E X T E N S I O N FAUSTUS IN MUSIC The legend of Faustus has inspired many people and different kinds of artistic and cultural works including comics, manga1 and even video games for over four centuries. Music is one of the fields which has more frequently used and re-interpreted his legend. Many musicians have composed wonderful pieces of classical music, operas2, ballets, and musicals, all referring, more or less openly, to Faustus s myth. The theme of Faustus appears in numerous classical musical compositions from Franz Liszt s Faust Symphony and Mephisto Waltzes (1854) to Charles Gounod s opera Faust (1859), from the Italian Arrigo Boito s Mefistofele (1868) to the modern version of the myth in Randy Newman s Faust musical (1995) where Elton John plays the role of the good Angel Ricky. In this popular musical retelling, God and the Devil fight for the soul of Henry Faust, a student at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. More recently, the contemporary French composer Pascal Dusapin wrote Faustus, the Last Night. In this modern work, a really powerful last scene was put on stage with a giant blue clock whose hands move towards midnight nonstop and push Faustus, struggling in pain on the surface of the clock, to damnation. However, rock bands and pop singers have not been indifferent to the myth of Faustus either. In the song Hotel California (1976) by The Eagles, for example, the lyrics narrate of a tired traveller who checks into a luxurious hotel.This appears inviting and tempting at first, but later turns out to be a devilish 1. manga: a Japanese word referring both to comics and cartooning. Outside Japan it refers specifically to comics originally published in Japan. 2. opera: a long dramatic musical work similar to a play but in which the parts are sung. 84