A young, rather directionless Hungarian musician, Franz Liszt, attended Paganini's 1831 Paris recital. At once, he resolved to become the Paganini of the piano and subsequently transformed himself into the first superstar concert pianist. Unsurprisingly, he tackled the Faust theme several times, writing four Mephisto Waltzes inspired by another Faust poem by one of Goethe's successors, Nikolaus Lenau. And listen to his B minor Sonata of 1852-53 associating its themes with Faust, Mephistopheles and Gretchen: the story is crystal-clear, culminating in a mighty struggle before Gretchen's soul rises to heaven and Mephistopheles vanishes in a pianistic puff of smoke. 

Liszt was introduced to Faust in 1830 by Hector Berlioz, who was already obsessed with it. The book made a "strange and deep impression" on Berlioz: "I read it incessantly," he wrote, "at meals, at the theatre, in the street...The translation...contained a num-ber of ballads, hymns and other pieces in verse. I was unable to resist setting them to music [Eight Scenes from Faust, which he later tried to destroy]. "Immediately after...still under the influence of Goethe's poem, I wrote my Symphonie fantastique..." And in La Damnation de Faust, Berlioz created perhaps the ultimate Faust — yet the furthest from Goethe's tastes, positively embodying the "excesses of romanticism".

Wagner approached Faust in a concert overture finished in 1844 and in some respects presaging Liszt's A Faust Symphony. The overture is no masterpiece — but significantly, Faust's "endless striving" is embodied in the chromatic harmonic language that Liszt and Wagner developed. If "endless striving" is the essence of Faust, then Faust is the essence of Wagner — and the approach that broke down tonality in the early 20th century.

Liszt composed his Faust Symphony in the 1850s after much procrastination: initially he disliked the character of Faust, finding him "bourgeois", dissipated and cruel. But living in Weimar, he could not escape the shadow of Goethe-everything pointed him towards Faust. His symphony was premiered in 1857. Three years later he added extra brass and a Chorus Mysticus. The footprints of Berlioz's Witches' Sabbath from the Symphonie fantastique are all over the "Mephistopheles" scherzo. 

The work's Faust motif is worth an extra glance. In Thomas Mann's later novel Doktor Faustus, the central character enters a demoniac pact through which he creates a new type of music suspiciously akin to Schoenberg's 12-tone system. Liszt's Faust motif is a tone-row, including all 12 notes, each played once. 

But why exactly did Faust spark such musical obsession? Sir Sacheverell Sitwell heard the Faust Symphony conducted by Ferruccio Busoni (like Liszt, the greatest pianist of his day, and composer of yet another complex Faust opera). He wrote: "Both [Liszt and Busoni], with their exceptional, magical powers, were for ever searching for a secret that was never revealed to them, or was only suffered to live in flashes before their eyes for the space of a few moments." 

In Goethe, Faust and Mephistopheles agree that Faust's damnation will be triggered when he experiences one moment so perfect that he begs it not to pass. That notion is the essence of the human condition — and the essence, too, of music, which exists only in real time. That's why music is the perfect medium for Goethe's Faust. And maybe it's why musicians are never free of its ghosts.