"Liszt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a family celebration, the "Little Swiss Boy" or the "Rocks of St. Malo." The result was she had been requested to go on with lessons that had had such a favorable beginning, and my musical education was entrusted to her until it came time for me to play the music of Chopin and Liszt. ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... have: I played the great fugue in A minor expressly for your entertainment: you used to work at Liszt's transcription of it. The organ is only occasionally my consoler. For the most part I am driven to it by habit and a certain itching in my fingers. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... write this to explain the cause of this homicide and suicide. Last summer Clifford and I began a friendship which developed into love." He then recited the details of the friendship, and continued: "After playing a Liszt rhapsody for Clifford over and over, he said that when our time to die came he hoped we would die together, listening to such glorious music as that. Our time has now come to die, but death will not be accompanied by music. Clifford's love has, alas! turned to deadly hatred. For some reason Clifford ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... LISZT, the eminent pianist, has published in French a book on Richard Wagner's two operas, Lohengrin and Tannhaeuser. He praises them most enthusiastically; possibly he may succeed in having Wagner's pieces produced ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of its "philistinism" and embrace "rational" ideas such as he propagated. Add to this the great difficulties he had in getting his works performed, and one might assume that he felt himself to be composing, most of the time, to audiences of bricks. Yes, his great, intensely beloved friend Liszt believed in, fully understood, and greatly appreciated Wagner's works, but Liszt was just one in a million, and even he, as Wagner suggested, associated with a base coterie incapable of assimilating Wagnerian messages. Considering the sorry state of music and intellectualism ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... has (without exaggeration) hands the size of a child of eight years old. These minute, supple, white hands, three of which I could hold in mine, have an iron power of finger, in the proportion, like that of Liszt. The keys, not the fingers, bend; she can compass ten keys by the span and elasticity of her fingers; this phenomenon must be seen to be believed. Music, her mother, and her husband: these three words sum up her character. She is the Fenella of the fireside; the ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... artists in Boston. But as I had no opportunity to see their work, I cannot offer an opinion on the proud claim. My gloom was becoming permanent, when one wet day I invaded, not easily, the Macdowell Club, and, while listening to a chorus rehearsal of Liszt's "St. Elizabeth" made the acquaintance of really interesting pictures by artists such as Irving R. Wiles, Jonas Lie, Henri, Mrs. Johansen, and Brimley, of whom previously I had known nothing. From that moment ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... cannon, hurrahs, and a nuptial hymn—rather difficult to render on a piano—but there was a certain amount of imagination in the composition. The two came often with me to the Conservatoire. Comte de Beust brought Liszt to me one day. I wanted so much to see that complex character, made up of enthusiasms of all kinds, patriotic, religious, musical. He was dressed in the ordinary black priestly garb, looked like an ascetic with pale, thin face, which ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... nature in his interpretation of a tone-poem'; whereupon another lady threw out remarks on 'subjective interpretation', confessing her preference for a method purely 'objective'. The influential critic began to talk about Liszt, with whom he declared that he had been on intimate terms; he grew fervent over the master's rhapsodies, with their 'clanging rhythm and ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... difficult to be sure where George Frederick left off and somebody else began. Bellini wrote fashionable music and Norma and La Sonnambula sound a trifle faded although they are still occasionally performed, but Rossini, whose only desire was to please his public, (Liszt once observed "Rossini and Co. always close with 'I remain your very humble servant'"), wrote melodies in Il Barbiere di Siviglia which sound as fresh to us today as they did when they were first composed. And when this prodigiously gifted musician-cook turned his back to the public ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Bedad, then, 'tis Misther Paddy REWSKI himself that is the broth of a boy entirely at the piano-forte, but, Begorra, he's better at the piano than the forte. He gave us a nice mixture of HANDEL, BEETHOVEN, CHOPIN, LISZT, and then a neat little compo of his own, consisting of a charming theme, with mighty ingenious and beautiful variations, all his own, divil a less. Great success for Paddy REWSKI. The Irish Pole, or Pole-ished Irishman, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... violin lessons under compulsion, were the circumstances ushering him into his career. He was for a brief time a pupil of Mozart; just enough so to preserve that succession of royal geniuses expressed in linking Mozart to Haydn, and in remembering that Liszt played for Beethoven and that Schubert stood beside Beethoven's last sick-bed. High patronage and interest gradually took the composer under its care. Austria and Germany recognized him, England accepted him early, universal intelligence ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dramatist, the most charming romancer of Germany: and, also, in France, of Theophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset. Among representatives of the other arts—with two of which Browning must ever be closely associated—Mendelssohn and Chopin were born in 1809, and Schumann, Liszt, and Wagner within the four succeeding years: within which space also came Diaz and Meissonier and the great Millet. Other high names there are upon the front of the century. Macaulay, Cardinal Newman, John Stuart Mill (one of the earliest, by the way, to recognise the genius ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... like a woman, or like a man, or unlike either, but to do her work thoroughly and well. He or she who works in this spirit works nobly, and gives an example which will pass beyond the bounds of sex, and help all. The Abbe Liszt, the most gifted of modern pianists, told a friend of mine, his pupil, that he had learned more of music from hearing Madame Malibran sing, than from anything ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... commenced Liszt's "Preludes"—and all conversation ceased. Afterwards Sarasate came again to bestow upon his eager admirers another saving grace of sound, in the shape of the famous Mendelssohn Concerto, which he performed with such fiery ardor, tenderness, purity of tone, and marvellous ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... good. But I rather doubt whether you could yet risk playing that in a concert." And in the matter of sheer noise I am also something of an expert, having once, as an infant prodigy, broken five notes in a single masterly rendering of Liszt's polonaise in E Major—I think it is E Major—whereupon my teacher, himself a pupil of Liszt, genially remarked: "Now don't cry, and don't apologize. A polonaise like yours is worth a piano." I set these things down with modest diffidence, solely in order to establish my locus ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... engaged Klesmer to come down to Quetcham. To have a first-rate musician in your house is a privilege of wealth; Catherine's musical talent demanded every advantage; and she particularly desired to use her quieter time in the country for more thorough study. Klesmer was not yet a Liszt, understood to be adored by ladies of all European countries with the exception of Lapland: and even with that understanding it did not follow that he would make proposals to an heiress. No musician of honor would do so. Still less was it conceivable that Catherine ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... modern than a great deal that was written yesterday. This modernity will, I fancy, be readily admitted by everyone; and it is the only one quality of Schubert's music which any two competent people will agree to admit. Liszt had the highest admiration for everything he wrote; Wagner admired the songs, but wondered at Liszt's acceptance of the chamber and orchestral music. Sir George Grove outdoes Liszt in his Schubert worship; ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... School of Great Britain, where, curiously enough for a musician, he graduated at the head of his class in mathematics. Waller was a class-mate and friend of the ill-fated Prince Imperial of France, killed by the Zulus, and afterwards spent three years in Franz Liszt's house as the master's pupil. Strangely enough, too, Waller's piano performances on the stage were almost mediocre, but to private audiences of those known to be appreciative, he was a tireless marvel. Allison was a frequent visitor at Waller's quarters and here his idea germinated for an ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... GERMANY.—Near the close of August, musical and Dramatic ceremonies in inauguration of the statue of Herder took place at Weimar. On the 24th was represented at the theater the "Prometheus Unbound," with overture and choruses by M. Liszt. On the 25th, after the inauguration of the statue, Handel's "Messiah" was performed in the Cathedral, where Herder used to preach, and where he lies buried. On the 28th, was given at the theater the first representation ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... nevertheless, Varvara Pavlovna was assiduous in visiting the theatres. She went into raptures over Italian music, yawned decorously at the Comedie Francaise, and wept at the acting of Madame Dorval in some ultra romantic melodrama; and a great thing—Liszt played twice in her salon, and was so kind, so simple—it was charming! In such agreeable sensations was spent the winter, at the end of which Varvara Pavlovna was even presented at court. Fedor Ivanitch, for his part, was not ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... community sat in carved wooden stalls round the altar, the pupils assisted from the galleries above, and hidden under the gallery was the small but very perfect choir of nuns and children. The hymns of Pere Hermann, a famous pianist and composer, a pupil of Liszt, a convert from Judaism, and afterward a Carmelite friar, are very popular in France, and of these the music chiefly consisted. At the communion the superioress stepped forward, wearing the white woolen mantle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... surprise, I found no less than six square piano-fortes belonging to different families in Reikjavik, and heard waltzes by our favourite composers, besides variations of Herz, and some pieces of Liszt, Wilmers, and Thalberg. But such playing! I do not think that these talented composers would have ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... in general, and Mr. Dumany surprised me again by an allusion to the Hungarian witticism that when we speak of Hungarian art we cannot omit Liszt (for the name of the great musician is also the Hungarian word for flour); and Mr. Dumany remarked that Americans travelling abroad have learned to appreciate both the Hungarian specialties. The great artist, and the product of the soil and mill converted into fine cake, are ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... 1822; from les Nouvelles Mditations. This poem, addressed to Victor Hugo, consists of several divisions, in different meters, only the last of which is here given. It inspired the symphonic poem of Liszt by ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... progress they have made in instrumental art since the roaring 'forties. For in the 'forties women, though still supreme on the lyric stage, had hardly begun to assert themselves as executants, save on the pianoforte. Punch well remembers LISZT—with the spelling of whose name he had considerable difficulty—in his meteoric pianofortitude. But the young WILMA NERUDA, who visited London in 1849, escaped his benevolent notice. She was then only ten. It was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... always liked," he answered, turning back to the keyboard. "It is the 'Mephisto Walzer' of Liszt. He has adapted it himself from his own orchestral score, very ingeniously. It is difficult to render on the organ, but I think you can get the idea of it." As he spoke he began playing, his head very slightly moving to the rhythm of the piece. At the beginning of each ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Michelet and Guizot, the elder Dumas and Beyle, Cousin and Villemain, Musset and Balzac; he knew the Comtesse d'Agoult, for so many years the friend of Liszt, and Madame Colet, the mistress, first of Cousin, then of Musset, and finally of Flaubert, of whom my French uncle, who had met her on his travels, had drawn me a very unattractive picture. Chasles was ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... about 1640." It was upon a Violoncello of this make that Signor Piatti played when he first appeared at the concert of the Philharmonic Society, on June 24, 1844. The instrument had been presented to him by Liszt, and is now in the possession of the Rev. Canon Hudson. In an entry in the Cathedral Register at Cremona, the name of the wife of Niccolo Amati is given as Lucrezia Paliari. The meagreness of accounts of a documentary character ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... today who still remember him and could call him by his name—formerly an impossible Hungarian one, with two or three syllables lopped off at the end, and for family reasons not divulged here. He assented that he was a fellow-pupil of Liszt's under the beneficent, iron rule of Carl Czerny. But he never looked his age. Seemingly seventy, a very vital threescore-and-ten, by the way, he was as light on his feet as were his fingers on the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... of instruments; to Hamburg, where are fine old organs, some of them built two or three centuries ago; to Lubeck, Dresden, Breslau, Leipsic, Halle, Merseburg. Here he found a splendid organ, built by Ladergast, whose instruments excel especially in their tone-effects. A letter from Liszt, the renowned pianist, recommended this builder particularly to Dr. Upham's choice. At Frankfort and at Stuttgart he found two magnificent instruments, built by Walcker of Ludwigsburg, to which place he repaired in order ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... literature in the works of a few great masters who have set the pace and established the limits for all the rest. In the line of purely instrumental music this has been done by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, and Wagner. The latter, who exercised a vast influence upon the manner of developing a musical thought and in the selection of the orchestral colors in which it can be expressed advantageously, powerfully stimulated all composers later than himself, nevertheless ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... to moods, and will be a satisfactory work of art or not, according as the composer has been actuated by a legitimate sequence of emotional states, like Beethoven, or by a desire to produce novel and startling effects, like Liszt. But the danger in purely instrumental music is that it may run riot in the extravagant utterance of emotional states which are not properly concatenated by any normal sequence of ideas associated with them. This is sometimes exemplified in the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... B——, of Philadelphia, who lives at Rome, has just written a charming song, with music for the piano, entitled, "Liszt, O Liszt!" The most famous aria, however, there now, is the malaria. Rome is sick. The people are sick of the Pope and his priests; the Pope is sick of the Council; the bishops are sick of each other; and travellers are sick of fever. ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... wrote the first sketch of the opera of 'Lohengrin.' The poem was written at Dresden in 1845, but the score was finished only in 1848. The opera was first performed at Weimar in 1850, under the leadership of Liszt, who was greatly interested in it, and determined to make it ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... startling reflections. Few have ever been successful in inducing this pianist to talk upon any other subject than music for more than a few minutes at a time. Another pianist, who was distinguished as a Liszt pupil, and who toured America repeatedly, seemed to have a hatred for the piano that amounted to an obsession. "Look," he exclaimed, "I am its slave. It has sent me round and round the world, night after night, year after year. It has cursed me like a wandering Jew. No rest, no home, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... made Azalea's bed, the strains of one of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies floated up to me. Azalea was playing. We had fallen into the habit of drifting into the living-room, where the piano stood, every morning immediately after breakfast, to hear Azalea play. In the evenings she sang to us; but one does not sing directly after breakfast, and ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... the Eroica. But my fingers were stiff and my touch was wooden—so it was small wonder my poor lord and master tried to bury himself in his four-day-old newspaper. Then I tried Schubert's Rosamonde, though that wasn't much of a success. So I wandered on through Liszt to Chopin. And even Chopin struck me as too soft and sugary and far-away for a homesteader's ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... skilful touch upon instruments, evolved their magic strains. Let an abler pen than mine portray the sublime triumphs of Hasse, Mario, Wachtel, Santley, Whitney; of Albani, Malibran, Lind, Parepa Rosa, Nilsson; of Haupt, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Ole Bull, Rubinstein, Liszt, and Von Bulow.[4] ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... old fraud asleep again. And to-morrow he'll print half a column of vapid reminiscence and call it criticism. It's a wonder his paper stands for him. Because he once heard Liszt, he.... ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... had left him pondering a minute the question he said Liszt always left with him, she turned, eagerly it seemed, to lighter things. She played a little Nevin, played it with a lightness, gladsomeness, he had never felt in her touch before. He said Nevin helped him to see things, that ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... which the author is most indebted for material are: Schoelcher's "Life of Handel;" Liszt's "Life of Chopin;" Elise Polko's "Reminiscences;" Lampadius's "Life of Mendelssohn;" Chorley's "Reminiscences;" Urbino's "Musical Composers;" Franz Heuffner's "Wagner and the Music of the Future;" Haweis's "Music and Morals;" and articles in ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... commonly called reactionaries, men who would prefer to go back a century or two, and who like to live in out-of-the-way places in old countries, as Landor lived in Florence, Browning in Venice, Stevenson in Samoa, Liszt in Rome,—besides a host of painters and sculptors, who have exiled themselves voluntarily for life in Italy and France. The whole tendency of the modern world is scientific and financial, and the world is ruled ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... that you want your tete-a-tete, Aunt Marcelle? I know the signal. Well, I will leave you. I want to try over that new march of Liszt's; and I expect, by the time I have grappled with it, you will be coming ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... beginning to execute with much vigour and some continuity. I had adopted the gestures of the young man of whom I have spoken, and frequently regretted that there were no strangers present to see me play. Soon, however, I began to realise that Liszt and Kalkbrenner were beyond me, and that I should never overtake Katenka. Accordingly, imagining that classical music was easier (as well as, partly, for the sake of originality), I suddenly came to the conclusion that I loved abstruse German music. I began to go into raptures whenever Lubotshka ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... sun-bursts, and those which were mosses beneath them. From this training she came before the best audience in Germany, and stood a sad-eyed, beautiful child of fourteen summers, and by acclamation was crowned the Queen of the Piano. Franz Liszt remembered his enthusiasm of that period, and many years afterward wrote in his extravagant way,—"When we heard Clara Wieck in Vienna, fifteen years ago, she drew her hearers after her into her poetic world, to which she floated upward in a magical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
