| Secondary abstract: |
This master's thesis Compositions for Clarinet by Max Reger examines the life, creative output, and significance of Max Reger for the clarinet repertoire. Reger was born in Brand, Bavaria, into a musical family. He received his education in composition and organ performance in Sondershausen and at the conservatory in Wiesbaden. He developed his career in various German cities, including Weiden, Leipzig, and Jena, where he worked as a composer, pianist, teacher, and conductor. Reger’s musical style is characterized by dense harmonic textures, intricate counterpoint, and fidelity to the traditions of Baroque and Classical music, while also incorporating the deep expressiveness of late Romanticism and an engagement with early modernist tendencies. His music was strongly influenced by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner, and Franz Liszt, while Reger himself had a significant impact on the development of 20th-century music, particularly influencing composers like Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, and Dmitri Shostakovich. The thesis also provides an overview of Reger’s complete opus, encompassing works for various ensembles, with special emphasis on his chamber music. Within his chamber works, the clarinet emerges as a prominent instrument, with Reger exploring its expressive range and technical possibilities, including a wide variety of tonal colors, the ability to perform virtuosic passages across all registers, and an extensive dynamic range. In the final part of the thesis, Reger’s chamber works for clarinet are analyzed, including the Tarantella in G minor, Albumblatt in E-flat major, three Sonatas for clarinet and piano, and the Clarinet Quintet in A major. Since Reger’s compositions bridge late Romanticism and the beginnings of modernism, he often rapidly shifts tonal centers, making it difficult at times to determine the actual key of a section. In such cases during the analyses, the tables indicate the predominant key, or the key that is clearly perceptible at the beginning or end of a section. |