The Mephisto Polka is a piece of program music

Program music

Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...

 written in folk-dance style for solo piano by Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

 in 1882-3. The work's program is the same as that of the same composer's four Mephisto Waltzes

Mephisto Waltzes

The Mephisto Waltzes are four waltzes composed by Franz Liszt in 1859-62, 1880–81, 1883 and 1885. Nos. 1-2 were composed for orchestra, later arranged for piano, piano duet and two pianos, whereas 3 and 4 were written for piano only...

, written respectively in 1859-60, 1880–81, 1882 and 1885 and based on the legend of Faust

Faust

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...

, not by Goethe but by Nikolaus Lenau

Nikolaus Lenau

Nikolaus Lenau was the nom de plume of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau , was a German language Austrian poet.-Biography:...

 (1802–50). The following program note, which Liszt took from Lenau, appears in the printed score of the Mephisto Waltz No. 1:

There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore...

 and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle

Fiddle

The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...

 from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightengale warbles his love-laden song."

The first recording of this piece was by France Clidat

France Clidat

France Clidat is a French pianist renowned for her interpretations of the works of Franz Liszt, a great many of which she has recorded, and Erik Satie, whose complete piano works she recorded....

 in her traversal of Liszt's works for Decca.

Dedication

The Mephisto Polka was dedicated to Lina Schmalhausen, one of Liszt’s “inner-circle” piano students. However, she is remembered more as one among the closest and most ardently devoted of Liszt’s followers, frequently attending to and assisting in the many needs of the aged master whose health was in rapid decline.

Form

This work appears the simplest and technically least challenging of all the Mephisto dances; except for the Bagatelle sans tonalité

Bagatelle sans tonalité

Bagatelle sans tonalité is a piece for solo piano written by Franz Liszt in 1885. The manuscript bears the title "Fourth Mephisto Waltz" and may have been intended to replace the piece now known as the Fourth Mephisto Waltz when it appeared Liszt would not be able to finish it; the phrase...

, it is also the shortest. Tonally, it is also mildest and can appear to be a fully tonal composition, with chromaticism

Chromaticism

Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...

 limited to neighboring-tone and chordal sonority varieties. These passages are usually realized on the left hand in chordal or arpeggiated figures. However, the simplicity in notation disguises the true character of the music. There is no functional harmony to clearly create the relational behavior of tonic, dominant, and subdominant harmonic functions. If anything, the general impression of the music is modal

Modal

Modal may refer to:* Modal , a textile made from spun Beechwood cellulose fiber* Modal analysis, the study of the dynamic properties of structures under vibrational excitation...

, with the piece constantly in flux. Any suggested tonality is quickly undermined by the following sonority, which may in turn vaguely (and now even more weakly) suggest another tonal focus. The most haunting touch is at the end, when the piece simply stops without explanation. with a solitary F natural above middle C sounding, then dying out.