Organ Pieces op. 145
- No. 1 Trauerode
- No. 2 Dankpsalm
- No. 3 Weihnachten
- No. 4 Passion
- No. 5 Ostern
- No. 6 Pfingsten
- No. 7 Siegesfeier
- -
- -
- -
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.
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).
1.1. Nr. 1–3
At Oppenheimer’s request Reger wrote two pieces in mid-July 1915 (no. 1 Trauerode and no. 2 Dankpsalm). By transferring seven bars from no. 1 into no. 2 they also relate to each other musically; again upon request, Reger amended these two pieces by adding a third one straight away (Weihnachten).7 The headings of the first two, engraver’s copies of which were probably handed in in the fourth week of July, already name the collection as “Three Pieces for the Organ”, but without opus number.8 In comparison, no. 3, submitted later, forgoes the collective title in favor of a number for the piece as “op. 145 No 3” (engraver’s copy ). By giving an opus number the decision may have been made to continue the series gradually.9
The first printed editions of nos. 1 to 3 were published in October 1915 (according to Hofmeister) – in good time for the seasonal use of Weihnachten (Christmas). The titlepages, designed as a common titlepage, were conceived from the outset with the potential for expansion. An examination of the sources shows that Reger himself checked the proofs and made small alterations in the music text (see
). Similarly at the correction stage, no. 2 was renamed from “Siegesfeier” (“Victory celebration” in the engraver’s copy) to “Dankpsalm” (“Psalm of thanksgiving” in the first printed edition); whether this stemmed from Reger or a suggestion from the publisher is not known.
1.2. Nr. 4–6
Soon after the publication of the first pieces by Oppenheimer, Reger asked Simrock-Verlag on 19 October 1915 for permission to now be allowed “to give this publisher a further 3–4 organ pieces” (postcard). The answer has not survived, but numbers 4 to 6 (Passion, Ostern and Pfingsten) were published in February 1916 (according to Hofmeister) with the corresponding common title page and again in good time for use in the church year.
1.3. Nr. 7
At the beginning of March 1916, that is after this second tranche was published, a further addition followed.10 With Siegesfeier, Reger returned to the title originally envisaged for no. 2. The first printed edition was published in April/May 1916 (according to Hofmeister).
It is striking that the sketch of the introduction of no. 7 is found on the same folio as the sketches for two Chorale Preludes from Opus 135a, which can be dated to as early as autumn 1914. This could mean that both works were written close to each other and that Reger, in making a fair copy of the Siegesfeier, drew on a compositional idea from eighteen months earlier. In September 1914 Reger had also composed his Vaterländische Ouvertüre op. 140, and in both the Ouvertüre and the Siegesfeier the chorale Nun danket alle Gott and the Deutschlandlied are incorporated.
2.
Translation by Elizabeth Robinson.
It is not implausible that in giving an opus number, Reger was already thinking of further pieces for the church year (see note 3).
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.
1. Stemma
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
Object reference
Max Reger: Organ Pieces op. 145, in: Reger-Werkausgabe, www.reger-werkausgabe.de/mri_work_00178.html, version 3.1.4, 11th April 2025.
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