Status Updates From Great Masters: Liszt - His ...

"Liszt had told his biographer Lina Ramann: 'I carry a deep
sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound'
(Ramann II, 470)."

"We do have Liszt’s letter of reply, which clearly shows his anger at the situation and his sympathy for von Bülow. The divorce proceedings left Hans von Bülow, in his own words, morally, spiritually, and artistically bankrupt. He was granted a divorce on July 18, 1870. He paid all the legal costs himself, despite the fact that he was the injured party." That is very unusual. Especially considering that time period.

"Then one day, Hans von Bülow picked up his newspaper and read that Richard Wagner and his girlfriend, Cosima von Bülow, were vacationing together in Italy. Von Bülow was devastated; five years of anger, self-
deception, self-loathing, denial, and rationalizations were
swept aside in a single moment."

"Filled with despair over the future of his career, Wagner prayed for a miracle. In May 1864, Wagner received a letter from the rich and probably insane eighteen-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The king invited Wagner to come to Munich and spend the rest of his life free from material care."

While Mendelssohn and Schumann wrote more traditional music when they grew older, Liszt in the words of Alan Walker, “never lost his
revolutionary fervor,” even as he grew older.

"Liszt was a true modernist. His essential philosophies, that music and poetry were one and that nothing must hinder the musical-poetic expressive impulse, became the root beliefs of 'modernist' composers for the next fifty years."

Poor Liszt! His daughter Blandine died in 1962 and his son Daniel in 1859.

I'm at "Lecture Seven: Rome" now.

"Anything connected with Goethe is dangerous for me to handle."

Liszt composed his Faust Symphony - over 300 pages of score - in 2 months between August and October of 1854 in Weimar.

Liszt was a very good friend. "He revived the career of his old friend Hector Berlioz at a time when Berlioz had fallen into near obscurity. Liszt
performed and celebrated Berlioz’s music at every opportunity and
devoted a number of week long festivals to his work." <3