Program Notes

FAUST
May 18 | 4:00 PM—Lensic

The Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra
The Santa Fe Symphony Chorus
Guillermo Figueroa, Music Director
Carmen Flórez-Mansi, Choral Director

Maire Therese Carmack, Mezzo-Soprano
Joseph Denis, Tenor
Brandon Cedel, Bass-Baritone
Christopher Humbert, Jr., Bass-Baritone

HECTOR BERLIOZ
La damnation de Faust, op.24

Born 1803, La Côte-St. André, Grenoble
Died 1869, Paris

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The legend of Faust—who yearns after knowledge and power and is ready to sell his soul for them—had been around for centuries before this piece was written, but it was the 1808 publication of Johann von Goethe’s Faust, The First Part of the Tragedy that crystalized that figure for the Western consciousness. Goethe’s hero lonely, suffering, seeking, striving, ready to embrace the whole range of experience yet flirting with the deadliest dangers as he did–struck the emerging romantic imagination like a thunderbolt, and Faust cast his shadow across the 19th century. That shadow seems to have haunted musicians with a particular fury: Composers as diverse as Schubert, Schumann, Spohr, Liszt, Gounod, Wagner, Mahler and Boito wrote music inspired by Faust; Beethoven hoped for years to set it to music but could never bring himself to that task.

One of those struck most strongly by Faust was a fiery young red-headed Frenchman who read it in the 1827 French translation by Gérard de Nerval. Hector Berlioz, an unknown music student in Paris, was so taken by the character that he composed Huit scènes de Faust in 1828-29. These eight scenes were unconnected, just random moments from Goethe’s huge drama scored for different instrumental and vocal forces. Berlioz published it as his Opus 1 in 1829, and he promptly regretted it; he came to feel that the music was “crudely written,” and he withdrew the score.

But Faust continued to haunt Berlioz, and 16 years later (after he had composed Symphonie fantastique, Harold in Italy, the Requiem, and Romeo and Juliet), he returned to Goethe’s drama. With the help of librettist Almire Gandonniere, he prepared his own text, and—drawing on the music he had composed for the Huit scènes—he sketched La Damnation de Faust during a long tour to Vienna, Prague, Pest, and Breslau in 1845-46, completing it after his return to Paris. Berlioz was very proud of this music, and its failure before two half-full houses in Paris in December 1846 was one of the bitterest disappointments of a career that had seen many of them. He later wrote that “Nothing in my career as an artist wounded me more deeply than this unexpected indifference.” Consolation came quickly: Faust was a success with audiences outside France, and Berlioz led triumphant performances in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vienna, Berlin, Weimar, and elsewhere. It remains one of his most striking works and one of the most successful musical treatments of the Faust story.

Because Faust is such a long work, it is impractical to set the entire piece to music. As a result, composers have felt free to treat only portions and to put their own spin on Goethe’s play. Berlioz treats only Part I of Faust. Although Part II had appeared in 1832, Berlioz was drawn specifically to the story of Faust, Mephistopheles, and Margarete (also called Gretchen). This is a tale of yearning, seduction, betrayal, a fatal pact, damnation, and salvation, and Berlioz adapted the tale rather freely, defending himself by noting that he had “merely borrowed a few scenes” from Faust and treated them as he desired.  This would involve, as we shall see, some striking changes in the ending of the drama.

To tell his story, Berlioz created a unique form. He first imagined Faust as an “opéra de concert”—an opera performed in concert version—but he soon preferred to describe it as a “légende dramatique,” a work in four parts with individual characters and a precise narrative, but performed from the concert stage without costume, scenery, or action. Berlioz deploys his forces shrewdly across the two-hour span. There are four principals—Faust, Mephistopheles, Marguerite (Berlioz changed her name slightly for the work), and Brander—and they act out their parts surrounded by a chorus and a children’s chorus, as well as a very large orchestra, some of it playing off-stage.

In a curious sense, the structure of the work is similar to that of a quite different work about salvation, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Both require vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Both tell a dramatic tale of salvation and damnation. Both make imaginative use of the chorus, which takes on changing roles within each work. And while neither work was intended as an opera, both create such dramatic situations that the temptation to perform them as operas has proven irresistible to some.  While Berlioz toyed with the idea of converting the piece into an opera called Méphistophélès, he wisely abandoned that plan. Faust works brilliantly from the concert stage, and Berlioz tells his story with a technique that defies operatic presentation. Many have used the term “cinematic” to describe Berlioz’s ability to leap between scenes, telescope time, and shift locations and perspectives instantly. It is an extremely dramatic work and at moments may feel operatic, yet Berlioz’s first instincts proved correct, and this music works its powerful hold on us as the “dramatic legend” he originally conceived.

Faust opens with violas alone, the husky, mid-range sound of that instrument setting the tone for Faust’s aimless mood. (The character of individual instruments will be important in this score, and in particular the sound of the viola will return at key moments.) Berlioz set his version of the story in Hungary, and he was candid about his reason: He had performed his setting of the famous Rákóczy March with great success in Hungary, and he wanted to incorporate that music in his setting. This first section finds Faust musing in springtime as soft winds whisper past. Gradually the world of human activity intrudes with happy villagers and soldiers heading off to battle, but they remain far outside Faust’s world. The Rákóczy March, however contrived its appearance here may be, brings Part I to a blazing close.

Some have felt the real beginning of La Damnation de Faust comes with Part II, which opens with Faust musing in his study. The orchestra’s quiet fugue here suggests intellectual activity without direction. Faust is on the verge of responding to religious faith when, in what feels like a puff of smoke and flash of light, Mephistopheles suddenly appears. Again, instrumental sound is important: Mephistopheles’ arrival is marked by a three-note figure played by piccolo and three trombones, and these sounds will be associated with the devil throughout the piece. Mephistopheles deceives from the first instant: “I am life’s serving spirit,” he tells Faust, then embarks on Faust’s spiritual seduction.  He proceeds to show Faust a range of experiences, first transporting him instantly to Leipzig. The scene in Auerbach’s Cellar is one of the most impressive, with its carousing students and drinking songs. Brander (in his only appearance in the work) sings the famous “Song of the Rat,” which concludes with an improvised fugue on the word “Amen.” Mephistopheles promptly outdoes him with “The Song of the Flea,” greeted with cheers from the students.

Then comes another of Mephistopheles’ instantaneous scene-changes, this time to the banks of the Elbe, where Mephistopheles sings his great “Voici des roses” as he puts Faust to sleep. The Dance of the Sylphs (often performed separately) depicts Mephistopheles’ spirits hovering above the sleeping Faust, who is enchanted by his dream of Marguerite. The dizzied Faust wakes deeply in love, and Part II comes to an impressive conclusion as groups of soldiers and students pass by singing. The soldiers sing in French, the students sing in Latin in a different key and meter, and Berlioz weaves it all together in an impressive counterpoint.

In Part III, the soldiers and students fade into the distance, and Faust sings of his love. Mephistopheles conceals him in Marguerite’s room as she enters. She too has had a vision of love (Mephistopheles has introduced the two in their dreams), and now she tries to take hold of her shaken emotions. As she braids her hair, she sings her moving “The King of Thule,” about faithful love. Yet we know it cannot be. Mephistopheles plots her downfall as well, bringing down the Will-o’-the-Wisps to further enchant the girl. Faust and Marguerite finally meet and declare their bond in one of Berlioz’s finest love duets. Mephistopheles joins them to make it a trio in “Il est trop tard”: Morning has come and the lovers are about to be discovered by outraged townspeople. The chorus now takes the part of that jeering crowd and helps drive Part III to an energetic close.

The beginning of Part IV finds everything changed. Marguerite, seduced and abandoned, sings the poignant “D’amour l’ardente flamme” (that was Nerval’s translation of Goethe’s “Meine Ruh is hin”; in its original German, that passage furnished the text for one of Schubert’s greatest songs, Gretchen am Spinnrade). The girl’s despair, painfully underlined by the melancholy sound of English horn, is the central statement of her character, and it leads to another leap through space: We discover Faust wandering alone through the roaring cataract of nature, lost amid forests and caves. He sings his famous “Invocation to Nature,” and it is in these two adjoining arias that Berlioz defines these two characters most clearly.

Mephistopheles appears to the sound of distant hunting horns and tells Faust that Marguerite has been imprisoned and condemned. In his own twist on the story, Berlioz has Marguerite accidentally poison her mother with an overdose of the sleeping potion she gave her to hide her nocturnal trysts with Faust. Faust asks what he can do to save her, and it’s simple: All he has to do is sign a document Mephistopheles produces. Desperate to save Marguerite, Faust signs to the accompaniment of a deep tam-tam stroke: His fate is sealed. Mephistopheles calls forth two black horses. Faust believes he is riding to Marguerite’s rescue, but he’s riding straight into hell. The riders scatter praying pilgrims, then confront howling monsters, flocks of great black birds, and finally bloody rain. Faust hesitates, then resolves to press on, and at the climactic moment he plunges screaming into hell as Mephistopheles exults.

The fiends of hell celebrate their most recent conquest in an impenetrable language that Berlioz made up himself (“Tradioun marexil firtrudinxé burrudixé . . .”), but we rise from out of these sulphurous depths. An “Epilogue on Earth” confirms what has happened to Faust, and we ascend to the final scene, “In Heaven.” Marguerite has been redeemed (her only sin, after all, had been to love), and now beauty and hope are restored as she is welcomed into heaven on the shimmering sound of harps and violins.

And so La Damnation de Faust ends in exalted calm, but the emotional effect of this ending is very much like what we feel at the conclusion of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In both works, the main character has been thrust into hell and morality apparently reaffirmed, but somehow neither ending is as satisfying as what had gone before. We come away from both Mozart’s opera and Berlioz’s “dramatic legend” not celebrating the restoration of morality but rather enlivened by the human drama that had proceeded it, doomed though both the Don and Faust may have been.

 —Program Note by Eric Bromberger