While performing one evening, Franz Liszt was dismayed to observe his patron, Emperor Alexander of Russia, loudly conversing with another member of the audience. Liszt promptly stopped playing and, according to some accounts, left the piano. Alexander naturally asked him why he had stopped playing. "When the Emperor speaks," he tartly replied, "one ought to be silent."
[A similar story is told of the Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713).]
Sources
John Walbaum, The Know-it-all`s Guide to Life; Janka Wohl, Liszt: Recollections of a Compariot; J. Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel
