Domiciled in Zürich, with his magnum opus and testament, Doktor Faust, well under weigh, through March 1918 Busoni's thoughts returned to Goethe's Faust. A sketch of Gretchen's "Es war einmal ein König in Thule" survives—the melody, similar to Berlioz's "Le Roi de Thulé" in La Damnation de Faust, found its way into the second movement of the Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra. The sarcastic—demonic—Lied des Mephistopheles, dated March 30, 1918, carries us persuasively into the noisy, gamy, besotted purlieu of Auerbach's Cellar where Mephistopheles' "Song of the Flea" competes in scurrilous satire with Brander's "Song of the Rat." The young Berlioz had set both, and "Es war einmal ein König," as well, in his putative Op. 1, the Huit Scénes de Faust, which he hastily withdrew after publication in 1829, though not before sending a copy to the aged Goethe. They were, however, salvaged and reworked in La Damnation de Faust (1846). The jumpy nervosité of Busoni's settings owe something to Berlioz, though his influence has been thoroughly assimilated to the rapid, allusive coruscating "Faustian" language Busoni had been formulating since before the Great War. Busoni did not publish the Lied des Brander—it first appeared in a collection of Fünf Goethe-Lieder in 1964, issued by Breitkopf und Härtel. A promising idea worked repetitively over three stanzas confirms it as a mere sketch—interesting but ultimately disappointing and best viewed as a glimpse into Busoni's workshop.

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