Meanwhile, upon the keyboard of the
piano he had the individuality of manner which had been developed much
sooner, and which was now taking on an astonishing range. Add to these
influences the ideas of individuality and human freedom which were in
the air, and we need not wonder that the talent of this great artist
now blossomed out with such luxuriance that its fragrance filled the
world.

It was in 1834 that Liszt's first marriage took place, or as soon after
as circumstances warranted. The young and brilliant Countess D'Agoult,
wearied with a tyrannic and unsympathetic husband, left him and placed
herself under the care of Liszt. They lived during the next three
years in Geneva, in a semi-private manner, and here also Liszt
continued his studies and experiments. Then, in 1836, he entered upon
his great career as performing artist, when he astonished Europe from
one end to the other by playing the piano in a manner previously
unheard of. His art had everything in it. He had enormous facility,
his very long hand giving him the same kind of mastery over technical
difficulties that Paganini had upon the finger-board of the violin;
and, while indulging in long stretches of pianissimo, he diversified
his performances by climaxes of prodigious power, under which for a
long time piano hammers gave way, so that often there were three or
four grand pianos upon the stage, and as soon as one was knocked out in
the melee another was rolled forward to be sacrificed in turn. After a
few years the piano-makers found ways of strengthening the actions, so
that nowadays such a thing as a hammer breaking in a concert never
occurs.

In 1839 Liszt did one of those daring things which hardly any other
musician has ever done. Hearing that the committee in charge of
raising funds for a Beethoven monument at Bonn had found themselves
making little or no headway, Liszt wrote them offering to raise the
entire missing sum himself. This he did, and in 1847, I think it was,
he himself conducted the musical festival with which the monument was
dedicated, himself playing the Fifth Concerto of Beethoven in a manner
which Berlioz characterized gloriously in his letters from Bonn to the
Paris "Journal des Debats."

In this same year Liszt entered upon the restful period of his life in
accepting the position of musical director at Weimar, where he lived
and kept up a sort of musical court until 1861, and at intervals
afterward. In the ex