Back to (the music of) the future: Aesthetics of technology in Berlioz'sEuphoniaandDamnation de Faust

Abstract

In his final years, Berlioz's name became entangled in debates around Wagnerian 'music of the future'; but Berlioz was also engaged with conceptions of the future in a much more literal sense throughout his life. An examination of texts such as Euphonia which treat futuristic settings helps us to identify three main technological tropes by which the future is characterised in Berlioz's writings: the industrialisation of space and time; the discourse of gender; and fears around agency. Applying these tropes to the contemporaneous La damnation de Faust enables a new reading of genre in Berlioz's 'légende dramatique', which is revealed to dramatise the dialectic of technology and gender on a meta-diegetic level. Performances of La damnation de Faust that stage it as opera or as Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk may blind us to the innovative aspects of the work, for these aspects are most visible when it is the orchestral 'machine' that is placed literally centre stage. This new reading of La damnation de Faust through the lens of Euphonia helps us to resituate Berlioz as a musician of the future in a manner that provides an alternative to the more familiar Wagnerian aesthetics.