{"title":"Louis Spohr’s Tragic Faust","authors":"C. McClelland","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.1","url":null,"abstract":"Louis Spohr’s Faust is the first operatic setting of the legend by a major composer. Unlike most of the Faust settings of later years, Spohr’s used a libretto based on Faustian characters and ideas, but not the main events associated with the legend. A subplot presents a second female love interest for Faust, and he is ultimately punished for his misdeeds with eternal damnation. The opera displays many of the features associated with German Romantic opera, including sophisticated characterization and motivic development. In particular, Spohr’s handling of the supernatural elements develops the disruptive procedures associated with two eighteenth-century musical styles, ombra and tempesta, the one slow and menacing, the other fast and furious, both of which lie at the root of Romantic expressivity.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134477910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Serial Concept in Pousseur’s Votre Faust","authors":"André Brégégère","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.10","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133081982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Faust Rocks the Stage (Not)","authors":"Elizabeth Wollman","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.36","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers commercial rock musicals with Faustian themes that have been staged or workshopped in New York City between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. Emphasis is placed on the ways in which rock music’s evolving relationship with philosophical notions of authenticity—often involving Faustian theme—stends to complicate such projects. Variations on the authenticity myth in rock music are examined and applied to several musicals: Tom Sankey’s The Golden Screw, which ran Off-Off-Broadway at Theatre Genesis in 1966; Joseph M. Kookoolis and Scott Fagan’s Soon, which premiered on Broadway at the Ritz (now Kerr) in 1971; and Randy Newman’s Faust, which was workshopped in New York and produced at the La Jolla in California and the Goodman in Chicago with the aim of a Broadway run that was ultimately deemed unwise.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129302782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Liszt’s Faust Complexes","authors":"Jonathan Kregor","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.31","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.31","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers Franz Liszt’s engagement with Faustian themes during three periods of his career: an initial stage during his concert years in which he ambivalently cultivated a Mephistophelean image through arresting performances and extraordinarily virtuosic compositions; a middle stage in which Goethe’s Faust inspired several choral compositions and the controversial Faust-Symphonie (Faust Symphony), premiered in 1857; and a final period in which, frustrated by the failure of the Faust-Symphonie in particular and criticism of his artistic goals and musical output in general, Liszt reinterpreted Mephistopheles in the Mephisto-Walzer (Mephisto Waltzes) as an artistically transgressive figure. These various engagements with Faustian themes are linked by Liszt’s constant struggles to balance a progressive musical orientation with inherited tradition.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127777590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hanns Eisler and Faust in the German Democratic Republic","authors":"Joy H. Calico","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.7","url":null,"abstract":"When Austrian composer and committed Marxist Hanns Eisler was forced out of the United States in 1948, he returned to Vienna and hoped to settle there. Instead, a commission for Goethe’s bicentennial celebration the following year drew him to East Berlin and the SBZ (Soviet Occupation Zone), soon to be the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany), and set him on the path to be that country’s most prominent composer. This chapter examines the piece Eisler wrote for that commission, Rhapsodie für großes Orchester (Rhapsody for large orchestra) (1949), which set text from Goethe’s Faust II, as well as his libretto for a proposed opera entitled Johann Faustus. East German reception of these pieces reveals the centrality of Goethe’s Faust for national identity formation in the fledgling GDR.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127054152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Extending the Reach of Ferruccio Busoni’s Doktor Faust","authors":"M. Roberge","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.6","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter documents the history and impact of the opera Doktor Faust (Doctor Faust), left incomplete by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni at his death in 1924, by surveying the completion proposed for the first performance (Dresden, 1925) by Busoni’s disciple Philipp Jarnach and, more recently, those offered by the musicologist Antony Beaumont and the composer Larry Sitsky, as well as the work’s translations, performances, and recordings. It examines works by Ronald Stevenson, Alistair Hinton, and Michael Finnissy, three composers from the United Kingdom on whom Busoni’s artistic figure has left a deep imprint and who have drawn on material from his masterpiece in a spirit of homage, thus drawing attention to its significance.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127807119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Havergal Brian’s Gothic Opera Faust","authors":"J. Schaarwächter","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.9","url":null,"abstract":"English composer Havergal Brian’s setting of Goethe’s Faust was the third of his large-scale German-language operatic projects. Goethe’s Faust had interested Brian for at least forty years when he started composing his Faust opera. Brian was fascinated by the Gothic, and the Goethean Faust represented Gothic Germany as he imagined it. In his opera Faust (1955–56), Brian sought to recreate the German Gothic, filtered through Goethe’s words, which he left unaltered. The opera is full of invention and new perspectives on Goethe’s play. The composer has avoided any superficial picturesqueness, creating a density and intensity typical of his later large-scale operatic works.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127713475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Helen Gifford’s Marlovian Regarding Faustus","authors":"M. Carroll","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.26","url":null,"abstract":"Australian composer Helen Gifford’s Regarding Faustus (1983) is an innovative musical theater setting of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy Doctor Faustus, with additional adaptation from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, verse by Marston and Shakespeare, Greene’s Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay, and Australian indigenous ceremonial practices. Developing the piece for performance by tenor Robert Gard, Gifford makes effective use of dissonance, with pitched and non-pitched percussion, and pre-recorded chorus, oscillating between diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. Her libretto underplays the visceral aspects of the Faustus character, who damns himself yet still invites our pity. The work is distinctive in its intercultural scope and creative synthesis.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"45 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114026079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mahler’s Eighth and the Faust Symphonic Tradition","authors":"James L. Zychowicz","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.21","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter sets Gustav Mahler’s Achte Symphonie (Eighth Symphony) in the context of the Faust symphonic tradition, which emerged with the growth of program music. Prior to Liszt’s monumental Faust-Symphonie (Faust Symphony), Faust overtures were composed by Richard Wagner and the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. In contrast to Liszt’s Faust-Symphonie, with its explicit setting of verses from Goethe’s Faust at the end of the final movement, Mahler’s setting of the final scene of the drama in his Eighth Symphony integrates his selection from Goethe’s text throughout the entire second part of the work. The structure of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony merits attention for its treatment of Goethe’s text in a single, cohesive movement rather than a sequence of separate scenes. Mahler juxtaposed Faust’s redemption in the second part of the Symphony with a cantata-like presentation of a Latin hymn.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"117 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131908402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reflections of the Contemporary Schizophrenia in Josef Berg’s Two Versions of Johanes doktor Faust","authors":"Martin Flašar","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935185.013.11","url":null,"abstract":"Czech music has a lengthy tradition of Faustian settings extending back to the nineteenth century. Two important Faust compositions from the mid-twentieth century were created by the composer, writer, and poet Josef Berg. Berg’s position in post–World War II music resembled the story of Doctor Faustus in that he was faced with the choice of an official existence provided by the Czechoslovak Composers' Union or a life in isolated opposition. After starting his career as an optimistic supporter of communism, Berg shifted to a critical mode involving irony and parody. In the 1960s, Berg worked on two different adaptations of the Faust theme entitled Johanes doktor Faustus (Johanes Doctor Faustus). The first was created as a chamber opera for three persons and a small ensemble, while the second was conceived as a grand opera inspired by the poetics of folk puppet theater.","PeriodicalId":383294,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123978842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}