letters, of which 399 are translated into English in this second
of a 2-volume set of letters (the first volume contains 260
letters).

Those who knew him were struck by his extremely sophisticated
personality. He was surely one of the most civilized people of
the nineteeth century, internalizing within himself a complex
conception of human civility, and attempting to project it in his
music and his communications with people. His life was centered
around people; he knew them, worked with them, remembered them,
thought about them, and wrote about them using an almost poetic
language, while pushing them to reflect the high ideals he
believed in. His personality was the embodiment of a refined,
idealized form of human civility. He was the consummate musical
artist, always looking for ways to communicate a new civilized
idea through music, and to work with other musicians in
organizing concerts and gatherings to perform the music publicly.
He also did as much as he could to promote and compliment those
whose music he believed in.

He was also a superlative musical critic, knowing, with few
mistakes, what music of his day was "artistic" and what was not.
But, although he was clearly a musical genius, he insisted on
projecting a tonal, romantic "beauty" in his music, confining his
music to a narrow range of moral values and ideals. He would have
rejected 20th-century music that entertained cynical notions of
any kind, or notions that obviated the concept of beauty in any
way. There is little of a Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich,
Cage, Adams, and certainly none of a Schoenberg, in Liszt's
music. His music has an ideological "ceiling," and that ceiling