RWA Volume I/2 – Fantasias and Fugues, Variations, Sonatas, Suites I; Early reception
Alexander Becker, Stefan König, Christopher Grafschmidt, Stefanie Steiner-Grage
1.
While the Suite in E minor op. 16 published in 1896 was well received in the Monthly Musical Record published by Augener & Co. in London (1896, July), there is no known review in German-language periodicals before 1899. By comparison, the preceding works received favorable and detailed reviews in both the Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung (AMZ) and the Musikalisches Wochenblatt. Although Reger had fallen out with the AMZ, for whom he himself had worked as a reviewer for a time, he was still badly affected by the pointed disregard, especially since it was unexpected.1 Even when Karl Straube gave the first performance of the Suite in Berlin in March the following year, the national music periodicals maintained their silence, whereas the daily papers published damning reviews.2
After Reger’s move to Weiden, the situation altered fundamentally: Caesar Hochstetter’s Biographisch-Kritische Skizze published at the end of 1898 in Die Redenden Künste turned the focus to Reger’s early works, especially the Suite in E minor op. 16. The following year the Chorale Fantasia “Ein’ feste Burg” op. 27, as well as the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor op. 29 were reviewed in several national periodicals. From then onwards Reger’s organ music attracted the attention of a broad and interested public. Reger himself consistently promoted his works through letters of thanks to reviewers, dedications and by widely distributing copies of his music.3
The reactions in the first Weiden years were all in all favorable, and Reger was generally acclaimed as a major talent. Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg, for example, in one of his first reviews in Urania already counted him among the “’stars’ in the organ firmament” (1899, Nr. 8) and dubbed him in his subsequent, nearly laudatory reviews as a “titan of the organ” (1899, Nr. 10). Even Rudolf Louis, with whom Reger later fell out, acknowledged in 1901 in Reger “a strong natural talent with great ability. The fact that his works almost without exception show a certain baroque superabundance and flamboyance, […] these faults […] seem to me to be a good, rather than a bad sign for a y o u n g composer” (Blätter für Haus- und Kirchenmusik, 1901). Georg Göhler, on the other hand, later one of Reger’s distinctive critics, reacted with a deliberately wait-and-see attitude – “His musical ability is outstanding. Whether he is one of those artists who really has something to say which is more than merely interesting and well-behaved time will tell” – and dismissed the works up to op. 40 altogether “studies” (Der Kunstwart, 1900, Nr. 23).
The fact that Reger’s organ music was often associated by the press with that of Johann Sebastian Bach, who was perceived as a father figure, did not only correspond with Reger’s own idea, but that of the spirit of the age (see Introduction, section Tradition and modernity). Rudolf Buck, for example, summarized that Reger had “made the expressive means of a Joh. Seb. Bach […] so much into his own, that he felt quite at home in it. Reger’s organ compositions breathe the magnificent daring of Bachian architectonics” (AMZ, 1899, Nr. 41). Even Göhler declared that the “emulation of the Bachian organ style, or rather, its continuation […] promised the best solution”, because this “took into account the nature of the instrument most of all”, but he warned that with Reger, the great model “was often too literally evident in his new works” (Der Kunstwart, 1900, Nr. 23). Eugen Segnitz gave a very moralistic interpretation of the “great style” intended with Reger’s interleaving of a Bachian-church-like aura, complex musical references and advanced performing and technical instrumental demands: Reger’s organ works “aspire to expansion in grand circumstances, a tonal language in genuine pathos, […] they are, in the true Bachian sense, intended and felt for church use, […] in them, organists are offered tasks which never allow the interest in technical difficulties, such as clever combinations, to wane […] Compared with an arist who should be taken as seriously as Reger, again seems to me to reveal the folly of the claim that everyone can sit at the feet of the great goddess Music, no matter how remote they are from goodness and evil”. (Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 1900, Nr. 27/28.)
Opinions were divided when it came to the Symphonic Fantasia op. 57. Whereas its “twin” (NZfM, 1902, Nr. 4), the op. 46 work characterized by the significant B-A-C-H motif, was generally positively received as an “imposing fantasia” (Der Kunstwart, 1901, first August issue) and as a “powerful […] prayer about the greatness and magnificence of the old master” (Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 1901, Dezember), in the perception of the Inferno Fantasia, the unaccustomed tonal language was the focus of attention. Otto Leßmann, defending both the work and its composer on the occasion of the first performance, wrote, “I can imagine that many listeners are startled by the exaggerated bold modulations of this composer, by the total reassessment of the term ‘organ style’ necessitated by his works and by his wild imagination […] however, it is undeniable that a completely distinctive personality has appeared on the scene here, who reveals himself musically, as he must do”.4 Yet, at the same time he qualified his remarks by saying that in Weiden, Reger had “lived and worked for too long isolated from the musical life of a major city” (AMZ, 1902, Nr. 9). A Berlin newspaper reported of the same occasion that the “fearlessness which the composer displays in the face of the tonal ugliness” offended “the ear in the most unpleasant way. […] With battered ears and unpleasantly taut nerves, I left the church after the Fantasia” (Vossische Zeitung, 22. Februar 1902). A performance of op. 57 led Rudolf Louis to complain that “with Reger there was something like a tonal and sound-psychological perversity”, to the extent that “for Reger […] ugliness […] becomes an end in itself” (Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 23. Juni 1903).
Other reviews, however, welcomed Reger’s compositional development as musical progress.5 Gottschalg pronounced: “Anyone who believed that the Munich organ titan was exhausted or that he could not intensify his productions is mightily mistaken” (Urania, 1904, Nr. 8). “‘Bravo Reger!’ I rejoice that old art has come to life again. Reger for ever!” (Urania, 1902, Nr. 1.)
Regardless of the increasing factionalism among music critics, in the years around 1900 Reger was able to attract a whole range of outstanding organists to promote his works. First and foremost was Karl Straube, who performed all new works straight away. And so, the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor op. 29, the 1st Sonata in F sharp minor op. 33 and the Fantasia and Fugue on B-A-C-H op. 46 received their premieres in 1898, 1899 and 1900, before their publication and from the specially produced autograph manuscripts; the Symphonic Fantasia and Fugue op. 57 was also premiered by Straube in 1902. As a concert organist who travelled widely, he performed these works not only in his usual sphere of activity in Wesel (premieres of opp. 29 and 46), but also in Essen (premiere of op. 33) and Berlin (premieres of opp. 16 and 57) and in the following period in Frankfurt a.M., Munich, Heidelberg, Leipzig and Basel (see Performances). Besides this, Reger had friendly contacts with the organists Karl Beringer (Ulm), Otto Burkert (Brno), Hermann Dettmer (Quakenbrück), Paul Gerhardt (Zwickau), Richard Jung (Greiz), Willem Petri (Utrecht) and Georg Stolz (Chemnitz), who likewise regularly championed his works. A few of them even visited him in Weiden, in order “to request a definitive explanation of the execution of technically tricky passages”.6 Reger’s detailed exchanges with interpreters and reviewers led Hermann Wilske to suppose “that during the whole period in Weiden there must have been […] a […] purposeful expectation among his circle of friends and acquaintances regarding the stylistic development of his organ works”.7
In one of Reger’s letters, he wrote that “the Berlin press showed itself in its true colors so utterly on the occasion of the performance of my Suite […] but I have critics here, against whom one could actually take legal proceedings […] One writes I would be the Social Democrat among present-day composers; for what I want is simply the overthrow of the musical status quo […] How infinitely comic, and at the same time also sad, such unbelievably stupid outbursts must sound, you can well imagine.” (Letter dated 11 April 1897 to Adalbert Lindner).
About this Blogpost
Authors:
Alexander Becker, Stefan König, Christopher Grafschmidt, Stefanie Steiner-Grage
Translations:
Elisabeth Robinson (en)
Date:
15th December 2011
Tags:
Module IVol. I/2
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Citation
Alexander Becker, Stefan König, Christopher Grafschmidt, Stefanie Steiner-Grage: RWA Volume I/2 – Fantasias and Fugues, Variations, Sonatas, Suites I; Early reception, in: Reger-Werkausgabe, www.reger-werkausgabe.de/rwa_post_00047, last check: 19th September 2024.
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