Scenes from Goethe's Faust

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Written between 1844 and 1853, Szenen aus Goethes Faust (Scenes from Goethe's Faust) has been described as the height of composer Robert Schumann's accomplishments in the realm of dramatic music.^[1]

Schumann's work on what he labeled an oratorio began just over a decade after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's completion of Part Two of the dramatic poem Faust in 1832, the year of Goethe's death.^[2] Many contemporary readers of the poem found Faust daunting and difficult to grasp, and the author himself had declared only Mozart fit to write the music for Faust (though Mozart died in 1791, almost 20 years prior to the completion of Part One of Faust). "[S]o any composer would not only be judged by his treatment of one of the seminal and most-widely acclaimed works in German literature, but would also be setting himself up to be compared to Mozart."^[3] Although Schumann thus understandably expressed reservations about publication and performance of the work in a letter to Felix Mendelssohn of 1845,^[3] the work has been described as Schumann's "magnum opus".^[1] "Deeply sensitive to the all-inclusiveness of Goethe’s drama," in Szenen aus Goethes Faust, from its dark and tense overture to its elegant and tranquil conclusion, Schumann opens wide "a manifold musical world" that coherently draws together elements of "lied, horror opera, grand opera, oratorio, and church music."^[1]

Schumann's music suggests the struggle between good and evil at the heart of Goethe's work, as well as Faust's tumultuous search for enlightenment and peace.^[3] After the overture, the music depicts Faust's wooing of Gretchen. For Gretchen's story, Schumann employs operatic music, beginning with a love duet, proceeding to Gretchen's passionate and desperate aria, and concluding with a church scene.^[3] The second part of the work begins with stark contrast: on the one hand, the lively, fresh music of Ariel and the spirits, calling to Faust to savor the beauties of nature; on the other hand, in the scene following, Schumann's intense orchestration and hints of the supernatural in the score bring to the fore Faust's delusions of hearing a new world being created and his rapturous calls to for an everlasting present.^[3] The final scenes, bringing the work to its placid yet unsettled conclusion, hold some of Schumann's best choral writing.^[3]

Although often overlooked within Schumann's impressive oeuvre, Szenen aus Goethes Faust has been rated among Schumann's most moving works, and a pinnacle of his quintessentially Romantic concern with the extra-musical, and especially literary, potential of music.^[4]

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