Mephistopheles (from Faust Symphony)

Liszt first encountered the Faust legend when, the day before the first performance of the Symphonie fantastique in 1830, Berlioz introduced him to Goethe’s Faust in a French translation. From then on he was hooked but, although he made some sketches in the 1840s, it wasn’t until he was stimulated by Berlioz again, this time by way of a performance of The Damnation of Faust in 1852, that he seriously applied himself to his Faust Symphony. The first, purely orchestral version was written in 1854 and the choral finale was added three years later, completing a work which many now consider to be Liszt’s greatest achievement. On its publication in 1861 the score was, very properly, dedicated to Hector Berlioz.

Liszt’s purpose in the Faust Symphony was not to tell a story, as Berlioz had done in the Symphonie fantastique, but to present character studies of the three major protagonists of Goethe’s drama: Faust, the philosopher who sells his soul to the demon Mephistopheles in return for whatever he asks of him; Gretchen, the girl he seduces and ruins but whose love for him redeems his soul in the end; and Mephistopheles, the devil figure who is Faust’s constant companion and attendant as he waits to claim his soul but who is finally cheated of his prize by divine intervention. According to Goethe, Mephistopheles is “the spirit who always denies.” He is a negative force, the opposite pole of Faust and his positive ambitions. So Liszt’s inspired solution to the problem of depicting his character in musical terms was to make Mephistopheles, the third movement of the symphony, a parody of the opening Faust movement, using the same themes but treating them derisively in what amounts to an extended and wickedly witty scherzo.

Since the Faust movement is not being heard on this occasion there is no point in identifying the various themes and tracing their progress through the Mephistopheles movement. There is no need to either: the devil is in the detail, in the endless variety of transformation techniques applied to Faust’s themes - including an explosive fugue at one point - the often sarcastic and sometimes eerie harmonies, the brilliantly satirical orchestration, the exclusion of anything that might seem to indicate any kind of sympathy in Mephisto’s attitude to Faust. The one moment of sentiment, at the very centre of the construction, is quiet echo of the Gretchen movement where, under high tremolandos on violin, woodwind and a solo horn recall one of the tenderly lyrical melodies associated with Faust’s unfortunate lover. Gretchen’s character Mephistopheles is unable to distort in musical terms and it is her constancy in dramatic terms that defeats him in the end.