The Classical Music Book

176

Mephistopheles holds a mirror up

to Faust in a poster created by Richard

Roland Holst for a 1918 Dutch National

Theatre production of Goethe’s play.

T

he central myths of

European art can often

be traced back to sources

thousands of years old. Unusually,

the Faust legend is a more recent

phenomenon, based on a real

person. The original Johann

Faustus was a late 15th-century

magician-illusionist, who claimed

to be in league with the devil. His

dubious career traveling through

the southeast German region

of Thuringia even secured him

a doctorate from Heidelberg

University. The Faust story had

already become part of folklore

when the literary doyen of the

German Romantic movement,

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

began to explore the character

in the 1770s.

Powerful appeal

Romanticism had multiple roots in

the political and social upheavals of

its time. With industrialism came

the rise of a middle-class less

beholden to the Church and the

aristocracy, and in this more

liberated climate, Goethe’s verse-

play Faust developed a potent

appeal. Faust concerns the

corruption of a secular, rational

mind. Goethe’s hero is a brilliant

WHO HOLDS THE

DEVIL, LET HIM

HOLD HIM WELL

FAUST SYMPHONY (1854–1857), FRANZ LISZT

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The Faust legend and

German Romanticism

BEFORE

1830 The premiere of Berlioz’s

Symphonie fantastique, with

the young Liszt in the Paris

audience, sees the debut of the

Romantic symphony orchestra,

much more colorful than those

that came before.

1846 Berlioz conducts

the first performances of The

Damnation of Faust, based on

G oethe’s Faust Part I.

AFTER

1861 Liszt arranges a piano

version of his Mephisto-Waltz

No. 1, which was originally

written for orchestra.

1906 Mahler composes his

Eighth Symphony; its main

movement is a huge setting of

the closing “Chorus mysticus”

scene of Goethe’s Faust Part II.

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