Max Reger - Biography
Max Reger was born on March 19th 1873 in Brand Bavaria and died in Leipzig May 11th 1916. He was the son of a school teacher. Reger exhibited his musical talent at a very early age. His father noted that he had perfect pitch when he was barely past infancy. This early development is significant because Reger was to develop a prodigious musical technique nearly the equal of Bach and Handel. Reger’s formal musical training started at six; his first instruction was on the organ and the piano by a teacher named Lindner. While he was a performer on the organ and the piano by his early adolescence he evidently only first heard an orchestra when he attended the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth when he was fifteen. He wrote a number of songs and chamber works in his late teens. He became a music teacher at sixteen. His music attracted the eminent musicologist Hugo Riemann. Reger took advanced studies with Riemann and became part of his household in Wiesbaden. After his advanced studies were completed he became an instructor at the Wiesbaden Conservatory. Reger was in frail health from childhood on this still didn’t not prevent the German Army from drafting him into the military service. He was mustered out in a few months after id health collapsed and returned to his family where he recuperated for a period of months. Reger used the time to compose various songs and Chamber works including Violin Sonata op. 3, a Piano Quintet and his earliest organ works (organ music was to be the heart of his music).
In 1901 Reger moved to Munich where eventually was to he became a professor of counterpoint at the prestigious Munich Royal Academy of Music. Living in a big city allowed him to have a significant career as a pianist and a choral conductor. Reger who was to be short lived had a stroke at the age of only 28 that affected his right side and required him to recuperate in a spa for an extended period of time. Significant works from this period include the Piano Quintet Op. 64, Violin Sonata Op.72, Variations and Fugue on a theme by JS. Bach for piano and the orchestral Sinfonietta.
In 1906 Reger moved to Leipzig where he became director of the Music department at Leipzig University. Poor health and his notoriously acerbic nature resulted in Reger’s resignation in a year. The next year Reger was to become a department head at the Leipzig Conservatory a position he would hold for the rest of his life. Reger as much as his precarious health permitted toured throughout Germany and Europe as a pianist, organist and conductor. Masterful compositions from the Leipzig period include the Serenade for Orchestra op 95 (1906), Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Hiller op. 100 (1907), Violin Concerto Op 101 (1908), Piano Concerto Op 114 (1910) and the choral Psalm 100.
Reger’s life was totally dedicated to composing teaching and music making. Though it is unkind to mention it Max Reger was a uniquely unattractive man. He was short, wore thick glasses, had a porcine face a dreadful temper and swore relentlessly. The great conductor George Szell when he was a teenage student of Reger in a recorded interview related that Reger during his classes him always took time out to tell his class a few smutty stories. An amusing but scatological anecdote about him, was that he once wrote a newspaper critic that he had been reading his negative review of his work while he sat in the smallest room of home, assured him that it was in front of him now but after reading it, it will be BEHIND him.
Reger was to become the conductor of the Meienigen Court orchestra in 1911 a prestigious position once held by the great Hans Von Bulow. His last series of works were to include the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart Op. 132, Suite in the Olden Style Op. 123, Four Tone Poems after Bocklin Op.128, Romantic Suite for Orchestra Op 125, many choral works, a Clarinet Quartet Op 146, Piano Quartet Op. 133, String Trio 141 and many other chamber works. This prodigious amount of work eventually broke Reger’s fragile health and he died of complications from a stroke on May 11th 1916.
Though Reger’s music is really well known only in German speaking countries his talents as a composer and particularly as contrapointalist are so extraordinary that I felt I am compelled to include him with the near great maters. There were a group of eminent musicians who were associated with Max Reger in their youth who were dedicated to the music of Reger including Fritz Bush the conductor, his brother Adolf Busch and Rudolf Serkin. He was the greatest German composer of organ music and along with Faure the most significant composer of chamber music after Brahms. A composer who was definitely not for all tastes, but an eminent figure whose music should be heard by serious listeners who are fascinated by the architecture of music.
