The Music of Max Reger

In the two decades after 1900, Max Reger was recognized as one of the leading figures of German modernism, the equal—in notoriety as well as achievement—of Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, or Gustav Mahler. His music is charged with complex historical meaning and innovative compositional techniques. Germany has a long history of scholarship on Reger, which in recent years has been greatly enriched by the publications of the Max Reger Institut (formerly in Bonn, now in Karlsruhe). Yet consideration of Reger within Anglo-American scholarship has lagged behind that of the other major icons of modernism. There has been suspicion of Reger’s prolixity, his self-promotion. Many analysts (and performers) only scratch their heads at his music’s harmonic and contrapuntal density. At the joint meeting of the American Musicological Society and Society of Music Theory in Columbus, Ohio, in November 2002, two music theorists (Daniel Harrison and Andrew Mead) and two musicologists (Antonius Bittmann and myself) presented a joint session on Reger’s music—the first such session in the history of either society. The session was chaired by Reinhold Brinkmann, a musicologist with a long-held interest in Reger. Our goal was to bring Reger into the “conversation” in English-language musicology and theory.