Max Reger Chronology | 1914

Totally over-stimulated and overworked Reger can hold out Reger his inhuman schedule only with the aid of alcohol. In February, he collapses in Hagen after a concert, must cancel all concerts and finally give up his position as Court conductor. However already on the sick-bed, explicitly prohibited to compose, he begins instrumentating own and Schubert lieder. Most fruitful result of a stay at a health resort in Meran and a subsequent holiday at Berchtesgaden are the Mozart variations, presumably Reger's most popular work. In sentimentalist longing and distance to Mozart he defines the own site, with reminiscences of his recent orchestral works he gives a melancholic retrospect to the Meiningen time from which he profitted the bright control of this body of instruments.

The outbreak of the first world war meets him in the summer break in most intense composition work. After he has finished a piano quartet, the spirited Telemann variations and the orchestral song Hymnus der Liebe in the first war month, he seems to fall with the Vaterlaendische (Patriotic) overture, dedicated to the German army, into general war euphoria. He nevertheless turns already during its final editing to a latin requiem which he wants to dedicate to the dead soldiers. The refusal of this highly expressive work of greatest size through his friend and consultant Straube leads him to stop working on the well-advanced work in the second movement - a Dies Irae full of apocalyptic visions. Reger falls, having failed in his lifelong dream of an oratorical main work, into a deep creative crisis from which only the move to Jena frees him in March 1915.

Next page: Year 1915