Published on Franz Liszt Group, on May 13, 2021. If you want to know how the Story Behind series started, I give details in “Story Behind” Series #1″.
Original post:
As the mother teaches her children how to express themselves in their language, so one Gypsy musician teaches the other. They have never shown any need for notation.
Liszt
Story behind:
Hello friends 🙂 Here are the stories behind the quote and the picture.
Another picture of Liszt with his students, but this time by another photographer. This one was taken in 1881 by Julien Ganz in Brussels, Belgium. On the picture, from left to right, we have Liszt, Juliusz Zarebski, Franz Servais and Johanna Wenzel (who became Johanna Wenzel-Zarebski, I guess it helps to be part of the Liszt community ;)). Franz Servais was a cellist and a composer, Juliusz Zarebski and Johanna Wenzel were pianists.
As for the quote, it is from Liszt’s essay about Gypsy and Music I have mentioned in a previous “story behind” post. The book is called “The Gypsy in Music” (in French: “Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie”) and was published in 1859. Actually if you want to read about the story of this book, Liszt’s student Arthur Friedheim talks about it extensively in his book “Life and Liszt” in the chapter called “Liszt the Writer” towards the end of the book, as an appendix. Friedheim was Liszt’s pupil for six years in Weimar, from 1880 to 1886. “Life and Liszt” is a good testimony about the late masterclasses period, and about the life of a pianist of the Nineteenth century.