Lorraine Byrne Bodley 
Music in Goethe’s Faust 
Goethe’s Faust in Music

Goethe’s Faust, a work which has attracted the attention of composers since the late eighteenth century and played a vital role in the evolution of vocal, operatic and instrumental repertoire in the nineteenth century, hashad a seminal impact in musical realms.


That Goethe’s poetry has proved pivotal for the development of the nineteenth-century Lied has long been acknowledged. Less acknowledged is the seminal impact in musical realms of Goethe’s
Faust, a work which has attractedthe attention of composers since the late eighteenth century and played a vital role in the evolution of vocal, operatic and instrumental repertoire in the nineteenth century. While Goethe longed to have
Faust set to musicand considered only Mozart and perhaps Meyerbeer as being equal to the task, by the end of his life he had abandoned hope that he would live to witness a musical setting of his text. Despite this, a floodtide of musical interpretations of Goethe’s
Faust came into existence from Beethoven to Schubert, Schumann to Wagner and Mahler, and Gounod to Berlioz; and a broad trajectory can be traced from Zelter’s colourful description of the first setting of Goethe’s Faust to Alfred Schnittke’s Faust opera (1993).

This book explores the musical origins of Goethe’s
Faust and the musical dimensions of its legacy. It uncovers the musical furore caused by Goethe’s
Faust and considers why his polemical text has resonated so strongly with composers. Bringing together leading musicologists and Germanists, the book addresses a wide range of issues including reception history, the performative challenges of writing music for
Faust, the impact of the legend on composers’ conceptual thinking, and the ways in which it has been used by composers to engage with other contemporary intellectual concepts. Constituting the richest examination to date of the musicality of language and form in Goethe’s
Faust and its musical rendering from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries, the book will appeal to music, literary and Goethe scholars and students alike.


LORRAINE BYRNE BODLEY is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Maynooth University and President of the Society for Musicology in Ireland.


Contributors: Mark Austin, Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Nicholas Boyle, John Michael Cooper, Siobhán Donovan, Osman Durrani, Mark Fitzgerald, John Guthrie, Heather Hadlock, Julian Horton, Ursula Kramer, Waltraud Meierhofer, Eftychia Papanikolaou, David Robb, Christopher Ruth, Glenn Stanley, Martin Swales, J. M. Tudor

विषयसूची

Introduction: Rhapsody and Rebuke: Goethe’s
Faust in Music – Lorraine Byrne Bodley

The Redress of Goethe’s
Faust in Music History – Lorraine Byrne Bodley

Wagering on Modernity: Goethe’s Eighteenth-Century Faust – Nicholas Boyle

Reflectivity, Music and the Modern Condition: Thoughts on Goethe’s
Faust – Martin Swales

Music and Metaphorical Thinking in Goethe’s
Faust: The Example of Harmony – J Tudor

Faust: The Instrumentalisation of an Icon – Osman Durrani

Faust’s Schubert: Schubert’s
Faust – John Michael Cooper

The Musical Novel as Master-Genre: Schumann’s
Szenen aus Goethes Faust –

The Psychology of Schumann’s Faust: Developing the Human Soul – Christopher Ruth

A Life with Goethe: Wagner’s Engagement with
Faust in Music and in Words – Glenn Stanley

Wagner’s Ninth: Reading Beethoven with Faust – Mark Austin

Linking Christian and Faustian Utopias: Mahler’s Setting of the
Schlußszene in his Eighth Symphony – Eftychia Papanikolaou

Operatic Translation and Adaptation: Gounod’s
Faust, with a Tribute to Ken Russell – Siobhan Donovan

Adapters, Falsifiers and Profiteers: Staging
La Damnation de Faust in Monte Carlo and Paris, 1893-1903 – Heather Hadlock

Faust in the Trenches: Busoni’s
Doktor Faust – Mark Fitzgerald

As Goethe Intended? Max Reinhardt’s
Faust Productions and the Aesthetics of Incidental Music in the Early 20th Century – Ursula Kramer

Music and the Rebirth of
Faust in the GDR – David Robb

Music, Text and Stage: Peter Stein’s Production of Goethe’s
Faust – John Guthrie

‘Devilishly good’: Rudolf Volz’s Rock Opera
Faust and ‘Event Culture’ – Waltraud Maierhofer

Select Bibliography

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SIOBHÁN DONOVAN is Lecturer in German Studies at University College Dublin.