Two Episodes from Lenau’s Faust

The Night-time Procession

The Dance at the Village Inn (Mephisto Waltz No.1)

Liszt was fascinated by the Faust legend from his first encounter with it in 1830, when Berlioz introduced him to it, until the end of his career. The earliest and greatest manifestation of his engagement with the subject was the Faust Symphony, inspired by Goethe’s transcendental treatment of the legend and completed in its final (choral) version in 1857. He was drawn too to Nikolaus Lenau’s Faust, a quite different interpretation in the form of a long narrative poem which the composer discovered in 1859. Two episodes were of particular interest to him, both of them magical evocations of a musical experience. Very different from each other in setting and atmosphere, they were clearly ideal material for a contrasting pair of orchestral pieces. As it has turned out, although they were written in the same breath in about 1860 and are of the same high quality, only one of them, The Dance at the Village Inn, has retained a place in the regular repertoire - largely because of the popularity of the piano version and the demonic reputation it has gathered as the first in a series of similarly inspired Mephisto Waltzes.

The Night-time Procession

There is no piano version of The Night-time Procession. Not even Liszt’s keyboard genius could make a convincing piano piece out of a score so spontaneously conceived and so sensitively realised in orchestral terms. The episode in Lenau’s Faust is set in a dark forest on a warm spring night echoing with the song of nightingales. Lost in his own gloomy thoughts, Faust is oblivious to his surroundings until he sees a light and hears the chant of an approaching procession of children dressed in white, veiled young women and priestly old men. He takes his horse under the trees to let them pass and as they disappear “presses his face deep into its mane and weeps hot tears on its neck.”

The main theme of The Night-time Procession is not heard in its definitive plainchant form until the appearance of the procession about halfway through. It is there from the start, however, in one of many variant versions, as lower strings and wind evoke the darkness of the forest and Faust’s sombre mood. With the entry of the violins, colours become brighter and the melodic line expands into a nature picture radiant with woodwind birdsong and passionate with spring-time emotion. Still in sombre mood, Faust rides quietly along the path, his horse’s hoofbeats marked by pizzicato strings, until the sound of a bell and fragments of the main theme on horn and lower strings signal the approach of the procession. From its modest introduction on a solo cor anglais the plainchant is developed into a full-scale orchestral chorale. The passing of the procession plunges Faust into despair and, as the double-basses confirm, into a mood even darker than he was in to start with.

The Dance at the Village Inn

The scene of the second episode is a peasant wedding party. As we know from Don Giovanni, an event like that is an irresistible challenge for any self-respecting seducer who happens to witness the celebrations. Sure enough, Faust arrives at the inn with Mephistopheles, who takes up a violin and whirls the company into an orgiastic dance. Taking advantage of the situation, Faust leads one of the girls out of the inn and into a wood echoing with the sound of nightingales - though not, it seems, to draw her attention to the bird-song.

Liszt’s treatment of the episode begins with a characteristically devilish outrage of convention as Mephistopheles tunes his violin, piling fifth upon fifth into a harmonic accretion on woodwind and strings that must have seemed a howling dissonance to Liszt’s contemporaries. The music Mephistopheles plays to the villagers is as uninhibited as his preparation for it, a turbulent and unstoppable dance calculated to sweep them off their feet. It most effectively offsets the central theme of the work, a contrastingly sensitive and hesitantly syncopated but highly seductive waltz tune for cellos, which is awarded to Faust himself to further his adventures in the wood outside. The subject of an extended and fantastically scored virtuoso development, the Faust theme is combined at the climax of the construction with allusions to the first theme and driven into an infernal gallop. The voice of the nightingale is heard on solo flute in a last amorous episode just before a poetic harp cadenza and a short but dramatic coda.

Gerald Larner ©2004