Wagner's first encounter with Franz Liszt ocurred inParis in 1840. His impression of the flamboyant virtuoso was tinged with some envy, for Wagner was barely eking out a living by making piano arrangements of contemporary operas such Halévy's La reine de Chypre and Meyerbeer's Robert le diable. He registered "stupefaction" as Liszt's keyboard artistry, but wrote wrote that he was "the last person in the world able to appreciate adequately the achievements of such a person who at the time was sunning himself in the brightest light of day, whereas I had turned my back and faced the night." Although Wagner could easily have capitalized on the insatiable Parisian market for piano music, he wrote very little for the keyboard. Some would argue that his piano works are unidiomatic, sounding like preliminary drafts for budding orchestral texture; their well-spaced contrapuntal activity suggests the sound images that would become familiar in his opera. ...

In the 1840s, Wagner tried to ease his financial burden by turning his hand to song composition - a genre he had never before attempted - and composed several songs in the unfamiliar language of French. The songs were published in 1841, as supplements to Lewald's journal Europa. ...

The symbiotic creative relationship between Liszt and Wagner became even more intense in the years 1882-83. At this time, Liszt wrote no fewer than four original works, all either premonitions of Wagner's death (La lugrube gondole I and II) or inspired by his memory (R. W. - Venezia; Am Grabe Richard Wagners). In some cases Liszt, ever the musical visionary, drew on motives from Wagner's Parsifal and transformed them into musical manifestos that foreshadowed the most forward-looking music of the next century.

Liszt's last visiti with Wagner (Venice, 26 November 1882 - 13 January 1883) proved particularly unhappy. He found Wagner in diminished health and spirits, and exhausted from the strain of mounting the previous summer's Bayreuth Festival, which was devoted to the premiere of Pasifal. Liszt's daughter, Cosima, recorded in her diary how Wagner denigrated Liszt's "new works, declaring them to be completely meaningless... accusing them of being the products of 'incipient madness.'" ...

Despite the gloomy memory of this last visit with Wagner, as always Liszt's magnanimity won out. He inscribed the manuscript of Am Grabe Richard Wagners: "Wagner once reminded me of the similarity between his Parsifal motives and my earlier composition Excelsior (Introduction to the Bells of Strasbourg). May these rememberances live on here. He achieved the great and the sublime in the art of the present." Liszt signed and dated the autograph 22 May 1883. This would have been Wagner's 70th birthday had he not died three months earlier. ...

Rena Charnin Mueller