16. ‘Faust-Symphonie’.

The symphonic poems were still in Liszt’s portfolio when he composed the Faust-Symphonie, his orchestral masterpiece, in a white heat of inspiration within the short space of two months, between August and October 1854 (a final section was added in 1857). Liszt had been introduced to Goethe’s Faust by Berlioz in 1830, and had long nourished a desire to reflect that literary masterwork in music. (Appropriately, Liszt’s score is dedicated to Berlioz.) For many years his itinerant life style had placed one obstacle after another in his path, and had prevented the realization of his plan. Once settled in Weimar, however, a city which still resonated with Goethe’s presence, the work took possession of him and he put the best of himself into it.

One of the best discussions of the Faust-Symphonie was also one of the first. Written by Liszt’s disciple Richard Pohl, and published in 1862, this essay is notable for a richness of detail which could only have come directly from Liszt himself (Pohl, H1883, pp.247–320). The first thing to observe is the work’s title: ‘A Faust Symphony in Three Character Sketches after Goethe: (1) Faust, (2) Gretchen, (3) Mephistopheles’. Liszt does not attempt to tell the story of Goethe’s drama, but rather creates musical portraits of the three main protagonists. The ‘Faust’ movement itself lasts nearly half an hour and reveals Liszt to be an orchestrator of the first rank. The work’s keyless beginning has attracted commentary. It depicts Faust as thinker, contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Some theorists have seen in this passage not merely a descending sequence of augmented chords, but one of the earliest 12-note rows in musical history (ex.14a). Liszt’s method of thematic metamorphosis is particularly suited to revealing the contradictory sides of Faust’s personality. In turn we are introduced to a series of motifs (passion, love, pride, and so forth), all of which are subjected to character change. The doubt motif (ex.14b) and the Motif of Love (ex.14c), for example, are different sides of the same coin. The ‘Gretchen’ movement was composed straight into full score, a feat that commands respect given the complexity of the music. Liszt regarded the orchestra as the sum total of many chamber ensembles – a notion later pursued by Mahler and Richard Strauss – to be endlessly mutated and produce a sonic surface of kaleidoscopic variety. The ‘Gretchen’ theme is introduced first as a duet for oboe and viola, and later turns up as a woodwind quartet and then as a string quartet.

The finale – ‘Mephistopheles’ – shows Liszt at his ingenious best. Mephistopheles is the spirit of negation, or, as Goethe describes him, ‘Der Geist, der stets verneint’. The problem for Liszt was how to depict him in music. Since Mephistopheles cannot create, but only destroy, Liszt gives him no themes of his own, but allows him to penetrate those of Faust, which are mocked and cruelly distorted. The evil spell under which Faust labours is strengthened by a self-quotation from one of Liszt’s earlier works, Malédiction (or ‘curse’) for piano and strings. The entire finale is a vast metamorphosis of the first movement (only Gretchen’s theme remains uncorrupted), an original idea that was later taken up by Bartók in his B minor Violin Concerto. Faust’s flight from Mephistopheles is portrayed by a fugue (an appropriate form since the word itself denotes ‘flight’), whose main subject is a metamorphosis of the doubt motif, Faust’s most vulnerable character trait (ex.14d). The symphony was originally planned as a purely instrumental work, a version in which it is often played. Three years after its completion in 1854, however, Liszt added a new ending, a setting of the Chorus Mysticus, for solo tenor and male chorus. He himself conducted the first performance on 5 September 1857, on the occasion of the unveiling of the Goethe-Schiller monument in Weimar.

Liszt, Franz