Beverly Nichols once said of Britain's three writing Sitwells—Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell—that they had genius enough for two. If Sacheverell's latest book does not show the full two-thirds that is his family share, it does reveal him as a conscientious, able biographer who has brought back to life one of music's grandest, most glittering figures—Franz Liszt.*
Musically the first part of the 19th Century was an age of virtuosity. Berlioz, writing for the orchestra, mysteriously made instruments sound as they had never sounded before. And not even Rubinstein ever played the piano like Franz Liszt. When Chopin heard Liszt he wrote: "I wish I could steal from him the way to play my own etudes."
Son of a music-loving Hungarian steward to a princely house, Franz Liszt was an infant prodigy. When he was 11, deaf old Beethoven is reported to have kissed him for his playing. Liszt's father took him to Paris, where he studied, gave public and private concerts, astounded all comers. He was fair, good-looking, wore long hair. Father Liszt knew what he was talking about when he said: "With you, it is women I am afraid of."
Young Franz's first serious love affair was with Marie Catherine, Countess d'Agoult, a beauteous unmusical mother of three, whose elderly husband bored her. The year was 1833. She was 28, he, 22. They ran away to Geneva, spent eleven years of romantic vagabondage interrupted only by his concert tours. She bore him three illegitimate children of whom Cosima (named after Lake Como) was to achieve fame by deserting her devoted husband to marry his dearest friend, Richard Wagner.
Although Liszt was at work on some of his best compositions before 1847 most of his time was devoted to piano recitals. Everywhere but in England, which disapproved of Countess d'Agoult, he was an idol. Women wore his portrait on cameos, went wild over him, He was the first, the greatest of pianists. He was making approximately $60,000 a year, owned 60 waistcoats, 360 cravats.
By 1847 he had left Countess d'Agoult and met her successor, the cigar-smoking Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. Although love affairs continued to play through his life like tarantellas, she remained his nominal mistress until his death. Only a last minute refusal from Rome to grant her a divorce prevented their marriage.
Shortly after he met his Princess, Liszt, at 36, amazingly gave up his fabulous concert playing, started an entirely new musical life during which he earned not a cent from playing or teaching. He had accepted a position as conductor and musical director to the Grand-Ducal Court at Weimar. To Liszt that meant two things—presenting the music of Wagner who was then penniless and unrecognized; composing music of his own.