intervened to embarrass the organization of the affair,
the jealousies of prominent singers, who revolted against the
self-effacement they would needs undergo, a certain truly German
parsimony in raising the money for the expenses, and the envious
littleness of certain great composers and musicians, who feared that
Liszt would reap too much glory from the prominence of the part he
had taken in the affair, But Liszt's energy had surmounted all these
obstacles, when finally, only a month before the festival, which was
to take place in August, it was discovered that there was no suitable
Pesthalle in Bonn. The committee said, "What if the affair should not
pay expenses? would they not be personally saddled with the debt?" Liszt
promptly answered that, if the proceeds were not sufficient, he himself
would pay the cost of the building. The architect of the Cologne
Cathedral was placed at the head of the work, a waste plot of ground
selected, the trees grubbed up, timber fished up from one of the great
Rhine rafts, and the Festhalle rose with the swiftness of Aladdin's
palace. The erection of the statue of Beethoven at his birthplace,
and the musical celebration thereof in August, 1845, one of the most
interesting events of its kind that ever occurred, must be, for the most
part, attributed to the energy and munificence of Franz Liszt. Great
personages were present from all parts of Europe, among them King
William of Prussia and Queen Victoria of England. Henry Chorley, who
has given a pretty full description of the festival, says that Liszt's
performance of Beethoven's concerto in E flat was the crowning glory
of the festival, in spite of the richness and beauty of the rest of the
programme. "I must lastly commemorate, as the most magnificent piece of
piano-forte playing I ever heard, Dr. Liszt's delivery of the concerto
in E flat.... Whereas its deliverer restrained himself within all the
limits that the most sober classicist could have prescribed, he still
rose to a loftiness, in part ascribable to the enthusiasm of time and
place, in part referable to a nature chivalresque, proud, and poetic in
no common degree, which I have heard no other instrumentalist attain....
The triumph in the mind of the executant sustained the triumph in the
idea of the compositions without strain, without spasm, but with a
breadth and depth and height such as made the genius of the executant
approach the genius of the inventor.... There are playe