Berlioz :Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust

Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

For more than a century after its appearance in the 1820s Goethe’s FAUST was to be a powerful preoccupation of a remarkable stream of composers, including Schumann, Liszt, Gounod, Wagner, Busoni, and many others. One of the earliest of these was Hector Berlioz, who as early as 1828 composed a set of “Eight Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” – which he promptly sent off to Weimar, seeking the approval of the great German poet. (Goethe gave the manuscript to a musical advisor, who dismissed it as incoherent rubbish!) In 1845 Berlioz returned to his Faust project, which now developed into a massive work for voices, chorus and orchestra, labeled a “Dramatic Legend” – a work not for the stage, but for the concert hall, with the usual visual and dramatic elements intended to take place in the minds of the listeners through the medium of the music.

Although in the main faithful to Goethe’s work, there is one startling liberty on the part of the composer: in order to inset into the action a stirring march composed after a visit to Hungary, Berlioz arbitrarily shifted the locale of the opening of the drama to that country. The march, sometimes known by its tradition Hungarian title, “Rákóczy March,” is one of several popular orchestral excerpts from the DAMNATION OF FAUST, notable for its brilliant coloration and dashing energy. The march begins softly, which caused Berlioz some nervousness when he conducted it in Budapest, lest the audience might take offense at such an understated opening. His fears were groundless; the swelling power and swagger of this infectious piece swept the Hungarians into a storm of applause, and the march has been one of the composer’s most popular compositions ever since.

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