Elaboration of the Grundgestalt through an Analysis of Max Reger's Orchestral Works

At the vivid fin-de-siècle Austro-German music scene marked by the Wagner-Brahms controversy, Max Reger (1873−1916) was recognized as a leading figure—the equal of Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and Gustav Mahler, if not, at times, even more conspicuous than them. It is therefore rather strange that shortly after Reger’s premature death, he nearly fell into oblivion outside the Austro-German musical sphere. One of the goals of the following analysis is to draw attention to or revive the interest of scholars and analysts in Reger’s music. During his Munich years (1901−7), Reger stood out as an uncompromising defender of absolute music and an enthusiastic modernist. In his most advanced works composed during this period, Reger undermined tonality, reaching the very border of atonality. On the other hand, he constantly maintained an intense and profound dialogue with the musical past—in particular with Bach and Brahms, whose mastery of motivic organization is readily recognized in Reger’s work. This makes Reger a typical representative of historicist modernism.1 Indeed, throughout his works, Reger combines an innovative harmonic language, marked by dense chromaticism, fractured harmonic progressions, disintegration of the traditional syntax, and prevalence of motivic logic, with classical harmonic and formal procedures. Even in his orchestral works which are considered to be