According to the legend recounted in his autobiography Mein Leben, Richard Wagner composed Eine Faust-Ouvertüre while under the overwhelming influence of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. There are, however, chronological problems with Wagner's claim of Beethoven's influence. Although Wagner was in Paris during the winter of 1839-40 when François-Antoine Habeneck led the orchestra of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in a performance of the Ninth Symphony on March 8, 1840, Wagner tells us that he first heard the first three movements of the Ninth Symphony in a rehearsal, rather than in performance. Wagner composed his Faust Overture in December 1839 - January 1840; thus, he would need to have heard the Ninth Symphony in a rehearsal before then in order for it to have inspired his own composition. Difficult as the symphony is, nevertheless, it would likely not have required such a lengthy period of preparation.

In an open letter of 1851, and later in Mein Leben, Wagner wrote that the work that would eventually become the Faust Overture was originally intended to be the first movement of a Faust symphony. The sonata-form organization of the Faust Overture betrays the work's genesis as a symphonic first movement. A slow introduction exposes all of the overture's principal motives, some of which will be transformed into full-blown "symphonic" themes and subjected to development in the subsequent, faster section (Sehr bewegt). The initial musical idea, presented in unison by the tuba and double basses, foreshadows the contour of the sonata-form first theme, stated by the first violins at Sehr bewegt, the beginning of the sonata "allegro" proper. The disjunct, chromatic first theme transitions from D minor to its relative major key, F major, for the contrasting second theme, a soaring diatonic melody. At the beginning of the development section, Wagner recalls, in the key of D minor, a fanfare-style motive first stated in the key of D major in the introduction. The first theme undergoes development, accompanied by two prominent motivic cells familiar from the introduction, before the recapitulation ushers its return at fortissimo in the original key of D minor. The second theme appears in D major, the key of the parallel major, in which the overture ends after a brief coda.

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