2 - Influential Advocate

Summary

Liszt played an active role in the complex business of social networking upon which musicians of his time relied, as they do today. This chapter examines Liszt's comments and decisions in support of certain individuals in his final decade, specifically those he discussed in his letters to Olga and Carolyne. It begins with his piano students and moves to his musician colleagues of the New German School, connected by a discussion of Liszt's support for Giovanni Sgambati, a former pupil who went on to reinvigorate the musical scene in Rome, at least in part by introducing some of the same repertory heard in Weimar, the heart of the New German School.

One event to which the chapter will return a number of times is the meeting of the Tonkünstler Versammlung in Weimar in 1884 under the direction of Liszt and the Leipzig choral conductor Carl Riedel (1827–88). The Tonkünstler Versammlungen were yearly gatherings of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, the first national music society in Germany, founded in Weimar in 1861 (before Liszt's departure), with Franz Brendel as president and Liszt providing artistic leadership. The Versammlungen included festival concerts (Musikfeste), as well as public discussions and editorials by Brendel on the state of music in Germany and Austria. The Musikfeste were devoted to presentations of new music, which from the outset meant works by the New German School composers, particularly Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. Not incidentally, the expression “New German School” had been coined by Brendel at the first Tonkünstler Versammlung in Leipzig in 1859; he preferred it to “music (or musicians) of the future,” which opponents had turned into a negative epithet. After Brendel's death in 1868, Riedel took over the presidency of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein. During his final decade, Liszt worked with Riedel on programming for some of the Musikfeste and hosted the event in 1884.

Liszt's dedication to promoting new music at the Musikfeste refl ected his life-long belief that society should support its artists, who in turn should pursue a mission to improve society through their creative contributions.