important symbol for the New Germans: after all, 79 80 81 82

Ludwig Nohl, “Franz Liszt,” ADMZ IV, no. 39 (21 September 1877): 297. Bernhard Vogel, “Aufführung des Oratoriums ‘Christus’ von Franz Liszt,” NZfM 77, no. 47 (18 November 1881): 478. Vogel, 478. Liszt’s symphonic poem Orpheus, premiered in Weimar in 1854, featured strong harp parts for the virtuoso Jeanne Pohl.

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Wagner’s Lohengrin tells the story of a swan-knight. Swans were also associated with song and valor. This image is very stable: Liszt’s jaw line runs parallel to the edge of the drawing, forming a right angle. Liszt is completely contained within the frame, as is simply depicts a bust of him in a completely static form. He appears serene and grandfatherly. He is an icon for the ADMV here, a symbol of stability and authority. The only indication that Liszt might not fit into “mainstream” (northern) German nationalism was his clerical garb: the lyre, laurel, and swan were regionally uninflected. Liszt was central to the ADMV’s conception of itself and its mission (Figure 6.1). Perhaps the most important event sponsored in part by the ADMV was the Wartburg Festival of 1867: it culminated 50 years of nationalist gathering at the site, and the 1867 Festival was the most inclusive.83 The 1867 Musicians’ Gathering was combined with the Wartburg Festival at Liszt’s suggestion.84 The Legend of Saint Elisabeth was performed as the inaugural piece. This nationalist event afforded an opportunity both to learn about medieval German history and to celebrate Germany’s openness to learning from and working with other cultures. Situated atop a hill near Eisenach, the Wartburg was festively lit, casting colored light far below into the Thuringian forest. It was such a success, one journalist claimed, that “at the end of the festival concert enthusiasm broke through all constraints of court etiquette” in the hall of the Landgrave.85 As in Hungary, Elisabeth’s story had long been appropriated by both Catholics and Protestants in the German lands for their own purposes. She had become a figure of popular Catholic reverence in the German lands in the nineteenth century, and Catholic writers used her as a figure of confessional integration.86 Protestants had refigured her as German and an ideal model of noble and cultivated womanhood as well as a platform from which to critique the Catholic

83

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For the reception of Martin Luther and the Wartburg, see Hartmut Lehmann, “Martin Luther as a National Hero in the Nineteenth Century,” in Romantic Nationalism in Europe, 181–201. Letter of 18 February 1867 in Adolf Stern, ed. Franz Liszts Briefe an Carl Gille (Leipzig, 1903), 27. “Die Tonkünstler-Versammlung zu Meiningen und Liszt’s ‘heilige Elisabeth’ auf der Wartburg,” NZfM 63, no. 37 (6 September 1867): 320. Stefan Gerber, “ ‘Die heilige der Katholiken und Protestanten’: Die Heilige Elisabeth in konfessioneller Wahrnehmung während des ‘langen’ 19. Jahrhunderts,” in vol. 2 of Elisabeth von Thüringen: eine europäische Heilige, ed. Uwe John, Helge Wittmann, Dieter Blume, and Matthias Werner (Eisenach, 2007), 501; Marko Kreutzmann, “Die Heilige Elisabeth in der Thüringischen Erinnerungskultur des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Elisabeth von Thuringen, 518.

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Figure 6.1 Liszt as Inspiration for the ADMV. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Festnummer 1884

veneration of saints and belief in miracles.87 She also gained a regional association, becoming a representative of the Weimar Ducal house.88 Her story also was a vital part of cultural nation-building for Catholics and Protestants. In the Vormärz era Elisabeth had featured in musical festivals among the singing

87 88

Kreutzmann, 516, 518; Gerber, 505. Kreutzmann, 511.

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associations of Thuringia.89 Indeed, Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser had memorialized the events at the Wartburg and gained its premier performance under Liszt’s direction in Weimar. Nationalists viewed the Middle Ages with nostalgia after 1848, longing for a federal approach to German identity as had existed under the Holy Roman Empire. By this time Elisabeth and the Wartburg had become symbols of German culture and national identity writ large. These transnational borrowings dovetailed with the larger purpose of the Wartburg Festival itself. When the restoration of the fortress began, Carl Alexander said he intended “to make it a type of museum for the history of our House, our Land, and all of Germany.”90 Carl Alexander saw it as an overdetermined site, which could represent his own power and lineage, that of Thuringia, and of greater Germany. The architect in charge of the restoration of the Wartburg, Hugo von Ritgen, expressed a deliberately interconfessional goal in working with his fellow Catholic von Schwind, carrying out the Protestant Duke’s commission. At the Festival itself, the President of the Conference of German Protestant Churches gave a sermon that sought to reconcile the confessional divide. He said that the Wartburg represented Luther and Elisabeth, both of whom sprouted from the shared soil of Christianity.91 Bülow, a staunch Protestant, made a similar assessment in his review of Elisabeth, which was “directed toward all of Catholic Christendom,” but whose glory also “would spread out to all lands where artistic intelligence exists. . . . In a way, the usually trivial idiom ‘art has no fatherland’ is completely right; we want to say to Liszt, who has previously been such a victim of abuse from his stepfather Germany, ‘he who has satisfied the best of his nation, he has lived for all nations.”92 Friedrich Nietzsche, no friend of Christianity nor nationalism, remarked to Cosima Wagner that Elisabeth smelled more of “incense than roses.”93 Elisabeth was one of Liszt’s most widely embraced works in the German lands. The Neue Zeitschrift reported that “all circles of society, down to the most humble citizens” turned out for the festival.94 Peter Cornelius raved, 89 90 91 92 93 94

Ibid., 514. Quoted in Möller, 113. Jubelgottesdienst auf der Wartburg am 28. August 1867 (Eisenach, 1867), n12, cited in Kreutzmann, 513. Hans von Bülow, “Die erste Aufführung von Fr. Liszt’s Oratorium ‘Die heilige Elisabeth’ auf dem ersten ungarischen Musikfeste,” NZfM 61, no. 37 (8 September 1865): 317. Cosima Wagner, Die Tagebücher, vol. 1, 2 August 1869, 136. “Die Tonkünstler-Versammlung zu Meiningen und Liszt’s ‘heilige Elisabeth’ auf der Wartburg,” NZfM 63, no. 37 (6 September 1867): 319.

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it is a work in which the folk heroine of Thuringia, who was led to ripe and enlightened Liszt, is praised and glorified! . . . We left the hall filled with the innermost peace that it was Liszt, the German-Hungarian, who gave the holy folk heroine of the Hungarians and Germans a permanent, beautiful-sounding monument.95 Another writer hoped that the work would “quickly become popular in the noblest sense.”96 The oratorio was performed six more times at ADMV events, even after Liszt’s death, at the Cologne (1887) and Vienna (1905) Gatherings. It was also performed in 1883 at the 600th anniversary of the church in Marburg where Elisabeth had died. Until the First World War broke out, Elisabeth was one of the most often-performed oratorios in the German-speaking lands.97 The Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein lasted until 1939. Its longevity is a testament to the strong purpose and commitment of the group and its powerful benefactors. Through the course of the nineteenth century Liszt’s works played a central role in concerts, and aspects of his life and compositions were a focus of articles about the ADMV. While it did not soothe tensions between the two musical camps, the fact that it was a voice of a cosmopolitan understanding of German identity is important. But Liszt’s and Brendel’s attempts to bring the public into a cultural association of musicians of different confessions, as well as its commitment to avant-garde music, kept the New German nationalist and aesthetic agenda alive into the twentieth century. As the Kulturkampf was waged against Catholics, the ADMV retained a confessional tolerance, featuring Catholic narratives and musical works as representatives of the German nation.

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Peter Cornelius, “Die heilige Elisabeth von Franz Liszt. Erinnerung an die Gründungsfeier der Wartburg,” Alm I, 140–144. “Die Tonkünstler-Versammlung zu Meiningen,” 320. Altenburg, “Die Erde berührte,” 583–84; Merrick 169.

Coda Liszt’s late oeuvre, notably the Hungarian Historical Portraits of 1885, expressed his emotional and aesthetic outlook near the end of his life. The Portraits, of statesman and liberal reformer István Széchenyi, novelist and politician Jószef Eötvös, poet and dramatist Mihály Vörösmarty, liberal magnate Lászlo Teleki, liberal politician Ferenc Deák, poet Sándor Petőfi, and Liszt’s close friend the violinist Mihály Mosonyi, continue his progressive experimentation and commitment to Romanticism. The Portraits are often viewed as precursors to modernism because of their expansion of, and in some places, suspension of tonality.1 They feature what Liszt considered hallmarks of Hungarian music, including the Gypsy scale and the csárdás rhythm. Some of them use pentatonic and whole tone scales, or are written in a bitonal fashion, making it impossible to identify exactly which key they are in. They are also elegiac, featuring funeral marches to mourn friends and allies. In his advancing years, Liszt became increasingly focused on loneliness and death, and his choices of subject for the Portraits reflect this as well as his political and aesthetic inclinations. Széchenyi and Téleki both ended their own lives in despair over their political failures and Hungary’s problems; Deák and Eötvös fled after 1848 to exile or seclusion, then returned to participate in building the new nation state as members of the reform generation; Petőfi died on the battlefield in 1849, and Mosonyi died in 1870. These figures all represented moderate Hungarian nationalism and Romantic art. This is not a canonical parade of great Hungarians; Lajos Kossuth’s absence, for one, signals that the Portraits are very personal selections for Liszt. Liszt’s self-fashioning, conducted through his performances on the stage and in salons, in his newspaper writing and personal correspondence, his compositions both sacred and secular, in his choice of friends, lovers, patrons, and residences, was an ongoing experiment with subjectivity. Liszt was drawn to art, nation, and religion, three transcendental, abstract authorities with which to imbue his own subjectivity. In order to resolve the tension between his musical talent and spiritual longing provoked by his virtuosity and fame, he sought an authentic, unalienated stance from which to compose works of art. Seeking to accommodate himself with changing cultural, national and artistic ideals, Liszt sought new subjectivities from which to pursue his artistic endeavors. 1 Dezsö Légany, “Hungarian Historical Portraits,” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 28, no. 1 (1986): 79–88; James M. Baker, “Liszt’s Late Piano Works: Larger Forms,” in The Cambridge Companion, 126–135.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004279223_009

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These Romantic, expressive characteristics found an ideal home in early nineteenth-century nationalism and Catholicism. Nationhood appeared to ground art in collective expressions rooted in particular locations and populations; Liszt’s enthusiastic adoption of Hungarian patriotism was an emotional one that he maintained throughout his life. Liszt’s conduct as a patriot, a teacher, a member of the Church, a performer and a creative artist was determined by the possibilities afforded to him as an individual of a specific time, place, and culture. He did not face limitless possibilities, and therefore, the choices he made tell us not only about him, but also about his historical and cultural context, one that increasingly insisted on mono-national identities. As cultural and national contexts changed, he found himself outside the mainstream, even opposed to prevailing ideologies. Liszt proved to be a true Romantic hero—one who lived for his art and suffered because of it, misunderstood and alienated. His conflict between art and fame, authenticity and performance, continued until his death, as fans wrote letters and published newspaper articles calling for him to perform more often. One observer noted, When Franz Liszt is asked to play for a group and isn’t in the mood—he becomes excessively polite to the host, speaks spiritedly about music, steps to the piano, plays a chord or two, and lets his demonic-sarcastic eye flash over the room, murmurs to himself, ‘you oxen!’ takes his hat and splits (schrammt ab).2 In 1865, he gave a benefit concert in Rome, after which he received a standing ovation. An audience member later recalled, “still moved by the storm of applause, [Liszt] laid his hands on my shoulders, and said with tears in his eyes: ‘My friend, believe me, I would gladly give up all the cheers ( Jubel), all the excitement, if just once I could produce a truly creative work.’ ”3 Liszt’s death did not put an end to the questions about who he had been: indeed, his absence allowed critics, nationalists and other interested parties to continue the argument without his potential intercession. The Austrian critics seemed to be the most open to Liszt’s cosmopolitan identity: the Viennese daily the Neue Freie Presse remembered him as “German, Frenchman, Hungarian— whatever you like. Through his constant travels and his world fame he soon became a cosmopolitan, at home everywhere and nowhere.”4 Likewise, the 2 Von Schlözer, 73. 3 Schlözer, 187. 4 “Franz Liszt,” NFP no. 7884 (8 August 1886).

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obituary in the Wagnerian Aufsätze über Musikalische Tagesfragen claimed, “Liszt was completely original, and in that, cosmopolitan. His music carries no national traits (Gepräge).”5 To belong “everywhere and nowhere” had been a common strategy in Central Europe well into the nineteenth century, as individuals negotiated situational and relational subjectivities. In addition, Liszt’s placelessness and ubiquity were products of modern transportation and communications technology that allowed him to traverse Europe and the news of his exploits to be read the Western world over. Yet his trifurcated life and those very same performance tours unmoored him from older corporate identities as well as newer nationalist identities that took shape over his lifetime. Multiple claims on Liszt’s body and legacy continued to be made well after his death. In 1906, Ludwig Karpath summed up those claims in his article, ‘The Fight over Franz Liszt’s Ashes.” A committee had been formed to return Liszt’s remains to Hungary, but lack of discussion about it and Parliamentary intransigence prevented any concrete action from taking place. Karpath wrote that Széchenyi had said that even patricides had to be forgiven if they were Hungarian, so that they could help the small nation. He noted sarcastically, “But Franz Liszt was no patricide, just a cultural carrier (Kulturträger); he had the misfortune to express his artistic-aesthetic viewpoint that Hungarian music was actually that of Gypsies. That is the crime of lèse majesté, which weighs more heavily than murder.”6 Karpath was disgusted by Tisza’s 1887 refusal to allow Liszt’s burial in Hungary and highlighted Liszt’s cultural rather than political importance.7 The ongoing struggle over Liszt’s identity reveals his considerable power and commitment to a cosmopolitan subjectivity as well as of the invented and persistent nature of national identity. Contemporaries’ and historians’ efforts to pigeonhole Liszt continue to be contested because national identity is a culturally determined category that changes over time, and can be deployed for both positive and negative ends. Its very malleability and vagueness made it possible and frequent that Liszt’s enemies and detractors painted him as a foreigner, whether German or Hungarian, and for his allies to claim the opposite: national identity, like other forms of subjectivity, was relational. His cosmopolitanism also could gain either a positive or negative inflection depending on 5 “Franz Liszt,” Aufsätze über musikalische Tagesfragen III, no. 6 (August 1886): 81. 6 Ludwig Karpath, “Der Kampf um die Asche Franz Liszts,” Neue Musikalische Presse vol. xv, no. 19 (29 October 1906). 7 Almost two hundred years after his birth, concert pianist Ádám Fellegy presents educational concerts of Liszt’s less known works and seeks the return of Hungary’s most famous composer’s remains to Budapest; email from Susan Keglevich, 24 June 2009.

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the user’s attitude toward Liszt himself. The opportunism of nationalists seeking to categorize Liszt made his fame the first priority and value, which nationalists then attempted to claim or co-opt for their own nation. Cosmopolitanism and nationalism were not mutually exclusive polarized alternatives, but rather two complementary forms of individual and collective identification. Liszt’s adherence to cosmopolitanism challenged late-nineteenth century ideologies and instructs us about the multiple strategies employed to fashion selves that fulfilled personal ambitions within cultural constraints. His choices became benchmarks of a radically changed century.

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Index Ábrányi, Kornél 205, 207–208, 214–215 absolute music 153, 157–158, 162, 179 Adami, Heinrich 40–41, 52 Adelburg, August von 102 Ágai, Adolf 210 Allgemeine Deutsche Musikzeitung 217 Allgemeine Musik Zeitung 224 Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 27, 29 Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein 220–223, 225, 227–230, 232–233, 236–241, 245 and Franz Liszt 226, 230–233, 240–242 founding 22, 118, 220–224 membership 221, 227, 235–236, 241 musical programs 221, 228 purpose 225–227, 229, 231, 233, 236, 239 Altenburg, the 155 Altenburg, the, as Liszt burial site 2 ancien regime aesthetics 25 ancien regime subjectivity 13, 17, 24, 42, 44 ancient Greeks 140, 168, 204 as inspiration for Liszt 57 as inspiration for Wagner 161 Andersen, Hans Christian 40–41, 51 Andrássy, Gyula 189, 207 Anregungen für Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft 180, 224 anti-Semitism 166, 213, 216 Apponyi, György 189 Arnim, Bettina von 134 art music 17, 62, 75, 95, 149, 174, 197, 200 art music, and nationalism 76 art music, and social class 27, 74, 152 Aufsätze über Musikalische Tagesfragen 248 Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung 208 Augusz, Anton 83 n. 79, 103, 184, 195–196, 206 authenticity 7, 42, 50, 74, 98, 204 and nation 81, 97–98 authenticity, and Franz Liszt 23, 52, 55, 63, 66, 94–95, 102, 104 authenticity, concerns about 32, 34, 201, 241 autonomists 162, 164, 170–171, 173–174, 181, 224, 232, 235 adherents 150, 228 and German national identity 162 tenets 49, 151, 157, 175

tensions with New Germans 151, 163, 172, 178–179, 220, 224, 231–233 autonomous subject 32, 51 Bach, Johann Sebastian 172–173, 197, 229, 40 Bach, Johann Sebastian, compositions 39, 194, 220, 228 Prelude and Fugue in A Minor 39 Baden-Baden 228, 237, 239 Barabás, Miklos 85, 92 Bartha, Sándor 214–215 Barzun, Jacques 34 Basel 239 Batthyányi, Lajos 89 Bayreuth 1, 22, 177 n. 116, 216, 219 Bayreuth Festival 1, 21 Bayreuther Blätter 217 Beethoven Festival 1845 91, 155 Beethoven Festival 1870 214, 232–233 Beethoven monument. See Beethoven Festival 1845 Beethoven, as inspiration 154 Beethoven, Ludwig van 19, 28, 33, 42, 47, 132, 149, 153–154, 156, 162, 172–173, 185, 194, 229, 231, 233 Beethoven, Ludwig van, compositions 153–154, 164, 178, 228 C-sharp Minor Quartet 39 Egmont 154 Emperor Concerto 232 Fidelio 54, 180 Fifth Symphony 154 Missa Solemnis 220, 229, 232–233 “Moonlight” Sonata 38 Ninth Symphony 136, 154, 232–233 The Ruins of Athens 136 Third Symphony 154 Belgiojoso, Cristina 38, 41, 79, 115–116 Bellman, Jonathan 75 Berlin 53, 125, 148, 220, 227, 238 n. 74 Berlin Associates 134, 137, 139 Berlioz, Hector 37, 38, 44, 45, 47, 48, 110, 130, 148 and New Germans 164–165 critique of virtuosi 33–34 reception of Liszt 39

270 Berlioz, Hector, compositions 157 Rákóczy March 75, 83, 89, 204, 206 Bern 239 Berry, Duchesse de 36 Bildung 107, 118, 123, 134, 158, 175, 179, 181 and German national identity 121 and music 152 ties to nationalism 108 Bildungsbürger 120, 142 and masculinity 181 Bismarck, Otto von 21, 190 n. 25 Blätter for Musik, Theater und Kunst 200 Brahms, Johannes 150, 163, 179, 228–229, 232, 235, 240 Brahms, Johannes, compositions First Piano Concerto 118 Hungarian Rhapsodies 75 Brassai, Samuel 102–103 Brendel, Franz 156, 158, 161, 172, 175, 177, 180–181, 185, 187, 194, 206, 224–225, 231, 235–36 and ADMV 220, 222–225, 236–238, 245 and nationalism 109, 111, 161 and NZfM 149, 166, 224 and universalism 164, 165 and War of the Romantics 163–164, 179, 225–226 Bronsart, Hans von 170, 228, 240 Budapest 2, 80, 82, 90, 94, 150, 184–185, 193, 204, 209–211, 232, 248 demographics 71, 212 Budapest, as Liszt’s burial site 1 Bülow, Hans von 177, 217, 226, 228–229, 244 divorce 2, 21 Byron, Lord George Gordon 43, 47, 158 canonization of music 26, 229 Carl Alexander, Grand Duke of Weimar 21, 159 and Goethe Foundation 121, 141 patronage of ADMV 227 patronage of Liszt 20, 105, 143 restoration of Wartburg 126, 244 Carl August, Grand Duke of Weimar 132, 136, 143, 171 patronage of art 125–126 Carl Friedrich, Grand Duke of Weimar 113, 141 Carlyle, Thomas 132

index Catholic reformers 18, 50, 190 celebrity monarchism 187, 202, 208 Cherubini, Luigi 28, 36, 77, 79 Chopin, Frédéric 38, 44, 76, 79 church music 4, 192, 194, 196–197, 200, 208 Liszt’s vision for 18, 62, 185 n. 6, 193, 209 Liszt’s works 20–21, 188, 219 Cologne 20, 195, 245 commercialization 23, 25, 31 Compromise of 1867 21, 184, 189, 201, 204, 207, 212, 219 Cornelius, Peter 21, 114, 135, 142, 150, 70 n. 88, 173, 177, 180–181, 215, 220, 227, 231, 235, 245 Cornelius, Peter, compositions Der Barbier von Baghdad 50 Coronation, Franz Joseph in Hungary 21, 202, 207 cosmopolitanism 11, 65, 76, 91, 95, 112, 159, 162, 215, 221, 230, 240 and music 17 French 70 relationship to nationalism 12, 75 Coßmann, Bernhard 129 csárdás 71, 98, 101, 198 Czeke, Alexander von 103 Czerny, Carl 19, 20, 30, 35, 37, 39, 154 d’Agoult, Marie 64, 81, 89, 53 and Liszt 19–20, 48, 53, 55, 82 and Romantics 47 and salons 28 literary activity 11 d’Agoult, Marie, nationality 78 d’Ortigue, Joseph 51, 62, 80 n. 63 Damrosch, Leopold 229 Danhauser, Josef 46–47 Danielik, János 191, 203–204 Danube 64, 81, 195, 198, 208 David, Ferdinand 166, 228 Deák, Ferenc 190–191, 212, 215, 246 Délacroix, Eugene 38, 43–44 Der Floh 216 Der Humorist 90 Der katholische Christ 197 Dessau 236 Deutschland 135 Die Gartenlaube 213, 230 Dingelstedt, Franz 126, 150 Dräseke, Felix 164, 229

271

index Dresden 21, 220 Dresdner Wochenblatt 91 Dvořák, Antonin 76 Echo 228 Eisenach 242 Eisenach, as Liszt’s burial site 2 Eliot, George 217 Elisabeth, Empress of Austria 189, 202 Elssler, Fanny 94 émigrés 26, 36, 43 England 20, 36, 61, 226 Enlightenment 59, 65 and cosmopolitanism 11 and universalism 15 Ense, Varnhagen von 135 Eötvös, Jószef 190, 215, 246 Érard 30–32, 36 Erfurt 236 Erkel, Ferenc 76, 202, 205 Eschenbach, Wolfram von 161 Estates nationalism 67, 69, 74, 94 Esterházy family 19, 37, 78 Esztergom 188–189, 195, 198–199, 202 Euterpe 237 exoticism 75–76, 97, 101, 130 Fallersleben, Hoffman von 114, 129 Festetics, Leo 83, 89, 195–196 festivals 119, 131, 202, 237, 243, 245 festivals, in German lands 61, 121, 125, 160, 223, 232, 236 festivals, in Hungary 21, 85, 184, 187, 192, 193, 202, 219 Fibich, Zdeněk 76 Flechtenmacher, Alexander 76 flood of 1838 in Pest 64, 79, 81 folk culture 75, 104 folk music 62, 75–76, 98–99, 158 Franciscans 2, 184, 186, 192, 199, 202, 203 Frankfurt 48 Frankfurt delegates. See Frankfurt Parliament Frankfurt Parliament 114 Franz Joseph 21, 198, 202 Franz, Robert 228 Freemasons. See Masons French Revolution 25, 59, 125 Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia 117

Friedrich, Caspar David 50 Frigyesi, Judit 212 Gazette de Hongrie 12 n. 37, 210, 213, 217 Genast, Eduard 129, 178, 229 gender 15, 54, 92 gentry, Hungarian 71, 188, 212 German Confederation 77, 152 German unification 110, 167, 184, 234, 240 Gesamtkunstwerk. See music drama Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde 60 Girardin, Delphine de 28 Goethe and Schiller 1, 132–133, 159 Goethe-Schiller monument 143 Goethe Festival 132, 135, 136, 140 Goethe Foundation 162 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 20, 131, 133, 136, 138, 141, 160 and universalism 125, 134 and Weimar Classicism 124 as symbol of German national identity  132, 142 relationship with Carl August 227 works 134, 158, 169 Tasso 32 Greenblatt, Stephen 49 Gregorovius, Ferdinand 201 Grimm, Jakob 159 Gusikow, Michel 56 Gypsies 66, 73, 95, 97–100, 102–103, 166 n. 72, 216, 248 Gypsy musicians 98–99, 102–103, 184 Gypsy scale 246 Habsburg Empire 19, 73, 78, 95, 97, 122, 124, 152, 240 diversity 9 Halle 36 Hamburg 41, 235, 238 n. 74 Händel, George Frideric 228 Hannover 237 Hanslick, Eduard 150, 160–161, 169, 175, 178, 182, 240 Hatos, Hubert 198 Haydn, Josef 75, 78, 149, 153, 197 Heine, Heinrich 32, 38, 45, 56, 116, 169–170 reception of Liszt 39–41, 49, 51–53, 116 Heine, Heinrich, nationality 78 Henrici, Ernst 217

272 Henschel, Ernst 237 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 66, 69, 70, 72, 73–74, 81, 84, 98, 109, 111, 133, 142, 160, 179, 204, 215 and Weimar Classicism 141, 143 relativism 16 Herz, Henri 19, 28, 39, 154 Hiller, Ferdinand 130 Hoffmann, E.T.A. 159–160 Hohenlohe, Alexander von 36 Hohenlohe, Gustav von 185, 190,–191 Horváth, Mihály 190 Hugo, Victor 38, 47, 158 Hummel, Johann Nepomuk 30, 160 Hungarian Academy of Music 21, 187, 211 Hungarus 68, 89, 208, 211 identity 5, 8, 17 Illustrirten Zeitung 178 imperial loyalty 5, 69, 82, 95, 184 Istóczy, Győző 217 Jaell, Alfred 228 Jean Paul 160 Jews 100, 166, 215–217, 219 in German lands 165 in Hungary 72, 188, 213 Wagner’s views about 165 Joachim, Joseph 150, 163, 166, 179, 232, 235 Kádas, József 210 Kahnt, C.F. 194 Karlsruhe 237–239 Kaulbach, Wilhelm von 158 n. 39, 240 kleindeutsch 118 Kodály, Zoltan 98 Köhler, Louis 169, 226 Kossuth, Lajos 88, 246 Kramer, Lloyd 44 Kriehuber, Josef 85 Kulturkampf 190, 235, 245 Kulturnation 107–108, 112, 139 L’Avenir 50 Lamartine, Alphonse de 158 Lamennais, Félicité de 19, 49, 50, 57, 69, 101, 190, 192, 193, 203, 235 Lassen, Eduard 229 Legouvé, Ernest 38

index Leipzig 148, 220, 223, 226, 230 n. 47, 235–236, 238 n. 74 and New Germans 163, 227 Lewald, Fanny 11, 127 n. 80, 141 liberalism 33, 50, 67–68, 118, 121 Lind, Jenny 127 Liszt, Adam 19, 35, 78 Liszt, Blandine 8, 20, 185 n. 5, 210 n. 111 Liszt, Daniel 20, 185 n. 5, 210 n. 111 Liszt, Eduard 89, 199, 235 Liszt, Franz and cosmopolitanism 6, 18, 65–66, 158 and masculinity 14–15, 54, 66, 85, 92, 94 as Catholic 2, 18, 48, 49, 51, 128, 184–186, 191–193, 199, 201, 206, 235 as charlatan 4, 51, 63 as composer 4, 20, 50, 66, 148, 199, 206, 229, 233 as cosmopolitan 11, 16, 164, 204, 213, 219, 231, 247 as patriot 64, 83, 85, 88, 94, 102–103, 148, 162, 184, 193, 201, 206, 207 as performer 6, 20, 23, 52 as Romantic 18, 43, 50–52, 79, 99, 154, 186, as teacher 6, 20 as virtuoso 5, 7, 23, 24, 37, 42, 49, 50, 55, 62, 79, 83–84, 91, 96, 99, 154, 163, 184, 201, 209, 232 burial 1–2 charisma 18, 37, 88 identity 2 Lower Orders 21 national identity 3, 6, 15, 101, 165 nationalism 82, 92 subjectivity 5–8, 12, 14, 18, 24, 41, 42, 44, 50, 51, 64–66, 80, 83–84, 163, 186, 201, 246 Liszt, Franz, compositions 150, 158 Années de pélerinage 50, 53, 70 Christus Mass 196, 201, 229, 240, 241 Coronation Mass 21, 206–209, 215 Dante Symphony 20, 133 Die Ideale 163 Die legende der heiligen Elisabeth 101, 190, 204, 206, 229, 242, 244, 245 Entfesselter Prometheus 101, 179 Faust Symphony 4, 20, 164, 229 Festcantate 232

index Funerailles 101 Gran Mass 195, 197, 200, 207, 240 Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses 50 Héroïde Funébre 156 Hungaria 101 Hungarian Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra 231 Hungarian Historical Portraits 189, 190, 246 Hungarian Rhapsodies 2, 70, 95, 101 Les Préludes 50 Mazeppa 101 Missa Solemnis 184 Orpheus 241 n. 85 St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds 191 St. Francis of Paola Walking on the Waters 191 Weimars Volkslied 142, 146, 170 Liszt, Franz, essays  Chopin 97, 173 De la situation des artistes 57, 62, 148, 180 Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie 82, 95, 97, 184, 187, 201, 206, 215–216 De la musique religieuse 193 Lettres d’un bachelier ès-musique 50, 62 Lohengrin 181 Louis-Philippe 59, 59, 61 n. 150, 115 Magdeburg 236 magnates, Hungarian 9, 67–68, 78, 89, 188–189, 198 Magyar Néplap 102 Magyar Sájto 195 Magyarization 72, 74, 212–214 Maria Pavlovna, Grand Duchess of Weimar 177 Martin Luther 135, 244 masculinity 153, 156, 167–169 Masons 190, 222 Mazzini, Giuseppe 21 Mendelssohn, Felix 149, 156, 228, 236 Mendelssohn’, Felix, compositions Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage 136 Metternich 36 Meyerbeer, Giacomo 165, 166 n. 72, 179 Mihailovich, Ödön 217, 219 Miroir drolatique 92

273 Montag, Carl 129 Montalembert, Charles de 190, 203–204 Montez, Lola 180 Moscheles, Ignacz 16–17, 28, 30, 91, 166, 228 Mosonyi, Mihály 101, 204–206, 246 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 28, 30, 33, 35, 75, 149, 153, 162, 164, 173, 178, 185, 197, 233, 240 and universalism 109 compositions 54 music drama 157, 162, 178 music education 61 Musicians’ Gatherings 165, 220–221, 222 n. 10, 223–224, 227–229, 237–239, 242, 245 Erfurt 231 Leipzig 222, 226, 228 Napoleon III 3, 21 Napoleonic Wars 13, 25, 125, 167 nation building 3, 5 national hermaphrodites 69, 89, 97 national identity 9, 16, 17 National Theater 71, 76, 83 n. 79, 207 National Verein 118, 171, 224 nationalism 9, 12, 17, 66–67, 69, 74, 76, 80, 88, 103–104, 110, 132, 152, 160, 164, 180, 184, 196, 202, 219, 244, 63 historiography 10, 65, 69 relationship to cosmopolitanism 75 Romantic 16 nationalism in German lands 91, 109, 111, 235 nationalism in Hungary 67–68, 71, 79, 83, 88 nationalism, German 216, 242 nationalism, Hungarian 189, 204–205, 212, 215 Neue Freie Presse 247 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 20, 33, 109, 149, 163, 165–166, 171, 195, 200, 224, 226, 231, 236, 241, 245 Neues Pester Journal 216 New German School 148, 164, 165–167, 170, 179, 184, 195, 220, 224, 233, 236, 238–239 New Germans 162–163, 170–172, 174, 178, 181–182, 184, 232, 235, 237–238, 241 aesthetics 149, 169, 173 and Beethoven 172 and cosmopolitanism 162 and masculinity 167, 169 and press 169

274 New Germans (cont.) as revolutionaries 170–171 didacticism 175 tenets 151 tension with autonomists 151, 224, 232–233 vision 157, 179, 229, 245 works 175, 237 Nietzsche, Friedrich 244 Nohl, Ludwig 172, 200, 229, 239–240 Noskowski, Sigismund 230 nóta 98 O’Connell, Daniel 190 Old Weimar 127–128 opera 25, 27, 31, 61, 119, 152–153, 156–162, 176, 178–180, 197, 202–203 Orpheus 62, 241 d’Ortigue, Joseph 28, 37, 193, 204 Ottoman Empire 73 diversity 9 Paer, Ferdinand 16–17, 36 Paganini, Niccolò 31, 37, 47, 51, 56 performance style 31 Palestrina, Giovanni 77, 194, 197 Paris 2, 13, 23, 24, 35, 36, 38, 39, 43, 49, 52, 53, 65, 75–76, 78–79, 91, 105, 111, 154, 159, 185, 239 Liszt’s education 19 musical life 25, 31 social classes 28, 43 Paris Conservatory 19, 28, 32, 36 patrie 82, 105 patronage 24–25, 30–31, 45 Pester Lloyd 102, 198, 206, 210, 213, 217 Pesti Náplo 212 Petőfi, Sándor 71, 81, 215, 246 Philistines 114, 128–129, 130, 164–166 Pius IX 185, 191, 194 Pixis, Francilla 94 plainchant 193–194, 204 Pohl, Richard 129, 168, 175 n. 107, 179–180, 220, 226, 239 Porges, Heinrich 146 Prague 237 Pressburg 19, 82, 89, 209 primitivism 99, 101, 104

index professionalization of music 38, 60, 224 program music 157–158, 172, 175–176, 178 Protestantism 2, 21, 190, 220, 234 Protestants 188, 194, 219, 200 n. 70, 227, 234–235, 242 Raff, Joachim 129, 172 Raiding 19, 98 Raiding, as Liszt’s burial site 2 Rakóczy March 75, 83, 89, 103, 204, 206 Ramann, Lina 127, 155, 240 Reicha, Anton 16–17, 75–76, 26, 36, 42 Reményi, Ede 205 Revolution of 1830 19, 37, 43, 49 revolutions of 1848 21, 77, 106, 128, 132, 146, 150, 151, 156, 165, 168, 170, 171, 187, 188, 195 in Vienna 150 in Weimar 135 Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris 27, 62, 94 Riccius, Franz 228 Riedel, Carl 225, 227, 233 Ries, Ferdinand 16–17 Rietschel, Ernst 143 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay 230 Ritgen, Hugo von 244 Ritter, Alexander 129 Rochau, L.A. von 174 Romantic aesthetics 22, 47, 55, 65 Romanticism 15, 24, 33, 43, 47–48, 59, 75, 77, 99, 246 Romantics 22, 34, 43, 56, 79, 81, 153, 190 Romantics, as outsiders 44–47, 50 Rome 2, 21, 184–185, 187, 195, 226, 247 Rome, as Liszt’s burial site 2 Roquette, Otto 204 Rossini, Gioachino 28, 47, 185 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 38, 84 Rubinstein, Anton 130 Russian Empire 20, 97 diversity 9 saber 83, 91, 92, 94, 116, 167 sacralization 23, 43, 180 sacred music. See church music Saffle, Michael 5, 91 Said, Edward 95 Saint Elisabeth 190–191, 202–203, 242, 244–245

index Saint Francis 191 Saint Stephen 190–191, 195 Saint-Cricq, Caroline de 36 Saint-Simonians 19, 49, 56–57 salon concerts 19, 30, 34–56 salons 19, 21, 28 Sand, George 38, 44–45, 47, 49, 54–55, 62 Saphir, Moritz 90, 92 Sárai, Josy 96 Sayn-Wittgenstein, Carolyne von 2, 20–21, 105, 128, 166, 175 n. 107, 194 literary activity 41, 192, 215 relationship with Liszt 185 Scarlatti, Domenico 77, 197 Schiller festival 176 Schiller, Friedrich 20, 92, 134, 136, 142, 158, 160, 163, 170, 180 and French Revolution 125 and universalism 109 and Weimar Classicism 124 Schober, Franz von 90 Schöll, Adolf 114, 150 Schorn, Adelheid von 191, 240 Schreiber, Ferdinand 129 Schubert, Franz 75 Schubert, Franz, compositions 54 Erlkönig 39 Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel 136 Schumann, Clara 149, 232, 236 Schumann, Robert 33 n. 42, 107, 136, 149, 156, 172, 178, 228, 236 and NZfM 33, 109 critique of virtuosi 33, 154 reception of Liszt 39 Schumann, Robert, compositions Rhenish Symphony 81 Scenes from Faust 136 Schütz, Miska 217 Schwind, Moritz von 204, 244 Scitovsky, János 188–189, 191, 195–196, 206 selfhood. See subjectivity Simor, János 206 Singer, Edmund 129 situational identity 5, 9, 11, 13, 69, 77, 112 Smetana, Bedrich 76, 81, 230 socialism 3, 171, 213 Society of St. Cecilia 194 Sondershausen 177, 236

275 Sonderweg 117 Soupper, Eugen von 129 Spain 20 Stahr, Adolf 125 Stein, Eduard 177 Stöcker, Adolf 217 Stöhr, Carl 129 Strasburg 239 Street-Klindworth, Agnes 88, 150, 186 Sturm, Albert 214 Stuttgart 239 subjectivity 5, 8, 14, 17, 74, 50 Switzerland 21, 129 Sybel, Heinrich von 235 symphonic music 153, 156–157, 176, 179, 196–197, 61 symphonic poems 20, 101, 133, 158, 162, 172, 175, 179, 188, 193, 196 Szábo, Alois 102 Széchenyi, István 3, 68, 72, 88, 189, 208, 246 Székely, József 207 Tallián, Tibor 82, 97 Tausig, Carl 229 Teleki, Lászlo 246 Téleki, Sándor 96 Thalberg, Sigismond 19, 39, 41, 154 Thuringia 105, 124, 126, 128, 202–203, 244–245 Tisza, Kálmán 2, 248 transcriptions 27 travel 12, 17 Tréfort, Ágoston 211 ultramontanism 192, 203 universalism 11, 18, 65, 67, 69–70, 74, 76, 91, 109, 112, 158, 202, 234, 241 universalism, German 164 Vatican 21, 189, 191, 219 Vatican 185 n. 6 Venice 19, 82 verbunkós 98, 101, 206 Verdi, Giuseppe 179 vie trifurquée 21, 148, 167, 211, 234 Vienna 2, 13, 23, 35, 64, 79–80, 84, 148, 155, 191, 200 and autonomists 235 Liszt performances 20

276 Vienna (cont.) Liszt’s education 19, 23 musical capital of Europe 25, 76 Viennese classicism 161 virtuosi 19, 27–34, 38–39, 41, 47, 56, 57, 174 Vogel, Bernhard 241 Volk 81, 142, 164, 174, 196, 221, 234 Volkmann, Robert 229 von Weber, Carl Maria 156 Vormärz 160 Vörösmarty, Mihály 71, 90, 101, 246 Wagner, Cosima 1–2, 7, 20–21, 53, 216, 244 Wagner, Richard 1–2, 107, 126, 133, 148, 151, 156–158, 160–163, 166, 168, 172, 173, 177, 179, 216–217, 228–229, 232 and Liszt 20, 157, 161, 162, 168, 177, 178, 229 Wagner, Richard, compositions 50 Das Rheingold 82, 171, 182 Die Meistersinger of Nürnberg 161 Die Walküre 171 Kaisermarsch 237 Lohengrin 20, 133, 159–161, 177, 179, 204, 241 Parsifal 1 Rienzi 159 Tannhäuser 159, 160, 179, 204, 244 Tristan and Isolde 118, 161 Wagner, Richard, essays Das Judenthum in der Musik 165, 166, 215 Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft 149, 204 Oper und Drama 149

index Walbrühl, Johann 129 Walker, Mack 127 War of the Romantics 149, 160, 167, 169, 174, 178, 181–182, 199, 220, 225–226, 235, 238 n. 74 Wartburg 2, 126, 160–161, 202–204, 242, 244 Wartburg Festival 242, 244 Weimar 20–21, 95, 104, 106, 113, 120, 123, 125, 129, 140, 143, 148, 150, 159, 162, 176, 184–185, 188, 193–194, 201, 209, 235 and German national identity 124 as site of innovation 157 Liszt performances 20, 21 Weimar Classicism 20, 106, 117, 230 Weimar, as Liszt’s burial site 1–2 Wieland, Christoph 160 and Weimar Classicism 124 Wiesbaden 236 Wilhelm I of Prussia 228 Witt, Franz 194 Wohl, Janka 88 n. 90, 208, 211 Wolzogen, Hans von 216 Wurzbach, Constant von 89 Zellner, Leopold 200 Zenészeti Lapok 207, 210, 214 Zichy, Géza 192 Zopff, Hermann 230–231 Zukunftsmusik 163 Zukunftsmusiker 150, 164 Zürich 237