Hungarian March from La Damnation de Faust (1846)

Goethe’s transcendental two-part drama Faust has been an inspiration for dozens of composers, most of them but by by no means all of them German. Gounod’s opera and Berlioz’s cantata La Damnation de Faust Faust (which has often been staged as an opera ) are both among the greatest works of their kind in the French repertoire. The Hungarian March, an arrangement of the patriotic Rácóczy-Indulo was originally written for a concert tour that Berlioz made in Hungary early in 1846. Irresistible in its original form, it is even more exciting with the triumphant coda added when – with less than total relevance – the piece was incorporated in the first part of La Damnation de Faust a few months later.