Many musicians somewhat erroneously think of Max Reger (1873–1916) as an ‘organ composer’, even though Reger’s prodigious musical output in other media far exceeds his organ works in quantity. And it can be argued that Reger’s chamber music specifically outweighs his organ music in terms of quality and importance as contributions to the canon. Nonetheless, in his short life of 43 years, Reger composed a large number of organ works during a period in which the instrument was largely ignored by many prominent German-speaking composers.
We American organists, through our training, usually are most familiar with Max Reger’s difficult concert pieces, including seven large chorale fantasias. Also well-known are a handful of shorter pieces, such as the ‘Benedictus’ from Op. 59 and the ‘Trauerode’ from Op. 145. But Reger’s smaller-scale chorale settings include much worthwhile, interesting, and beautiful music. A study of this repertoire can be most rewarding to musicians who wish to enrich their understanding of a composer’s relationship to the chorale as a genre. Thus, Christopher Anderson’s beautiful renditions of the 52 pieces in Reger’s Op. 67, arranged by liturgical topic and played on an outstanding modern American organ, are welcome listening.
Christopher Anderson’s specializations include Max Reger, as well as early modernism, modern German history and philosophy, and the organ’s position in Western culture. His numerous writings include a thoroughly researched and excellently presented biography of Karl Straube (1873–1950), Organist and Kantor of the Leipzig Thomaskirche, an influential pedagogue, and Reger’s colleague who performed and edited much of the composer’s organ music.Footnote 1 This excellent presentation of some of Max Reger’s most appealing organ music on two CDs attest to Professor Anderson’s impressive skills as a performing organist.
The 2013 Carus critical edition of Reger’s organ and vocal music includes an excellent introduction outlining the genesis of this collection.Footnote 2 Reger’s op. 67, Zweiundfünfzig leicht ausführbare Vorspiele für die Orgel zu den gebräuchlichsten evangelischen Chorälen (Fifty-two Easy Preludes on the most common Protestant chorales) dates from 1901–02. Reger’s original intention, expressed to Straube in May 1901, was to ‘write about 30 chorale preludes on the best-known chorales’.Footnote 3 By September of that year, he had expanded this plan to comprise 50 pieces.
It appears that Reger first sent the chorale preludes to the publisher F. E. C. Leuckhart in October 1902, and when Leuckhart declined to publish them immediately Reger wrote to the publishers Lauterbach & Kuhn: ‘It is possible that I can now indeed offer you the chorale preludes for organ (op. 67) and I can say without any arrogance that no such collection of chorale preludes has been published since J. S. Bach. What is more, none of these preludes is technically difficult’.Footnote 4 The Leipzig University music director Hermann Kretzschmar reviewed the pieces and described them rather pejoratively as ‘nothing more than simple music for church music directors, that is compositions which any village school music teacher can play’.Footnote 5 However, Straube (in Leipzig in mid-November 1902 to negotiate the position he was to take up as Kantor of the Thomaskirche) apparently successfully convinced the publishers of their merit.
The pieces appeared in print in the spring of 1903 in three volumes, dedicated to J. G. Herzog, Robert Frenzel, and Hermann Gruner, respectively.Footnote 6 Op. 67 comprises forty-eight newly-composed works and four (nos. 15, 48, 51, and 52) repurposed from earlier musical trade journals. The pieces are organized in alphabetical order by chorale title, although nos. 51 and 52 were last-minute additions outside this ordering.
The 1956 Breitkopf & Härtel edition of Reger’s collected works reordered the pieces in op. 67, putting nearly, but not quite, all into correct alphabetical order. Consequently, the final two works (no. 51 ‘Jesus ist kommen’ and no. 52 ‘O wie selig’) are folded into the group as nos. 20 and 35, respectively. Moreover, two changes of alphabetization in the original edition are ‘corrected’, reversing the order of nos. 20 and 21, and nos. 23 and 24.Footnote 7 The edition then moved two pieces (nos. 34 and 35) from Book II into Book III (as nos. 36 and 37). The edition retains the dedication of Book III to Hermann Gruner, apparently without comment concerning the reordering of the pieces.
A subsequent edition of Reger’s complete organ works in seven volumes published by Breitkopf & Härtel – with the reordering of pieces in op. 67 – appeared in 1987 and is widely used today by organists in both the US and Europe.Footnote 8 Serious listeners who refer to this edition will note variances with the original numbering of the pieces, which Anderson’s recording (as well as the 2013 Carus edition) respects.
As sources for the chorales in op. 67, Reger apparently followed the Gesangbuch für die evangelisch-lutherische Landeskirche Sachsens (Leipzig 1883), or more specifically an edition of the Vierstimmiges Choralbuch belonging to it.Footnote 9 The sources for the four above-mentioned pieces (nos. 15, 48, 51, and 52) were the Evangelisches Gesangbuch für Elsaß-Lothringen, as these pieces had earlier been composed for the periodical Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst.Footnote 10
To organists more familiar with Reger’s seven large-scale concert chorale fantasias (all of which were composed before these pieces during an especially intense period of the composer’s productivity), a study of op. 67 will reveal numerous compositional and expressive techniques essential to the understanding of that more difficult concert repertoire. As Christopher Anderson notes in the brief but excellent liner essay, ‘The model of Bach is never far from the surface’ (p. 4). One finds a variety of cantus firmus techniques – which pre-date Bach – in the works, most of which are composed in strict contrapuntal fashion with a consistent number of voices.
Reger’s stated intention was to present the most commonly used chorales in the Protestant Church of his time. Of the 52 chorales, many, but not all, are still in regular use today in Germany, and many are also well known in the United States. In the Protestant Church in Germany, some melodies are now known with different texts, and a few are not well-known at all.Footnote 11
An especially moving setting in this collection is no. 25, ‘Mach’s mit mir, Gott, nach deiner Güt’, a piece that bears some comparison to Bach’s famous Orgelbüchlein chorale ‘O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde gross’, BWV 622. Both pieces are in the key of E-flat Major, both are ornamented chorales with the cantus firmus in the soprano, and a few details in the Reger can remind one of the Bach.Footnote 12 While Anderson’s heartfelt performance of this very personal piece displays a noticeable degree of freedom with tempo rubato, his choice of registration – employing similar timbres for both cantus firmus and accompaniment – allows one to hear clearly the contrapuntal relationship among the voices.Footnote 13
The description ‘easy’ in the title to Reger’s op. 67 is deceptive. The collection as a whole is indeed technically easier than many of Reger’s earlier organ works, especially the aforementioned chorale fantasias. And a number of the pieces do make quite modest demands of the performer. These simpler settings include several of the most beautiful in my opinion, including no. 29, ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’, no. 20, ‘Jesus, meine Zuversicht’, no. 35, ‘Seelenbräutigam’, and no. 33, ‘O Welt, ich muss dich lassen’.
But some of the pieces in the collection are quite challenging indeed in terms of technical difficulty, and hardly fit the description ‘simple music for church music directors’. Anderson notes ‘there is much here that demands a technique and musical acumen on par with Reger’s nominally more advanced works. The composer himself recognized this in private, equivocating to Straube later in 1903, ‘The collection admittedly isn’t all that easy, but at least reasonable in its difficulty!’Footnote 14 Pieces such as no. 8 ‘Erschienen ist der herrliche Tag’, no. 15 ‘Jauchz, Erd und Himmel, juble!’ (one of the most effective ‘loud and fast’ pieces with a concise compositional technique), no. 22 ‘Komm, o komm, du Geist des Lebens’ (a short but tricky piece), or no. 40 ‘Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her’ all would require substantial preparation from any skilled performer. Anderson’s renditions of these movements demonstrate a fine, secure technique.
Thus, although most of the pieces in op. 67 are quite short, and many considerably ‘easier’ than Reger’s big concert works, a recording of this collection is unquestionably a substantial undertaking. One can easily find other recordings of the complete op. 67 (including as a portion of recordings of Reger’s complete organ music), as well as recordings of portions of this collection. Of particular interest, if not necessarily representative of ‘definitive’ performances, are Reger’s own performances of Nos. 20, 23, 25, 33, 45, 50, and 52, made in 1913 on the Welte recording (player) organ in Freiburg, Germany, and available as part of the CD series The Britannic Organ.Footnote 15
Anderson’s recording is unique in two respects, specifically the topical organization of the pieces, and the performance on the Richards, Fowkes & Co’.s Op. 17 organ at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in Dallas, Texas.
The topics Anderson groups the pieces under are (Disc One) Mass, Catechism, Morning, Evening, Praise, Love of God, Death, and (Disc Two) Justification, Trust and Faithfulness, Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Passion, Easter, Pentecost, Reformation, and End of Church Year. This hymnal-like grouping of pieces, intended to ‘render the music more serviceable to the liturgical rhythm of church organists’, makes for a rewarding listening experience for those familiar enough with most of the chorales.
Concerning Reger’s compositional approach and grouping the pieces into liturgical topics, listeners may benefit from a 1982 article on op. 67 by Michael Krentz,Footnote 16 as well as a liturgical index published in the same year by David Gehrenbeck.Footnote 17 Krentz’s study discusses Reger’s compositional procedures in the pieces, and Gehrenbeck’s short article organizes the works by liturgical topic. In 1967, Alec Wyton edited 18 pieces from the collection for publication by Carl Fischer, organizing these pieces according to the liturgical year.Footnote 18 Since Anderson’s recording organizes the pieces by topic, it is interesting to compare Gehrenbeck’s and Wyton’s groupings.
It should come as no surprise that the nature of Reger’s collection, specifically the number of pieces and their relative brevity, leads to inevitable comparison with Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. Krentz’s article deals ably with this issue, categorizing Reger’s pieces and summarizing the chief similarities and differences in compositional technique. In general, Reger’s collection shows considerable variety regarding such techniques as Vorimitation and cantus firmus placement. Krentz points out that Bach’s tendency to develop only one or two specific motives within a piece in a quite disciplined fashion – a hallmark of the Orgelbüchlein’s nature – differs from Reger’s freer approach. In this light, a few of Reger’s compositions betray a certain lack of consistency (an example would be no. 41 ‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme’). But other pieces reveal a resourceful inventiveness: the echo chorale no. 38, ‘Valet will ich dir geben’, is one of the most remarkable, with echoes of chorale phrases presented in melodic inversion.
To an American organist, the most welcome and novel aspect of Anderson’s recording is the very beautiful organ at the Church of the Transfiguration in Dallas. Richards, Fowkes & Co’.s Op. 17 is one of the best recent pipe organs to appear in what is an outstanding collection of modern instruments in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex. Reger’s music is – perhaps not astonishingly – sonically most effective on this organ. While Anderson writes broadly that the recording’s aim is to ‘demonstrate how [the music] can sound convincingly on a recent American instrument of superior quality’ (liner notes, p. 4), information about the organ’s specification, winding, and temperament are unfortunately lacking in the liner notes. While the organ’s specification and details about its key, stop, and combination action can be found through the church’s web site with a little research, I would have benefited from having this information immediately at hand while listening to the recording.
The organ registrations used in the recording are very effective, even though the lack of information in the liner notes on specifics raises some questions. As was typical for Reger, the pieces in op. 67 contain no specific stop instructions, but rather broad indications of dynamics assuming a three-manual organ. Information about the registrations employed in Anderson’s renditions would have been of great interest, especially since the recording features repertoire that one would not normally associate with this type of organ.
Many of the most remarkable registrational colours used in the recording are those quite unlike the sounds of an ‘authentic’ Reger organ. Particularly noteworthy examples include no. 39 ‘Vater unser im Himmelreich’ (the overtones of the flute stops give the illusion that a 2 2/3’ Nasard is present), no. 32 ‘O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig’ (a relatively loud reed solo is striking, but not nearly as soft as Reger’s dynamics would suggest) and no. 21 ‘Jesu meine Freude’ (featuring a very attractive reed colour for the cantus firmus). Anderson’s registrational choices in these cases serve to highlight especially distinctive sonorities found in this noteworthy organ.
A number of the pieces in op. 67 feature a crescendo to ‘Organo Pleno’, or a tutti. Marvelous examples of this compositional technique, which in performance at a German Romantic organ would employ the register crescendo device known as the ‘Walze’ or ‘Rollschweller’, include no. 24, ‘Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren’. How did Anderson achieve register crescendos on these pieces without this device? Did Anderson employ one or more assistants, use combination presets, or both? Is there any correlation between the register crescendo patterns followed and the makeup of crescendo devices on organs that Reger would have known?Footnote 19 Regardless, this aspect of the organ registration is amazingly effective given the nature of the Richards, Fowkes & Co. organ.
Concerning interpretation, Anderson’s approach to tempo and rhythm could be criticized for the degree and manner to which tempo rubato and agogic are applied to the performances. While tempi are generally respectful of the composer’s instructions, some pieces lack a sense of ‘flow’ to their rhythm. Nevertheless, the effect of the performances always is authoritative, and the overall sense I received from the very pleasurable and rewarding experience of listening is that I was in the imposing presence of an expert with a deep understanding of this most affecting music.
