Frank Cooper

Thirteen Days in the Death of Liszt

Alan Walker: The Death of Franz Liszt based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen, Cornell University Press, 2003, 208 pp.

 

After the deaths within one year of Beethoven and Schubert, playwright Eduard Bauernfeld's words were appropriately magnanimous: "Music's glorious reign is over." When Chopin died, painter Eugene Delacroix declared with deeply felt emotion, "What a loss he will be!" At Liszt's burial, the self-serving Mayor of Bayreuth, Theodor von Muncker, called his century's most comprehensive and influential musician "a master of sound, the devoted friend and promoter of the Wagner cause."
That single phrase was true but its public purpose could only have been to shift Liszt from the sunlight of his deserved fame to a place in Wagner's shadow, and it reflected the secondary position which Liszt was meant to have in Bayreuth-as first servant to the Wagner industry. His "employer" for this purpose, since Wagner's death three years earlier in 1883, was his daughter Cosima, Wagner's dutiful widow and eventual high priestess.
Stalwart and stubborn, Cosima single-handedly had assumed complete control of the Wagner Festival for 1886 and, to boost its attractiveness, had insisted that her father-arguably one of the greatest living musicians in Europe and the most renowned-attend. Liszt's presence in itself would generate publicity, draw the curious and the serious, and help to sell the tickets. That the 75-year-old was nearly blind in one eye, could hardly walk due to dropsy having caused his legs and feet to swell alarmingly, had to eat only soft foods due to terrible gum disease and suffered from a lingering cold caught earlier in the year dissuaded Cosima in no way from her determination to capitalise on her father's magnetism. Thus, on July 20, Liszt obeyed his daughter's summons and arrived by train in Bayreuth. Eleven days later, on July 31, in the middle of Cosima's Festival and after having attended Parsifal on July 23 and Tristan on July 25, Liszt lay dead. He was buried in the morning of August 3. The story was circulated that he died peacefully murmuring the name "Tristan," thus serving Wagner's cause even at the moment of death itself.
Those who knew the truth and how contrary it was to the fiction kept quiet-grief, respect, even fear perhaps contributing to their decision. History received its sanitised account. Wagner's posthumous fame soared, eclipsing Liszt's until the second half of the next century when, with laboured steps, scholars began wresting the facts from evidence of every sort to produce accounts of Liszt's life and assessments of his place in music's history that became clearer with each passing decade. The culmination of this work was Alan Walker's three-volume masterpiece Franz Liszt, the final installment of which reached the public in 1996-a century and a decade after the events of Liszt's passing.
Walker's research unearthed the unpublished eighty-one page "diary" of Lina Schmalhausen, Liszt's one-time student, attentive caregiver and close companion who, at twenty-two, was with her master, by invitation, throughout the ordeal in Bayreuth. Unearthed as well were the circumstances under which this document came to be written and to be placed under the embargo that kept its contents hidden. In the field of musical biography, no apparent parallels come to mind comparable to the story behind this document and its intimate, vividly detailed content.
Unable to attend the event of August 3 due to illness, Liszt's authorised biographer, Lina Ramann, wrote from distant Nürnberg to seek an account of the composer's last days from the only eye witness who was free to provide it, Lina Schmalhausen. The young lady's qualifications included her having been Liszt's pupil in Weimar, Budapest and Rome over a period of nearly seven years, her intimate access to the grand old man with whom she sometimes embraced and held hands (and for whom she did the personal laundry) as well as her being completely in his trust and the recipient of important holographs as gifts (including the oratorio Christus). She, however, was disliked both by Liszt's male students (who were jealous of her familiarity with their Master) and by Cosima (who had heard tales which had roused her suspicions). Schmalhausen's presence in Bayreuth was welcomed only by Liszt. Treated as a pariah by almost everyone else (a fact that Ramann could not have known), Schmalhausen had no reason to participate in the posthumous cover-up and manufacture of another Wagnerian myth. Rather, she had every reason to write what no one else involved could. The resulting document, sketched, then finalised by February 10, 1887, must have hit Ramann with the force of a bombshell. She kept it, unused (for obvious reasons), among her mountainous personal papers which found their resting place in Weimar following her death in 1912.
The "diary" places its reader in the room with Liszt, sometimes privately but often in the company of Cosima and her children, Liszt's disciples, admirers, friends, servants and his doctors. Conversations and card games alternate with readings aloud as pastimes, which are punctuated by matters of health becoming more acute every twenty-four hours. Schmalhausen's record would be important enough for the mere sequence of events it contains, but is all the more compelling for the insight it provides into the personalities involved-and the disastrous results of their interactions and interventions. The following-derived from the lady's exceptionally detailed descriptions-outlines the succession of days and nights which took Liszt to his grave.
Thursday, July 22: Schmalhausen's account begins with Liszt's early morning greeting of her, their casual conversation, a garden stroll together (marked by Liszt's pronounced coughing), cautionary confidences about certain people who would be arriving, the black-draped Cosima's haughty indifference to Lina's presence (despite knowing that her father had telegrammed Lina asking her to join him for a week in Bayreuth), the invalid's chair which elevated the old man's swollen feet, her description of his appearance as "deathly ill" and her chilling observation: "Four months ago, in Pest, he was still just like a god; now, he was completely broken." That night, a "terrible storm" keeps Lina awake.
Friday, July 23: Lina suggests to Liszt that, to avoid problems, she ought to leave Bayreuth (Arthur Friedheim's wife having told Liszt the absurdity that Lina meant to murder him), but the idea is rejected. Conversations ensue with the pianists Alexander Siloti, Bernhard Stavenhagen and Stefan Thomán (all former pupils), helping to distract the master from his fits of coughing. Cosima evidently provides no tickets to her father or his friend Lina, so Liszt, despite being guest of honour at the Festival, buys pairs of tickets to Parsifal and Tristan. Lina hears of pianist Marie Jaëll's disapproval of her.
Saturday, July 24: Liszt's appetite begins to wane. He drinks only water flavoured with a little wine. August Göllerich, another Liszt protégé, reads aloud to pass time while Liszt slumbers. Visitors fill the rest of the morning, tiring Liszt who wants to be alone until late afternoon. Lina, who was scowled at earlier by another woman for her help in dressing Liszt and combing his hair, is briefly brought to sit on his lap and to receive a few quietly spoken words of appreciation. In his frail condition, Liszt has trouble holding his cards during games, nods sleepily and rattles "terribly."
Sunday, July 25: Lina continues her practice of arriving in Liszt's rooms after Cosima's early morning visits (to avoid censorious glances), and finds Liszt "very fatigued." A day of calm, with only the fewest visitors, is planned, but three of Liszt's Viennese relatives arrive. Their leaden conversation puts Liszt to sleep. An hour-and-a-half later, he wakens saying, "I feel horribly weary." Lina's efforts to read to Liszt are broken by the arrival of his local, uncomprehending doctor, who counsels fewer visitors, less talk ("It taxes the lungs") and bowls of broth. The pretty pianist Sophie Menter arrives and chats about Olga Janina, the wild Cossak who once threatened Liszt with a revolver. The only handkerchief which Liszt has had all day is filled with his phlegm. At the Tristan performance that evening, his prolongued, visible applause helps to put across the first Bayreuth production of the great work.
Monday, July 26: Friends and relatives say goodbye before Menter breezes in, wafting lilac, and gossips with her beloved former teacher about Stavenhagen, Thomán and Arthur Friedheim, who have behaved boisterously and badly in the past. Lina and Liszt share the same fork while eating some rice for lunch. Discussion centres on future plans for travel and with whom. Cards are played once more but Liszt's cough brings red spots to his brow. Eventually, he tries to write a few letters but is overcome by drowsiness. As the day drags on, sadness infects both of them. Lina almost falls trying to support Liszt's weight as he tries to walk to his bedroom. He eats only about a third of
the rice and chicken he is given for supper, although Lina hands him each forkful.
A high fever results in another useless house call by the doctor, who insists that Liszt only has a bad cold. To avoid scandal, Lina is sent away, although she desires nothing more than to sit holding his hand during the night.
Tuesday, July 27: After a sleepless night during which his fever raged, Liszt has been attended not even by Cosima. Liszt expresses his dismay at having fallen ill amid the clamour of Bayreuth. Cosima spends ninety minutes with her father who, in his delirium, thinks he's speaking intimately with Lina. Cosima's ears burn. Lina and all others are banned, but Liszt's servant calls the departing Cosima "the crazy witch" and allows Lina to remain. After reading aloud for some time, Lina hands the book to Daniela, Cosima's daughter by Hans von Bülow, who continues while Lina leaves. Returning an hour later, Lina, on Cosima's orders, is denied entry. She despairs that she "would never be allowed to see" Liszt again.
Wednesday, July 28: Sent for at 6:00 a.m., Lina is told that her master has been forbidden to see anyone, that he greets her "very warmly," and offers her a sum of money with which to leave Bayreuth, but Lina will have none of it. Staying in the servant's room to be nearby and to follow events, she notes Cosima's comings and goings as well as the arrival of another doctor, Dr Landgraf, "the bungler of Bayreuth", who had been sent for to give a second opinion. The diagnosis is pneumonia and the prescription complete rest in isolation. Cosima's daughters Eva and Isolde are assigned to watch duty but pay little attention to Liszt, distracting themselves with the flirtatious, young Stavenhagen (who later responds smugly to Lina's queries by saying that he had not been "with the old man at all").
Thursday, July 29: Cosima establishes herself as Liszt's night nurse, sleeping in a bed in the next room but with the connecting door "tightly shut" from 11:00 p.m. on. This heartless sham, followed after her departure for Festival duties by the arrival of Eva, Isolde and their amuser, Stavenhagen, aggravates the household-no one is responding to Liszt's moans or coughing. They push the weak, old man back into bed when he tries to get up. Helpless, Liszt dissolves into tears. All of this is heard by Lina who again has secreted herself in the servant's room, from the cracked door of which she can see much of what transpires. In the afternoon, when Lina returns to the house with the intention of finding Liszt unguarded, she looks through a garden window to discover Stavenhagen writing letters and is told that Cosima has locked him alone inside with Liszt, who is sleeping. Entrance is impossible because Cosima might return at any time. Miserable, Lina sits for five hours in the garden-until everyone but a sympathetic servant girl thinks she was gone. It is whispered to Lina that she might now steal into Liszt's room. With tender affection and restrained emotions they embrace, worried about the consequences should Cosima discover them together. Stavenhagen, witnessing some of the conversation, tricks Lina into leaving. At midnight, Lina discovers Stavenhagen, Thomán and others in a tavern making merry with jokes and beer, and is told that "the old man was still calling for you."
Friday, July 30: Crudely insensitive to Lina's pleading for entry, Stavenhagen and Göllerich (under threats from Cosima) prove obstinate. Lina learns that the Master is alone and unattended, unable to recognise anyone, suffering dreadfully and wracked by his cough. That "he will die tonight" is predicted. Around 7:00 p.m., Lina forces her way into Liszt's room to see his emaciated, shaking form (he has had no food and nothing but water to drink for days). Trying to absorb the dreadful spectacle, she makes a mental note that "the living Amfortas" is here, "struggling with death on his sickbed" while the Wagner family was at the Festspielhaus attending Parsifal. She slips out to establish her vigil in the garden where a narrow opening in the window blinds let her glimpse what was happening inside. Liszt's hallucinations grow worse. By 11:30 P.M., Cosima and the doctor confer before she goes to sleep. Liszt's valet sleeps at his bedside, being awakened first to help Liszt use the chamber pot and again when "the Master leaped out of bed like a madman, clutching his heart and shouting" in the belief that "he was choking to death." After thirty minutes of this horror, Liszt falls over the bed. Cosima sends for the doctor, who arrives around 4:00 A.M.-and pronounces Liszt dead. But Liszt had not died. Vigorous massage warms him, drops are administered, and his unconscious form is placed again under the covers.
Saturday, July 31: The situation is so dire that Cosima, "for the first and only time," remains with her father all day, her children in attendance. The second physician responds to a cable and arrives in the late afternoon to prescribe that "the heaviest wines and champagnes" be poured into Liszt in anticipation of the critical evening ahead. Utterly docile and unable to speak, Liszt submits to these ministrations. At night, Lina takes up her previous station-outside, looking in. She sees both doctors in Liszt's room and notes that, at 11:15 p.m., two hypodermic injections are made in his chest. "Then," she tells us, "the Master's body shook violently as if an earthquake were taking place." Without emotion, Cosima kneels for long minutes. before falling into uneasy sleep in a nearby chair. As the hours pass, her wakefulness and glances toward the window make Lina anxious and she leaves for her rented room.
Sunday, August 1: Arriving nearly frozen at 4:30 a.m., Lina goes to bed for about an hour before her landlady awakens her gently with the words, "So Liszt is dead." In a frenzied few minutes Lina dresses and walks to Liszt's house where the valet confirms the news but will not permit her to enter before 10:00 a.m., after the Master's body has "been dressed." Giving the man "a push that he will remember," she forces her way to the wax-yellowed shell of her Master, whom she finds "gaunt but very peaceful." Cosima, who is there, leaves for twenty minutes during which Lina holds her beloved's hand and prays. Returning, she kisses Lina, gives her Liszt's prayer book and places the blame for Liszt's death on the Hungarian family [the Munkácsys], at whose country home her father had caught his cold before coming to Bayreuth. Lina is permitted to cut a lock of Liszt's hair before leaving. At her rooming house, she picks some forget-me-nots to place in Liszt's hand (with Cosima's permission). None of the family sheds a tear during a quickly-arranged prayer service led by a local priest. With Wagner's bust over his head and a crucifix at his feet, Liszt is now to be viewed, his daughter and grandchildren in a half circle around the bed. The local citizenry file past, more curious than moved, while the former pupils Friedhein, Göllerich, William Dayas and Alfred Reisenauer (who had arrived in Bayreuth hoping for some lessons from his teacher) were visibly in grief. At 1:00 p.m., Lina is sent to buy some muslin to keep the flies off Liszt. Photography and the making of plaster casts of Liszt's face occupy an hour or two. The local barber arrives to embalm the body. Lina's description cannot be paraphrased: The good fellow. had never in his life embalmed a corpse and cut the whole cadaver apart. The head, as well as the body, were so bloated afterward, the face so distorted, that it was forbidden to remove the white gauze. Consequently no one was permitted to view the body.
Monday, August 2: In its room, surrounded by bowls of chlorine to mask the odour of rapid decay, Liszt's body is to be viewed by no one. Lina tells us that, at the landlady's insistence, an annoyed Cosima and a servant lift the body into a brown metal coffin then carry it themselves across the street to Wahnfried, the family residence. (One can only imagine the sight this made on a busy Monday morning in Bayreuth and the indignity of it all.)
Tuesday, August 3: At 9:00 a.m., Lina arrives at Wahnfried with a wreath of dark red roses inscribed Auf Wiedersehen, places it on Liszt's coffin and prays. Both the coffin and Wagner's grand piano are draped in black crepe. The funeral of "Wagner's father-in-law" (as Bayreuthers referred to Liszt that day), after a procession through town, takes place but is not described by Lina, who writes only: After the funeral I departed immediately. I had suffered enough during the past week, and each additional day spent in Bayreuth would only have increased my disgust with humanity.
Thus we learn the circumstances of Franz Liszt's final days and death, Lina Schmalhausen's account providing unprecedented access to events, motivations and consequences which appall the modern reader. Framed by a prodigious prologue and an equally remarkable epilogue (describing the funeral and memorial service) and annotated in revelatory fashion throughout by Alan Walker, The Death of Franz Liszt based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen is fascinating, essential reading in the history of one of the nineteeth century's most amazing musicians, the man who said of his predicament in Bayreuth, "If only I do not die here."

 

Frank Cooper
Research Professor of Music at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, was President of the American Liszt Society from 1985-89. He was awarded the Liszt Centenary Medal of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture in 1986.