my purpose to indulge in criticism of composers, but
something of the kind is made unavoidable by the position assigned to
Liszt in our pianoforte recitals. He is relied upon to provide a
scintillant close. The pianists, then, even those who are his
professed admirers, are responsible if he is set down in our scheme as
the exemplar of the technical cult. Technique having its unquestioned
value, we are bound to admire the marvellous gifts which enabled Liszt
practically to sum up all the possibilities of pianoforte mechanism in
its present stage of construction, but we need not look with unalloyed
gratitude upon his influence as a composer. There were, I fear, two
sides to Liszt's artistic character as well as his moral. I believe he
had in him a touch of charlatanism as well as a magnificent amount of
artistic sincerity--just as he blended a laxity of moral ideas with a
profound religious mysticism. It would have been strange indeed,
growing up as he did in the whited sepulchre of Parisian salon life,
if he had not accustomed himself to sacrifice a little of the soul of
art for the sake of vainglory, and a little of its poetry and feeling
to make display of those dazzling digital feats which he invented.
But, be it said to his honor, he never played mountebank tricks in the
presence of the masters whom he revered. It was when he approached the
music of Beethoven that he sank all thought of self and rose to a
peerless height as an interpreting artist.

[Sidenote: _Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies._]

[Sidenote: _Gypsies and Magyars._]

Liszt's place as a composer of original music has not yet been
determined, but as a transcriber of the music of others the givers of
pianoforte recitals keep him always before us. The showy Hungarian
Rhapsodies with which the majority of pianoforte recitals end are,
however, more than mere transcriptions. They are constructed out of
the folk-songs of the Magyars, and in their treatment the composer has
frequently reproduced the characteristic performances which they
receive at the hands of the Gypsies from whom he learned them. This
fact and the belief to which Liszt gave currency in his book "Des
Bohemiens et de leur musique en Hongrie" have given rise to the
almost universal belief that the Magyar melodies are of Gypsy origin.
This belief is erroneous. The Gypsies have for centuries been the
musical practitioners of Hungary, but they are not the composers of
the music of the Magyars, thou