6 - Soul Baring

Summary

This chapter examines Liszt's expressed inner struggles in his final decade with an eye to various meanings, interpretations, and theories of melancholia in the nineteenth century. It brings into focus how Liszt's mental state affected his composing, and vice versa. It also examines Liszt's internal tensions caused by the demands of responding to the voluminous correspondence that accompanied his public role as musical elder statesman. Such demands encroached on his time needed for composing. Not least, it confronts the degree to which Liszt presented himself differently to Carolyne and Olga, and suggests that his self-presentation to Carolyne involved more overtly adaptive strategies than were apparent in his relationship with Olga. Thus, his soul baring is as much about his relationship to each of them as it is about him.

Liszt's psychic Achilles's heel was his sensitivity to criticism of his music: deeply wounding past critiques left him vulnerable for decades. Not surprisingly, his periodic mood disorders could sometimes be linked to expressed doubts about his self-worth as a composer, which intensified in 1880 and 1883 in particular. In both cases he claimed to have “no illusions” that he could write something of worth or garner public recognition as a composer. The mood disorder and the latent self-doubt probably fed each other. But in any case there is no simple correlation between mood disorder and the amount of music he composed. His need to be accepted as a composer required that he fulfill that role, so even during his periods of inner turmoil in 1880 and 1883, Liszt continued composing. Composing allowed him to channel his doubts about his compositional talent into the creative act, and thereby became for Liszt a coping strategy, as well as an end in itself. Sometimes the coping strategy made him feel better—that is, consoled him—but in other cases he was ultimately dissatisfied with the music.

The burden of personal correspondence also weighed heavily in these years. In addition to voluminous correspondence related to the yearly Musikfest of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, Liszt faced mounds of letters and telegrams from fans, well-wishers, and those who sought his professional influence.