Openwhyd: The community of music lovers

i just love this symphony. it consists of 3 movements which represent the 3 character of goethes faust: 1. movement (faust), 2. movement (gretchen) and 3. movement (mephistopheles). in the first movement liszt composed 3 guiding themes for faust: all themes are derived from the augmented chorda although they sound differently because they are different in melody and rhythm but have the same feeling. he starts with strings on Ab to introduce his first very chromatic theme (the main theme of this movement and faust himself) playing an augmented chord on G, then F#, F and finally E. so every tone of the chromatic scale is played once (this was the first 12 tone theme in music history, although it has nothing to do with dodecaphonism). the other two themes has the idea of augmented chord as well, but second theme starts with a falling 7th for example. the devil or mephistopheles has material consisting of the deminished chord (tritone = diabolo in musica) and therefore correspond with fausts character in a musical way. this first movement works like a sonata - it has an ABA' form and synthesizes the two forms which kinda represents the whole symphony. the main key is c-minor (although its very blurred in the beginning because of the augmented triads, playing all notes of chromatic scala), so A is eventful and in c-minor, B is "cantabile" (sorry, dont know the english word) in e-major and A' is maestoso and e-major too (listen to the finale of the symphony, its very solemn/pathetic). the second movement represents gretchen and is a slow movement. the oboe is playing a beautiful melody accompanied by solo viola (oboe = natural, countrified feeling), it symbolizes gretchens innocence. bit by bit fausts themes supervenes into the movement until there is some kind of "love duet" between gretchen and fausts musical material. its musical form is also ABA' (in part B faust themes come along). the third and last movement of this symphony represents mephistopheles, a scherzo. the beginning "allegro vivace ironico" is a musical qoute of berlioz' symphony fantastique (the esbat part) ...(liszt met berlioz in person through goethes faust)... this movement works like a reprise and has alot of the characteristics from faust themes (the devil dont create own themes, he steals other and deforms them in a diabolic way -> diminiched chord). only gretchens themes are spared, they sound the same, because the devil is powerless to her innocence. liszt composed two different endings: first ending is an answer on gretchens theme, a 10-bar-cadence with the "grandioso"-theme in basses (so gretchen wins over the spirit of mephistopheles) and the other ending (which is more popular, liszt composed it afterwards) a choir finale "chorus mysticus". so now we have a 4th movement. the choir consisting of men sings 8 lines out of goethes faust...