Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Photo: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
It is unlikely that any writer can have inspired and influenced so many composers as Goethe. This is hardly surprising when you consider the position Goethe occupies in German and European thought during his lifetime and to the present day. Indeed the time he lived is often referred to simply as ‘die Goethezeit’, the Goethe Period, the great age of German literature and culture. His reputation as ‘the greatest European’ and ‘the last Renaissance Man’ is all the more remarkable because he spent more than 50 of his 82 years in relative seclusion at the court of Weimar, a small, obscure duchy with a population of about 6000.
For no literary figure of any other European country can claim anything like the importance Goethe has for Germany. Dante, Molière, Cervantes, Tolstoy are all giants of literature but more restricted in scope. The nearest equivalent is Shakespeare with his dominant place in English literature, but even he, unrivalled as a playwright and poet, can hardly compete with Goethe’s breadth and universality. Also, his life remains mysterious, whereas Goethe’s is probably the best documented of any great writer’s.
Well aware of his own significance from quite an early age, Goethe made sure everything was meticulously recorded. His public life is officially chronicled, his private life well known from his autobiography and recorded conversations while his emotional and intellectual life can be deduced from his works, since his creative output is closely linked with events in his own life. He once described his whole huge oeuvre as ‘fragments of a great Confession’ though one must be cautious in assuming that everything written by a great imaginative writer must necessarily be drawn from real life.
From Massenet’s Werther to Léhar’s operetta Friederike, from Mendelssohn’s First Walpurgis Night to the Argentinian composer Ginastera’s Creole Faust, Goethe’s writings have provided a huge number of composers with a rich quarry which is still far from exhausted.
Music Details:
BEETHOVEN Egmont Overture - Naxos 8.557264
DUKAS The Sorcerer’s Apprentice - PENTATONE PTC 5186 336
MASSENET Werther - PHILIPS 416 654
SCHUBERT Der Erlkönig - DG 437 221
BEETHOVEN Maigesang - DG463 507
SCHUBERT Rastlöse Liebe - Private Recording
WOLF Harfenspieler - FORLANE UCD 16745
LISZT Mephisto Waltz - PHILIPS 456 715
BERLIOZ Damnation of Faust - DG 423 909
MAHLER Symphony No 8 - PHILIPS 446 195
SCHUBERT Wanderers Nachtlied - DG 437 230
