Vienna Mahler Lecture #10

Vera Micznik: Text/Music and Discursive/Narrative Elucidations in Schumann’s and Mahler’s Settings of the End of Faust

As it is known, unlike Faust I, Faust II, in five acts, takes Faust into five imaginary historical periods and places, from Greek antiquity to contemporary times, culminating after Faust’s death with the rescue of his immortal remains in a quasi-Christian celestial realm. With its esoteric subject matter, the novelty of a plot constructed from five disjoint stories rather than as a coherent whole conveys an ambiguity of meaning that puzzled literary critics ever since its publication until today. Vera Micznik will explore the problematic reception in the critical literature of Faust II, especially of the final scene, and the consequences for the assessments of two of the few musical works it engendered: the renderings of the “Closing Scene” of Faust II (Bergschluchten) in the last section (no. 7) of Robert Schumann’s “Szenen aus Goethes Faust” (1848-49), which he named “Fausts Verklärung” (Faust’s Transfiguration), and in the second movement of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony (1906) which uses the same text.

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