Reger and his works for men’s, women’s and children’s choir
Christopher Grafschmidt
1.
In Reger’s time, male voice choirs “belonged among the prime musical institutions of cultural life, especially in the cities, but also in rural areas.”1 This made the choral genre attractive for composers of all stripes: “the many [choral] associations and choirs offered a profitable market with their steadily increasing membership, while the social status of these choirs provided composers with an important forum for self-presentation.”2 Nevertheless, after returning from Wiesbaden to his parents’ home in Weiden in 1898, Reger only reluctantly began to write for male voice choir. His former teacher Adalbert Lindner later recalled that Reger “was not particularly fond” of the genre.3 It was Reger’s immediate proximity to the choral association “Liederkranz” in Weiden, of which his father was a member, that made him change his mind. In a short space of time, he now composed several folk song arrangements (WoO VI/6, 7, 8 and 9) and original works too (WoO VI/5, op. 21 and op. 38). In the spring of 1900, he also made arrangements of older secular pieces (by Thomas Morley, Jean-Baptiste Lully and others) for mixed chorus or male voice choir (his Madrigals B1 and B2) for the music publishing company Hug.
After a break of several years, Reger wrote in April 1903 to the publisher Lauterbach & Kuhn to suggest “making arrangements for male voice choir of the choruses by Hugo Wolf that you have (or at least some of them)! Right now, I’m of the firm opinion that this would be a splendid idea!”4 This was quite possibly with an eye on the “Gesang-Wettstreit Deutscher Männergesangvereine” (the “singing competition of German male voice choirs”) that had been initiated by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and whose second edition was due to be held soon in Frankfurt am Main. Nothing by Reger was sung in the competition, and the Kaiser afterwards expressed his dissatisfaction with what he regarded as the excessively ambitious nature of the men’s choral repertoire. He felt that it thwarted his plans to “elevate folk song and the cultivation of folk song, and to disseminate it among a broad circle.”5 Reger took the Kaiser’s rebuke as an opportunity to embark on his op. 83, even if its initial eight choral pieces hardly corresponded to what Wilhelm II had in mind (“Have you read that we should sing more folk songs in men’s choirs!”, he wrote to Lauterbach & Kuhn).6 Whether or not Reger had ever intended to provide what the Kaiser wanted is a question that remains unanswered. Either way, when in 1907, at the Kaiser’s instigation, a collection of folk songs for male voice choir was published that was intended to steer the repertoire in the direction stipulated by his ex cathedra pronouncements, Reger was not among those invited to contribute by the commission responsible.7
In early 1906, Reger informed his publishers that he wanted to write new works for male voice choir,8 though he did not offer any further details. He only developed a more concrete plan the following year, by which time he had been appointed the new Music Director of Leipzig University. This position involved conducting the Universitäts-Sängerverein zu St. Pauli (the University Singing Association at St Paul’s Church), and Reger offered to “compose a large, secular cantata for male voice choir with large orchestra” for the 500th anniversary of the University in 1909 (RWV Appendix B14).9 He was relieved of his duties at his own request in autumn 1908, but nevertheless stuck to his plan until the end of 1909. That same year, he composed two other choral works, namely An Zeppelin (“To Zeppelin”) WoO VI/21, which was a commissioned work, and whose edition for male voice choir Reger considered to be more important than the version for mixed chorus10 and another choral piece for his op. 83 (no. 9, Abschied, “Farewell”).
In mid-1910, Elsa Reger informed Fritz Stein – one of Reger’s closest friends – that her husband was planning a requiem: “Text by Hebbel; for male voice choir, orchestra and contralto solo; dedicated to Gudrun Fischer-Maretzki. This is for the 1911–12 season.” However, when Reger ultimately set this text in March 1912 it was for male voice choir alone (as no. 10 of his op. 83), and he was occasioned to do so by the Swiss conductor Hermann Suter. The forces he had originally envisioned for it were employed in 1911 for his setting of a different text by Hebbel: Die Weihe der Nacht (“The consecration of the night”), op. 119. In the summer of 1912, Reger was occupied with his Römischer Triumphgesang (“Roman song of triumph”) for male voice choir and orchestra, op. 126. “This score is a huge amount of work”, wrote Reger to his employer Duke Georg II of Sachsen-Meiningen; “Caesar has been crowned with victory and the Roman legions sing to him, thus demanding ‘armoured’ orchestration, and I have to write a fearful amount of notes until the thing sounds like the immense spectacle that the Romans presumably organised on such occasions; all the same, the thing must never sound vulgar.”11 At the end of the year, he also promised “the Schubertbund in Vienna a new work for male voice choir and orchestra [RWV Appendix B15] […]; duration 10 minutes; in contrast to the Römischer Triumphgesang, I would like to do something very delicate!” To this end, he asked his friend Karl Straube “to choose some texts […]. It has to be a very tender text; of course, a depiction of Nature after the manner of Eichendorff would be best suited to it! […] I already have the music in my head”.12 However, no more came of this than of another work supposedly intended for the same forces as Weihe der Nacht. Straube was delegated to find Reger a text “in which the solo contralto voice has the main part and the male voice choir is in a ‘quasi-accompanying’ role – though please don’t misunderstand this”.13 The Eichendorff poem Der Einsiedler (“The Hermit”) that Straube suggested was one that Reger said he could “very well use – albeit not for male voice choir with contralto solo, but for a very fine, ‘intimate’ piece for baritone solo, mixed chorus and orchestra!”14
It was probably Reger’s work for the Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst (“Monthly magazine for worship and church art”) that gave him an incentive to write for women’s choir, because its music supplements enabled him to reach a broad public. In January 1900, he wrote to the magazine’s editor, Julius Smend, to offer to arrange “pieces for 3-part chorus” (later his op. 79g) while also asking him to suggest suitable melodies and texts.15 We do not know whether it was actually Smend who had suggested writing three-part works in the first place, or whether it was Reger’s own idea. But we do know that Reger worked on four more sacred pieces for three-part women’s choir in December of that same year (as well as on two pieces for five-part mixed choir, WoO VI/16), “because various choirmasters have drawn my attention to the fact that there is a lack of easy pieces in three and five parts”.16 He was quite possibly prompted to compose further women’s choruses in 1909 (op. 111b) by a member of the Hamburg Women’s Quartet. He also made a three-part arrangement (op. 111c) “so that these women’s choruses can be sung more often”.17
Reger’s three magazine supplements for women’s choir (later his op. 79g) appeared in the Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst in late 1900. He had them reprinted in 1903 in the Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik (“Magazine for music at home and at church”), though he now also added ‘children’s choir’ as an alternative designation, probably so as to market them better.18 In August 1905, Reger began work on a Hymnus vom Tode und ewigen Leben (“Hymn of death and eternal life”) WoO V/5, in which a boys’ choir was to play a significant role alongside a mixed choir, orchestra and organ. Reger thus planned “to have the boys’ choir (placed above them all) sing the chorale ‘Jesus, meine Zuversicht’ [‘Jesus, in whom I trust’] in the massive final fugue, where everything goes wild”.19 We do not know how far this work had progressed by the autumn of 1906 when Reger ceased working on it. His draft is no longer extant, and it is unclear whether a fair copy was ever made of it. All that survives is a copy of the text with notes of Reger’s on his plans for its composition.20
In 1909, Reger was asked to make an arrangement for unison children’s choir and piano of his song Herzenstausch (“Exchange of hearts”) from his Schlichte Weisen for voice and piano (op. 76 no. 5). There are no differences between this arrangement and the original. Finally, between February and April 1913, Reger composed three small pieces for an American schoolbook publisher: Night Thoughts for unison children’s choir and piano, WoO V/7, The Snow for two-part school choir and piano, WoO V/8, and Good Night for mixed choir, WoO VI/25.
About this Blogpost
Authors:
Christopher Grafschmidt
Translations:
Chris Walton (en)
Date:
1st July 2024
Tags:
Module IIChoirsVol. II/10
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Citation
Christopher Grafschmidt: Reger and his works for men’s, women’s and children’s choir, in: Reger-Werkausgabe, www.reger-werkausgabe.de/rwa_post_00032, version 3.1.0, 23rd December 2024.
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