Though he still led the Weimar Court Theater orchestra on occasion, his resignation from the post of Kapellmeister in 1858 represented a turning point for Liszt, compounded by the deaths of his son, Daniel, in December 1859, and his daughter Blandine, in September 1862. March 1860 saw the public repudiation of the New German School (e.g., Liszt, Wagner, and their followers) in peculiarly personal terms by Brahms and Joseph Joachim. The summer of 1861 was marked by trips to Berlin and Paris—where Liszt played before Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie—and paid calls upon Rossini, Gounod, and Halévy, as well as his former mistress, Countess Marie d'Agoult. By October 1861 it was clear that the Pope would not sanction the divorce of Liszt's current mistress, Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein—her planned marriage to Liszt was set aside as they took separate residences in Rome. For Liszt the composer the period is marked by an increasing turn to religious themes and choral music (e.g., settings of Psalms 18, 23, and 137, completion of the oratorio St. Elizabeth in 1862 and work on Christus, the anguished "Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen" Variations for piano, etc.). But the past loomed internally as fragments of Liszt's personality took on high definition—the Magyar-cum-Gypsy in a setting of Lenau's Die drei Zigeuner; the Mephistophelean Liszt in the orchestral Episodes (2) from Lenau's Faust (including Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke, or Mephisto Waltz) from 1860; Liszt the magus, summoning elemental creatures in Waldesrauschen and Gnomenreigen; an 1862 return to the world of the Études d'exécution transcendante, that is, to the 1830s and even to Liszt's teens, though with a deftly aerial, old-masterly touch. June 20, 1863, Liszt took up residence in a ruined Dominican monastery outside Rome, Madonna del Rosario, which would be his home for the next five years. Retreat from the world brought memories of the strolling player who had held Europe in thrall from Constantinople and the fringes of Russia to Lisbon and Madrid. A rhapsody on Spanish themes inspired by Liszt's tour to the latter capitals in 1845 furnished material for a new Rapsodie espagnole—an elaborate flourish sets the stage for a passacaglia on La Folia (also used by Corelli and Rachmaninov) whose proud gestures are interrupted by carnivalesque fripperies and flirtatious entanglements, developed at length and worked to a brilliant Jota Aragonesa peroration in Liszt's best virtuoso style. Busoni arranged the Rapsodie espagnole for piano and orchestra in 1894.

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