Niccolo Paganini arrived in Paris in March, 1831, on a tour which set all Europe aflame with wonder at the amazing brilliancy of his playing. What averted the calamity was Paganini’s violin playing. When we consider the many ways in which Liszt, during his long career, helped along music and musicians, we realize that it would have been nothing short of a calamity if, at the age of twenty-one, he had followed this inclination to become a priest. At one time he was so short of funds that he sold his piano to buy bread. From his early years his mind had been inclined toward religion but there were other reasons which affected him at this time, among them a disappointment in love, a long illness, an inborn aversion to the career of a public performer, and the necessity of giving lessons to support himself and his mother in Paris, because his recitals were not well-attended. What is strange is that he had an attack of this tæ dium vitæ when he was a mere youth-an attack so severe that he decided to say farewell to the musical world and enter the Church. ![]() He had become tired of life, having exhausted its joys as well as its sorrows. It is not strange that he repeatedly alluded in the letters of his last years to the tæ dium vitæ. He lived a life crowded, as few lives have been, with hard work, romantic episodes, splendid triumphs, deep disappointments. ![]() ![]() Franz Liszt reached the ripe age of seventy-five.
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