Notes for: July 14, 2015
Max Reger’s life and music spanned the pivotal years in the history of music. On the one hand, he looked back to the harmonic world of Beethoven and Brahms and even Bach. On the other, he exploited the new ambiguous tonality of Wagner, late Mahler and early Schoenberg. The result was a unique blending of both musical universes, combining Romantic expressivity with modern innovation.
Reger was, in fact, born in 1873, the same year as Rachmaninoff, perhaps the last voice of lyrical Romanticism, and a year before Schoenberg, who upset that world with his development of atonality and the twelve-tone system in which all the tones of the scale are treated as equals. Reger was thus a transitional figure between these two poles. Further he crammed that activity into the short span of 43 years - he died in 1916 while Rachmaninoff lived until 1943 and Schoenberg until 1951.
Reger was born near Bayreuth in northern Bavaria, and lived most of his life in western Germany. After studying music in Munich and Wiesbaden, he settled in Munich in 1901 and in his first Munich season he appeared in ten concerts as an organist, chamber-music pianist and accompanist. In 1907 he was named music director at the University of Leipzig and then professor of composition at the Leipzig Conservatory, a post he held until his death. Commuting once a week to teach in Leipzig, he moved to Meiningen in 1911 for the part-time position of kapellmeister at the court of the ruling Duke.
At the same time, he was a prolific composer of orchestral, chamber, piano, organ and vocal music, with a lifetime total of 146 opus numbers. For some unexplained reason, he avoided operas and symphonies. He saw himself as part of the tradition of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, combining their classical structures with the mind-expanding harmonies of Liszt and Wagner, to which he added the complex counterpoint of Bach. Particularly in the composition of chamber music, he thought of Brahms as his immediate predecessor.
Composed in 1915, the year before Reger’s death, this Clarinet Quintet was his last completed work, and he modeled it after the great mature clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms. However, the work was clearly a product of its times, composed six years after Schoenberg’s introduction of atonality. While Reger never completely accepted atonality, the quintet shows Schoenberg’s influence in its heavy and persistent use of chromaticism (that is, atonality’s language of half steps). And while Reger’s score indicates a key signature in its title and its instrumental parts, the music moves freely among distant keys and atonal chord patterns.
The first movement is in conventional sonata form with two themes, their development and their recapitulation. However, the tempo marking is significant - moderato ed amabile (moderately and with love) - as if the composer were trying to soften the challenging harmonies. Further the score is peppered not only with sharps and flats but with frequent exhortations of espressivo (expressively) and dolce (sweetly). The music, in other words, treads a fine line between the austere and the sentimental.
The clarinet starts the first movement with the main theme in A major, but over an accompaniment in the strings peppered with unexpected sharps. The effect from the outset is one of tonal ambiguity, and it never fully relaxes. This leads eventually to the second theme in E major, the related key, which has a downward contour and is introduced by the first violin tranquillo. It too gives way to unexpected sharps and flats, and the tonal ambiguity returns to denominate the development, recapitulation and concluding coda. The final chord, however, is a pianissimo A major.
The second movement, vivace, is a minor-key scherzo, marked with immediate contrasts of rhythm between the clarinet and muted violins and cello, while the viola, unmuted, provides a running counterpoint. The trio section, now in a major key, is more straightforward in texture, relaxed in mood and avoiding cross-rhythms.
The third movement is a moving Largo, with two more elaborate and agitated intervening sections. For further contrast, the music interrupts with reminiscences of the first movement’s second theme.
The fourth movement, poco allegretto, is a theme with eight variations. The theme, marked grazioso, is presented by the strings in the home key of A major. The clarinet takes over with the first variation, and the subsequent variations introduce changes in note values, tempo and a shift to the minor key. A final, slower sostenuto section concludes the quintet with fragments of the theme heard in their original form.