Mephisto Waltz No. 1

• Liszt originally composed this piece for piano between 1856-61.¹
• Liszt arranged the piano piece for orchestra as part of his Zwei Episode aus Lenaus Faust (completed 1861, published 1866). Liszt’s alternate title for the orchestral version of this waltz is “Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke” (The Dance in the Tavern).²
• Lizst’s set was inspired by Nikolaus Lenua’s Faust: Ein Gedicht (pub. 1836, rev. 1840), a stark and rather nihilist reworking of Goethe’s version of the Faust legend.³
• Liszt was fascinated by the Faust legend, and explored it in several works, including three other “Mephisto” Waltzes and his Faust-Symphonie (1854-7). It was Hector Berlioz who first introduced Liszt to Goethe’s version of Faust, in 1830.⁴

Liszt provided a program note, from Lenau’s book: 

“There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightingale warbles his love-laden song.”

From Lenau’s Faust: Ein Gedicht⁵

1. Maria Eckhardt, Rena Charnin Mueller, and Alan Walker, “Liszt, Franz,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed September 2, 2021, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000048265. 
2. Ibid.
3. “Nikolaus Lenau,” Encyclopedia Britannica (August 18, 2021), accessed September 2, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikolaus-Lenau.
4. Eckhardt, Mueller, and Walker, “Liszt, Franz,” Grove Music Online.
5. Quoted in David Ewen, ed. The Complete Book of Classical Music (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 519-520.