Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/550

 Liszt, when a boy, came into the Vienna atmosphere, with its strong interest in instrumental styles of composition. Beethoven was at the acme of his power, and the city had long been the home of leading players, both pianists and others. Ensemble music was everywhere exalted. To these stimuli his ardent spirit responded, so that later, when he became known as a virtuoso throughout northern Europe, his style tended more and more toward fullness of color and splendor of effect such as the orchestra has, but which had been attempted upon the piano only rarely. Liszt's technical accomplishments were so extraordinary that he promptly expanded the range of pianism in several directions, almost stepping beyond the verge of what is germane to it, at least establishing a new standard of dexterity and eloquence for it. Happily, hand in hand with this capacity for dazzling mechanism went a fine culture of mind which opened to his sympathetic use the whole range of keyboard music from Bach to Chopin, and from the daintiest bagatelle to the most massive concerto.

Liszt's service to piano music went much beyond the enrichment of technique. It included manifold illustrations of how the piano can reproduce by suggestion the effect of much that was not originally written for it or conceived from its point of view. 'Arrangements' of vocal, organ and orchestral works had not been unknown, of course, but in Liszt's hands they took on a new importance, since in him was united consummate command of the instrument and profound sympathy with the aim and structure of concerted composition. In his own playing of the piano works of others he knew how not only to render them in accordance with the conventions of the period or school to which they belonged, but also, while preserving their individuality, to clothe them with something of the freshness and breadth of modern orchestral style. And in his many 'transcriptions' he did the same thing with freedom and authority.

Liszt was also notable as one of the first to make a deliberate and powerful use of 'program music'—music in which the imagination is directed in advance by some literary motto or plan in accordance with which the development proceeds. The legitimacy of this method has been somewhat hotly debated (see sec. 211). Doubtless much depends on the degree of emphasis upon it, on the particular series of ideas or sentiments chosen, and espe