All this music says, "Song is
enough."
But no such goodly presence glimmers through the music of Max Reger. No
sturdy bardic spirit vibrates in it. This Reger is a sarcastic, churlish
fellow, bitter and pedantic and rude. He is a sort of musical Cyclops, a
strong, ugly creature bulging with knotty and unshapely muscles, an ogre
of composition. He has little delicacy, little finesse of spirit. In
listening to these works with their clumsy blocks of tone, their eternal
sunless complaining, their lack of humor where they would be humorous,
their lack of passion where they would be profound, their sardonic and
monotonous bourdon, one is perforce reminded of the photograph of Reger
which his publishers place on the cover of their catalogue of his works,
the photograph that shows something that is like a swollen, myopic
beetle with thick lips and sullen expression crouching on an
organ-bench. There is something repulsive as well as pedantic in this
art. The poetry, the nobility, the moderation and cleanness of line of
Brahms is absent. Instead, there is a sort of brutal coldness, the
coldness of the born pedant, a prevalence of bad humor, a poverty of
invention and organizing power that conceals itself under an elaborate
and complex and erudite surface.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234