Max Reger

Max Reger, postcard (1910)

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger (19 March 1873 – 11 May 1916) was a German pianist, organist, composer, conductor, and academic teacher. He worked as a concert pianist, as musical director at the Leipzig University Church and professor at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig and simultaneously as music director at the court of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen.

He composed first mainly Lieder, chamber music, choral music and works for piano and organ, later turned to compositions for orchestra, such as the popular Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart, and to works for choir and orchestra such as Gesang der Verklärten, Der Einsiedler and Requiem.

Career

Born in Brand, Bavaria, Reger studied music theory in Sondershausen, then piano and theory, in Wiesbaden.[1] The first compositions to which he assigned opus numbers were chamber music and Lieder. A concert pianist himself, he composed works for both piano and organ.[1]

Reger returned to his parental home in 1898, where he composed his first work for choir and orchestra, Hymne an den Gesang (Hymn to singing), Op. 21. He moved to Munich in September 1901, where he obtained concert offers and where his rapid rise to fame began. During his first Munich season, Reger appeared in ten concerts as an organist, chamber pianist and accompanist. He continued to compose without interruption, for example Gesang der Verklärten, Op. 71. In 1907 he was appointed musical director at the Leipzig University Church, a position he held until 1908, and professor at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig.[1][2]

In 1911 Reger was appointed Hofkapellmeister (music director) at the court of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen, retaining his master class at the Leipzig conservatory.[1] In 1913 he composed four tone poems on paintings by Arnold Böcklin (Vier Tongedichte nach Arnold Böcklin), including Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead), as his Op. 128. He gave up the court position in 1914 for health reasons. In response to World War I, he thought in 1914 already to compose a choral work to commemorate the fallen of the war. He began to set the Latin Requiem but abandoned the work as a fragment.[1] In 1915 he moved to Jena, commuting once a week to teach in Leipzig. He composed in Jena the Hebbel Requiem for soloist, choir and orchestra.[1] Reger died in Leipzig on a heart attack on 11 May 1916.[1][2]

He had also been active internationally as a conductor and pianist. Among his students were Joseph Haas, Sándor Jemnitz, Jaroslav Kvapil, Ruben Liljefors, George Szell and Cristòfor Taltabull.

Reger was the cousin of Hans von Koessler.

Works

Main article: Max Reger works
Max Reger at work, painting by Franz Nölken, 1913

Reger produced an enormous output over little more than 25 years, nearly always in abstract forms. Few of his compositions are well known in the 21st century. Many of his works are fugues or in variation form, including what is probably his best known orchestral work, the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart based on the opening theme of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331. He also wrote a large amount of music for organ, the most famous being his Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and the Fantasy and Fugue on BACH. While a student under Hugo Riemann in Wiesbaden, Reger met and became friends with the famous German organist, Karl Straube who premiered many of Reger's works for that instrument.

Reger was particularly attracted to the fugal form and created music in almost every genre, save for opera and the symphony. A similarly firm supporter of absolute music, he saw himself as being part of the tradition of Beethoven and Brahms. His work often combines the classical structures of these composers with the extended harmonies of Liszt and Wagner, to which he added the complex counterpoint of Bach. His organ music, though also influenced by Liszt, was provoked by that tradition.

Recording session with Max Reger for the Welte-Philharmonic-Organ, 1913

Some of the works for solo string instruments turn up often on recordings, though less regularly in recitals. His solo piano and two-piano music places him as a successor to Brahms in the central German tradition. He pursued intensively, and to its limits, Brahms's continuous development and free modulation, often also invoking, like Brahms, the aid of Bach-influenced polyphony.

Reger was a prolific writer of vocal works, Lieder, works for mixed chorus, men's chorus and female chorus, and extended choral works with orchestra such as Der 100. Psalm and Requiem, a setting of a poem by Friedrich Hebbel, which Reger dedicated to the soldiers of World War I. He composed music to texts by poets such as Gabriele D'Annunzio, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Adelbert von Chamisso, Joseph von Eichendorff, Emanuel Geibel, Friedrich Hebbel, Nikolaus Lenau, Detlev von Liliencron, Friedrich Rückert and Ludwig Uhland. Reger assigned opus numbers to major works himself.[1]

His works could be considered retrospective as they followed classical and baroque compositional techniques such as fugue and continuo. The influence of the latter can be heard in his chamber works which are deeply reflective and unconventional.

Reception

In 1898 Caesar Hochstetter, an arranger, composer and critic, published an article entitled "Noch einmal Max Reger" in a music magazine (Die Redenden Künste 5 nr. 49, s. 943 f). Caesar recommends Reger as "a highly talented young composer" to the publishers. Reger then thanks Hochstetter with the dedications of his Op. 25 and 34.[3]

Reger had an acrimonious relationship with Rudolf Louis, the music critic of the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, who usually had negative opinions of his compositions. After the first performance of the Sinfonietta in A major, Op. 90, on 2 February 1906, Louis wrote a typically negative review on 7 February. Reger wrote back to him: "Ich sitze in dem kleinsten Zimmer in meinem Hause. Ich habe Ihre Kritik vor mir. Im nächsten Augenblick wird sie hinter mir sein!" ("I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me!").[4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Institut 2016.
  2. 1 2 Schröder 1990.
  3. ↑ "Max Reger Curriculum vitae". Max Reger Institut. Retrieved 2 October 2012.
  4. ↑ Nicolas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective, second edition (New York: Coleman-Ross 1965; paperback reprints, New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1965, reissued 2000. ISBN 9780393320091; Washington Paperbacks WP-52. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969, reissued 1974, 1975, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1990. ISBN 9780295785790.), p. 139, also quoted in Fuguemasters and Humormykind. Retrieved 5 April 2013

Bibliography

Filmography

External links

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Consolation Op. 65 No. 4
Performed by Ulrich Metzner
Variations on a Theme by J. S. Bach Op. 52
Performed by Andriy Bondarenko
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Max Reger at Find a Grave

Music scores

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