Music Welcome to snoozecast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and now also on YouTube, while you are on our channel, be sure to subscribe. This episode is brought to you by Truth and Beauty. Tonight, we'll read about the musical genius, Franz Liszt, as a child piano prodigy from the book Life of Liszt, written by Ludwig Neul. List was a Hungarian composer, pianist and teacher of the romantic era. He gained fame during the early 19th century for his virtuoso skill as a pianist. see often appeared three or four times a week in concert, it could be safe to assume that he appeared in public well over a thousand times during one eight-year period. During his virtuoso heyday, list was described by the writer Hans Christian Anderson, who has written many fairy tales featured by snooze cast as a slim young man with dark hair hung around his pale face. He was seen as handsome by many, with the German poet writing concerning his showmanship during concerts. How powerful, how shattering losses mere physical appearance. Let's go cozy. Close your eyes. your lecture body into the softness of your head. Now take a few deep breaths. hold. Breaths. Behold, a young virtuoso seemingly dropped from the clouds, who arouses the greatest astonishment. The performances of this boy border on the miraculous, and one is tempted to doubt their physical possibility when he hears the young giant thunder-fourth hummus difficult compositions. Says of Vienna account of this boy, scarce eleven years of age. Only a year afterward we see Paris wild with amazement over a phenomenon never be held before. Like that of young Mozart at Naples, the piano was turned round so that they could see what they did not believe to be possible, thereby revealing the genial and manly characteristics of the young artist. Which afterward became the delight of the world, like his playing, his eyes gleam with animation, mischievousness and joy. He is not led to the piano. He rushes up to it. They applaud, and he looks surprised. They applaud a fresh, and he rubs his hands. It is said, and then are pointed out the national quality, the inspired fury, the unmistakable originality, and at another time the proud, manly expression which gained for him the appellation of the Hungarian wonderchild. We shall further notice the indications of these peculiarities, particularly as they are given in a longer biographical notice, which in its main features seems to have been taken from his own communication that appeared about the year 1830, in one of the first of Parisian musical journals. Franz Liszt was born October 22nd, 1811. The comma ear appeared to his parents as a good omen of his future. The father, belonging to a not very wealthy family of the old nobility was, in his prime, accountant with a prince Nicholas Asterazee, for whom Joseph Hayden was the orchestra master. As he enjoyed the personal acquaintance of the honored master of the quartet, mostly at card-playing, which he practiced as a recreation in the midst of his always-severe labor. He was brought into his sphere, which was peculiarly musical in its character, and which furnished his own nature with the richest food. For Fotherlist was on terms of personal friendship, also with that best scholar of Mozart's, the distinguished pianist, Hummel, who officiated many years as the princes orchestra master. No one esteemed him more highly as a pianist. His playing had made an indelible impression upon him. He was also musical himself in a high degree, playing nearly every instrument, particularly the piano and violin cello, and was only restrained by the displeasure of his family relatives from perfecting himself as a thorough musician. So much the more his dreams and hopes of artistic power were transferred to his eldest son, whose rare talent had manifested itself early. Destiny is fixed fixed. Thou wilt realize that art ideal which fascinated my youth in vain. In thee will I grow young again and transmit myself. He often said to him, he was so strongly impressed with all the signs of promise in the boy that he devoted a diary to him in which he entered his notes, with the most minute and solicitous punctiliousness of a tender father. We interrupt the narrative at this point to inquire what was the act of source of this inner consecration to art, as well as of the passionate impulse to exhibit it in public. Neither Ferdinand Ries, who merely imitated the ornamentations of his great teacher, Beethoven, Norm Mozart's pupil, Hummel, who succeeded Heiden, nor the great father of instrumental music himself even felt remotely that genius for execution. the wonderful results of which were already filling the youthful soul like a creative impulse

and with a passionate longing

for expression, urging him on to public performance. In a letter from Paris to Schumann's musical paper in 1834, it is said, he often plays tenderly and with gentle melancholy, then again, with overpowering passion, and with such fire and even fury that it seems as if the piano must give way beneath his fingers. It often creaks and rattles during his playing. You see head, eyes, hands, the whole upper part of the body, moving impetuously in every direction. On one occasion he fell back from the piano exhausted. Whence this unprecedented devotion to music. Whence, as one might say, this merging of his very identity in his playing, there are peculiar people scattered from the Himalayas to the Scottish Highlands, possessing nothing in this wide world of God but themselves in nature. Neither house nor hearth, neither state nor social forms restrain them. They have no fixed pursuit, no calling which makes a firmly settled existence based on duty and inclination. They have no manners, no church, no God, and yet these people have lived for centuries. As we know, unchanged in kind and number, yet nowhere settled. They are the gypsies, who seemingly possess nothing which the earth offers men, or which makes life valuable. And still more, wherever they appear, they are completely ignored and even looked upon with contempt But they have one thing that lies with our culture and art, their music, as they feel the complete rapture of an existence in nature which is boundlessly free, free from everything which hinders the slightest movement or inclination, but particularly in their improvisations, they express the God-given freedom of the inner sensibility in all its emotions, from the proudest human consciousness to the inmost longing of the soul for sympathetic communion. This music is to them as it were their world and God, life and happiness, the sun, and all that world movement with which we feel ourselves closely associated. Thus, early his soul had discovered the supernatural, thrown like a sphinx in the innmost recesses of nature. He had felt that mysterious creative power which shapes and maintains the world. He felt it as belonging to his own inner nature and power and his heart, in the profound consciousness of this magical possession, must have bounded more excellently since those other lofty human requirements of culture and artwork, which first invest the deep outreachings of life with the nobility and loftiness of thought were open to him also. Henceforth, his genius illuminated him, but the activity of this genius, in other words, its creative power. He attributed to his always profound recognition of the mysterious operations of the creative power of nature. A Parisian description of his playing, and that of the similarly demonish pegnaini, about the year 1834 says, music is to them the art which gives man the presentiment of his higher existence and leads him from the occurrences of ordinary life into the Isis temple, where nature speaks with him in sacred tones, unheard before, and yet intelligible. Let us now observe how the success of his playing, which this boy had already evidently achieved by his vigorous expression of his own feelings, influenced his future fortunes. the tones of his bewitching violin fell upon my ear like drops of some fiery, volatile

essence. He says of the gypsy virtuoso. Bihari, whom he heard in Vienna in 1822, had my memory been of soft clay, and everyone of his notes a diamond nail, they could not have clung to it more tenaciously. Had my soul been the ooze from which the river god had returned to his bed, and every tone of the artist a fruitifying seed corn, it could not have taken deeper root in me. His father took him at this time to Prince Esther Hasey in whose family musical patronage was hereditary. I believe that female influence alone succeeds with him. Wrote the great Beethoven two years later when he profored. Mississolumnus to him, as he had to another prince for a subscription. He did not anticipate much kindly feeling on his part towards himself of what use then for a mere young beginner in art to expect anything. The prince made him a gift of a few hundred francs. That was little for the heir of Hyden's patron. In contrast with this, the boy met with a merited reception in the larger and more cultivated city of Presberg. Six noblemen settled upon him for six years an annuity of 600 golden, which satisfied the father's desire to give the boy a fitting education. Soon afterward, in the year 1821, he resolved to give up his position and settle in Vienna with his wife and child. He was met with the anxious misgivings of his wife, born in Upper Austria, who could not bear to see her darling exposed to the vicissitudes of an artistic career, and who asked what would become of them if, at the expiration of the time, time, their hopes were disappointed. What God wills cried the boy of nine, who had listened to the conversation with a quiet timidity. The objections and solicitude of the mother were dispelled all the more, as she was of a deeply and genuinely religious nature. It was estimated that 600 francs was a fair price for their household effects. On their arrival in Vienna, the father selected the distinguished and unassuming, Carl, Chirney, for the boy's teacher. For Chirney's had been Beethoven's pupil a short time and played nearly all his compositions by heart. It was only the wonderful endowment of the boy that induced the overburdened teacher to accept him, and when he had finished playing to him he won his complete affection as he did Beethoven's. How could a boy of such fiery musical spirit who had enjoyed such a free and overflowing life in this art of his youth. Play the dry, pedantic, clementy, which churned at first selected as the pedagogical groundwork. If he visited a music store, he never found a piece difficult enough to suit him, says our informant. Once a publisher showed him the beam-minor concerto of Hummel, the boy turned over the leaves and intimated that it was nothing, and that he could play it at sight, making the assertion in the presence of the first piano players of the city. The gentleman astonished at the self-confidence of the boy, took him at his word and led him into the hall where there was a piano. He performed the concerto with equal skill and ease. It was the same composition which he played before Beethoven a year afterwards. Nothing could now restrain him from giving himself entirely to the public. There is no greater pleasure for me than to practice and display my art. Beethoven also wrote in his earlier years and should not a genius who had acquired to his own thorough satisfaction, the utmost freedom, and highest success by such characteristic performances in public seek its own free course, the open sea of the great public. I still remember it to have seen and heard this virt of so, who had a manly, beautiful personnel, writes list, at the time he first heard Bihari in Vienna. I can still recall the absolute fascination which he exercised, when, with an absorbed, And at the same time, melancholy and listlessness,

in striking contrast with the apparent buoyancy of his temperament and the flashing glances, which, as it were, fathomed the souls of his heirs. He took his violin in his hands, and for hours, forgetful that time was also flying, unloosed cascades of tones which streamed on in their wild plunges, a non-ripling away as over-velvety moss. 18th of December of the same year, 1822.

The young Hercules in that concert when he thundered out the humble composition, so united and as it were needed into one whole, the Andante of Beethoven's A Major Symphony, with an Arya Rosini's, who was at the time idolized in Vienna that the relator excitedly cries out. Verily, a god directed the creative and executive power of this little one with his open brow, histy nose, and his countenance lit up by his large deep eyes, which seemed set in the streaming hair, appearing as it were, like emanations of his power. All this it was that may have urged our serious Beethoven, who could so unneringly distinguish between the true and the false, and the great and the little, to go up to the boy at the close of that concert of April 13th, 1823 and embrace him. It was a difficult matter to get the old master out to such a concert. His ill health, deafness, and many other troubles had kept him from the public many years. He was more over restrained by his aversion to prodigies who were all the rage at the time, and by his fixed displeasure with churny, some of whose works were certainly noble, and yet they had not kept him from the faults of a frivolous virtuosity. At last, the persuasion of his friends, His own good-hardiness and interest in art prevailed

as they wrote to him the boy and himself were in the same situation, which he and Mozart had occupied in their youth. The presence of the renowned composer, far from intimidating the boy increased his imaginative power, says the account. It also expressly mentions that Beethoven encouraged him, but in that reserved manner, which was characteristic of him in his last years, and which was ascribed either to his personal circumstances or to his great sorrow about his deafness. Beethoven's life is today fully revealed to us in the firm assurance of his spiritual condition in these last years. When the ninth symphony begins with its ode to joy, it may be found set forth in its historical connection in the book Beethoven, Liste, Wagner. Thus, the young Liste started upon his way in the great world, consecrated by the kiss of the freest poetical spirit in his art. The next move was to Paris, which at that time, indeed, was the most important place in the world for artistic and above all, musical productivity. Besides, as the opportunity for full musical development was wanting in Vienna, since Beethoven himself was no longer active in such matters, it seemed best to apply to the Paris Conservatory at that time under the world renowned. Chermene. The boy was pleased with the excellent receipts, says our last concert report, and their means for the journey were soon increased in Munich, where he heard himself called the second Mozart. It was the same also at Stuttgart, then they went to Paris. The two strangers made application to Cherubini

with letters of recommendation from Prince Meternick, says a Parisian sketch. He met them with

their reply. A foreigner cannot enter the conservatory. The director forgot that he himself was an Italian. The disappointed father fell into despair. How do you then risked his very existence on the hopes of the complete artistic development of his son? Meanwhile, his hope for the success and artistic perfection of the boy was at last gratified. The public and the friends of the noble art itself supplied the place of a narrow-minded and envious click and became father and god of father alike to this true wonderchild of the 19th century of whom one account happily says, we believe that no other contemporary has created so profusely or reflected so faithfully, is varied acquirements as he. They were next summoned to the Palais Royale. It was on New Year's, 1824. The boy charmed everyone. The Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis Philippe in his delight, bade him ask for any gift he liked. This harlequin cried the boy and pointed to a beautiful automaton hanging on the wall. This incident, as in the case of Mozart, illustrates the utter unselfishness of the real artist, who continually gave and desired nothing for himself.

These frank, manly traits, like the incomparable genius of the boy, who is no longer a boy, way, powerfully affected everyone within his circle. The biography of his youth tells us his sensibility was as perceptible as it was attractive to everyone a year past. And all the The ladies of Paris became enamored with the young list.

His Rogish... And all the ladies of Paris became enamored with the young list. His rogish tricks and pranks, his whims, were all observed and told over and over. Everyone was delighted. garsely 13 years of age, he had awakened love, aroused envy, kindled enmity. All were attracted to him and were completely infatuated with him. This sudden conquest of the leading society of the Europe of that day, which was noted in the public prince, may be found more amply detailed in the volume Beethoven, List, Wagner. must have remarkably endowed that extraordinary child, who at the age of twelve was without arrival, and that too in an art in which he accomplished and understood what no mortal could boast to have produced of himself. The genius for performance, whose sources we have sought to locate, without, however, the skill to disclose their lowest depths, since they lie in that combination of the freest and most individual power, as applied to universal individuality and to the artistic, which we call genius. This unsurpassed skill of performance was so irresistibly overwhelming at that time, for example upon an actor like Talma, that one evening in the Italian theater, while they rushed around the boy from all the boxes, he threw his arms about him and embraced him so closely. In that excellent Parisian musical journal, to which Lest himself contributed many years, the following appeared in 1834, when he was in his 22nd year, His playing, his language, his soul. It is the very poetical essence of all the impressions he has felt of all that have captivated him. These impressions, which in all likelihood he could not render in language, and express

in clear and precise ideas, he reproduced in their full meaning with an accurate skill, natural power, an energy of feeling and a charming grace which have never been

and a natural power, an energy of feeling and a charming grace which have never been equaled. At one time, his art is passive, an instrument, an echo. It expresses and interprets, but, it is active again. It speaks. It is the organ which he uses for the development of his ideas. Hence, it is that lists playing is not a mechanical material exercise, but much more than this in the genuine sense of composition,

a successful creation of art. you you