La Damnation de Faust


Légende dramatique en 4 parties

German translation by Stefan Troßbach
Vocal Score by Eike Wernhard
BA 5448b

Preface

The very title of this work is sufficient to indicate that it is not based on the main idea of Goethe's Faust, since in that celebrated poem, Faust is saved. The author of The Damnation of Faust has merely borrowed from Goethe a few scenes for inclusion in the plan he had already sketched out, scenes whose fascination proved impossible for him to resist. But even had he remained faithful to Goethe's conception, he still would have incurred the reproach, which many have levelled at him (sometimes with rancor), of having defaced a monument.
Indeed, it is, as we all know, absolutely impracticable to set to music a poem of such length which was not intended to be sung, without first subjecting it to myriad alterations. And of all dramatic poems extant, Faust is unquestionably the most impossible to sing in its entirety from beginning to end. So if, while preserving the theme of Goethe's Faust, it has proved necessary to modify the masterpiece in a hundred different ways in order to adapt it for musical treatment, the crime of lèse-majesté against genius is no less obvious in the one case than in the other, and merits equal reprobation.
It follows, then, that musicians should be forbidden to choose famous poems as subjects for their compositions. We should thus be deprived of Mozart's Don Giovanni, for which Da Ponte, in fashioning the libretto, modified Molière's Don Juan. Even less would we be in possession of his Marriage of Figaro, for whose text Beaumarchais' comedy was most certainly not spared. Nor would we have Rossini's Barber of Seville, for the same reason, nor Gluck's Alceste, which is but a crude paraphrase of Euripides' tragedy, nor his Iphigenia in Aulis, for which the verses of Racine (and this is truly reprehensible) were pointlessly mutilated although they might perfectly well have been inserted in all their purity and beauty among the recitatives. None of the many operas founded on Shakespeare's plays would have been written. Finally, Spohr would have stood condemned for having produced a work which also bears the name of Faust, and in which we encounter the protagonists Faust, Mephistopheles and Margaret, not to mention a witches' scene, and yet which bears no resemblance whatsoever to Goethe's poem. Having said this, it will now be an easy matter to meet the various minute objections which have been raised against the libretto of The Damnation of Faust.
Why, it has been asked, does the author send his hero to Hungary?
Because he wished to introduce a piece of instrumental music which is based on a Hungarian theme. He freely admits this; and he would have sent his hero anywhere else, had there been the least musical reason to do so. Did not Goethe himself, in the second part of Faust, take his hero to Sparta into the palace of Menelaus?
The legend of Doctor Faust may be treated in ever so many ways: it is public property, and was dramatized well before Goethe's time; it had long circulated in varied forms in the literature of northern Europe ere Goethe took hold of it. Marlowe's Faust, in England, even enjoyed a certain popularity and actual fame that withered away and vanished at the hand of Goethe.
As to the German verses sung in The Damnation of Faust, which are Goethe's in altered form, they must obviously offend German ears, just as the verses of Racine needlessly altered in Gluck's Iphigenia must shock the French. We must, however, bear in mind that the score of this work was composed to a French version which was itself partly translated from the German, and that the composer's earnest wish to submit his work at a later date to the most musical audience in Europe has made it necessary to produce a German translation of the translation.
Possibly these remarks will seem puerile to those excellent wits who see at once into the heart of things and resent the attempt to prove to them that it is impossible to drain the Caspian Sea or to blow up Mont Blanc. Monsieur H. Berlioz, nevertheless, has not thought it possible to dispense with them, as it pains him to see himself accused of infidelity toward the religion of his whole life and of demonstrating a lack, even indirectly, of the respect due to genius.