Talk:Max Reger

message: His students also included the composer Johanna Senfter. By the way, in my edit note I meant the Jecklin recording of the 8th and 9th violin sonatas - the Koch Schwann recording is of the 4th and 5th string quartets, the latter of which is practically contemporary with, and shares at least one theme with, the 8th sonata. (Unsurprisingly both were premiered in 1911.) Schissel : bowl listen 13:56, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)
Note: The trivia I added is not fictitious; instead of deleting it, it would be rather helpful and friendly if someone would improve its style (of course it can be deleted if it is really irrelevant). Among my sources are an old German encyclopedia on famous people, the German Wikipedia and several German sites dealing with classical music- the anecdote is quite famous in Germany. It is said that Reger's humour was quite peculiar.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.254.157.220 (talk • contribs) 16:00, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Was Reger's Toccata for organ op. 59 no.5 used in the movie the Godfather when Micheal Corleon sends the hits on the rival mob bosses?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.125.192.104 (talk • contribs) 22:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theme music 

message: I found a lot of books about him at the Internet Archive.  All are from before 1923, so they're considered to be public domain in the US.  Some of the books are set in script type.  I've skimmed them and they look like they would be good material.  There are a lot of photos in them-his parents and childhood home, his wife and children and even a death photo of him.  Using photos from them, I'd suggest they be uploaded here at WP with a Pre-1923-abroad license, since they may not be in the public domain elsewhere.  The books can be downloaded from the Internet Archive in PDF format. 
*Max Reger : Abriss seines Lebens und Analyse seiner Werke 1922
* Max Reger und Karl Straube 1907
*Max Reger; Darstellung seines Lebens, Wesens und Schaffens 1921
*Max Reger 1921
*Max Reger; eine Studie über moderne Musik, mit einem Bildnis und vielen Notenbeispielen 1911 We hope (talk) 15:11, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I place it here, because I will archive soon, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:55, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Additional sources, quoted from my talk page 

message: A proposal has been initiated to merge List of works by Max Reger into List of compositions by Max Reger. The merge proposal discussion is at Talk:List of compositions by Max Reger#Merger proposal. -- Softlavender (talk) 05:04, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  A proposal has been initiated to merge [[List of works by Max Reger]] into [[List of compositions by Max Reger]] 

message: The entire (now shorter) first paragraph of the Works section is unsourced and includes unsupported subjective language -- "enormous", "well known" and "Many of his works" -- all more dubious than the wording, now removed, about his relative prominence during his lifetime and the greatly diminished public performance of his work in more recent years.  As my edit summary stated, I think that a reference is not urgently required to state that his work is less performed in public recently.  The Schoenberg reference is not a peer reviewed statistical study, but it does reflect reality from the point of view of a writer who was well aware of what was being performed at that time. It's generally sufficient for an uncontroversial statement. 
At any rate, I'm inclined to remove the short first paragraph, given the discomfort with it, and perhaps we should start from scratch on the beginning of that section?  SPECIFICO talk 13:08, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead. - I felt uneasy about the phrasing, but am always reluctant to delete the efforts of others, - silently hoping the same will be done to mine ;) - I made Reger works, and hope that will be read, not the little prose bit which will always be selective. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:39, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hello Gerda. Frankly, for our readers who know little of Reger, the old text -- including the parts that offended another editor recently, gives them good information. It's not up to academic standards, but we could tag with better source needed or similar improvement tags.  I don't think we should descend into idle concert program notes chatter, but on the other hand we shouldn't remove context that's correct but not precise.  Thanks for your reply.  SPECIFICO talk 13:44, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I hate these tags, which discredit the information in the eye of the reader. What can we do? - I "dissolved" the cne for the premiere in Breslau, easily, such a well-known fact. But as when exactly Reger wasn't fashionable any more, I have little interest. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:31, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  We know he was mainstream during his lifetime. We know he was little-performed anywhere in the world as of post-WW2. Regardless of the detail or even whether that is a useful narrative, we know that it is true. I think it's pointless to nitpick over whether there's a peer-reviewed academic study of the matter. I agree it is not worth the  battle it's apparently raised.  SPECIFICO talk 14:37, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Let's not call it a battle. The tags appeared today, and perhaps Jerome has a solution. I have no time to dig into performance history of Reger's works, but dislike tags enough to rather say nothing than something discrediting ("failed verificaion"). He studied close to where I live, therefore interest is probably higher than elsewhere. This years Winterspiele were supposed to be crowned by the Breslau piece, but it didn't happen, of course. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:58, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well jumping to tags and denigration of adequate though not perfect sourcing like the NY Times article is battle, but you and I are pacifists. Yes maybe there will be some constructive progress. Otherwise, we can just blow it up and work on more substantive article content. Regards.  SPECIFICO talk 15:34, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  On Bach's birthday, I work on BWV 227, and first of all, I'll take in some fresh air ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:53, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Perfect. We still have fresh air!  SPECIFICO talk 16:50, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I did not mean to provoke such a storm in a teapot! If it makes any difference, my curiosity was drawn to Kosboot's deletion of "unsupported opinion", and SPECIFICO's subsequent restoration of the claim, "with a reference". When I checked the reference, I could not find anything in it that even remotely touched on the recent performance history of Reger's music, so I tagged the reference as failing to verify the claim. I really have no idea whether performers' interest in Reger's music has increased, decreased, or stayed about the same since the beginning of the present century. It is almost certainly true that it has not been as high as during the composer's lifetime, but that is more than a hundred years of history now. I first got to know Reger's music in the 1960s, and he was certainly not as often-performed then as, say, Brahms (my direct comparisons being the clarinet quintets and sonatas). Since the late 1980s I have observed a general increase of interest in the lesser masters of the late-19th and early 20th century. Some cases (Alexander Zemlinsky, for example) have amounted to wholesale resurrection of the reputation of almost entirely forgotten names. Even if Reger might be among those, my generalization is only a personal feeling, far from a reliable source. I am interested in seeing some real data, or at least respectable, well-informed opinion on the matter.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:30, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Well snarky summaries and tags rarely support any constructive mode of collaboration. That unsourced text you seized on did not say that the number of performances has declined during any recent period of time. Rather it made the WP:SKYBLUE statement that he's less performed/known now than during his lifetime. It sounds as if you agree with that. Now, my impression is that he's a bit more often performed in the most recent 30 years than the preceding 30 years, in part -- as stated in as what you scornfully called a critic's opinion --  due to the performances of the Serkins and the larger American chamber music circle around them. At any rate, the part that you picked at/on is not perfectly sourced, but it is uncontroversial and better-sourced than the program-note chitchat about "enormous output" etc.  As I said, given the high standard you set, I was about to remove that whole first paragraph. I'll leave it to you to look back and maybe improve the whole thing. No harm done either way. Thanks for your reply.  SPECIFICO talk 01:12, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I shall do my best to avoid snarkiness (I thought I already had done, but apparently not). The text that Kosboot seized on (and which for that reason caught my attention) was "Few of his compositions are well known in the 21st century". No doubt this should have continued "in comparison with his own lifetime", though that in turn would leave a question-mark over the 84 intervening years. Personally, I would be happier with a more general statement about the decline in prominence of his work after his death, rather than pinning things directly to the 21st century but, in general, yes of course I agree with you. Those "program chit-chats" to which you refer often include bold but unsupported claims about this or that neglected composer making a triumphant comeback in recent years. More often than not, this means that there has now at last been a single performance of one of the composer's works, whereas there had been none at all for over forty years. "Well known" is a relative term, of course. A few years ago, on one of the Google Groups, there was a silly proposal to measure the fame of "classical" composers according to the number of recordings found on the ArkivMusic sales site. The winner, of course, was not Bach, or Beethoven, or Vivaldi, but Franz Xaver Gruber. I believe that Gruber has now been demoted to some extra-classical category, but the serious issue is: how can we objectively determine "well-known-ness"?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:34, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

text: Sounds good to me. I just revisited the Clarinet Quintet, after a long absence. "Weird and worthwhile" certainly fits. I may have access to that Musical Quarterly issue. I shall see what I can discover. Thanks for rekindling my interest in Reger.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:38, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: It was not my intention to be snarky but simply use the tools that the majority of editors on WP use. It's so easy to read and think in terms of the prose one finds on liner notes and programs, e.g. "Not heard as much," "gone through a period of decline," "more popular than x since the 1930s" etc.  To me it's all unsupported literary prose.  It's also very unnecessary in WP unless one is writing reception history. Just say what the works are and leave it at that - that's my attitude.  I've been on the music scene since the early 1970s and I don't recall Reger ever being neglected.  It could be that certain performers promulgated him more than others and once those artists were off the scene, the perception might appear as if he's gone in decline.  But unless you can find an authoritative source to support that, there's no reason to say it at all.  Stick with facts. - kosboot (talk) 16:01, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Snark was not about you. But there is now a reasonably good source, the Harold Schoenberg article, about Reger's relative obscurity. I don't know what scene you inhabit, but if you live in a place where Reger has consistently in the public eye with frequent performances, that's a very unusual zipcode.  The performers cited in the Schoenberg article were virtually the only ones programming his work at the time of that article. As a result of their performances and recordings, the frequency has increased, not decreased, since then.  SPECIFICO talk 16:44, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I won't disagree with you about Reger.  But I want to put before you the example of Mahler.  Mahler went through a big resurgence in the 1960s U.S. mainly due to Bernstein - at least that's how program notes state it.  You can find examples of prose saying that he was neglected and only resurrected because of Bernstein. Of course that's nonsense; Mitropoulos and Walter were programming him with regularity. In fact, I think from 1920 to the present there was not a NY Philharmonic season that didn't have some Mahler on it.  This is an example of very typical music promotion: that to raise the profile of a performer, publicity states that he/she was the first, or the most, or championed, etc. etc. So I'm always wary of such statements unless they're backed up by solid hard facts. In general I think it's better to eschew such prose altogether (although I see the NY Philharmonic did not program Reger very much in the 1940s and 1950s.) - kosboot (talk) 18:37, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely right about Mahler. But of course Bernstein may have thought he was Mahler so there's that. SPECIFICO talk 19:39, 22 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Works section