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 moderni sm 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 Reection 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 inuential product of his his- Reger’s historicist modernism, Žrst by sketch- Reger’s toricist imagination is the Žnale 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 contempora ry 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 Žnale. 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, intensiŽ ed 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- exempliŽes 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 Žrst 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 Žrst 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, Ž nale of First Organ Suite, op. 16 (1895); Zemlinsky, Žnale 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 Micha el 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 Herkunf t 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 Bachgese llschaft,” 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 Vorträ ge, 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.

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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 Žrst 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 in uence 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 Žgure 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. 12 and Guido Adler, but also the farther- ung The critic Paul Bekker, in an essay of 1919 Sibelius, Glazunov, Debussy , Leonca vallo, entitled “ Neue Musik,” cites Kurth favorably Puccini, Grieg, MacDowell, and Elgar. Among and characterizes the awareness of Bach as the responses (received from about half of those Melodist as a key feature of the modern era in contacted), to which Die Musik devoted al- music: most an entire issue, the metaphor associated with Bach by Nagel in 1901—that of health— Our position vis a vis Bach is . . . a very different one surfaces with striking frequency. 9 from that of the earlier generations. We see in Bach In his response to the survey, Albert not only the great master of contrapuntal technique, Schweitzer stressed the more religious and mys- we see in him not only the powerful tone poet; we tical side of Bach: Bach as Tröster, as com- also see in him principally the unmatched shaper of melodies. His melodic art was founded in an unprec- forter. Yet a few years later, he may be said to edented power of linear musical sensibility, for which have put his two pfennig into the discussion later eras despite their Bach cult had little regard. 13 reected in the pages of Die Musik. In the German edition of his Bach study, published in 1908, Schweitzer added at the very end the plea

10Albert Schweitzer, J. S. Bach, trans. [from the German 8Willibald Nagel, “Johann Sebastian Bach und die Deutsche edn.] Ernest Newman (Boston: Humphries, 1911), vol. II, Musik der Gegenwart,” Die Musik 1/1 (1901), 207. Nagel’s p. 468. article and other aspects of Bach reception in the years 11August Halm, Von zwei Kulturen der Musik (3rd edn. before World War I are treated in Wolfgang Rathert, “Kult Stuttgart: Klett, 1947), pp. 206, 218. und Kritik: Aspekte der Bach-Rezeption vor dem Ersten 12See Ernst Kurth, Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Lee A. Weltkrieg,” in Bach und die Nachwelt, vol. III (Laaber: Rothfarb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Laaber, 2000), pp. 23–61. for excerpts from Grundlagen. For an assessment of Kurth’s 9“Was ist mir Johann Sebastian Bach und was bedeutet er thought, see, in addition to Rothfarb’s illuminating com- für unsere Zeit?” Die Musik 5/1 (1905), 3–78. For further ments in that volume, his Ernst Kurth as Theorist and discussion of this survey, see Walter Frisch, “Bach, Brahms, Analyst (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, and the Emergence of Musical Modernism,” in Bach Per- 1988). spectives 3, ed. Michael Marissen (Lincoln: University of 13Paul Bekker, “Neue Musik,” in his Neue Musik (Stuttgart: Nebraska Press, 1998), pp. 126–29. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1923), pp. 100–01.

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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 For Bekker, Bach’ s melodic art could show seems to be an act of restoration. He is reach- WALTER FRISCH the way to a modern musical language not by ing back, often obsessively or desperately, to Reger’s mere imitation or “ superŽcial” adoption, but the world of Bach that is acknowledged as past Bach and Historicist only when “the spirit of a new age can recog- and that must be reconstituted in contempo- Modernism nize and readapt stylistic elements of an older rary terms. art.” Bekker is calling not for neoclassicism, but for a profound historical-structural engage- II ment with music of the past, especially Bach’s. Reger’s response to the 1905 survey in Die The one composer he mentions speciŽcally in Musik on the contemporary signiŽcance of Bach this context is Reger, whom he calls “the Žrst reads as follows: to make reference in his art to that past which for us, insofar as we want to connect with a Sebastian Bach is for me the beginning and end of all past at all, is the most fruitful; he was the Žrst music; upon him rests, and from him originates, all to reach beyond the classic-romantic models to real progress! Bach.”14 What does—pardon, what should—Sebastian Bach Bekker anticipates the remarks of Stephan mean for our era? A really powerful, inexhaustible medicine, not cited above in positing Bach as an alternative only for all those composers and musicians who around 1900 to the standard “ classic-roman- suffer from “misunderstood Wagner,” but for all those tic” models. In his description of adapting older “contemporaries,” who suffer from spinal maladies styles “in the spirit of a new age” Bekker also of any kind. To be “Bachian” means: to be authenti- provides as plausible a characterization of his- cally German, unyielding. toricist modernism in music— and of the role That Bach could be misunderstood for so long, is of Reger’s Bach reception within it—as we might the greatest scandal for the “critical wisdom” of the want. We need not worry the concept of his- eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 17 toricism in its many Germanic guises, a topic that has Ž lled many books. 15 But we might Reger touches here on virtually all the major turn briey to Carl Dahlhaus’s concise account themes of contemporary Bach reception—Bach of musical historicism, which he sees as dialec- as progressive, Bach as German, Bach as sturdy, tically divided in the nineteenth century into Bach as healthy. But his relationship with Bach two basic attitudes, “ tradition” and “ restora- went far beyond fervent admiration; it ap- tion.” In the Ž rst, “ past and present form an proached what Johannes Lorenzen has aptly indissoluble alloy.” The past is not alienated or called “monomaniacal identiŽcation.” Reger’ s viewed as something foreign; rather, “ past letters and reported comments are full of refer- things form an essential part of the present.” ences to “Allvater Bach,” on whom he would Many works of Brahms, which impart a sense call in times of need. In 1902 Reger described of identiŽcation that indicate s continuity, to his Žancée Elsa his work on an arrangement would seem to capture this kind of historicism. of Bach’s Cantata 93 (“Wer nur den lieben Gott “Restoration,” however, implies the acknowl- läß t walten” ) as a “spiritual chalybeate bath edgment of a gulf that must be bridged in an act of understanding. 16 Reger’s music often (Regensburg: Bosse, 1969); and Leo Treitler, Music and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1989). 14Bekker, “Neue Musik,” pp. 102, 100. 17“Seb. Bach ist für mich Anfang und Ende aller Musik; 15See Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: auf ihm ruht und fusst jeder wahre Fortschritt! Was Seb. The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder Bach fü r unsere Zeit bedeutet— pardon— bedeuten sollte? to the Present (rev. edn. Wesleyan: Wesleyan University Ein gar kräftigliches, nie versiegendes Heilmittel nicht nur Press, 1983); and Reinhart Koselleck , Futures Past: On the für alle jene Komponisten und Mu siker, d ie an Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cam- ‘missverstandenem Wagner’ erkrankt sind, sondern für alle bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985). jene ‘Zeitgenossen,’ die an Rückenmarksschwindsucht jeder 16Carl Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, trans. J. B. Art leiden. ‘Bachisch’ sein heisst: urgermanisch, Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), unbeugsam sein. Dass Bach so lange verkannt sein konnte, pp. 70, 67. On musical historicism, see also Die Aus- ist die grösste Blamage für die ‘kritische Weisheit’des 18. breitung des Historismus über die Musik, ed. Walter Wiora und 19. Jahrhunderts” ( Die Musik 5/1 [1905], 74).

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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 [Stahlbad].”18 Bach became an essential com- •two arrangements of Bach’s violin sonatas for CENTURY violin and piano. MUSIC panion to a composer who was plagued by self- doubt, was physically and psychically restless, •two arrangements of Bach’s cantatas, with re- 20 suffered from alcoholism, and composed and alized organ part. performed with compulsive prolixity. Antonius Bittmann has related Reger’ s personality and We can add to this list Reger’s edition of his musical style to a Žn-de-siècle culture ob- Bach’s keyboard works prepared with August sessed with, and often characterized by, ner- Schmid-Lindner for Schott and his revision of vousness—or, as it was often called around 1900, Joseph Rheinberger’s two-piano arrangement of neurasthenia. 19 the “Goldberg” Variations. Lorenzen has given us what is undoubtedly Reger’s Bach arrangements and transcriptions the most complete picture to date of Reger’s had varying purposes. Some of the earliest tran- Bach-Pege as re ected in the vast array of scriptions of organ works for the piano, from arrangements and transcriptions. These cover 1895 and 1896, were virtuoso pieces destined virtually all genres and span almost Reger’ s for concert use, much in the mode of Busoni entire career, from 1895 to 1916. The numbers (whose transcriptions were a direct inspiration are astonishing: Reger edited, arranged, or tran- for Reger) or d’ Albert. Also intended for the scribed 428 individual pieces by Bach. No other concert hall were some of the arrangements of composer since Bach himself was so deeply, the concertos and orchestral music for smaller indeed pathologically, involved with his works. ensembles. The four-hand arrangements of the Reger’s activity in this sphere can be sum- Brandenburg Concertos (and of some of the or- marized as follows: gan works) were offered as Hausmusik. The transcriptions of the two-part inventions for •thirty-four arrangements of Bach organ works, organ and of selected chorale preludes for piano for either piano two-hands or four-hands, or were for instructional use. The cantata arrange- for two pianos. These include larger works like ments and some of the transcriptions for organ preludes or toccatas and fugues, as well as cho- of keyboard works were intended for the Prot- rale preludes. estant liturgy. 21 •thirty-Žve arrangements for organ of Bach key- Lorenzen locates Reger’s Bach-related activi- board works. These include some Preludes and ties directly under the rubric of historicism, Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, the which was a fundamental part of Reger’s artis- Two-Part Inventions, and the Chromatic Fan- tic formation with Hugo Riemann, with whom tasy and Fugue. he studied from 1890 to 1895. That a composer •fourteen arrangement s of Bach’ s orchestral works for four-hand piano or for chamber en- of Reger’s ability should have as his principal semble, including the Orchestral Suites and teacher not another composer, but a musicolo- the Brandenburg Concertos. gist—moreover a musicologist of the status and •seven arrangements of solo concertos, often authority of Riemann—does indeed constitute, for chamber ensemble, or with piano reduc- as Lorenzen says, a “unique constellation.”22 tion of the orchestral part. But ultimately Reger’s Bach was not Riemann’s Bach. For Riemann, Bach was part of a formidable past that was being brought to 18Johannes Lorenzen, Max Reger als Bearbeiter Bachs, pp. light by historical research and that had to be 55, 52. absorbed into the music of the present. “ Be- 19Antoninus Bittmann, Negotiating Past and Present: Max hind Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, now Reger and Fin-de-siècle Modernisms (Ph.D. diss., Eastman School of Music, 2000), chap. 7. On Reger’ s Bach recep- Gluck, Handel, and Bach have risen again as tion, see also Helmut Wirth, “ Der Ein uß von Johann Sebastian Bach auf Max Regers Schaffen,” in Max Reger 1873–1973: Ein Symposion, ed. Klaus Röhring (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf and Hä rtel, 1974), pp. 3– 20; and Friedhelm 20For more details, see Lorenzen, Max Reger als Bearbeiter Krummacher, “ Auseinandersetzung im Abstand: Ü ber Bachs, pp. 18–25. Regers Verhältnis zu Bach,” in Reger-Studien 5, ed. Susanne 21See Lorenzen, Max Reger als Bearbeiter Bachs, pp. 59– Shigihara (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1993), pp. 11– 60. 39. 22Ibid., p. 30.

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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 the Žrst great masters of the most recent past,” At this point in his career, Reger steered WALTER FRISCH Riemann intoned in “Degeneration und Regen- clear of the genres in which the major musico- Reger’s eration in der Musik,” a broadside of 1907 aimed political battles of the later nineteenth century Bach and Historicist at contemporary music. “And behind them in were being fought. He avoided the post-Wagne- Modernism turn rise up Palestrina and Lasso as witnesses rian symphonic poem and music drama, culti- of a period that lies still further in the past, and vated by Strauss, Schillings, and PŽtzner. After the greatness of whose music, which at Ž rst an initial urry of chamber music (ops. 1, 2, 3, sounds strange to us, must be, and will be, 5, from 1890 to 1892), Reger created little in exemplary for the music of the present and that medium until after 1900. He thus may be future, just as the art of the Renaissance and said also to have avoided at this point continu- Antiquity are for the visual arts.” 23 All this ing the traditio n strongly associa ted with sounds very much like a musicologist placing a Brahms, where Žgures like the young clammy and restrictive hand on the music of Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, and countless Brahms his own time. Re ger broke publicl y with epigones (Robert Fuchs a nd He inrich von Riemann over the “Degeneration” article. In a Herzogenberg, for example) located themselves. response, he proudly included himself among In organ music Reger found an area that offered the “moderns” like Strauss and endorsed a vi- rich possibilities because it was largely sion of music in which one could revere the unplowed. older masters and still “ride to the left,” a meta- Most commentators recognize the summit phor that he takes from— and turns against— of Reger’s Bach receptio n in the so-calle d Riemann.24 Weiden organ works, written between 1898 and 1901, when he returned to live with his parents III and be treated for nervous exhaustion and alco- Reger’s own compositions give a better pic- holism. These colossal pieces include three ture of this left-tilting historicism than either Chorale Fantasies (ops. 27, 30, and 40); three his arrangements or his polemical writings. It Fantasies and Fugues (op. 29; the Fantasy and seems clear that the ood of organ works that Fugue on BACH, op. 46; and the Symphonic issued from Reger for about a decade, from the Fantasy and Fugue, op. 57); and two sonatas mid-1890s until 1905, were part of a deter- (ops. 33 and 60). 26 I would like to focus on two mined attempt to forge a modernist style in the Bach-inspired works composed on either side image of Bach, the composer most closely asso- of the Weiden period, the First Organ Suite, op. ciated with the instrument. Heinrich Reimann, 16, and the Bach Variations for Piano, op. 81, a leading writer on music and one of the most which together provide an equally rich picture renowned organists of the time, urged all play- of Reger’s historicist modernism. ers and prospective composers for organ to steep Reger completed his Suite for Organ in E themselves in the style of Bach. He wrote in Minor, op. 16, on 23 July 1895, near the end of 1894, using the metaphor of health or safety his formal study with Riemann. He had begun that would dominate the responses to the 1905 the work in 1894 as a “sonata” in three move- survey: “Beyond this style there is no salvation ments, comprising an introduction and triple [Heil] . . . Bach becomes for that reason the fugue; an Adagio based on the chorale “Es ist criterion of our art of writing for the organ.”25 das Heil uns kommen her”; and a passacaglia. The work evolved into a “suite” in four move- ments, although the Suite in fact resembles a 23Hugo Riemann, “Degeneration und Regeneration in der Musik,” in Max Hesses Deutscher Musikerkalender fü r das Jahr 1908, rpt. in “Die Konfusion in der Musik”: Felix Draeseke’s Kampschrift von 1906 und ihre Folgen, ed. Susanne Shigihara (Bonn: Gudrun Schröder, 1990), p. 249. 24Max Reger, “ Degeneration und Regeneratio n in der Musik,” Neue Musik-Zeitung 29 (1907); rpt. in “Die Konfusion in der Musik,” pp. 250–58. 26Other instrumental works directly inspired by Bach in- 25Cited in Hermann Wilske, Max Reger—Zur Rezeption in clude the Preludes and Fugues for Solo Violin, ops. 117 seiner Zeit (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1995), p. 104. and 131a.

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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 sonata.27 The Adagio was expanded to a ternary to know my Organ Suite (with Passacaglia). CENTURY MUSIC form, of which the middle part incorporates (Bach varied the theme 21 times in his; I have two more chorales, “ Aus tiefer Not” and the done it 32 times.)”31 Passion Chorale, “O Haupt voll Blut und In the spring of 1896, Reger felt sufŽciently Wunden.” Between the original second and third conŽdent to send a copy of the Suite to his idol, movements Reger added an Intermezzo in the Brahms. This was the occasion of his only di- form of a scherzo with trio. rect contact with the older composer, who Reger dedicated his Suite not, as was to be would die the following April. In his accompa- his practice, to a living Žgure he admired, but nying letter, Reger asked Brahms’s permission “To the Memory of Johann Sebastian Bach” to dedicate to him a symphony in progress (a (Den Manen Johann Sebastian Bachs). The work, work that was never completed). Brahms re- which appeared in 1896, was given its premiere plied with the following note: by Reger’s friend, the virtuoso organist Karl Straube on 4 March 1897, in Berlin. The strongly Dear Sir! I give you heartfelt thanks for your historicist orientation of the score was remarked letter, whose warm, indeed too friendly, words were by critics, including on e reviewer in the very sympathetic to me. Moreover, you spoil me Monthly Musical Record, who noted that the with the lovely offer of a dedication. “boldness” of the inscription to Bach was “in Permission for that is certainly not necessary, however! I had to smile, since you approach me large measure justiŽed” by Reger’s “knowledge about this matter and at the same time enclose a of harmony, of counterpoint, canon, and fugue, work whose all-too-bold dedication terriŽes me! 28 and of part-writing generally.” Reger himself You may then without concern set down the thought the Suite was the best thing he had name of your most respectful composed up to that time. 29 Seeking a wider J. Brahms.32 audience for it than it might receive as an or- gan work, he arranged it for piano four-hands, Brahms provided no comments on the Suite, as one might a symphony. 30 but he did enclose an autographed picture of Reger alluded to the signiŽcance of the Or- himself and asked the young composer to re- gan Suite in a letter he wrote to Riemann in ciprocate.33 August 1895, as the latter was leaving Brahms might have been “terriŽed” by not Wiesbaden and as Reger’s formal instruction only the dedication of the suite to Bach—one with him came to a close: “As a young musi- could scarcely imagine him doing something cian, who, full of the noblest enthusiasm, con- similar—but also by the close associations with tinued to serve only his masters Bach, a work of his own. Reger’ s Suite concludes Beethoven, and Brahms and to absorb them with a passacaglia in E minor that bears more within himself, I ask your permission that this young unknown musician may give you and your wife once again the most heartfelt and 31Der junge Reger, p. 246. Reger refers of course to Bach’s best thanks. . . . As your student I will not Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 582, a work he bring you any dishonor. As proof you must get arranged for four-hand piano at this time (see Lorenzen, Max Reger als Bearbeiter Bachs, p. 18). By counting twenty- one variations in Bach, Reger seems to consider the initial thematic statement as a variation. In the Bach there are 27The terminology was fairly uid in the nineteenth cen- twenty-one total statements of the theme, and twenty ac- tury as far as multimovement organ works. Reger even tual “ variations.” Reger seems to recko n his own quipped that “our organ sonatas are really closer to suites” passacaglia in a similar way; yet he is nonetheless in error, (cited in Martin Weyer, Die Orgelwerke Max Regers unless he is referring to an earlier version of the passacaglia [Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel, 1989], p. 31). that no longer survives. Reger’s movement, as it appears 28Anonymous review of 1 July 1896, rpt. in Der junge in the original manuscript and in printed editions, has Reger: Briefe und Dokumente vor 1900, ed. Susanne Popp twenty-nine variations, or thirty total statements of the (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf and Härtel, 2000), p. 275. theme. It is hard to see how he comes up with the number 29Max Reger, Briefe eines deutschen Meisters: Ein thirty-two. Lebensbild, ed. Else von Hase-Koehler (Leipzig: Koehler & 32Der junge Reger, p. 265. The letter is misdated as March Amelang, 1928), p. 54. 1897 in Briefe eines deutschen Meisters, pp. 54–55. 30Despite Reger’ s strong advocacy, the arrangement was 33The photographs exchanged by Brahms and Reger are not published. See Der junge Reger, pp. 280–82. reproduced in Der junge Reger, p. 274.

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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 than a passing resemblance to the Ž nale of kommen her,” never appears in a purely me- WALTER FRISCH Brahms’s Fourth Symphony. Reger’s Žnale is in lodic form, but is elaborately decorated in the Reger’s fact an extraordinary synthesis of past and upper voice (ex. 1; chorale tune added above Bach and Historicist present, drawing on Bach’s C-Minor Passacaglia example). The models for this portion of Reger’s Modernism (the model acknowledged by Reger in his letter movement seem to be the chorale preludes from cited above) and on the Ž nales of Joseph Bach’s Orgelbüchlein that have been called “or- Rheinberger’s Organ Sonata No. 8, op. 132 namental,” where the tune appears in the so- (1882), and Brahms’ s Fourth Symphony, both prano part complete and continuous, but highly also in the key of E minor. embellished. These preludes would include As Martin Weyer has shown, Reger’ s Suite “Das alte Jahr vergangen ist” (BWV 614), “ O follows closely the structure of Rheinberger’s Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross” (BWV 622), Sonata No. 8, which has as its Žrst movement and “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein” (BWV an Introduction and Fugue in E minor; as its 641).35 second or slow movement an “ Intermezzo” “O Mensch” must have been Reger’ s pri- marked Andante (in E major); as the third a mary inspiration. In the Bach-Gesellschaft edi- “scherzoso” in A minor; and as a Žnale a tion that Reger would have known (volume passacaglia. 34 The similarities extend to numer- 25), this chorale prelude is the one of the few ous details as well. Both introductions begin from the Orgelbüchlein to appear with a tempo with tonic pedal points, which are followed by indication (presumably Bach’ s own), Adagio dissonant chromatic chords and scalar  our- assai, precisely the tempo marking Reger gave ishes. The principal fugue themes are close in to the A segment of his slow movement. “ O shape. In both works material from the slow Mensch” seems moreover to have been one of introduction is brought back at the end of the Reger’s favorite among Bach’s chorale preludes. passacaglia. It took pride of place—as the Žrst—in the edi- Besides following the “ sonata” model of tion of the thirteen Bach chorale preludes he Rheinberger, Reger might be said to adopt the arranged for solo piano, published in 1900. (It “symphonic” design of Brahms, as manifested was in the preface to this edition that he fa- in the Ž rst three symphonies, in which the mously called the chorale preludes of Bach outer movements are the largest and most im- “symphonic poems in miniature.” ) In 1915 posing, while the two interior ones are on a Reger published two different arrangements of smaller, more intimate scale. The model of “O Mensch” as an instrumental “aria,” one for Brahms’s Fourth Symphony lies—remotely, but violin and keyboard and another for string or- signiŽcantly— behind the larger plan of Reger’s chestra.36 Suite. The key signatures of Reger’s four move- Rudolf Huesgen points to what he calls a ments match precisely those of Brahms: one Parsifalstimmung in the A segment of Reger’s sharp in the outer movements, Žve sharps for Adagio and at the same time identiŽes an “ex- the Adagio, and no sharps or ats for the Inter- alted religious mysticism, such as we sense in mezzo. Three of Reger’s movements do in fact the St. Matthew Passion and in certain canta- share Brahms’ s keys: E minor for Žrst move- tas by Bach.”37 Indeed, Wagner and Bach, who ment and Žnale, and B major for the Adagio. I would like to look in some more detail at two movements from Reger’s Suite, the slow 35See Russell Stinson, Bach: The Orgelbüchlein (New York: movement and Ž nale. The Adagio assai is at Schirmer, 1996), pp. 70–73. 36See Lorenzen, Reger als Bearbeiter, p. 20. The arrange- once a Classical-Romantic slow movement with ment for string orchestra has been given a ravishing (if a ternary form (ABA) and a composite neo- slow) recording by Dennis Russell Davies and the Stuttgart Baroque chorale prelude. The chorale on which Chamber Orchestra (Dabringhaus and Grimm, MDG 321 0940-2). The similarity of Reger’ s Adagio to Bach’ s “O the A segment (the original slow movement of Mensch” is noted by Rudolf Huesgen ( Der junge Reger the 1894 sonata) is based, “Es ist das Heil uns und seine Orgelwerke [Inaugural-diss., Freiburg, 1935], p. 72), who, however, does not comment on either the strik- ing identity of tempo indication or Reger’ s later arrange- ments of the chorale prelude. 34Weyer, Orgelwerke, p. 17. 37Huesgen, Der junge Reger, p. 72.

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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 n

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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 Più andante WALTER 11 II 8’ 4’ FRISCH Reger’s Bach and (II) Historicist poco a poco crescendo Modernism I 8’ 4’

16’ 8’

(“Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir”)

15

(II) sempre poco a poco crescendo e stringendo (I)

Example 2: Max Reger, Organ Suite, op. 16, movt. II (with chorale text added).

join hands in certain moments of Meistersinger unmistakably to Bach’ s own chorale prelude and Parsifal, are both plausible inspirations for on the same tune from part III o f the Reger’s Adagio, which, however, is character- Clavierübung (BWV 686). This is the most ized by a thicker and busier contrapuntal tex- elaborately contrapuntal of Bach’s chorale pre- ture than either of his predecessors would have ludes, in which the chorale is likewise treated provided in such an instance. in six-part imitation through the use of a double The contrasting B section of Reger’s Adagio, pedal. in B minor, is in two parts, each based on a Reger develops the chorale tune “Aus tiefer different chorale, “Aus tiefer Not” and the Pas- Not” for sixteen measures, modulating to the sion chorale (“O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden”), dominant, F . After this densely polyphonic dis- respectively. 38 The two chorales are developed course comes a long fermata, and the Passion successively—and in different ways— and are chorale begins as a solo line, marked “Adagio then combined in counterpoint. “ Aus tiefer (recitativo)” (ex. 3). Reger has gone from the Not” is treated by Reger fugally in as many as most “instrumental” of textures and styles to six parts (ex. 2; chorale text added by me). Reger the most vocal. In this section, phrases of the also manages to Žt in stretto (m. 16) and aug- Passion chorale alternate between a recitative mentation (mm. 17–18). Reger’s elaborate treat- manner and fuller Žve-part writing that is ment of “Aus tiefer Not” alludes directly and clearly meant to imitate choral style. Just as Reger’s treatment of “Aus tiefer Not” brings to mind Bach’s six-part chorale prelude, so his use of the Passion chorale reminds us of the St. 38To avoid confusion, I refer to this chorale tune by the more general designation, as the Passion chorale, follow- Matthew Passion, where it plays a starring role. ing J. S. Bach, ed. Malcolm Boyd (Oxford: Oxford Univer- In the B section of his Adagio, then, Reger sity Press, 1999), p. 361, because it is associated in Bach’s seeks to embrace both sides of Bach—Bach the work with several different texts (including, in the St. Matthew Passion, “O Haupt voll Blut,” “ Herzlich tut mich instrumental composer -contrapuntalist and verlangen,” and “Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden”). Bach the composer of sacred vocal music. In

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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 Adagio(recitativo) a tempo CENTURY 27 II 8’4’ MUSIC

I

16’ 8’

Example 3: Max Reger, Organ Suite, op. 16, movt. II, Passion chorale.

36 die Melodie hervortretend ritenuto

I (II)

Example 4: Max Reger, Organ Suite, op. 16, movt. II, superimposition of “Aus tiefer Not” and Passion chorale.

the closing measures of the B section, Reger nipulated to produce serves to reinforce the brings together the two tunes, “Aus tiefer Not” presentness—the modernity, as it were—of the and the Passion chorale, in a Žnal gesture of music and our reception of it. contrapuntal legerdemain (ex. 4). The Ž nale of Reger’s E-Minor Suite is less No one could mistake Reger’s Adagio for a strikingly original than the Adagio, but is if work by Bach, nor for one by Brahms in his anything more synoptic, drawing on several pre- historicizing, Bachian mode, as in the late Cho- vious passacaglias (ex. 5). The themes by Bach, rale Preludes, op. 122 (which were yet to be Brahms, Rheinberger, and Reger share the triple composed at the time Reger wrote his Suite). meter characteristic of the passacaglia genre and The language and the quality of expression are follow a standard eight-measure pattern. 39 From uniquely those of Reger, whom we sense is Bach and Rheinberger, Reger adapts the con- constructing a modern music by delicately han- dling the relics of a beloved past. Reger seems to acknowledge a gulf between himself and the past, yet does not wallow in nostalgia. As 39In all the literature on Brahms’s passacaglia, I have not seen the Rheinberger movement mentioned as a possible throughout his œuvre, he places a high value source, although it appeared two years before Brahms be- on craft, especially on counterpoint. The coun- gan to work on his Žnale. (For an assessment of the likely terpoint leads to a higher level of ambient dis- inspirations for Brahms, see Raymond Knapp, “The Finale of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony: The Tale of the Subject,” sonance than we would Žnd in Bach, or even in this journal 13 [1989], 3– 17.) It is certainly possible that Brahms. The dissonance creates for the listener Brahms knew the Rheinberger Sona ta. Weyer ( Die a level of discomfort that is clearly intentional Orgelwerke, p. 26) adduces as another possible source for Reger a passacaglia theme in B minor from an organ work on Reger’ s part. The disjunction between the by Gustav Merkel, composed in 1885, which seems to historical technique and the sonority it is ma- borrow from both Bach and Brahms.

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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 a. Bach, Passacaglica, BWV 582 WALTER FRISCH Reger’s Bach and Historicist Modernism b. Rheinberger, Sonata No. 8, op. 132, Žnale (1882)

c. Brahms, Fourth Symphony, Žnale (1885)

d. Reger, Organ Suite, op. 16, Žnale (1894–95)

Example 5: Passacaglia themes.

tour of large leaps followed by half- or whole- their “returns.” At variation 25 Reger returns step motion. From Brahms he takes the initial the theme to the bass for the Žnal, culminating rising stepwise ascent, as well as the introduc- group of variations. tion of one, and only one, chromatic note (aside Another model lies behind Reger’ s passa- from the leading tone), A , or the raised fourth. caglia (as it does behind Brahms’s). This is Bach’s The total number of Reger’s variations (twenty- Chaconne in D Minor for Solo Violin (BWV nine) is closely in line with Brahms (thirty). 1004), which turns to the major mode for a (Rheinberger, with twenty-four variations plus series of variations almost exactly half-way a coda, lies somewhere in between.) through the movement (a feature shared by As in the Bach C-Minor Passacaglia, Reger’s neither Bach’s C-Minor Passacaglia nor Rhein- Žrst variation introduces rhythmic syncopation berger’s). As in Bach’s chaconne and Brahms’s in the upper voices. But where Bach abandons Žnale, the turn to the major mode is associated the syncopation after variation 2, Reger is more with softer dynamics and a slowing of the systematic in continuing and developing it rhythm. In all three works— Bach’ s chaconne across the Ž rst Ž ve variations. A feature of and Brahms’ s and Reger’ s passacaglias— these Bach’s C-Minor Passacaglia that Reger may be changes make for a kind of internal slow move- said to have adopted via Brahms is moving the ment. ostinato in a middle group of variations into From Brahms, Reger also takes the concept the upper voices, then staging a kind of “re- of creating real countermelodies that at times turn” in the bass. Reger’ s procedure in the overshadow the passacaglia theme. Brahms be- passacaglia is again a kind of sophisticated syn- gins that process already with the second varia- thesis of Bach and Brahms: the ostinato begins tion, and in the fourth a broad violin melody in the bass and remains there until variation emerges, to which the passacaglia theme is now 12, where, at the Žrst dynamic climax ( fff), it accompaniment, or at least subordinate. In his moves into the top voice. Then it retreats into Žrst variation, Reger introduces an idea that is, the bass again for the transition to the major as already noted, treated imitatively. This idea variations and remains there during the major becomes augmented and transformed into a variations. For the return to minor in variation more genuinely melodic gesture, marked 22—a major articulation point in Reger’s move- hervortretend by Reger. Other important ment—the theme goes back to the melody, the countermelodies are introduced in variations exact inverse of what Bach and Brahms do at 9, in the slower major variations (16 and 18).

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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 Andante ( = 66) (quasi Adagio) CENTURY sempre assai legato; la melodie sempre dolce (quasi Oboe solo) A2 MUSIC A1

espressivo m.g. molto

sempre con Pedale A3 B1 B2 5

sempre espressivo meno

(sempre con Ped.) C1 C2 molto espressivo poco stringendo a tempo un poco rit.

10

meno e cresc.

(sempre con Ped.) Example 6: Max Reger, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach, op. 81, theme.

IV op. 81 was “the best that I have written up to The self-critical Reger recognized the Organ now.”40 As in the case of the Suite, such a Suite as a milestone in his development as a comment should be taken seriously. composer. Yet in it we sense a young composer Outside of the theme itself and the Ž nal of enormous technical ability exing histori- fugue there is no hint of neo-Baroquism in op. cist muscles that also seem to get in his way. 81, which falls clearly into the tradition of For all his prowess and imagination, Reger can- monumental piano variations of the nineteenth not be said, in the Organ Suite, to transcend century. Reger’s models were the “Eroica” and any of his models, except perhaps in the Ada- “Diabelli” Variations of Beethoven and the gio. By the time he composed the Variations Handel Variations of Brahms, along with the and Fugue on a Theme of Bach for Piano, op. Urquelle of all those works, Bach’s “Goldberg” 81, a decade later in 1904, and on the other side Variations. What immediately distinguishes of the Weiden organ works, Reger was in his Reger’s op. 81 from any other variation set in full maturity as a composer. Like the Organ the literature, however, is the nature of the Suite, the Variations were acknowledged by Reger as a special work in his compositional 40Max Reger, Briefe an Karl Straube (Bonn: Dü mmler, development. To Karl Straube he wrote that 1986), pp. 61, 63.

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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 theme. He uses the entire opening instrumen- but by challenging himself to write variations WALTER FRISCH tal ritornello of the duet “ Sein’ Allmacht zu on an unvariable theme. The text of Bach’s Reger’s ergründen” from Bach’s Cantata 128, Auf duet, which reads “Sein Allmacht zu ergründen, Bach and 41 Historicist Christi Himmelfahrt allein . Bach’s ritornello, wird kein Mensche Žnden” (No man can fathom Modernism scored for oboe d’ amore and continuo, lacks His omnipotence), may be signiŽ cant in this the rounded and clearly segmented phrase struc- regard. By selecting the melody associated with ture of traditional variation subjects. Its four- these words Reger expresses awe of Bach’s own teen measures may be said to divide, as with compositional Allmacht, which no one can pos- most Baroque ritornellos, into units that con- sibly comprehend or equal. tain no large scale returns or repetition, only The fourteen variations of op. 81 are not small internal ones. numbered; they are separated from one another The theme has three larger units (ex. 6): A only by double bar lines. (See Table 1 for a (mm. 1–6), B (mm. 7–10), and C (mm. 11–14). formal synopsis.) This practice, exceptional The A unit subdivid es into three smaller among Reger’ s variations, suggests that the phrases: A1 (mm. 1– 2), which closes on the work is to be understood as a more continuous, tonic; A2 (mm. 3– 5), which is a parallel or “organic” composition. One can agree with the answering phrase that also moves to the tonic; Munich critic Alexander Berrsche, who sug- and a concluding gesture, A3 (mm. 5–6), which gested that the Bach Variations were cadences on the dominant minor. The B unit “gedichtet,” as compared with Reger’ s other has two parallel phrases, treated as a sequence, great solo piano set, the Telemann Variations, of two and a half measures each: B1 (mm. 7–8), op. 134, which were “komponiert.”43 which moves to the subdominant minor, and Harmonically, Reger divides his variations B2 (mm. 9–10), which moves to III, or D major. into two large groups of seven. The Žrst group The Žnal unit, C has two broader phrases: the remains in the tonic, B minor; the second be- Žrst, C1 (mm. 11– 12), builds upward to the gins to modulate, Žrst in an abrupt shift to the climax of the ritornello; the second, C2 (mm. remote key of the Neapolitan, C major (var. 8), 13–14) leads downward to the Ž nal cadence then to B major (var. 9), G minor (var. 10, and echoes aspects of the melody of B (a down- ending on G major, or V of C ), C minor (var. ward curve). 11, moving to V of B), B major (var. 12), and The ritornello selected by Reger is an en- back to the tonic B minor (vars. 13– 14). The tirely different creature from the rounded and/ fugue concludes in B major. or binary themes used by Bach, Beethoven, and Crosscutting this harmonic scheme is an ap- Brahms in their variation sets. As Elmar Budde proach to treating the theme that is as unique puts it, Reger’s op. 81 presents a “remarkable in the variation literature up to that time as is paradox: Reger writes variations on a theme on the theme itself. The risk of writing variations which no variations, in the sense of a tradi- on a theme as long, complex, and irregular as tional horizon of expectations, can be written.”42 the Bach ritornello (which lasts close to two One might supplement Budde’s paradox in the minutes in performance) is that complete varia- following way: Reger creates his Žnest homage tions will seem too independent and self-con- to Bach not by allusion to Bach’s compositional tained, and will sap the overall  ow of the techniques or structures, as in the Organ Suite, work. Reger steps up to the challenge by con- stantly changing the kind of variation he writes, from stricter ones that retain the original me- 41Reger did not actually seek out this theme himself; it was suggested (and sent) to him by his friend, the pianist lodic and harmonic structure, to freer fantasy- August Schmid-Lindner, who was also the dedicatee and like variations based on only a motivic frag- Žrst performer of the work. ment or two from the ritornello. Such variety 42Elmar Budde, “Zeit und Form in Max Regers Variationen und Fuge über ein Thema von Johann Sebastian Bach op. is, to be sure, not unusual in the literature. 81,” in Reger-Studien 3: Analysen und Quellenstudien, Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations and Brahms’s ed. Susanne Popp and Susanne Shigihara (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1988), p. 129. Budde’s phrase “hori- zon of expectations” refers to Hans Robert Jauss’s recep- tion theory. 43Cited in Budde, “Zeit und Form,” p. 134.

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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 Table 1 CENTURY MUSIC Reger, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach, op. 81

FORMAL UNIT MEASURE NO. TEMPO KEY COMMENTS

Theme 1–14 Andante B minor “past” Variation 1 15–28 L’istesso tempo B minor strict; “past” Variation 2 29–42 [slightly faster] B minor strict; “past” Variation 3 43–56 Grave assai ambiguous —> B minor free; “present” Variation 4 57–70 Vivace B minor strict; “past” Variation 5 71–92 Vivace B minor free; “past” Variation 6 93–115 Allegro moderato B minor strict; “past” Variation 7 116–27 Adagio B minor strict; “past” Variation 8 128–45 Vivace C major free; “present” Variation 9 146–55 Grave e sempre molto B major free; “present” espressivo Variation 10 156–78 Poco vivace G minor free; “present” Variation 11 179–201 Allegro agitato C minor free; “present” Variation 12 202–16 Andante sostenuto B major free; “present” Variation 13 217–40 Vivace B minor free; “present” Variation 14 241–54 Con moto B minor strict; “past” Fugue 255–384 Sostenuto B minor —> major “past” and “present”

Handel Variations also progress from stricter to assai, and instead of the theme in the tonic, we freer, although the overall number (or propor- get a two-measure sequence of highly ambigu- tion) of measures and essential harmonic frame- ous harmony, based on a fragment of the de- work of the original theme remain intact. But scending Ž gure from the last measure of C2, in op. 81 Reger avoids any simple trajectory. which has been heard at the end of the previous In Table 1, the terms “ strict” and “ free” variation. Gradually there emerges in the bass must be taken as relative, where the former a three-note rising chromatic Ž gure based on indicates a variation that follows the original A1 (B –C –D , m. 45), whose Žrst phrase then ritornello closely at least as to sequence of the- appears complete in its original form in the matic ideas (and often actual number or pro- melody of m. 48. portion of measures), while the latter abandons We might now interpret the preceding mea- the ABC formal-thematic structure in signiŽ - sures (43–47) as having been an introduction to cant ways. In the freer variations, one has the a standard variation, but after only one measure impression that fragments of the original theme A1 is interrupted by a furious, crashingly disso- are being cited, recollected, or meditated upon, nant outburst that seems unrelated to any as- rather than “varied.” Any attempt on the part pect of the original ritornello (m. 49). The whole of the listener to follow the standard narrative process then begins again (not shown in the of a variation set is thus thwarted. example): we return Ž rst to the introductory The Žrst two variations, which form a pair, measures of this variation, based on the frag- remain very close to the theme and to tradi- ments of C2 and A1, and then once again to the tional variation technique. The fourteen-mea- start of an apparently “real” variation on A1, in sure structure remains intact, as do the melody, the tonic (m. 53). But as before, only a Žrst harmony, and bass; variation consists princi- phrase is allowed to be heard before the fantasy- pally in the rhythmic animation of the inner like C2 interrupts again. Now C2 miraculously parts. Variation 3, however, brings a sudden metamorphoses into its original cadential form change (ex. 7). Reger slows the tempo to Grave and ends the variation on B minor.

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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 Grave assai ( = 25) ( = 50) WALTER (C2) FRISCH 43 Reger’s Bach and Historicist una corda molto espressivo Modernism molto

Poco più mosso ( = 44)

45

molto sempre espressivo (A1) poco

poco rit. 47

sempre espressivo sempre dolcissimo

a tempo ( = 48) poco rit. A1 48 sempre espressivo

sempre con Pedale, ma delicato

“outburst”

( = 54) 49

tre molto agitato marcato corde e cresc.

sempre con Pedale

Example 7: Reger, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach, op. 81, variation 3.

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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 An extraordinary aspect of variation 3 is that, Reger the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic tra- CENTURY MUSIC despite its freely unfolding fantasy style, its ditions, extending from Bach, the author of the fourteen measures correspond exactly to the theme, through to Beethoven and Brahms, who dimensions of the ritornello. But the main point wrote monumen tal keyboard variations to to be made is that this variation interrupts the which Reger pays homage. The freer variations traditional ow of a variation set quite early in in op. 81, in which the standard structure is its course and dramatizes that very action. The disrupted by motivic fragmentation or motion variation twice tries and fails to “begin” when to distant harmonic regions, may represent the A1 appears in B minor; the second time, it present—the present of 1904. Here contempo- seems to give up and moves immediately to rary music has undergone a kind of Sprachkrise the Žnal cadential phrase, C2, thus collapsing analogous to what Hofmannsthal described in the entire variation process. his famous Lord Chandos Letter of 1902, in Variation 4 returns to the structure of the which “everything fell into fragments . . . the theme and Žrst two variations, but variation 5 fragments into further fragments, until it dissolves it anew, and in a different way. The seemed impossible to contain anything at all Žrst ten measures are based almost exclusively within a single concept.” 44 As we have seen on sequential treatment of a Žgure derived from above, Reger acknowledged in the musical cul- A1. The “real” A1, in its original form, emerges ture of his time a similar crisis or malady, in m. 81, and as in variation 3 we might think which he felt Bach could help to heal. that a conventional variation is about to begin. In portions of Reger’s op. 81, perhaps espe- But, as in variation 3, the process is interrupted, cially in variations 3 and 5, the variation struc- and this form of A1 becomes treated sequen- ture tends to break down and thus capitulate to tially, as at the beginning of the variation. In the contingency of musical language and syn- op. 81 Reger exploits a distinction—and this is tax. But the work also resists contingency and perhaps the most original contribution of the dissolution. In variations 8–13, the rounded re- work to the variation literature up to that turns represent an assertion of order, which time—between “ real-time,” complete varia- becomes still more explicit in variation 14, the tions and freer, more fragmentary ones, which only “strict” variation in the second half. The seem generated by memory. fugue, which lasts almost eight minutes, might Reger’s strategy in the second half of the be heard as a heroic effort both to accept frag- piece is, at Ž rst, to round off the individual mentation (in the form of the fugue subject) variations with a return to the initial motive of and to reestablish coherence through powerful that variation (var. 8, m. 140; var. 9, mm. 152– formal and harmonic closure in the Žnal pages. 53; var. 10, m. 170; var. 11, m. 193). In doing so, However we choose to explain the complex Reger omits the C portion of the ritornello and temporal-structural framework, it is clear that creates an actual thematic return where one Reger writes directly into the Bach Variations, was not present in the original. He may thus be in a way that he could not have done in the said to “classicize” or “romanticize” what was Organ Suite, an awareness of historical time a more open-ended Baroque aspect of the theme. that is the essence of historicism. He composes In variation 12, the C section returns (m. 211) out the distance between himself and Bach, after a long absence, and the effect is quite and between himself and Beethoven and Brahms striking. But this variation, like the immedi- as well. It is almost impossible to put this ately preceding ones, is also rounded off by a layered process into words, but Reger manages return of its initial motive (in m. 215); aspects to put it into music in ways that make op. 81 of Classical-Romantic and Baroque thus com- perhaps the most revealing and touching mingle. document of his historicist modernism. A different but related way of thinking of op. 81 is that there is an implied past and present (as indicated in Table 1). The past is repre- 44Hugo von Hofmannsthal, The Lord Chandos Letter, trans. sented by the theme and the stricter variations, Russell Stockman (Marlboro, Vt.: Marlboro Press, 1986), p. which together might be said to embody for 21.

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