Organ Pieces op. 145

Content

No. 1 Trauerode
No. 2 Dankpsalm
No. 3 Weihnachten
No. 4 Passion
No. 5 Ostern
No. 6 Pfingsten
No. 7 Siegesfeier

Creation

–

Status

–

Dedication

–

Performance medium

Organ

Work collection

Original work

Versions

1.

Reger-Werkausgabe	Bd. I/7: Orgelstücke III, S. 146–188.
Herausgeber	Alexander Becker, Christopher Grafschmidt, Stefan König, Stefanie Steiner-Grage.
Verlag	Carus-Verlag, Stuttgart; Verlagsnummer: CV 52.807.
Erscheinungsdatum	Juli 2015.
Notensatz	Carus-Verlag, Stuttgart.
Copyright	2015 by Carus-Verlag, Stuttgart and Max-Reger-Institut, Karlsruhe – CV 52.807. Vervielfältigungen jeglicher Art sind gesetzlich verboten. / Any unauthorized reproduction is prohibited by law. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. / All rights reserved.
ISMN	M-007-16416-4.
ISBN	978-3-89948-224-9.

1. Composition and Publication

Reger wrote the seven Organ Pieces op. 145 in a more-or-less loose sequence between July 1915 and March 1916 for the Hamelin publisher H. Oppenheimer. The initiative for these may have come from the publisher’s managing director Wilhelm Oppenheimer,¹ which Reger’s correspondence with his main publisher N. Simrock confirms:² “I have received a request from the publisher Oppenheimer in Hamelin to give him 2 organ pieces for publication! Before I give the man an answer, may I ask you as per my contract whether you would be so kind as to allow me to give Herr Oppenheimer the 2 organ pieces.” (Postcard dated 16 July 1915) Nonetheless it is conceivable that individual movements had been thought about well before (see below, no. 7).³ The time frame of making a fair copy and preparing the works for print can be established in detail from Reger’s letters to Simrock and the respective prompt publication of the first edition by Oppenheimer. According to these, the pieces were written and published in three tranches roughly quarterly:

nos. 1–3
nos. 4–6
no. 7

Trauerode, Dankpsalm and Weihnachten
Passion, Ostern and Pfingsten
Siegesfeier

The Opus 145 collection, with the Siegesfeier, which in terms of content forms an arch back to the two first numbers, found its unforeseen conclusion: The title page of the first printed edition of no. 7, which was published just before or around the time of Reger's death, reflects his intention to continue with the series.⁴

Rudolf Walter probably rightly placed the seven Opus 145 pieces alongside Reger’s organ improvisations for musical devotions in the Meiningen city church in the wartime winter of 1914/15; their lasting influence can be seen in the “Sieben Fantasien zu den Hauptfesten des Kirchenjahres op. 145. […] In A[ugust] König’s opinion they are conceived in the style of those improvisations.”⁵ All seven pieces have in common the fact that they make programmatic reference to chorales or melodies, en passant or at the end (see ).⁶ The links to the church year and the dedications of the Trauerode (“To those fallen in the 1914/15 War”) and the Dankpsalm (“To the German armed forces”) certainly label the pieces as music for edification or as music which had been “born out of the present” (review by Walter Petzet).

2.

Translation by Elizabeth Robinson.

This is reported in a newspaper article of 1968, albeit very unreliable in other details (see Ernst Meyer-Hermann, Ein Hamelner Musikverleger, in Feierabend an der Weser. Beilage der Deister- und Weserzeitung, No. 46, 16. November 1968).

Reger’s correspondence with Oppenheimer is not available, as the publisher no longer exists.

According to information from August König, the organist of the Meiningen Stadtkirche from spring 1915, Reger announced the composition of the organ pieces in winter 1914/15 (see Walter 1978 [see note 5], p. 39). When he submitted the Chorale Preludes Opus 135a to Simrock-Verlag on 24 November 1914, he had raised the prospect of further general “shorter […] organ pieces”, which he wanted to include under the opus number 135 (letter).

Only in posthumous editions did the work acquire its frequently-used title Seven Organ Pieces.

Rudolf Walter, Max Regers Kirchenkonzerte in Thüringen 1912–1916 und ihre Beziehung zu seinem Schaffen, in Reger-Studien 1. Festschrift für Ottmar Schreiber zum 70. Geburtstag am 16. Februar 1976, ed. Günther Massenkeil and Susanne Popp, Wiesbaden 1978 (= Schriftenreihe des Max-Reger-Instituts Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1), p. 39.

Reger used the as sources.

1. Reception

Soon after their publication the Pieces op. 145 found their place in solemn church or devotional concerts which were intended to provide comfort in time of war. Similarly, the Trauerode was played at the end of May 1916 in the Stuttgart Conservatoire in one of the memorial events organized across the country for Reger, who had died just three weeks before. The Reger pupil Hermann Keller, who had also performed Passion (no. 4) in the Weimar Stadtkirche, recommended Opus 145 “strongly to all organ players […] it demonstrates most clearly the way which Reger had taken further, and what we might yet have expected from him!” ¹ A few years later, however, he spoke far more reservedly of these works, as sometimes moulded by their time.² Whereas Dankpsalm and Siegesfeier could be emphatically reviewed in relation to wartime events,³ Passion and Trauerode in particular probably left those “listeners in need of harmony and edification” ⁴ with more mixed feelings. And thus the chronicler from Weimar perceived Passion in technical respects as “captivating”, but missed “a deeper effect, filling the soul with religious awe” (review in the Neue Musik-Zeitung); the critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung Stuttgart interpreted the Trauerode as “a rhapsodically-structured work full of serious, brooding questions and anxious sounds, which is counterbalanced by the comforting chorale, resonating like the celestial spheres” (review).

2.

Translation by Elizabeth Robinson.

Max Regers Orgelwerke, in Neue Musik-Zeitung 37 Jg. (1916), Vol. 18 (22 June), p. 287.

Keller now talks of the “strange op. 145” and explains: “Where the imagination takes its mood and subject matter from the chorale itself, as in “Passion” […] an inwardly-unified whole of moving effect is created; by contrast, the transition to chorale does not succeed either in the “Trauerode” […] or in “Pfingsten” […]; pieces whose formal deficiencies cannot be covered up by any performer’s artistry.” His conclusion is correspondingly severe: “At any rate, one would do Reger the greatest disservice imaginable if compositions such as the op. 145 pieces were included in the series of his fully-fledged works without further discussion.” (Reger und die Orgel, Munich 1923 [= Max Reger. Eine Sammlung von Studien aus dem Kreise seiner persönlichen Schüler, ed. Richard Würz, Vol. IV], p. 283f.)

Walter Petzet saw the crowning of Reger’s “life’s work for the organ” in Siegesfeier, and in parts of the allegro passages “the triumphal entry of the army” was symbolized (review in Signale für die musikalische Welt).

Wilske 1995, p. 305.

This text is currently only available in German.

1. Stemma

Die in Klammern gesetzten Quellen sind verschollen.

2. Quellenbewertung

Der Edition liegen als Leitquellen die Erstdrucke zugrunde. Als zusätzliche Quellen konnten für die Nrn. 1–3 und 5–7 die autographen Stichvorlagen herangezogen werden (die Stichvorlage der Nr. 4 ist verschollen). Die fragmetarischen Entwürfe zu Nr. 1–3 und Nr. 7 spielten für editorische Entscheidungen kaum eine Rolle.

Der Quellenvergleich zeigt, dass im Korrekturstadium – neben der Umbenennung der Nr. 2 – an einigen Stellen auch bewusste Änderungen im Notentext vorgenommen wurden, für die nur Reger selbst als Urheber in Frage kommt.¹
Gleichwohl blieb in den Erstdrucken aber auch eine auffallend große Zahl offensichtlicher Stecherfehler stehen. Zum einen hatten sowohl das Oppenheimer’sche Lektorat wie auch die kriegsbedingt unterbesetzte Stecherei F.M. Geidel in Leipzig wenig Erfahrung mit den Eigentümlichkeiten von Regers musikalischer Orthografie, was Missverständnisse nach sich ziehen musste. Zum andern dürfte Reger, z.T. unter großem Zeitdruck stehend (vgl. Opus 135b, ), den Korrekturfahnen von Opus 145 nur begrenzte Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet haben.

3. Sources

Vgl. für die erste Tranche Dankpsalm, T. 84 und für die zweite Folge Ostern, T. 34.

Object reference

Max Reger: Organ Pieces op. 145, in: Reger-Werkausgabe, www.reger-werkausgabe.de/mri_work_00178.html, version 3.1.0, 23rd December 2024.

Information

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