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Hello and welcome to Sticky Notes, the classical music podcast. My name is Joshua Weilerstein, I'm a conductor and I'm the music director of the Orchestra national de l' Isle and the chief conductor of the Allborg Symphony. This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive into this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank my new Patreon sponsors and Natalie, Ann, Michael, Adam, Peter, Francia, Judith, Julie, George, Rebecca, Stephen, Michael, Eric, Robert, Rebecca W, Jim, Boris Hammer, Piano, Karen, Donna, AJ in Va, Karl, Sean, Daniel and Jorn and all of my other Patreon sponsors for making season 11 possible.
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If you'd like to support the show,
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please head over to patreon.com stickynotespodcast and
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if you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give
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us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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It is greatly appreciated.
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As you all probably heard, lots of new Patreon sponsorships this week as I've just begun my 21 part series on Schubert's song cycle Die Schenemulleren. We had part one last week, the introduction to the show basically giving a bit of background. And now this week Today episode number
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one one will come out, or I
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guess episode two about Song one of Diana Mulleren. It's been such a joy to put that series together and we've already got a pretty lively discussion going on about the best recordings of the piece, so I do encourage you to check that out on patreon.com stickynotespodcast in terms of conducting, I've been all over the place. I was in Aalborg for two weeks doing Mahler 2 for the very first time, which was incredibly exciting, along with an American program. And then next week I'll be in Lille doing one of my favorite programs of the year with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and Gidon Klein's Partita for Strings and Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto with the great Denis Kozykin. This week's episode is a bit of a continuation of the episode I did a couple of weeks ago where I interviewed Keis Scaglione about Tristan and Isolde, because Liszt's Faust Symphony is really related to Wagner, as Liszt and Wagner always are. This is actually a Patreon sponsored episode, so I want to thank Jerry for sponsoring it and when Jerry sponsored it a few months ago, I was really not familiar with this piece and actually the conversation with Keis really helped me in writing this episode and thinking about Liszt and Liszt's contribution to music because
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Liszt is just somebody that I never really related to.
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I'll talk about that on the show. And so this was a really fascinating discovery for me and it's just yet another reason why I love doing these Patreon sponsored episodes because they always help me cover pieces that I don't know very well or that I was never familiar with.
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So thanks again to Jerry and I
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really hope you enjoy this episode on Liszt's Faust Symphony.
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Goethe's Faust is considered to be the greatest work of German literature. This sprawling two part play occupied Goethe's life for nearly 60 years, from its original version begun in 1772, all the way to Goethe's final revisions of it before his death. It inspired just about every Romantic era composer who came after it, including Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Berlioz, Gounod, Mahler, and our subject the show, Franz Liszt. Liszt, who was in many ways the world's first pop star, and we'll get to that later, was initially skeptical of Faust, saying that he couldn't relate to the main character of the play he wrote. Faust's personality scatters and dissipates itself. He takes no action, lets himself be driven, hesitates, experiments, loses his way, considers bargains and is interested in his own little happiness. But slowly, Liszt began to be taken in by this remarkable play and decided to try his hand at a reflection on it, writing a massive three movement, 75 minute long symphony that never attempts to tell the story of Faust in a narrative way, but instead reflects on the psychological nature of the three central Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. The Devil. A lot of English speaking listeners will know this story as the story of a man who sold his soul to the devil. But for Goethe, it was much more than that and it was for Liszt as well. Now, I've never talked about Liszt on the show because frankly, I've never been in love with his music. But this is one of those great things that these Patreon sponsored episodes can do, which is to help me discover pieces that I've never really explored before. So thank you to Jerry for that. And today we are going to talk about Liszt, Faust and then take a stab at some of the greatest moments in this symphony. We'll talk about thematic transformation, a technique Liszt essentially invented and which is a vital part of understanding this piece. All this and more is coming right up on sticky notes. As a composer, Liszt is known today for his two piano concerti and his solo piano works. His orchestral music is much Less well known though, his Les Preludes is played from time to time, though it used to be much more popular. In Liszt's time he was also known as a composer, but most of all he was known as one of the great virtuosi of his time and someone who truly could be called one of the musical world's first rock stars. The great German poet Heinrich Heine was the first to use the term Lisztomania to describe audiences ecstatic reactions to Liszt, which included fights over his used handkerchiefs and gloves, attempts to get locks of his hair and the wearing of his portrait on brooches. This all sounds pretty tame by 20th century rockstar standards, but 19th century Germany was not a place where this kind of thing ever really happened. Lystomania inevitably draws comparisons to Beatlemania, but the contexts were actually quite different. The term mania during Liszt's time didn't mean intense fandom. It meant something more like insanity. Some doctors considered the obsession with Liszt to be a veritable medical condition. This is how Heine described when formerly I heard of the fainting spells which broke out in Germany, and especially in Berlin, when Liszt showed himself there, I shrugged my shoulders pityingly and thought quiet, sabbatarian Germany does not wish to lose the opportunity of getting the little necessary exercise permitted it. In their case, thought I, it is a matter of the spectacle for the spectacle's sake. Thus I explained this listomania. Yet I was mistaken after all, and I did not notice it until last week at the Italian opera house where Liszt gave his first concert. This was truly no germanically sentimental, sentimentalizing Berlinate audience, before which Liszt played quite alone or rather accompanied solely by his genius. And yet how convulsively his mere appearance affected them. How boisterous was the applause which rang to meet him. What a claim. It was a veritable insanity, one unheard of in the annals of. This is the context in which Liszt was understood as a musician for much of his life, and I think it still affects us today. Liszt's music, now that we don't have the rock star to admire, isn't often taken that seriously. His music is thought of as a bit shallow, a bit for show and maybe a bit lowbrow. This is despite some of his solo piano music being some of the most beautiful music out there.
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Sam.
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The other thing about Liszt that I have to bring up before I get into the symphony was his involvement in the great war of the romantics in the 19th century. I've talked about this extensively in episodes about Brahms, but basically the two sides of the War of the Romantics were the Brahmsians. The voted to craft the symphonic idea and the continuation of Beethoven's legacy, and the Wagnerian Listhiens, the New German School, which believed that Beethoven had essentially finished the symphonic timeline and that a new form of musical art needed to be created, namely the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total artwork that would embody music, art, dance, the voice, text, literature, and anything else Wagner could dream up. Now, this doctrine happened to fit exactly with the music that Wagner was writing. But Liszt was a big part of the New German School as well, and he advocated for music to be connected more with literature and with programs or stories that went along with the music. This is a very truncated version of the War of the Romantics, but it gives you just a taste of these battles which rocked the musical world. In the end, both sides won in different ways, though not in the ways that they might have wanted. The Brahmsians focused a bit more on the past, oversaw the gradual museumification of the classical concert hall, resulting in the programs of today, which might include five to 10 minutes of new music, followed by lots of music by dead composers. The New German School practically destroyed the symphonic idea and program Music became essentially the way most composers wrote music for quite a while, until Sibelius, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and others picked up the symphonic ideal for a few more years in the 20th century. This is the context in which we enter Liszt's only symphony. Though it's really only a symphony in name, The symphony's title is the best clue as to what we are about to experience. The symphony is called a Faust Symphony in Three Character Sketches, after Goethe. This means that we are not to expect a retelling of the Faust story, but instead we are going to hear a kind of study of the three main characters. It's possible to enjoy this piece without knowing anything about Faust, but I think it's helpful to have a bit of a background on the story before we jump into the piece. The Faust story is a myth, but also a story about a real life person named Johann Faustus, A man who traveled through modern day southern Germany as a doctor, or as a magician and astrologer, or as an alchemist, or as a doctor of philosophy, or any other number of faces he took on. Essentially, Faustus was a bit of an itinerant con man, but this didn't stop his name from gaining a kind of legendary status. Soon after his apparently grisly death, a legend sprang up that Faustus had made a deal with the devil, Mephistopheles, to satisfy all his earthly desires in exchange for his soul. This spawned numerous plays, poems and stories about Faust. But Christopher Marlowe, the great English playwright, made perhaps the biggest impression with his Doctor Faustus. Marlowe portrayed Faust as a satanic figure, and it became popular in Germany, though much more often in a comedic way rather than anything more serious. Goethe took a different approach with the Faust legend, treating Faust in a much more empathetic way and portraying him as a man who was disillusioned with the limits of human knowledge and desiring of all the sensual pleasures of life. Mephistopheles, who in Goethe's telling of the story has gotten permission from God to do this, attempts to corrupt Faust. He provides Faust with everything he desires, of course, in exchange for his soul. This includes a beautiful woman, Gretchen, who Faust ends up falling in love with, which was not the plan. He ends up renouncing sensual pleasures and turns to doing good works, with which he is assisted by Mephistopheles. At the end of his life, Faust says the words, stay, Thou art so fair. Essentially, this is the signal to Mephistopheles that he can have Faust's soul and that Faust is ready to die. But as Mephistopheles swoops in, angels block his path and take Faust to heaven. Goethe's Faust is a redemptive story, one that says that living a good life and doing good things and to be constantly in search of knowledge is enough for redemption for anyone, even for someone who made a deal with the devil. Apologies for the long and yet totally inadequate recap of this greatest of books, but it's important to understand the context of this symphony before listening to any of it, as it is a huge work of over an hour, and every moment of it is tied to Liszt's understanding of Goethe's vision.
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Sam,
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We're now ready to go into this symphony. Now, since it's over an hour long, I'm not going to have the time to do a detailed analysis of the symphony like I usually do, but actually, I'm not sure if it would be that helpful. This is not a piece that one should come to, necessarily with a very analytical ear, as its sweep and scope is the central idea behind it. But there is one very technical thing to mention, and that is Liszt's own innovation of thematic transformation. The idea behind thematic transformation is essentially an updated version of a variation form. But instead of a theme and then a specific set of variations, Liszt takes an original theme and then subtly changes it, using constant Small adjustments like inversions, transpositions, tempo changes and many other technical devices. Some would say this is just repetition in disguise. But Liszt felt that repetition wasn't so bad anyway, saying it is a mistake to regard repetition as a poverty of invention. From the standpoint of the public, it is indispensable for the understanding of the thought, while from the standpoint of art, it is almost identical with the demands of clarity, structure and effectiveness. So at the beginning of the symphony, we hear the theme of Faust, and we are going to hear this theme of constantly throughout the symphony, but always slightly changed. Here is that theme as it appears in the introduction of the symphony. This theme, portraying a magician like Faust, has a bit of magic of its own, though Liszt couldn't have possibly known he was predicting the future. This theme is made up of all 12 notes of the scale and none of them repeat, meaning that Liszt, not Schoenberg, actually wrote music's first 12 tone row. The implications of this theme are powerful. We have no sense of key, no sense of stability, no sense of home. A perfect depiction of Faust the dreamer, and of his perpetual dissatisfaction and search for more. It's hardly possible to write a more arresting opening, and Liszt follows it with his first thematic transformation, a version of the theme written for oboe and which apparently represents doubt. It's essentially the same theme, but slightly adjusted in terms of length of notes, but the character is completely different. It is full of yearning and feels slightly, though just slightly more stable than the opening. This theme repeats. And if you listened to my show two weeks ago about Tristan and Isolde with my friend Kescaglione, you might recognize the way Liszt ends this introduction. Yes, it's the rising sixth, the interval that defines the word yearning in music. And here it is, seven years before Wagner wrote a note of Tristan. The introduction is now past and we head into the main part of this huge half hour long movement. The movement is in a kind of sonata form, but that's not how it's understood, and I would recommend listening to it with this thematic transformation idea in mind rather than trying to find a structure. The main part of the movement starts with a violent and terrifying version of the Faust theme, marked to be played impetuously. The writer Robert Pohl idolized Liszt and knew him well, and named some of the different motifs and themes in this movement with descriptive titles which must have come from Liszt himself. So I feel pretty comfortable sharing them with you. This theme that we just heard is described as the motif of passion. But did you hear the chord right at the start. That is this chord. It's technically called a half diminished seventh chord, but in classical music circles it is known as the Tristan chord. This chord, which famously comes near the beginning of Tristan and Isolde, has been a marker of the beginning of the modern era of classical music since it was written. The reason for its significance is that it suggests something outside of traditional tonality. I don't have time to get into this here, but again, listen back to my show with Quescaglion for a detailed look at just why the Tristan chord is so significant. But here's the other composers had used the chord before Wagner did, and Liszt here uses it in the same destabilizing way that Wagner does seven years before Tristan. In a great essay on this piece by Alan Walker, he writes, this is not the first time that Liszt cheated history by stealing from the history of music. Here is the motif of passion. Again, listen for that Tristan chord at the beginning. This music is describing the insatiable passion of Faust, his desire to constantly achieve more, to get more. Liszt develops this motif through a series of increasingly thrilling sequences before we suddenly arrive at a new transformation of the Faust theme. This is the motif of longing. We hear it only briefly in the first movement, but it will form the core music in the second move.
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Sam.
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I'll admit the repetitiveness of Liszt's music often does bother me, despite what he said. But when the result of all of these repetitions is this, this moment of absolute magic. Okay, I'll buy it. This is structurally a transition to the second main theme of the movement, but it's also a welcome moment of calm within all of this stormy music. A long wind down with loads of characteristic sign motifs leads us to that second the motif of love. Liszt transforms the motif of doubt into the motif of love, showing their psychological relationship in an extremely subtle and ingenious way. A solo horn and solo viola play a gently sensual duet as we hear the calmest and most openly tonal music we have heard so far. This does not build in the way you might expect for a so called love theme. Instead of increasing ardor and a further development of the love theme, Liszt speeds up the tempo and we arrive at a new theme which is described as the motif of pride. It apparently corresponds exactly to Faust's words. Im anfang war dite. In the beginning was the deed.
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Sam.
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This theme is often criticized as being quite banal in comparison with the rest of the symphony, but actually I think it's quite intentional. Pride is what always gets Faust and all of us in trouble. It's only his willingness to give that up and to do good deeds which leads to his redemption. So, in a sense, I think Liszt writes a theme of pride that is deliberately a bit shallow and meaningless. Remember, this is not a narrative, it's a psychological portrait. And so Liszt, I think, is making the brave choice to write shallow music in order to make a psychological point about the man he is portraying. We are now into the development of the movement where Liszt begins to meld all the motifs together. This is thrilling music and we start to understand the interrelatedness of all of these themes. If you think about it, it's a brilliant and risky concept from Liszt. He's taking a theme that describes the core character of a person and then transforming it to show all of their different sides. It's like taking a theme and turning it into different shades, not of gray, but of vivid colors, to describe every aspect of a person, or, in this case, a character's personality. Another fantastic example of this occurs in the development, where Liszt has the motif of love stand out as the main theme, while underneath, the motif of doubt rumbles below. The development wanders quite a bit, but I don't really mean that in a negative way. It's almost like a portrayal of a personality that can't find its bearings. Every time it confidently steps forward with something, it steps back almost as quickly. Much of Goethe's Faust is about to use a very modern finding oneself. And this is a bit of what Liszt is doing in this very loose development section. The build up to the recapitulation is thrilling, with the opening notes of the doubt motif building inexorably until you think it can't go any further, but then it does, until the motif of passion finally bursts through. Far, far more passionate than it was at the beginning.
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It's Sam.
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Instead of the motif of longing, though, this time Liszt moves right to the motif of love, as if longing has been replaced.
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Sa.
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And then this is where the thematic transformation technique really bears fruit. Instead of the bouncy and almost mocking pride that we got in the exposition, this time we get a warm and gentle expression of this motif. Is it still pride? Is it pride infused with love, with longing? Or all of it at once? But as if to undercut all of this, we hear the motif of doubt making its return more ominous than ever before. As I said, the structure of this piece is in three massive movements. The first is Faust, the second, Gretchen, and the third, mephistopheles. Liszt, in 30 minutes, is trying to musically summarize one of the most complex characters in all of literature. It makes sense that even in a sonataform structure, Liszt is placing the themes out of order, as if to portray a disordered mind.
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Sam.
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But slowly pride begins to replace doubt. And as we fly into the coda, the motif of passion and the opening 12 tone motif blend together. This is music of incredible fire again, as if Liszt is trying to amalgamate these multiple sides of Faust. If you were to end an epic 30 minute movement, you might think to end it loudly, whether triumphantly or tragically. But Liszt goes in the other direction, not using the opening theme, but instead the motif of doubt, which plunges into the lower strings and slowly fades away. After all this struggle, passion, longing, love and pride, we are left with only doubt.
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Sam.
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The second movement, Gretchen, is the portrayal of the love interest of Faust. In Faust itself, the Gretchen character is deeply complex and ends up the victim of many of Mephistopheles and of Faust's actions. But in this movement, the portrayal of Gretchen by Liszt is almost angelic, without any of the complexity that her character embodies. We'll get to why that might be in a moment, but first we need to hear the introduction to this movement, which is in ab, the key of love for Liszt. As you are hearing, two clarinets and two flutes are ongoing, a process of a long unearthing of a melody, which is first taken by the oboe accompanied by a solo viola in a beautiful and heartfelt theme. There's a remarkable intimacy to just two musicians playing this theme. After all the storms of the first movement, this movement really explores the chamber music side of Liszt's orchestration, and this is a beautiful example of it.
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Sam.
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Throughout the unfolding of this theme, Liszt transfers the theme to different instruments, but often on a small scale, such as two solo violins playing a slight evolution of the theme. Now accompanied by two violas, Liszt writes a series of gorgeous modulations which leads us toward a famous moment in the piece. Now, even if you don't know a word of Faust, surely you know the famous he loves me, he loves me not scene with Gretchen. Gretchen herself, by the way, has been an inspiration for many songs, including perhaps the most famous of them, Schubert's Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel. But her other cultural touchstone is he loves me, he loves me not. And Liszt can't possibly resist portraying this scene, even though the piece isn't a narrative, and he does it with as close to a literal mind as anything in the piece. But this appears just once as Liszt returns to his beautiful main AB major Theme. As this unwinds, the first violins end up practically alone, slowly descending like a leaf falling gently to the ground. This is the transition to the second theme, a theme that is marked to be played sweetly and lovingly, and is played by the strings alone. This is my favorite moment of the piece so far. An expression of sincere sweetness and love that belies all of the stereotypes of Liszt as a composer, only of banalities. But now something new begins to creep into the music. It's a kind of dissonance in the melody that we haven't heard so far. In this movement, Liszt repeatedly sits on suspensions note that suspend their resolutions, hence the name, in order to add more emotional pathos. That wasn't a mark of Gretchen's music though. That was a mark of Faust's music. And as if we heard Faust before we could see him. This leads us to Faust's full appearance, taking the love theme from the first movement and now fully fleshing it out. Some commentators have said that Liszt's portrayal of Gretchen is so simple because he is portraying her from Faust's eyes as beautiful and virginal, and not much more than that. Faust's theme at first appears in a light that is clearly more ominous. Gretchen's encounter with Faust will slowly lead her into a nightmare, despite or perhaps because of her obsessive love for him. Perhaps this is an element in Liszt's portrayal as well.
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Sam.
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The love theme becomes increasingly passionate and fragmented until a luminous modulation into D major takes us to a transformation of the theme of longing from the first movement. The question is, who is longing? Faust, Gretchen, both of them. And this leads to the full flowering of the love theme, now in the bright key of B major. Liszt removes all the agitation and threat from the previous iteration of this theme and we are treated to a passionate and ecstatic version of this love music.
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It.
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The rest of the movement features another long unwinding. As I've said, this is not a concise piece. Liszt expects you to really sit with these themes and luxuriate in them, and that's not easy in our fast paced modern world. Listening to this piece takes patience, as this movement is the shortest one and still clocks in at around 23 minutes. But your patience will be rewarded in this piece again and again as Liszt takes the scenic route to get you where you want to go. The movement ends in ab, where it began, with little echoes of the he loves me, he loves me not Music.
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Sa.
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And we now enter the massive third movement, titled Mephistopheles. The last movement is about 25 minutes long, and yet it features no actually new music. How does Liszt pull this off? Well, Mephistopheles, the devil is the spirit of negation. He does not create, and in fact, he cannot create. All he can do is to destroy. And so Liszt takes all of his themes from the Faust movement and takes thematic transformation to a new level. First, though, we hear an introduction of music that you might recognize, even though it's brutally distorted. This is a moment from the theme of love, but it's now much faster and jagged in its articulation. And now, as the movement really begins, the massive transformations begin as well. The motif of passion in the first movement, it now becomes a broken, fragmented and cruelly ironic dance. In six, eight. It's no surprise that Liszt marked this movement to be played with irony.
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Sa.
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As this reaches a furious climax, the theme of love is heard, but now screeched out by the upper winds. Many commentators have noted that it is possible that Liszt is not really portraying Mephistopheles here, but more the extremely dark elements of Faust's personality. After all, these are Faust's themes, and Faust does do a number of extraordinarily cruel things in Goethe's play. But to me, it's more likely that Liszt is doing both. Many of those horrible things Faust does are, with the help or encouragement of Mephistopheles. Perhaps Liszt is portraying, at least at the beginning of this movement, the near amalgamation of the two that takes place at moments during the Mephistopheles becoming Faust and Faust becoming Mephistopheles. It. The theme of longing is now broken apart, as if someone in this state can never have a true feeling for very long. Here's the original in the first movement,
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Sam.
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And now the transformation. Listen for the chromatic line at the end. That's the clue. And now, as if Faust realizes he has been corrupted or even cursed, a furious battle breaks out between him and Mephistopheles. All based around the great form to depict battle, the fugue. Faust's theme of doubt is the subject of the fugue, and it builds to a massive and destructive battle. This is extraordinarily modernistic music for its time and comes very close to a tonality at times. I'll play you a longer passage now so you get the idea of the progression of this battle.
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It's.
- [54:19]
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But suddenly all the motion stops. Gretchen's theme appears, and unlike Faust's music, it is uncorrupted. And this begins the final transformation of the piece towards its ending. Though we still have about 15 minutes to go. Most of the previous music is now recapped. We are not sure who is Faust and who is Mephistopheles anymore. And I think this is quite intentional. The motif of doubt has been transformed into a major key, but whose doubt has been overcome? Finally, things seem to calm down for the final moments of the piece. Originally, the piece was written with a gorgeous C major ending that references Gretchen's music. This is sometimes how you will hear this piece today. But three years later, Liszt changed everything about this ending and made both a remarkable but also challenging choice in terms of logistics. A harmonic stasis leads to a stunning surprise. This is the Chorus Mysticus, a chorus appearing in the last seven minutes of a 75 minute piece singing these words from Faust. Everything transitory is only an allegory. What cannot be achieved here, it will come to pass. What cannot be described here, it is accomplished. The eternal feminine draws us aloft. This is such beautiful music that it needs little commentary. A tenor solo then takes Faust's soul aloft. Thanks to that eternal feminine, Gretchen really did bring Faust back to his humanity after all. And this theme that the tenor sings is a variation on Gretchen's music. The transformations in this piece continue until practically the last note, And over a rising line in the strings, Faust is finally lifted to heaven. As Alan Walker writes, Liszt could never have been content with the early, over simplistic idea of a bargain with the devil. He understood Goethe's genius in starting the story with a prologue in Heaven, in which God expresses faith in the possibility of Faust's redemption. It is the Lord himself who permits the drama to begin. In Goethe's version, the Faust legend is not a pact between Faust and the devil, but a wager between the devil and God in which the devil loses. It is the redemptive power of love that the devil has overlooked and that God knew would prevail.
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Sam,
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This is an epic piece, and I'll be honest, it's not one that I see myself attempting to conduct anytime soon. Some of the repetition that I skipped over in the show today makes me a bit impatient. And the melodic content is not something that appeals to me in the sense of making me want to conduct this music. But that doesn't mean it's not great music, and it also doesn't mean that it wasn't a discovery for me. The Faust story is so Central to the 19th century Romantics that it is essential to know how these composers grappled with it. And the Faust Symphony is another installment in that fantastic repertoire. Based on this timeless story. I hope you enjoyed this look at the piece, and thanks to Jerry for sponsoring today's episode. And thank you so much for listening to Sticky Notes today. We'll have some more exciting stuff for you in a couple of weeks, so don't miss our next episode. If you like what you heard today, please feel free to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps the show gain more visibility, and please send any questions over to stickynotespodcastmail.com and if you'd like to support the podcast monetarily or pick a piece to sponsor yourself, just head over to patreon.com stickynotespod podcast thanks and I'll talk to you again after a while.