Liszt and Bayreuth

The selflessness of Franz Liszt as a friend and fellow musician in supporting Richard Wagner is one of the great and at the same time true commonplaces in the history of music. Liszt not only recognised the “bold and sublime genius” of the colleague two years his junior, and not only propagated his art, but also actively assisted the survival and further prosperity of Wagner who had become a refugee after the failure of the Dresden uprising in 1849. And although he strongly opposed the romantic connection between his daughter Cosima, the homely mother of several children, and Wagner who was married, his paternal disapproval was in time overwritten by his friendly admiration of Wagner. Liszt’s many visits to the couple who set up home in Bayreuth is proof of this reconciliation, as is the concert given in 1875 in the Pest Vigadó where Liszt and Wagner appeared together – in aid of the construction of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Right from the start of the festival that was still only taking shape Liszt assisted and supported his son-in-law: he participated in the rehearsals as well as in the first performance of Parsifal.

In the same way, the elderly Liszt regarded it as a voluntarily accepted obligation to be present at the first festival series following Wagner’s death and so travelled one last time to Bayreuth in the summer of 1886. He died during the festival, practically in the shadow of the events, and his funeral was also held here – he was laid in state in the Wahnfried villa with his students forming a guard of honour. And although many people considered that the Wagner cult shaped with a firm hand by Cosima downgraded Liszt to the status of a useful subordinate figure, today the composer’s mausoleum in Bayreuth bears witness to the close connection between the two autonomous geniuses rather than to any real or imagined difference in artistic rank.