A Faust overture

The Faust Overture in D minor WWV 59 is an orchestral work by Richard Wagner . It was written in Paris at the turn of the year 1839/1840; the first performance took place on July 22, 1844 under the direction of the composer in the palace in the Great Garden in Dresden. Wagner revised his composition in 1843 and 1855; this revised version was premiered on January 23, 1855 in Zurich .

Emergence

In the period between late 1839 and early 1840, Wagner decided to write a symphony on the subject of Faust , inspired by the "Roméo et Juliette" symphony by the French composer Hector Berlioz and a visit to rehearsals for Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 . However, the composition did not go beyond the first movement, which depicts Faust's loneliness in his study, as well as sketches for the second movement, "Gretchen"; the completed first movement finally became the Faust overture. Advice from Franz Liszt and his Faust symphony , composed in 1854, influenced Wagner's adaptation of the Faust overture .

To the music

occupation

• Piccolo
• 2 flutes
• 2 oboes
• 2 clarinets
• 3 bassoons
• 4 horns
• 2 trumpets
• 3 trumpets
• tuba
• Timpani
• Strings

Sentence names

Very held - very moved

Work description

A characteristic of the Faust overture is its leitmotif character. Its slow introduction is characterized by double basses and tuba. The main theme, which is kept in octaves and chromatic intermediate steps (which would later influence the third movement of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 ) depicts Faust's agonies of the soul. The secondary theme of the woodwind, in turn, contains a hint of Gretchen. Only at the end does the mental tension depicted in the overture dissolve in a breathtaking major.

effect

Hans von Bülow described the subject of the Faust overture as "suffering in general human content". The Dresden premiere by Wagner and a Weimar performance in 1852 by Franz Liszt (both times in the first version) met with a positive response; Tchaikovsky wrote, for example, in 1872: "The Faust Overture is Wagner's best composition and at the same time one of the most excellent works in German symphonic literature". However, the piece met with criticism from the influential music critic Eduard Hanslick and other critics of symphonic program music .

literature

• Wulf Konold (Ed.): Concert Guide Romanticism. Orchestral music from A – Z. Schott, Mainz, 2007, ISBN 978-3-254-08388-3
• Christoph Hahn, Siegmar Hohl (eds.), Bertelsmann Konzertführer , Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1993, ISBN 3-570-10519-9
• Harenberg concert guide , Harenberg Kommunikation, Dortmund, 1998, ISBN 3-611-00535-5

Web links

• A Faust Overture : Sheet Music and Audio Files in the International Music Score Library Project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Everett Helm: Peter I. Tchaikovsky. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-499-50243-7 , p. 65