The success was momentary only. Long before he died, the world had found
in Max Reger its musical _bete noire_. Closer acquaintance with his art
had not ingratiated him with his public. Indeed, concert-audiences had
become bored to the point of exasperation with his classicizing
compositions. To most folk, it appeared as though the man saw no other
end in composition than the attainment of the opus-number One Thousand.
And although his works are rife with the sort of technical problems and
solutions which those initiated into musical science are supposed to
relish, few musicians found them really attractive. Reger made various
attempts to regain the favor he had lost. They were unavailing. Even
when he turned his back on the absolutists and wrote programmatic music,
romantic suites that begin with Debussy-like low flutes and end with
trumpet blasts that recall the sunrise music of "Also Sprach
Zarathustra," ballet suites that seek to rival the "Carnaval" of
Schumann and the waltzes in "Der Rosenkavalier," "Boecklin" suites that
pretend to translate into tone some of the Swiss painter's canvases, he
only intensified the general ill-will. People who knew him whisper that
he realized his failure, and in consequence took to emptying the vats of
beer that finally drowned him.
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