Musical Studies

by Ernest Newman

Now for the Faust affair. Wagner was not in Paris in 1846, when Faust received its two performances. Mr. Ellis, however, sagely opines that "it is not absolutely impossible (!) that Wagner should have heard fragments (!) either of the earlier Huit Scènes (i.e. the eight numbers referred to on p. 95 of the present volume), or the Damnation itself." This invocation of the aid of the "not-absolutely-impossible" does not help us very much, I am afraid. "But for argument's sake," continues our intrepid apologist, "let us say he had not; about the work he must have heard, or he could not know of its existence." (Here, at any rate, Mr. Ellis's penetrating intelligence has struck home. Even I am compelled to admit that Wagner must have heard about the work, or he could not have known of its existence.) "And if about it, why should the general outline of common artistic repute (Wagner still maintaining desultory correspondence with old Paris friends of good art-judgment, as we know) not be enough to furnish him with grounds for deploring its scheme in a private letter?" I have already dealt with the contention that Wagner was justified in running down works he did not know so long as the running-down was done privately. For the rest, the argument is just our old friend the "not-absolutely-impossible" again. It is not absolutely impossible that Wagner should have known some one who heard the work in Paris six years previously; it is not absolutely impossible that Wagner should have corresponded with this friend on the subject of Faust; it is not absolutely impossible that this friend should have been a man "of good art-judgment." Such a string of "may-have-beens" may be confidently left to its fate. But once more, if any one had disparaged a work of Wagner's on the strength of such dubious information, what would Wagner have said of him then, and what would Mr. Ellis say of him now?

But even Mr. Ellis, I imagine, does not take these phantom speculations of his very seriously. From his own point of view, indeed, there was never any need for him to indulge in them, so confident is he that in his closing paragraph he has a piece of evidence, that is shattering in its conclusiveness. He will not have it that to call The Damnation of Faust a symphony is to betray ignorance of it. Was not Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet a "dramatic symphony"? It was indeed; but in the first place, Berlioz himself called Romeo and Juliet a symphony, whereas he never applied that title to Faust; and in the second place, Romeo and Juliet really is a symphony, in the sense that time after time the work is carried on by means of orchestral movements pure and simple—while Faust is not a symphony in any sense, and could hardly have been called one by any one who knew it. Mr. Ellis is "credibly informed" that it was called a symphony "in Paris at the time." I take leave to doubt it; but in any case, Mr. Ellis's credible informant might have given him some evidence that it was so called by any one who had heard it. Adolphe Adam, for example, writing about it to a friend on the morrow of its performance, calls it "a kind of opera in four parts" (see J. G. Prodhomme's Hector Berlioz, p. 278). Berlioz himself, as Mr. Ellis notes, styled it a "Legend" or "Dramatic Legend." Uninformed gossip no doubt gave it the title of "symphony," in the years after 1846, from a vague idea that it must necessarily have been of the same type of structure as Romeo and Juliet. Gossip may have had something else to go upon too. In 1829 Berlioz had really thought (as we see from a letter to Humbert Ferrand quoted in Adolphe Jullien's Hector Berlioz, p. 182) of writing a "symphonie descriptive de Faust." Shortly before that he had tried to get a commission from the Opera for a ballet on the same subject. These facts may have lingered in the air for years, and in the general vagueness upon the matter after 1846 it may well be that Berlioz's name was often associated with a Faust "symphony." It was apparently this ill-informed gossip that Wagner was repeating. Fragments of Faust, by the way, were given at some of Berlioz's Russian and German concerts, and there was a complete performance of it at Berlin in 1847. Wagner, of course, was in Dresden at that time. There is hardly the slightest likelihood, again, that he had a score of the Huit Scènes, a few copies of which Berlioz had rashly had engraved at his own expense in 1829, and published at 30 francs; and even if Wagner did know these eight fragments, that would not justify him in criticising The Damnation of Faust without knowing it. I repeat that the only conclusion we can come to is that he called it a symphony because he was ignorant of it.

But now Mr. Ellis's great discovery comes in. He quotes from a letter of Liszt to Breitkopf and Härtel, the music publishers, of 30th October 1852: "I am expecting M. Berlioz here ... and on the 21st the symphonies of Romeo and Juliet and Faust will be performed, which I proposed to you to publish." Here Mr. Ellis imagines me crying out, "It is all that wretched Wagner's fault; he had put the word into Liszt's innocent head six weeks before." "But Berlioz," Mr. Ellis goes on to say, "arrives at Weimar, conducts les 2 premiers actes' of his Faust at one concert with his Romeo, and behold—no longer innocent, Liszt writes Professor Christian Lobe, editor of the Fliegende Blätter für Musik, May 1st 1853: 'The German public is still unacquainted with the greater part of Berlioz's works, and after many enquiries that have been addressed me in the past few months, I believe a German translation of the catalogue might have a good effect; perhaps with division into categories, e.g. Overtures, Francs Juges, &c.... Symphonies, (1) Episode, (2) Harold, (3) Romeo and Juliet, (4) Damnation of Faust; Vocal Pieces, &c. &c.'"

Alas! Mr. Ellis is no happier here than in his other attempts to get out of the difficulty. It is not clear, to begin with, why he should suppose that Liszt's or any one else's knowledge of Faust should prove Wagner to have known it. But putting that aside, what seems to have shaped itself in Mr. Ellis's mind is some such ramshackle syllogism as this: "If Liszt, who knew the Faust so well, wrongly calls it a symphony, the use of the erroneous title by Wagner makes it possible that he too may have known it." It all looks promising enough; but it has one fatal flaw, one point upon which Mr. Ellis, in his hurry to whoop, forgot to make quite sure. His confident assumption that Liszt did know Faust is unjustified.

My previous point that people who did not know the work had got into the habit of calling it a symphony is proved by other letters of Liszt in which he thus speaks of it. On the 4th September 1852, for example, he writes to Cornelius: "On the 12th November I expect a visit from Berlioz, who will spend a week at Weimar. Then we shall have Cellini, the symphony of Romeo and Juliet, and some pieces from the Faust symphony." Mr. Ellis may think this confirms his own theory. But it is worth while looking again at the above-quoted letter of Liszt of 30th October 1852 to Breitkopf and Härtel, and the circumstances that called it forth. On the 7th June Berlioz had written to Liszt that he was going to give a concert in Paris, at which he would perform some fragments of Faust. "I am truly sorry," he says, "that you do not know this work. I cannot get a publisher to take it; they find it too big to engrave (trop riche de planches). I must apply to Ricordi of Milan.... In any case, if you were to find a daring German publisher capable of undertaking this rash act, you can tell him that Faust has been well translated into German." It is evident that after receiving this letter, Liszt wrote to Breitkopf and Härtel recommending them to publish the work; this is the proposal he refers to in his letter of 30th October 1852. So that the very letter of Liszt's which Mr. Ellis quotes triumphantly for its use of the term "Faust Symphony" was prompted by a letter from Berlioz, in which he distinctly says that Liszt does not know the work!

Bearing this in mind, let us follow up the subsequent course of events, and see whether Liszt knew it after Berlioz's visit to Weimar—whether, that is, he was not still in much the same state of ignorance about it when he wrote the letter of 1st May 1853 to Lobe. It can be shown that Liszt had nothing to do with the performance of the first two acts of Faust at Weimar; that Berlioz brought the score and parts with him from Paris and took the rehearsals and the concert himself, whereas Liszt himself took charge of Cellini. On the 10th October 1852 Berlioz writes to Liszt in terms that once more place the latter's complete ignorance of the work beyond dispute. Berlioz has actually to tell him the number and quality of soloists to engage. "I will leave here for Weimar on the 12th November, certain. I will arrive on the 15th, and can stay in your neighbourhood eight days, but no more.... Now tell me by the next post if it is necessary for me to send you the vocal parts of Faust, or if it will suffice that I should bring them with me. The soloists and chorus would in that case have to learn in four or five days the fragments to be given at the concert. Only a tenor and a bass (soli) are needed for these fragments of Faust, Marguerite appearing only in the last two acts." Berlioz would not tell an elementary fact like that to a man who already knew the work.

Then, on the 6th November, he writes: "I send you to-day the parcel containing the Faust vocal parts, the choruses, the rôles, and a German libretto ... and the vocal score (for sixty-three people). The orchestral parcel is too large; I will bring it myself. It would be of no use to you before my arrival." Clearly Liszt was not even going to conduct the rehearsals, which would not be begun until Berlioz arrived at Weimar. (The Faust fragments were evidently rehearsed hurriedly; there is a letter of Frau Pohl's extant describing the success of the performances, and saying how amazing it was that so much should have been accomplished in so short a time.) Berlioz's further remarks once more show that he assumes Liszt's complete ignorance of the work: "It is not difficult; only the chorus and the principal parts are dangerous. We will announce for the concert the first two parts only, for which no Marguerite is required. You will need a tenor (Faust), a deep bass (Mephisto), and another bass (Brander). It will last an hour." All this, pointing conclusively to Liszt's total ignorance of the work, is in the identical letter which Mr. Ellis actually cites in another connection!

Even after the Weimar concert, which took place about the 20th November 1852, Liszt knew no more of Faust than what he had heard there. It is clear from a letter of his to Radecke of 9th December 1852, and one of 27th February 1853 to Schmidt, that the parcel containing the score and the parts was sent on to Berlioz in Paris a few days after the concert. Liszt, in fact, though he looked after Cellini and the other works, had practically nothing to do with Faust. Berlioz brought the score and parts with him, conducted the rehearsals, conducted the concert, and then on his departure left the parcel with Liszt, to be forwarded to him in Paris. Moreover, we may be pretty sure that all he took with him was the score of the first two parts—all that were given at the concert. The bulky manuscript score, now in the Conservatoire library at Paris, is bound up in three (or four) volumes—I forget which at the moment. If any one should conjecture that Berlioz might have taken with him the score of the whole work to show to Liszt, that supposition is disposed of by a letter of Berlioz, dated Dresden, 22nd April 1854. The complete Faust had just been given there. Berlioz wishes Liszt had been present: "I regret that you could not have heard the last two acts, which you do not know." Everything points to the fact that even Liszt's knowledge of Faust was limited to a hearing of the first two acts at the Weimar concert. There is plenty of subsequent correspondence with Berlioz, but it is all about Cellini, which Liszt had produced and knew thoroughly. In after years people used to write to him—people who were compiling books on Berlioz, or trying to get hold of his correspondence, or investigating the history of the Weimar theatre—and ask Liszt to tell them something of his relations with Berlioz. Liszt's reply is always the same; he is proud of having refloated Cellini, but he does not mention Faust. Even when he tells the Grand Duke Carl Alexander that Berlioz gave three concerts in Weimar, there is still no mention of the Faust fragments, which apparently had been no affair of his.

In 1853 and 1854 he calls the work a symphony, knowing no better, having neither seen the score nor heard a complete performance of it. But in 1854 the score is published, and a copy sent to Liszt. In December of that year he writes two letters on the same day. In one of them, to Mason, the old habit is still too strong for him, and he speaks of the "dramatic symphony of Faust"; [64] in the other, to Wasielewski, he refers to it as Faust only. Thereafter, so far as I can discover, he never speaks of it as a symphony. See, for example, his letters of 9th February 1856 to Edward Liszt, 19th February 1856 to Brendel, 3rd January 1857 to Turanyi, 16th September 1861 to Brendel, March 1883 to Vicomte Henri Delaborde, 12th September 1884 to Pohl, 1st January 1855 ("Do you know the score of his Damnation de Faust?"), and 24th December 1855 to Wagner.