Berlioz came across Gérard de Nerval's newly published translation of Goethe's Faust early in 1828. "The marvellous book fascinated me from the first. I could not put it down, I read it incessantly, at meals, at the theatre, in the street." At his first meeting with the 19-year-old Franz Liszt, on the day before the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz turned the conversation to Faust, introducing Liszt to the work which would eventually prompt his greatest masterpiece, Eine Faust Symphonie (1854). But Berlioz's own most avant-garde work, La Damnation de Faust (1846), is the first of the great series of Faust portraits in music, including Gounod's conventional but compellingly melodious Faust (1859), Boito's crusading Mefistofele (1868), and Busoni's testamentary Doktor Faust (1914 - 1924). La Damnation de Faust had its nucleus in the Huit scènes de Faust, composed under irresistible inspiration between September 1828 and January 1829, and published soon after at Berlioz's own expense as his Opus 1. He had composed many conventional drawing room romances before the Huit scènes, but in these powerfully drawn vignettes his originality—modal inflections, novel timbres, nervous or presciently languishing melody, and, above all, volatile rhythmic invention—emerges with startling clarity for the first time. The distinguished English critic, Ernest Newman, looking back over a century later, called the Huit scènes de Faust "the most outstanding Opus 1 that the world of music had ever known." A copy sent to the aging Goethe, with an admiring letter, was turned over to his friend, the conservative composer and pedagogue Carl Friedrich Zelter, who declared the Huit scènes as "the residue of a miscarriage resulting from a foul incest." "Le Roi de Thulé," the first lyric to be set, was composed with piano accompaniment, though in the Huit scènes it is scored for orchestra, as are the other numbers, with the exception of the "Sérénade de Méphistophélès," a tenor solo accompanied by guitar. The collection opens with the vaulting, ecstatic "Chants de la fête de Pâques," the Easter chorus, followed by the peasants' dance and chorus, "Paysans sous le tilleuls." The "Concert de sylphes"—of the Huit Scènes, the most revised for La Damnation de Faust—originally scored for six voices and orchestra, was the only one of the Huit Scènes to be performed in Berlioz's lifetime, on November 1, 1829, at a Conservatoire concert with his Ouverture des Francs-Juges, Waverly, the "Resurrexit" from his Messe solennelle, and the first Paris performance of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto. In his Memoirs, Berlioz notes that "It was sung by six students...and produced no effect at all. Eighteen years later, with a few minor changes in harmony and orchestration, the same piece became a favorite all over Europe." Brander's "Histoire d'un rat," Méphistophélès' "Histoire d'une puce," and Marguerite's "Une amoureuse flamme," which fades into a "Choeur de soldats," form the body of the collection. Curiously, Berlioz withdrew the work soon after publication, declaring it "crude and badly written" and destroying all copies that he could lay his hands on.

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