# TC Listening Club Part 5: A Faust Symphony (Liszt)



## crmoorhead (Apr 6, 2011)

YouTube LINKS

Here are two recordings of Faust Symphony available on YouTube. There are also several partial recording available.





 (Chicago SO, Solti)




 (Wiener Philharmoniker, Muti)

You can also see a clip of Leonard Bernstein conducting part of the Mephistopheles section of the symphony here:






PURCHASE OPTIONS

Here are some available purchasing options. Any additions to this list welcome:

Liszt: Faust Symphony, Dante Symphony, Les Preludes, Prometheus (Chicago SO, Solti) (Decca)
Liszt: Faust Symphony (Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Chailly) (Decca)
Liszt: Faust Symphony (Orch. of the F. Lizst Academy, A. Ligeti) (Naxos)
Liszt: Faust Symphony (Rotterdam Philharmonic Orch., Conlon) (Apex)
Liszt: Faust Symphony (Philidelphia Orch., Muti) (EMI classics)
Liszt: Faust Symphony (Danish National Radio SO, Dausgaard) (Chandos)

OTHER INFORMATION

Check out the Wikipedia article on this work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust_Symphony

The following program notes were written by Dr. Richard E. Rodda:

There was a historical Faust. The Doctor Faustus who provided one of the most enduring figures in Western folklore and literature lived in Germany in the early 16th century, gaining a wide reputation as a necromancer, astrologer, alchemist and sorcerer. So extraordinary were his powers, so tangled the path of his life, so evil his reputation, that the popular belief sprang up that he was in league with the devil himself; Faustus more than once referred to that unearthly force as his "crony." Though many scholars accused him of being nothing more than a brazen charlatan, he threw enough of a fright into the fledgling Protestant clergy that he was denounced by Luther and Melanchthon. Soon after his death, around 1540, Faust came to symbolize the man endowed with special powers during his earthly life at the cost of his own eternal damnation. The tales about Faust first found their way into literature when they were woven through the Faustbuch, published by a now-unknown author in 1587, in which Faust was made to give accounts of legendary, ancient and medieval sorcerers and occultists from his own merciless point of view. The incarnation of the lord of the underworld, Mephistopheles - savage, ironical, scheming, wicked - and his hellish domain were made chillingly vivid in that telling. Translations quickly spread the Faustbuch across Europe, and by 1604, the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe had produced his History of Dr. Faustus, which retained some of the coarse humor and sensational images of the original work but added to them a certain dignity and tragedy. Plays and puppet shows on the Faust theme were popular for the next two centuries, as were manuals of magic bearing Faust's name explaining how to avoid a pact with the devil, or, if it came to that, how to break one. In 1784, the German rationalist writer Gotthold Lessing tried to redeem Faust in an unfinished play by depicting him as a noble man in pursuit of knowledge at any cost. This redemptive thread was taken up by Goethe in his renowned transfiguration of the Faust legend into a cosmic treatise on man's relation to the universe. (Part I was published in 1808; Part II in 1832, shortly after the author's death.)

Franz Liszt came to know Goethe's Faust, in the French translation by Gérard de Nerval, through Hector Berlioz, whom he met for the first time in Paris in December 1830, just before the premiere of the Symphonie Fantastique. Berlioz admitted, "This marvelous book fascinated me from the very first moment" (he completed his evening-length "dramatic legend" The Damnation of Faust in 1846), but Liszt warmed to it more slowly, saying that "in my youth, Faust seemed to me a decidedly bourgeois character … [who] takes no action and lets himself be driven, hesitates, experiments, loses his way, considers, bargains and is only interested in his own little happiness." (Liszt was not yet twenty when he first read the book.) As Liszt matured, however, his opinion of Goethe's masterwork grew, and he came to carry a copy of Faust with him constantly, along with Dante's Divine Comedy.

By the early 1840s, Liszt was considering basing a composition on Goethe's Faust, but his continual touring as the day's leading piano virtuoso kept him from progressing beyond a few unconnected sketches. In 1848, he abandoned the European concert circuit to become court music director at Weimar, Goethe's home for many years before his death in 1832. Liszt became imbued with the spirit of Goethe after settling in Weimar, and for the city's celebration of the centenary of the writer's birth, on August 28, 1849, he conducted an excerpt from Robert Schumann's gestating Scenes from Goethe's "Faust" as part of the festivities. (Schumann did not complete the work until 1853.) The following year Liszt tried (unsuccessfully) to establish a "Goethe Foundation" to award prizes in the arts, and he also entertained the visiting translator Gérard de Nerval at his home; in 1852, he invited Berlioz to Weimar to conduct The Damnation of Faust. Liszt must have been accumulating ideas for his own composition based on Faust during those years, but the catalyst to begin serious work on the score seems to have been the discussions that he had with the English philosopher and literary critic George Henry Lewes when he descended upon Weimar in August 1854 to do research for his pioneering biography of Goethe. Despite the ambitious scale of the Faust Symphony, most of the score was completed at lightning speed during the following two months. (Liszt added an optional epilogue for tenor and male chorus, which took the closing lines of Goethe's poem as its text, in 1857. This performance uses the original orchestra-only version.) Liszt conducted the work's premiere on September 7, 1857 at the unveiling of Ernst Reitschel's joint monument to Goethe and Schiller that still stands in front of Weimar's National Theater.

Barry Millington, the English musicologist and authority on Liszt and Wagner, summarized Goethe's version of the tale, which sees Faust as an aged academic willing to trade his soul for love, riches and renewed youth: "Faust, impatient with the limits imposed by academic knowledge, longs to transcend them and live life to the full. He strikes a pact with the devil, Mephistopheles, by which diabolic magical powers are put at his disposal so long as he continues to strive. If, however, he should once express satisfaction with his lot, his soul can be claimed by Mephistopheles. Faust is presented to the innocent Gretchen, whom he seduces and destroys. He reforms somewhat and at the end of a long, rich life, he at last expresses satisfaction. Mephistopheles claims his soul, but he is borne aloft by angels, saved by Gretchen's redeeming love."

A Faust Symphony comprises three movements - "character pictures," Liszt called them - that capture the emotional essences of the main protagonists rather than portray any of the story's specific events. The opening movement depicts Faust in his varied moods: pensive and mysterious (a slow-tempo, harmonically ambiguous motive of short, separated phrases that defies a clear tonality by using all twelve tones of the chromatic scale); longing, uncertainty and sadness (a motive, presented by the oboe in the fourth measure, that begins with a wide falling seventh, one of music's most expressive intervals); passion and ambition (a fast, agitated strain initiated by the violins after a doleful bassoon solo based on the "longing" motive); love (a tender, lyrical idea, the movement's formal second theme, first given by clarinet and horn); and pride or, perhaps, heroism (a bold, swaggering subject led by the brass). The movement is a tour-de-force of mid-19th-century symphonic formal practices, combining traditional sonata form with the sectional structure that Liszt had developed for his tone poems by presenting, returning and balancing the themes according to classical practice but developing them throughout rather than just in the central section, and by separating them with related or contrasting episodes.

Gretchen, the subject of the second movement, is evoked by a melody of celestial purity first heard as a duet for oboe and viola following a sweet, chaste introduction from the flutes and clarinets. The intensity rises when several of Faust's themes from the first movement are entwined with those of Gretchen as the movement unfolds. The recall of Gretchen's themes brings the movement to a halcyon close. In addition to its expressive effect, this luminous movement is also one of the finest examples of Liszt's orchestral craftsmanship. "Across its sonic surface," wrote Alan Walker in his authoritative study of the composer, "Liszt unfurls a kaleidoscopic array of chamber-music textures in which every player is a soloist."

Mephistopheles, as is his wont, works his will upon what he finds, so the finale is spun from diabolical transformations of Faust's motives; the devil gets only one new theme, a motive (an expectant harmony followed by two staccato points of punctuation) that Liszt borrowed from his Malédiction ("Curse") Concerto of the mid-1830s, where he labeled it "Pride." The renowned English music critic Ernest Newman wrote that the finale "consists, for the most part, of a kind of burlesque upon the subjects of the Faust movement which are here passed, as it were, through a continuous fire of irony and ridicule." The finale's form, like that of the opening movement, is a hybrid of sonata, developmental and episodic practices, and often takes on the character of a demonic scherzo.

"The Faust Symphony," wrote the noted English critic and poet Sacheverell Sitwell, "represents Liszt at the summit of his powers, in the acme of his achievement. The Romantic Revival - such shades as those of Ossian, Byron, Hoffmann, Delacroix, Berlioz, Paganini - attains its culmination in this work."


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## crmoorhead (Apr 6, 2011)

UPCOMING

The schedule for the next four Listening Club sessions will be:

PART 6: Gruppen (Stockhausen) chosen by mmsbls and starting 16/07/12
PART 7: Cello Suite No. 6 in D (Bach) chosen by Clementine and starting 23/07/12
PART 8: Piano Sonata No. 16 in G (Beethoven) by CarterJohnsonPiano and starting 30/07/12
PART 9: TBC by KRoad before 29/07/12 and starting 07/08/12

OTHER THREADS

You can still participate in past Listening Club threads here:

http://www.talkclassical.com/19793-tc-listening-club-week.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/19883-tc-listening-club-week.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/19986-tc-listening-club-part.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/20078-tc-listening-club-part.html

NOMINATIONS

To sign up and nominate pieces for listening, use the following thread or PM crmoorhead.

http://www.talkclassical.com/19752-listening-club.html

If a member does not nominate a piece before the deadline in the schedule, a piece will be selected at random from the list of pieces nominated by other members. Members will be given a reminder a few days before the deadline for their selection passes. Nominations must be available on YouTube.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

The Muti recording is better than the Solti, I find.

Oh, there's also Bernstein/BSO's video recording in full...the audio quality is awful though, so overall i'd go with the Muti.


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## maestro267 (Jul 25, 2009)

I've heard this a few times, but I'm still not really familiar with it. The third movement is quite a thrill-ride! Nice to see an appearance of the chorale-theme from the first movement, albeit at breakneck speed. The 2nd movement was lovely, but it was definitely a lull in proceedings.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I give the _Faust Symphony_ 8.5/10. My only problem with the work is a certain amount of repetitiveness/long windedness - which stops me from giving it a 10. However this 'problem' could very well just be my lack of understanding rather than a problem with the work. I haven't read _Faust_ (yet), and in listening/studying the piece I haven't done my part of the bargain in trying to fully understand this complex work.

One thing for certain is that it's a monument in 19th century orchestral composition. For whatever reason, it hasn't proven itself as far as worldwide appeal as, say, a Brahms symphony has (which doesn't really mean much, considering the general neglect and prejudice that invariably finds its way toward Liszt) - but it is certainly a work of the utmost importance in its form, pushing the boundaries of tonality, orchestration, and program music. It is a pillar in musical Romanticism, as well as a work that foreshadows the music in the coming decades.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

This is a work which I know quite well, its one of the first scores I studied. I hope I find the time to post some more, but I will say that this is quite an innovative work, which almost uses leitmotives in the wagnerian sense with various sound representing each character.

For example the music for Faust is chromatic and vague and is descriptive of his dreamy character. 

An extraordinary work which is forward-looking and quite radical, but as a piece in itself it doesnt quite reach great heights.


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## maestro267 (Jul 25, 2009)

I have to say, my listening to this on Monday evening did a lot to enhance my appreciation of this piece.


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## crmoorhead (Apr 6, 2011)

I am a little behind on my listening ATM - I am on holiday and visiting relatives. I'll get back to this thread tomorrow or Fri and add to the Rangstrom thread too. My thoughts on this symphony and why I chose it:

-Being a fan of literature and an amateur writer, I love the idea of 'character sketches' as a program for a symphony. Indeed, Liszt's full title for this work was "A Faust Symphony in Three Character Sketches." The more I read into the symphony, the more it interests me.

-I know the basic story and plot of Faust, though have not read Goethe. If you listen carefully, you can see how the character development is matched with the musical development. Faust is an old man, full of yearning and desire. Gretchen is full of innocence and beauty. Mephisopheles is impetuous and exciting. On a deeper level, you can see the action of various elements of the plot in the changing nature of the music. Faust, for example, dreams of excitement, but recoils from that dream - showing an element of temptation. His own level of cunning and a feeling of intrepidation, his feelings of love/desire and the realisation of his dreams are expertly woven into the music.

-The length of this piece is considerable, the longest in the listening club so far, and (as others have mentioned) this might put people off getting into this work. The first few couple of times I listened to it, I didn't 'get it', but as I listened more and more I saw more elements of the music. The three parts of the story are not chronological but are, instead, three ways of seeing the same story through the development of each character. I have also read that the parts of Gretchen and Mephistopheles are versions of those characters as seen through the protagonist's eyes.

- As has been mentioned by others, there are quite a few recurring motifs that are reused in the symphony like leitmotifs. This, and the fact that Liszt was one of the innovators of the tone poem and programme music, makes it historically interesting.

-Liszt created some very dramatic (and showy) piano pieces, so it is interesting to se how he might transfer that to his orchestral works. There are long parts of his Hungarian Rhapsodies that are subdued which, IMO, only serve to contrast the dramatic finishes to these works all the more. I think that part 3 of this work also satisfies in this way, though each of the movements has their moments

This is currently one of my favourite symphonies, obviously, so I'd give it a 9/10.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

I am enjoying listening to this. I can't say I'm a great Liszt fan although I really love the B minor Piano Sonata. I really don't know that much of his orchestral works apart from Les Preludes.
I notice there is a melodic motif in the first movement very reminiscent of the opening of Tristan. I think they were both written at around the same time......mmm..interesting.

Thanks to crmoorhead for all the work.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I am finding tonal music rather difficult to listen to. I am doing my best to enjoy this work though. I do like Liszt.


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## powerbooks (Jun 30, 2012)

Agree this is a long and complex work for listening club. It took me two days to go over the entire piece twice, and I still don't think this is my favorite piece of (even) Liszt. I prefer him on piano.

I have the Bernstein/BSO version which is among the longest as most of you know at 77 min. I don't feel it is stretched too slow though, and it is a truly stunning performance. 

The first movement could have been one of the single symphony poems Liszt was specialized in. It has a complete picture of Faust with different aspects of his life and characters. That alone could have been an impressive work. 

The second movement left me cold even though it was supposed to be a tender theme. There supposed to have the reflections of themes from the first movement but the music is so complex I could not make the connection. 

I expected the last movement about Mephistoph to be wild and clumsy (as some introduction claimed), but I felt it very positive and energetic, to my surprise, and I love the tensions from the so called "distortion and corruption". It is a very theatrical progress building up the climax and lead to the grand chorus finale.

I am not a bookworm, and know Faust in less details. Comparing to the opera by Gounod, I find Liszt's symphony is more on the concepts and covers lot more angels of the whole scene. Gounod's Faust is more focused on the love between Faust and Marguerite, and more humanized. The opera ending is also a grand redemption. I have to say I like the opera than the symphony.

I have two other versions at hand, and may find sometime to do more listenings.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Now that I have finished listening to it I think the work is a bit long. It is a great work, but the first movement was enough for me. Love the augmented triads.


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

Well I have to say I struggled with this one.
I've listened to it twice now, and find it too long.
I like the first half of it, then seem to lose interest a bit.
I'll try again a few times over the next week or so?


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## powerbooks (Jun 30, 2012)

Well, next week might be even more challenging as it is a modern music. I don't even have a recording available!

At least the whole thing, Gruppen by Stockhausen, is available on YouTube!


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

My appreciation of this work has grown the last week after listening to it a few times. For awhile I found myself not really enjoying large portions of the work and finding it tedious. Now it is clicking for me and i'm really starting to love it. The sections that seemed less inspired at first make sense now and connect together with the rest of this complex work (although there are still some bits I struggle with). Upgrade my 8.5 to a 9 :tiphat:


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## Mika (Jul 24, 2009)

I have listened this two times now. At first Bernstein version:








then some Beecham:








My first impression was, that this is too long, especially 2nd movement was a struggle for me. I keep on fighting with this .


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