I cannot tell you how deeply I regret having thus made concessions to bad taste, which violated the spirit as well as the letter of the music. That they were justified in censuring him he admitted four years later, in a letter to George Sand, in which he confessed his guilt in these contrite words: “In concert halls as well as in private drawing rooms I often played works of Beethoven, Weber, and Hummel, and I am ashamed to say that for the sake of winning the applause of a public which was slow in appreciating the sublime and beautiful, I did not scruple to change the pace and the ideas of the compositions nay, I went so far in my frivolity as to interpolate runs and cadenzas which, to be sure, brought me the applause of the musically uneducated, but led me into paths which I fortunately soon abandoned. While the public applauded, the critics jumped on Liszt with both feet, on the ground that he took liberties with classical works, playing them arbitrarily and introducing inappropriate ornaments. ![]() He had become the Paganini of the piano, performing feats of virtuosity which no other player could equal. Thenceforth he shunned appearing in public or in society, devoting most of his time to experimenting on the piano and when, after three years of assiduous practice, he gave another recital, the Parisians applauded him as frantically as they had applauded Paganini. Liszt heard him, and like a flash the thought came to him: “What wonderful things might be done with the piano if its technical possibilities were developed as those of the violin have been by Paganini.” He performed tricks with harmonics, double stopping and treble stopping, arpeggios, springing bow, together with “guitar effects,” pizzicato and arco simultaneously, and other things that astonished not only “the natives” but rival violinists, who could not understand how he did them. ![]() Niccolo Paganini arrived in Paris in March, 1831, on a tour which set all Europe aflame with wonder at the amazing brilliancy of his playing. What averted the calamity was Paganini’s violin playing. ![]() When we consider the many ways in which Liszt, during his long career, helped along music and musicians, we realize that it would have been nothing short of a calamity if, at the age of twenty-one, he had followed this inclination to become a priest. At one time he was so short of funds that he sold his piano to buy bread. From his early years his mind had been inclined toward religion but there were other reasons which affected him at this time, among them a disappointment in love, a long illness, an inborn aversion to the career of a public performer, and the necessity of giving lessons to support himself and his mother in Paris, because his recitals were not well-attended. What is strange is that he had an attack of this tæ dium vitæ when he was a mere youth-an attack so severe that he decided to say farewell to the musical world and enter the Church. He had become tired of life, having exhausted its joys as well as its sorrows. It is not strange that he repeatedly alluded in the letters of his last years to the tæ dium vitæ. ![]() He lived a life crowded, as few lives have been, with hard work, romantic episodes, splendid triumphs, deep disappointments. Franz Liszt reached the ripe age of seventy-five.
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