Скачать или смотреть Max Reger, Siegesfeier Op. 145 No. 7 (1916) - James Garratt

Max Reger's collection Orgelstücke Op. 145 is probably the most complex response to the First World War in the field of organ music. While three out of the seven pieces are explicitly linked to the war, the collection as a whole offers a commentary on it, reading the German war experience through the lens of Christ’s suffering and resurrection.

Siegesfeier (Victory Celebration) from May 1916 was the last piece in the set to be conceived and written, and has the task of drawing together and resolving the twin themes running through the collection. Musically, Siegesfeier has much in common with other compositions from the early years of the war which offer anticipatory celebrations of German victory -- works like Max Gulbins's War Sonata for organ (   • Max Gulbins, Sonata No. 5 (War Sonata) Op....  ) and Reger's own Vaterländische Ouvertüre (   • Max Reger - Eine Vaterlandische Ouverture,...  ) -- weaving together chorale melodies and patriotic tunes. In Siegesfeier, Reger draws together the chorale 'Nun danket alle Gott', associated with German victory on the battlefield since the Battle of Leuthen (1757) with the then unofficial national anthem 'Deutschland über alles'. Another common feature of these wartime celebrations of imminent victory is the display of Germanic contrapuntal prowess, evident here in Reger's canonic treatment of 'Deutschland über alles'.

On the face of it, Siegesfeier may seem simply a bluff (and noisy!) piece of premature triumphalism. But Reger seems to have embedded a deeper significance into the work, drawing on a web of musical allusions to pursue the programme described above. More generally, Reger's later music is characterized by frequent, fragmentary allusions to chorales, which flash up in passing, as Walter Frisch puts it, like 'distant, ephemeral memories of the actual melodies'. Such allusions last only for a few notes, sufficiently long to be recognized and for the listener to register (even if not consciously) the connotations which the allusion brings to its new context. The crucial allusion in Siegesfeier occurs in the opening bar, which recalls the first line of the chorale ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’. This reference—wrenchingly incongruous in the context of a victory celebration— reactivates the parallel established in the first three pieces in the set between Germany’s fate and that of Christ, and to draw Passion, Ostern, and Pfingsten into this narrative framework. The notion that Reger intended this collection to illustrate Germany’s Christ-like path from suffering and sacrifice to triumph and a new kingdom might seem forced, were it not for the pervasive nature of such parallels in the Germany of his day.