The “Damnation of Faust,” dramatic legend, as Berlioz calls it, was written in 1846. It is divided in four parts, the first containing three, the second four, the third six, and the fourth five scenes, the last concluding with an epilogue and the apotheosis of Marguerite. It was first produced in Paris in November, 1846, and had its first hearing in this country Feb. 12, 1880, when the late Dr. Leopold Damrosch brought it out with the assistance of the New York Symphony, Oratorio, and Arion Societies.
Berlioz has left in his Autobiography an extremely interesting account of the manner in which he composed it. Though he had had the plan of the work in his mind for many years, it was not until 1846 that he began the legend. During this year he was travelling on a concert-tour through Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Silesia, and the different numbers were written at intervals of leisure. He says:—
“I wrote when I could and where I could; in the coach, on the railroad, in steamboats, and even in towns, notwithstanding the various cares entailed by my concerts.”
He began with Faust’s invocation to Nature, which was finished “in my old German post-chaise.” The introduction was written in an inn at Passau, and at Vienna he finished up the Elbe scene, Mephistopheles’ song, and the exquisite Sylph’s ballet. As to the introduction of the Rákóczy march, his words deserve quoting in this connection, as they throw some light on the general character of the work. He says:—
“I have already mentioned my writing a march at Vienna, in one night, on the Hungarian air of Rákóczy. The extraordinary effect it produced at Pesth made me resolve to introduce it in Faust, by taking the liberty of placing my hero in Hungary at the opening of the act, and making him present at the march of a Hungarian army across the plain. A German critic considered it most extraordinary in me to have made Faust travel in such a place. I do not see why, and I should not have hesitated in the least to bring him in in any other direction if it would have benefited the piece. I had not bound myself to follow Goethe’s plot, and the most eccentric travels may be attributed to such a personage as Faust without transgressing the bounds of possibility. Other German critics took up the same thesis, and attacked me with even greater violence about my modifications of Goethe’s text and plot; just as though there were no other Faust but Goethe’s, and as if it were possible to set the whole of such a poem to music without altering its arrangement. I was stupid enough to answer them in the preface to the ‘Damnation of Faust.’ I have often wondered why I was never reproached about the book of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ which is not very like the immortal tragedy. No doubt because Shakspeare was not a German. Patriotism! Fetichism! Idiotcy!”
One night when he had lost his way in Pesth he wrote the choral refrain of the “Ronde des Paysans” by the gaslight in a shop; and at Prague he arose in the middle of the night to write down the Angels’ Chorus in Marguerite’s apotheosis. At Breslau he wrote the Students’ Latin Song, “Jam nox stellata velamina pandit;” and on his return to France he composed the grand trio in the work while visiting a friend near Rouen. He concludes:
“The rest was written in Paris, but always improvised, either at my own house, or at the café, or in the Tuileries gardens, and even on a stone in the Boulevard du Temple. I did not search for ideas, I let them come; and they presented themselves in a most unforeseen manner. When at last the whole outline was sketched, I set to work to re-do the whole, touch up the different parts, unite and blend them together with all the patience and determination of which I am capable, and to finish off the instrumentation, which had only been indicated here and there. I look upon this as one of my best works, and hitherto the public seems to be of the same opinion.”
This opinion, however, was of slow growth, for of the first performance of the work he says:—
“It was the end of November, 1846; snow was falling; the weather was dreadful. I had no fashionable cantatrice to sing the part of Marguerite. As for Roger, who did Faust, and Herman Léon, who took the part of Mephistopheles, they might be heard any day in this same theatre; moreover, they were no longer the fashion. The result was that Faust was twice performed to a half-empty room. The concert-going Parisian public, supposed to be fond of music, stayed quietly at home, caring as little about my new work as if I had been an obscure student at the Conservatoire; and these two performances at the Opéra Comique were no better attended than if they had been the most wretched operas on the list.”
The opening scene introduces Faust alone in the fields at sunrise on the Hungarian plains. He gives expression to his delight in a tender, placid strain (“The Winter has departed, Spring is here”). It is followed by an instrumental prelude of a pastoral character, in which are heard fragments of the roundelay of the peasants and of the fanfare in the Hungarian march, leading up to the “Dance of Peasants,” a brisk, vivacious chorus (“The Shepherd donned his best Array”), beginning with the altos, who are finally joined by the sopranos, tenors, and basses in constantly accelerating time. The scene then changes to another part of the plain and discloses the advance of an army to the brilliant and stirring music of the Rákóczy march.[16]