Life and Liszt: The Recollections of a Concert Pianist (Dover Books on Music) by Arthur Friedheim

Author:Arthur Friedheim [Friedheim, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-04-19T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

Funérailles

Now the time was fast approaching when I was to lose my beloved master and friend. Fortunately I did not know it. Indeed, could I have ever admitted such a possibility? There had never been a time in my life, it seemed, when Liszt had not existed for me, first as a far-off vision of glamor, then, these last several years, as a living reality. The name Liszt had been a household word to two generations of people already. It was impossible to picture the time when there might be no Franz Liszt. Surely in his case the laws of life and death which rule mere mortals would be transcended. But very soon now the parting was to come, and I would experience the most bitter grief my life had ever known.

The Master had promised his daughter Cosima that he would attend one or two performances of “Parsifal” in Bayreuth toward the last week in July 1886. The day before his departure a few of his intimates assembled at the Hofgärtnerei. For no apparent reason Liszt seated himself at the piano and played just one short selection very softly, Chopin’s A flat Etude, the second of “Trois Etudes composées pour la Méthode de Moscheles et Fétis”. We were all familiar with the ethereal sounds his hands could bring from the piano, but in this hour there seemed to come mystic echoes from regions where time and space lose their meaning. Tears rose to the eyes of everybody in the room.

The next morning he left for Bayreuth, accompanied by Stavenhagen. Siloti and I had arranged for regular reports on his condition during this visit to his daughter. Just before he took the train Liszt said: “I have never travelled before on a Friday. Nun, lassen wir es darauf ankommen.” Could this have been a premonition?

A few days later we heard from Stavenhagen that the Master had attended the performance of “Parsifal,” though he was feeling far from well, that he taken a severe chill and that a doctor was in attendance at his bedside. On the morning of 30 July we received a wire in Leipzig from Stavenhagen: “Satisfactory.” Eight hours later another wire: “Sudden change for the worse. Come at once.”

We took the next train, but because of the deplorable connections between Leipzig, where we were spending the day, and Bayreuth, we arrived four hours too late. It was 31 July 1886.

Frau Wagner conceded that the vigils should be left to the pupils; and after some hesitation she yielded likewise to my peremptory claim that we should be the torchbearers at both sides of the hearse during the funeral procession.

And so, after a ceremony of simple and beautiful dignity, the great man was borne to his last resting place in the relatively unfamiliar town of Bayreuth, far from his beloved Weimar, far from Budapest and from Rome, where he might perhaps have been enshrined more suitably, since all those places had become hallowed for those who held him dear by their many years of association with his living genius.

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