Scenes from Goethe’s Faust

Part 3: Faust’s Transfiguration

1 Chorus: Waldung, sie schwebt heran -

2 Pater Ecstaticus: Ewiger Wonnebrand

3 Pater Profundus: Wie Felsenabgrund mir zu Füssen -

Pater Seraphicus: Welch in Morgenwölkchen schwebet -

Blessed Boys: Sag uns, Vater -

4 Angels: Gerettet ist das edle Glied -

The Younger Angels: Jene Rosen -

The More Perfect Angels: Uns bleibt ein Erdenrest -

Blessed Boys: Freudig empfangen wir

5 Doctor Marianus: Hier ist die Aussicht frei -

6 Doctor Marianus: Dir der Unberührbaren -

Penitent Women: Du schwebst zu Höhen -

Una Poenitentium: Von edlen Geisterchor umgeben

7 Chorus Mysticus: Alles Vergängliche

Goethe’s Faust - one of the great works of European literature ranked by common consent alongside the likes of Don Quixote and The Divine Comedy - has attracted all sorts of composers in all sorts of ways. Published in two parts, the first in its definitive version in 1808 and the second in 1832, it offers two broadly different musical opportunities. Part I, in which the learned Doctor Faust sells his soul to the devil in return for such gratifications as the love of Gretchen, whom he seduces and abandons, is the source of most operatic treatments of the story, including Gounod’s Faust, as well as Berlioz’s ‘dramatic legend’ La Damnation de Faust. Part II, in which Faust is redeemed partly through his own efforts and partly through Gretchen’s enduring love for him, is more a philosophical poem than a drama and has inspired two great symphonic finales, the last movements of Liszt’s Faust Symphony and Mahler’s Eighth, as well as the second and third parts of Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust.

Schumann’s oratorio - as it became, although it was originally conceived as an opera - was written more or less backwards, beginning with Part 3 in Leipzig in 1844 and ending with the Overture in Düsseldorf in 1853, less than six months before his final mental breakdown. Strangely, however, although the complete work forms a narrative continuity comprising significant elements in the story, from Faust’s seduction of Gretchen to his death and redemption, Schumann thought it would not be a good idea to perform all three parts of it together - ‘which might be done only as a curiosity’. So it is entirely legitimate to present Part 3 in isolation, as the composer himself did when he conducted one of three simultaneous performances in Dresden, Leipzig and Weimar on the centenary of Goethe’s birth in 1849.

Part 3, Faust’s Trasnfiguration, based on a text drawn almost word-for-word from Goethe’s final scene, is set in a mountainous region somewhere nearer to heaven than to earth. This ‘holy refuge of love’ - said to be inspired by the landscape of Montserrat near Barcelona but influenced also by the iconography of medieval painting - is described in the gently expressive opening chorus, ‘Waldung, sie schwebt heran’. It is inhabited by four Holy Anchorites known to Goethe from the writings of the Christian mystics. The first of them, the tenor Pater Ecstaticus, ‘hovering up and down’ and accompanied by an appropriately undulating solo cello line, sings rapturously of the state of grace he has attained through love and suffering. The bass Pater Profundus, who has not yet achieved such ecstasy, proclaims from a ‘lower region’ of weighty trombones his faith in divine love. He is joined in the ‘middle region’ by the baritone Pater Seraphicus who, in a melodious exchange that owes much to Mozart’s Magic Flute, offers words of encouragement to the Selige Knaben, spirits of children (sung here by the sopranos and altos of the CBSO Senior Youth Chorus) who, having died too young to lose their innocence, are seeking their place in heaven.

Having set the near-heavenly scene, Goethe and Schumann now turn to the delicate matter of redeeming Faust, whose soul is carried aloft by a solemn chorus of Angels and can be saved, they say, by virtue of Faust’s ‘ceasless striving for good’. A tuneful choir of Younger Angels add that their task is eased by the prayers of penitent women - a hint of the part Gretchen is to play in the next section. Although the More Perfect Angels require a further manifestation of love, a chorale of Blessed Boys welcomes Faust in a provisional or ‘chrysalis’ state. The splendidly fugal chorus that follows, ‘Gerettet ist das edle Glied’, was added four years later, after a serious study of Handel’s English oratorios. Its echoes of Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ Symphony notwithstanding, it is surely the greatest of all Schumann’s choral pieces.

Equally inspired, though in a quite different way, is the baritone Doctor Marianus’s ‘Hier ist die Aussicht frei’ sung in the highest of the Holy Anchorites’ cells. From its visionary beginning accompanied by spellbound muted strings, it develops with the entry of a celestial harp and poetically expressive oboe into an adoring hymn to the Virgin, ‘Höchste Herrscherin der Welt’. In the next section it is to the Virgin, or Mater Gloriosa, that the penitent women, including Magna Peccatrix, Mulier Samaritana, and Maria Aegyptica, pray in ensemble for forgiveness. Gretchen herself, now identified as Una Poenitentum, intercedes on behalf of Faust her ‘former loved one’. In a short but solemn recitative crowned with a trumpet call Mater Gloriosa pronounces the verdict that she, Gretchen, will draw Faust on to salvation.

The closing section, the Chorus Mysticus, which finally confirms the power of the ‘eternal feminine’ to lead man on to higher things, exists in two versions. The extraordinary opening section, which combines archaic procedures and progressive harmonies to create a fresh and entirely individual sound, is common to them both. So too is the ethereal first entry of the words ‘das Ewig-Weibliche’. In anticipation of the Goethe centenary performances, however, everything that follows was written afresh in 1847. Schumann did not, on the other hand, discard the original, which was published alongside the revised version in the first edition of the score in 1858. It is the shorter 1844 ending, with its operatic solo soprano part, that will be heard on this occasion.

Gerald Larner © 2002