Max Reger - Life, Works

Composer, born in Brand, SC Germany. He studied at Weiden, taught music at Wiesbaden and Munich, and became director of music at Leipzig University (1907), then professor (1908). He composed organ music, piano concertos, choral works, and songs.

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger (March 19, 1873 – May 11, 1916) was a German composer, organist, pianist and teacher.

Life

Born in Brand, Bavaria, Reger studied music in Munich and Wiesbaden with Hugo Riemann. In 1901 he settled in Munich, where he taught organ and composition, and from 1907 he worked in Leipzig, where he was music director of the university until 1908 and professor of composition at the conservatoire until his death.

Works

During a composing life of little more than 20 years, Reger produced an enormous output in all genres, nearly always in abstract forms, although few of his compositions are well known today. Many of his works are fugues or in variation form, including what is probably his best known orchestral work, the Variations and Fugue on a theme of Mozart (based on the opening theme of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata, K. He also wrote a large amount of music for organ, including the Fantasy and Fugue on BACH (this piece, based on the BACH motif, is considered one of the most difficult and demanding in organ literature).

He was a firm supporter of absolute music and saw himself as being part of the tradition of Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. His work often combines the classical structures of these composers with the extended harmonies of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner and the complex counterpoint of Johann Sebastian Bach. of his chamber music the lighter-textured trios have retained a place in the repertory, along with some of the works for solo string instruments. He pursued intensively, and to its limits, Brahms's continuous development and free modulation, often also invoking, like Brahms, the aid of Bachian counterpoint: Many of his works are in variation and fugue forms;

His works were not revolutionary and could be considered retrospective as they followed classical and baroque forms such as the fugue and continuo. The influence of the latter can be heard in his chamber works which are deeply reflective and unconventional. Max Reger and Karl Straube: Perspectives on an Organ Performing Tradition. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing.