Max Reger notable work Requiem
In 1911 Reger was appointed Hofkapellmeister (music director) at the court of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen, also taking charge of music at the Meiningen Court Theatre. He continued with his master class at the Leipzig conservatory. In 1913 he composed four tone poems on paintings by Arnold Böcklin (Vier Tongedichte nach Arnold Böcklin), including Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead), as his Op. 128.
He gave up the court position in 1914 for health reasons. In response to World War I, already in 1914 he was planning to compose a choral work, commemorating those lost in the war. He began to set the Latin Requiem but abandoned the work as a fragment. He composed eight motets as his Acht geistliche Gesänge für gemischten Chor (Eight Sacred Songs, Op. 138), embodying "a new simplicity". In 1915 he moved to Jena, commuting once a week to teach in Leipzig. In Jena he composed the Hebbel Requiem for soloist, choir and orchestra.Reger recorded some of his works on the Welte Philharmonic organ, including excerpts from 52 Chorale Preludes, Op. 67. He also composed various secular organ works, including the Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue, Op. 127. It was dedicated to Straube, who gave its first performance in 1913 to inaugurate the Wilhelm Sauer organ at the opening of the Breslau Centennial Hall.Reger was particularly attracted to the fugal form and created music in almost every genre, save for opera and the symphony (he did, however, compose a Sinfonietta, his Op. 90). A similarly firm supporter of absolute music, he saw himself as being part of the tradition of Beethoven and Brahms. His work often combined the classical structures of these composers with the extended harmonies of Liszt and Wagner, to which he added the complex counterpoint of Bach. Reger's organ music, though also influenced by Liszt, was provoked by that tradition.
Some of the works for solo string instruments turn up often on recordings, though less regularly in recitals. His solo piano and two-piano music places him as a successor to Brahms in the central German tradition. He pursued intensively Brahms's continuous development and free modulation, whilst being rooted in Bach-influenced polyphony.
Reger was a prolific writer of vocal works, Lieder, works for mixed chorus, men's chorus and female chorus, and extended choral works with orchestra such as Der 100. Psalm and Requiem, a setting of a poem by Friedrich Hebbel, which Reger dedicated to the soldiers of World War I. He composed music to texts by poets such as Gabriele D'Annunzio, Otto Julius Bierbaum, Adelbert von Chamisso, Joseph von Eichendorff, Emanuel Geibel, Friedrich Hebbel, Nikolaus Lenau, Detlev von Liliencron, Friedrich Rückert and Ludwig Uhland. Reger assigned opus numbers to major works himself.His works could be considered retrospective as they followed classical and baroque compositional techniques such as fugue and continuo. The influence of the latter can be heard in his chamber works which are deeply reflective and unconventional.
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