He Was Also A Superlative Musical Critic, Knowing, With Few
Mistakes, What Music Of His Day Was "Artistic" And What
Was not.
But, although he was clearly a musical genius, he insisted on
projecting a tonal, romantic "beauty" in his
Music, confining his
music to a narrow range of moral values and ideals. He would have
rejected 20th-century music that entertained cynical notions of
any kind, or notions that obviated the concept of beauty in any
way. There is no Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Cage, Adams
and certainly no Schoenberg in Liszt's music. His music has an
ideological "ceiling," and that ceiling is "beauty." It never
goes beyond that. And perhaps it was never as "beautiful" as the
music of Mozart, Bach or Beethoven, nor quite as rational (Are
all the emotions in Liszt's music truly "controlled?"). But it
certainly was original and instructive, and it certainly will
linger.
DEDICATION
To the Memory of
MY BROTHER WALTER,
AND TO OUR
DEAR AND HONORED FRIEND
A.J. HIPKINS, ESQ.,
I DEDICATE THIS TRANSLATION.
- C.B.
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION, BY CONSTANCE BACHE
In writing a few words of Preface I wish to express, first and
foremost, my appreciation of the extreme care and
conscientiousness with which La Mara has prepared these volumes.
In a spirit of no less reverence I have endeavored, in the
English translation, to adhere as closely as possible to all the
minute characteristics that add expression to Liszt's letters:
punctuation has, of necessity, undergone alteration, but italics,
inverted commas, dashes and other marks have been strictly
observed.
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