Page 178 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

176

WHO HOLDS THE

DEVIL, LET HIM

HOLD HIM WELL

FAUST SYMPHONY (1854–1857), FRANZ LISZT

he central myths of
IN CONTEXT European art can often
T be traced back to sources
FOCUS thousands of years old. Unusually,
The Faust legend and the Faust legend is a more recent
German Romanticism
phenomenon, based on a real
BEFORE person. The original Johann
1830 The premiere of Berlioz’s Faustus was a late 15th-century
Symphonie fantastique, with magician-illusionist, who claimed
the young Liszt in the Paris to be in league with the devil. His
audience, sees the debut of the dubious career traveling through
Romantic symphony orchestra, the southeast German region
much more colorful than those of Thuringia even secured him
a doctorate from Heidelberg
that came before.
University. The Faust story had
1846 Berlioz conducts already become part of folklore
the first performances of The when the literary doyen of the
Damnation of Faust, based on German Romantic movement,
Goethe’s Faust Part I. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
began to explore the character
AFTER in the 1770s.
1861 Liszt arranges a piano
version of his Mephisto-Waltz Powerful appeal
No. 1, which was originally Romanticism had multiple roots in
written for orchestra. the political and social upheavals of
its time. With industrialism came
1906 Mahler composes his the rise of a middle-class less
Eighth Symphony; its main beholden to the Church and the
movement is a huge setting of aristocracy, and in this more
the closing “Chorus mysticus” liberated climate, Goethe’s verse-
scene of Goethe’s Faust Part II. play Faust developed a potent
Mephistopheles holds a mirror up
to Faust in a poster created by Richard appeal. Faust concerns the
Roland Holst for a 1918 Dutch National corruption of a secular, rational
Theatre production of Goethe’s play. mind. Goethe’s hero is a brilliant

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