Listening to Reger

My relationship to the music of Max Reger has been that of a fan, rather than a scholar. This is music that thrilled me and moved me deeply from my very first encounter with it, more than thirty years ago. However, Reger has hardly been a favored figure: most commentary on his music has tended to disparage it both in comparison with his contemporaries and with his obvious models, Bach and Brahms. In the case of the former, his music was thought to be too conservative, and in the case of the latter, insufficiently structured. For the most part I have kept my love of his music to myself, a private, even a guilty, pleasure. Over the years my estimation of Reger’s music has grown, along with my intuitive satisfaction with it. I have found myself in increasing disagreement with the criticism that this music is, in effect, failed Brahms, and in fact I find that in interesting ways my understanding of it has very strong parallels with what I find engages me most about his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg’s response to this moment in music history. In the following I will begin to illustrate this by offering what I believe is the framework that allows me to enjoy this music in its own right.