Franz Liszt: Consolation No 3

Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein with her daughter Marie in 1840

The princess

Many years ago, back in the fourth century, a disciple of the philosopher and theologian St. Augustine dared to ask him what God used to do before creating the universe. Augustine did not hesitate and, impassively, answered that along with creating the universe God had also created time.

The ingenious and accurate answer remained for centuries as immovable truth attracting the attention of theologians and philosophers, among them, Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who as a pioneer woman of the theology in the XIX century, decided to sink the tooth to this and other matters.

In the mid-1840s, already separated from her husband and officer of the Russian army Prince Nikolaus, Princess Carolyne used to spend all the day long in his native Kyiv to unravel the questions and answers that both Augustine and the distinguished doctor of theology St. Thomas Aquinas had been raising centuries ago.

Franz Liszt visits Kyiv
In the summer of 1847, while working on those matters, she learned that the internationally-famed composer and pianist Franz Liszt was in Kyiv as part of a concert tour throughout Russia, in addition to Austria and Hungary.
We do not know the details but we may assume that Carolyne attended one of the concerts, after which she would have begun to question the amount of time she spent studying Augustine and Thomas. The fact is that Carolyne left Kyiv and went to live with Franz in the city of Weimar, where the famous pianist resided serving as Kapellmeister of the court.

The relationship, extremely complex due to the repeated and unsuccessful attempts to get Carolyne's divorce from the Holy See, will last for fourteen years.

Consolation No. 3, in D-flat major
Composed between 1849 and 1850, at the height of the love affair, the "Consolations", though very typical of Liszt's musical universe, tend to be related to the aesthetics of Chopin's nocturnes, for its spirit and its non-spectacular technique.
Consolation No. 3 is the one that has most attracted the favour of the public, of the six that make up the group.

The rendition, outstanding, is by Tiffany Poon when she was eleven.

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