The Serial Concept in Pousseur’s Votre Faust

Abstract

The product of an eight-year collaboration between Belgian composer Henri Pousseur and French writer Michel Butor, Votre Faust (Your Faust) (1969) engages in a critical dialogue with the operatic genre and the Western tradition through a multifaceted exploration of the Faust theme. This chapter analyzes the opera’s intricate design, highlighting the extensive influence of the serial concept in Pousseur’s compositional approach. It discusses the opera’s origins, setup, and plot elements; Pousseur’s innovative harmonic techniques; the dense web of musical and literary quotations concentrated in the central locale, the fair; and the work’s complex mobile structure, a unique blend of aleatoric performance mechanics and elements of audience participation.