19TH CENTURY MUSIC Reger’s Bach and Historicist Modernism WALTER FRISCH Most accounts of Austro-German music from classicism has tended to overshadow histori- about 1885 until 1915, or roughly from the cist modernism, an earlier and soberer, but death of Wagner until the start of World War I, equally fascinating, phenomenon. 1 still tend to focus on chromaticism and atonal- Brahms plays a key role in the development ity as the barometers of emergent modernism. of historicist modernism. He showed how tech- Only more recently have we begun to under- niques of the remote past could be put in the stand that early modernism was a many- service of a musical language both expressive splendored thing, not restricted to late Mahler, and original. His a cappella sacred vocal works, Schoenberg and his pupils, and Strauss through steeped in Renaissance and Baroque principles, Elektra. One particularly rich vein of this pe- riod that has yet to be fully mined is what might be called historicist modernism, incor- 1Accounts of neoclassicism can be found in Scott Messing, porating music written in the years around 1900 Neoclassicism in Music: From the Genesis of the Concept that derives its compositional and aesthetic en- through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988); Stephen Hinton , The Idea of ergy not primarily from an impulse to be New, Gebrauchsmusik: A Study of Musical Aesthetics in the but from a deep and sophisticated engagement Weimar Republic (1919–1933) with Particular Reference with music of the past. I am not referring here to the Works of Paul Hindemith (New York: Garland, 1989); Richard Taruskin, “Back to Whom? Neoclassicism to neoclassicism, a term that normally con- as Ideology” (a review essay on the foregoing), this journal notes a repertory and practices associated with 16 (1993), 286–302; and “Historical Reection and Refer- Stravinsky, Hindemith, and other composers ence in Twentieth-Century Music: Neoclassicism and Be- yond,” a special segment of Journal of Musicology 9 (1991), of the 1920s and 30s. Often brash and cosmo- 411–97, with articles by J. Peter Burkholder, Joseph N. politan—and self-consciously au courant—neo- Straus, Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, and Scott Messing. 296 19th-Century Music, XXV/2–3, pp. 296–312. ISSN: 0148-2076. © 2002 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 13:13:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions are of course prime examples, but the most In this article I would like to investigate WALTER FRISCH extraordinary and inuential product of his his- Reger’s historicist modernism, rst by sketch- Reger’s toricist imagination is the nale of the Fourth ing aspects of contemporary Bach reception and Bach and Historicist Symphony from 1885. With its unique fusion examining Reger’s activities in that context, Modernism of ancient and contemporary practice, this then discussing in greater detail two composi- passacaglia had a profound impact on subse- tions from different periods of his career, his quent composers. Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, First Suite for Organ, op. 16 (1895), and his Reger, and Zemlinsky all wrote pieces modeled Bach Variations for Piano, op. 81 (1904). after or partially inspired by Brahms’s nale. 2 Max Reger understood perhaps better than I any other composer of his generation that for The signs of engagement with Bach around Brahms the music of the past was not a crutch 1900, many and diverse, intensied a nine- but a creative stimulus. “What assures Brahms teenth-century trend, which had begun with immortality,” he wrote in 1896 (and reiterated Forkel and continued with Wagner, Spitta, and in later years), “is never and will never be his many others, of seeing Bach as embodiment of reliance on old masters, but the fact that he the German spirit. 5 One practical goal was to knew how to produce new, unimagined psy- get Bach’s works actively into the repertory of chological [ seelisch] moods on the basis of his performers in both secular and sacred and pro- own psychological makeup.”3 fessional and nonprofessional contexts. The One could say much the same for Reger’s Neue Bach-Gesellschaft came into being on 27 historicist modernism, which is modeled on January 1900, as successor to the old one, with that of Brahms and which is most evident in the goal (as stated in its bylaws) “to make the his attitudes toward and assimilation of the works of the great German composer Johann music of J. S. Bach. Reger’s reception of Bach Sebastian Bach a creative force among the Ger- exemplies an important development in the man people and in those countries that are years around 1900, when Bach began to edge open to serious German music, and in particu- out Beethoven as a principal model for many lar to make his sacred works useful for the composers in Austria and Germany. As Rudolf worship service.”6 To that end, the NBG began Stephan has observed, Bach’s music came to publishing the Bach-Jahrbuch (which rst ap- represent both an Altklassik alongside the peared in 1904), initiated a series of moveable Klassik and a pathway forward among the many Bach festivals to be held in different locales crosscurrents of modernism. 4 every few years, and planned editions of both instrumental and sacred vocal works “für den praktischen Gebrauch.”7 2Schoenberg, “Nacht,” from Pierrot lunaire (1912), and The rst two decades of the twentieth cen- Passacaglia for Orchestra (fragment from 1926); Berg, tury would see a rash of publications assessing Altenberg Lieder, op. 4, no. 5 (1912); Webern, Passacaglia or advocating Bach’s position with the modern for Orchestra, op. 1 (1908); Reger, nale of First Organ Suite, op. 16 (1895); Zemlinsky, nale of Symphony in B (1897). 3Cited in Johannes Lorenzen, Max Reger als Bearbeiter Bachs (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1982), p. 86 (trans. 5For a summary of this phenomenon, see Michael mine). Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Heinemann and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, “Der ‘deutsche’ German are my own. Bach,” in Bach und die Nachwelt, ed. Heinemann and 4Rudolf Stephan, “Max Regers Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert: Hinrichsen, vol. II (Laaber: Laaber, 1999), pp. 11–28. See Über ihre Herkunft und Wirkung,” in Musiker der also the still valuable study by Friedrich Blume, Two Cen- Moderne: Porträts und Skizzen, ed. Albrecht Riethmüller turies of Bach: An Account of Changing Taste (New York: (Laaber: Laaber, 1996), p. 37. Stephan’s are among the most Da Capo, 1978). thoughtful writings on Bach reception among German com- 6“Satzungen der Neuen Bachgesellschaft,” in Arnold posers around 1900. See also his “Johann Sebastian Bach Schering, Die neue Bachgesellschaft, 1900–1910 (Leipzig: und die Anfänge der Neuen Musik,” in Vom musikalischen Breitkopf and Härtel, 1911), p. 21. Denken: Gesammelte Vorträge, ed. Rainer Damm and 7See Schering, Die neue Bachgesellschaft, for details on all Andreas Traub (Mainz: Schott, 1985), pp. 18–24; and the early activities and publications of the NBG. I am “Schoenberg and Bach,” in Schoenberg and His World, ed. grateful to Steven Crist for alerting me to this pamphlet Walter Frisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), and to Christoph Wolff for securing a copy from the Bach- pp. 126–40. Archiv in Leipzig. 297 This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 13:13:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH world. In its inaugural issue in the fall of 1901, that “Bach help our age to attain the spiritual CENTURY MUSIC the journal Die Musik featured as its lead ar- unity and fervour of which it so sorely stands ticle “Johann Sebastian Bach und die Deutsche in need.”10 This sentence does not appear in Musik der Gegenwart,” by Wilibald Nagel, a the original French edition of 1905. critic-historian from Darmstadt. Besides rehash- In 1913 August Halm would publish his Von ing the idea of Bach as national icon, Nagel zwei Kulturen der Musik, the rst modern study sounds a note that would become very charac- to place the “culture” of Bach’s fugal polyphony teristic of Bach reception: Bach as healthy, as on an equal status (and in a dialectical relation- restorative within a culture that was seen by ship) with that of Beethoven’s sonata forms. many as decadent or sick. He argues that the Halm analyzes a number of Bach themes for artistic world is dominated by Sensation, by an their organic growth and integrity, for their emphasis on the sensuous, for which Bach could “spiritual, biological unity,” and for their pow- help provide a “Wiedergesundung.”8 erful “life force” or Lebenskraft .11 Halm’s work Four years later, the editors of Die Musik had a direct inuence on that of his friend would follow up on Nagel’s theme by conduct- Ernst Kurth, whose Grundlagen des linearen ing a full-edged survey on the question “Was Kontrapunkts appeared in 1917. For Kurth, Bach ist mir Johann Sebastian Bach und was bedeutet is the greatest manifestation of the way in which er für unsere Zeit?” (What does Johann Sebastian a dynamically owing melodic line can gener- Bach mean to me and what is his importance ate larger polyphonic and formal structures. for our era?). Opinions were sought from virtu- Expanding on Halm’s view of the generative ally every major living gure in music, not powers of Bach’s melodies, he attempts to dem- only those within the Austro-German sphere onstrate “kinetic energy” in individual phrases like Mahler, Reger, Schillings, Artur Nikisch, or passages from Bach’s works.