Studies in Music of the Romantic Period: The Faust Legend in Romantic Music

This seminar examines musical and music-theatrical interpretations of the Faust legend in the Romantic era. Would you sell your soul for immortality, pleasure, knowledge, power? What would you sacrifice, and what could redeem you? Through Faust-themed pieces by Schubert, Berlioz, Schumann, Gounod, Liszt, and Mahler we will examine aesthetic, harmonic, and dramatic techniques of Romantic music, and trace developments in nineteenth-century ideas about music, morality, religion, fate, gender, and eroticism.