Chapter 18 - Liszt and Religion

Summary

One of the most controversial and multifaceted aspects of Liszt’s life and career concerns his involvement with religion and the Catholic Church. The young Liszt maintained a distinctively secular profile as a flamboyant piano virtuoso of Mephistophelean powers and a restless Don Juan, replete with all the indulgences afforded a musical icon of his time. In his forties and fifties, however, his close relationship with the Catholic Church intensified; after a residency in the Vatican, he received minor orders and subsequently was known as Abbé Liszt. Audiences and critics remained suspicious: How sincere could his attitude toward religion be when he had led such a flamboyant and unconventional life? During his ‘years of pilgrimage’ he retained a long and public relationship with Marie d’Agoult, a woman he never married; he had had three illegitimate children; and after their breakup, he met and carried on an equally public relationship with Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. The fact that he decided to become an Abbé only after the thwarted nuptials to Sayn-Wittgenstein in Rome, continues to fuel mistrust of his motives.