Goethe et la musique : le cas de Berlioz

With his two settings of Goethe’s Faust, Hector Berlioz makes it possible to grasp the issue of a double cultural transfer, on the one hand the musical treatment of a literary text and, on the other, the transition from one language to another. However, the relationship between the composer and the source in question, be it musical or literary, also makes it possible to identify a literal approach to arranging material and the creative process of appropriation. One can detect therefore the different attitudes of the same composer with regard to different requirements. This brings out the complicated relationship between the music and the written text, and its anteriority. This applies to the choices Berlioz made for his version of Der Freischütz at the Paris Opéra where he curbed his inspiration, as opposed to those he made for the subject of Faust, in which his spirit of invention transcended Goethe’s suggestions. One wonders therefore how much of the spirit of the music Goethe himself had integrated in his own creative powers.