Max Reger's 1915 Requiem (or the Hebbel Requiem), , is a late Romantic setting of Friedrich Hebbel's poem "Requiem" for alto or baritone solo, chorus and orchestra. It is Reger's last completed work for chorus and orchestra, dedicated in the autograph as (To the memory of the German heroes who fell in the 1914/15 War).
Reger had composed Requiem settings before: his 1912 motet for male chorus, published as the final part of his , uses the same poem, and in 1914 he set out to compose a choral work in memory of the victims of the Great War. The setting is of the Latin Requiem, the Catholic service for the dead, but the work remained a fragment and was eventually designated the (Latin Requiem), .
The Hebbel Requiem was published by N. Simrock in 1916, after the composer's death, with another choral composition, (The Hermit), , to a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff. That publication was titled (Two songs for mixed chorus with orchestra), . Reger provided a piano transcription of the orchestral parts. Max Beckschäfer arranged the work for voice, chorus and organ in 1985. The Hebbel Requiem was first performed in Heidelberg on 16July 1916 as part of a memorial concert for Reger, conducted by Philipp Wolfrum.
Reger thought the Hebbel Requiem was "among the most beautiful things" he ever wrote. It has been described as of "lyrical beauty, a dramatic compactness, and [of] economy of musical means" in which the composer's "mastery of impulse, technique, and material is apparent".
Background Reger was a German composer, born in Brand in 1873 and raised in Weiden in der Oberpfalz. He studied music theory from April to July 1890 with Hugo Riemann at the royal conservatory in Sondershausen and continued his studies, in piano and theory, at the Wiesbaden Conservatory beginning in September of that year. He established himself as a keyboard composer, performer, and teacher of piano and organ. The first compositions to which he assigned opus numbers were chamber music. In 1891 he composed his Sechs Lieder, Op. 4, a collection of six songs. The first, "" (Prayer), was on a text by Friedrich Hebbel, who also wrote the poem on which two of Reger's Requiem settings are based.
Reger returned to his parental home in 1898, where he composed his first work for choir and orchestra, (Hymn to song), Op. 21. He moved to Munich in 1901. Income from publishers, concerts and private teaching enabled him to marry in 1902. His wife, Elsa vonBercken, was a divorced Protestant, and as a result he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. In 1907 he was appointed musical director at Leipzig University and professor at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig.
In 1911 Reger was appointed Hofkapellmeister (music director) at the court of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen, while retaining his professorial duties at the Leipzig conservatory. In 1912 he set Hebbel's poem "Requiem" as a motet for unaccompanied male choir, which was published as No.10 of his collection Op. 83. In 1913 he composed four tone poems on paintings by Arnold Böcklin (Vier Tondichtungen nach A. Böcklin), including the painting Die Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead), as his Op. 128. He gave up the court position in 1914 for health reasons. That year, in response to the World War, he set out to compose a choral work to commemorate the soldiers who had died or were mortally wounded. He began to set the Latin Requiem but abandoned the work as a fragment. In 1915 he moved to Jena but continued teaching in Leipzig. In Jena, he composed the Hebbel Requiem for soloist, choir and orchestra, Op.144b, again on Hebbel's poem, as in the setting for men's chorus. Following a full day of teaching in Leipzig, Reger died of a heart attack while staying at a hotel there on 11May 1916.
Hebbel's poem
In 1840 the playwright Friedrich Hebbel wrote a poem in German titled "Requiem", its Latin title alluding to "" (eternal rest), the first words of the Mass for the Dead. The poem opens with an apostrophe to a "soul" in a plea, "" (Soul, forget them not, soul, forget not the dead). These words appear to echo various psalms, such as Psalm 103, "Bless the Lord, O my soul". Hebbel, however, evokes an "eternal rest" that is distinctly non-religious: the poem offers no metaphysical reference, Christian or otherwise, but calls for remembrance as the only way to keep the dead alive. The first lines, in which the speaker calls upon the soul not to forget the dead, are repeated in the centre of the poem and again at its conclusion, as a refrain that sets apart two longer sections of verse. The first of these sections describes how the dead, nurtured by love, enjoy a final glow of life. In contrast, the latter section portrays a different fate for souls that have been forsaken: who are relegated to an unending, desolate struggle for renewed existence. The musicologist Katherine FitzGibbon notes that the speaker of this narrative is not identified, but may be "a poetic narrator, divine voice, or even the dead".
German EnglishSeele, vergiss sie nicht, Seele, vergiss nicht die Toten!
Sieh, sie umschweben dich, Schauernd, verlassen, Und in den heiligen Gluten, Die den Armen die Liebe schürt, Atmen sie auf und erwarmen Und genießen zum letztenmal Ihr verglimmendes Leben.
Seele, vergiss sie nicht, Seele, vergiss nicht die Toten!
Sieh, sie umschweben dich, Schauernd, verlassen, Und wenn du dich erkaltend Ihnen verschließest, erstarren sie Bis hinein in das Tiefste.
Dem sie, zusammengekrampft in sich, Trotzten im Schoße der Liebe,
Und er jagt sie mit Ungestüm Durch die unendliche Wüste hin, Wo nicht Leben mehr ist, nur Kampf Losgelassener Kräfte Um erneuertes Sein!
Seele, vergiss sie nicht, Seele, vergiss nicht die Toten!Soul, forget them not, Soul, forget not the dead!
See, they hover around you, Shuddering, abandoned. And in the holy glow which love stokes for the poor, they breathe in relief and warm again And enjoy for a last time their dimming life.
Soul, forget them not, Soul, forget not the dead!
See, they hover around you, Shuddering, abandoned. And if you coldly lock yourself up to them, they stiffen up into the deepest.
which they, cramped together, defied in the bosom of love.
It chases them impetuously through an endless wasteland, Where there is no more life, only fight of unleashed forces for renewed existence!
Soul, forget them not, Soul, forget not the dead!
The poem was published in 1857. Separately, Peter Cornelius set the same poem in 1863, as a funeral motet for a six-part chorus, in response to the author's death.
Motet
Reger composed his first setting of Hebbel's poem as a motet for unaccompanied male choir in 1912 in Meiningen, where he had worked from 1911. He composed it for the Basler Liedertafel, conducted by Hermann Suter, who performed it on 18May 1912 to celebrate their 60th anniversary before giving the official premiere at the national Schweizer Eidgenössisches Sängerfest (Swiss federal song festival) in Neuchâtel on 22July 1912.
In accordance with the poem's structure, Reger used the same material for each of the refrains, in a homophonic setting. The words "ihr verglimmendes Leben" (their dimming life) are illustrated by "a sequence of chromatically descending sixth chords". Similar descending chords are often found in Reger's works as a musical expression of "pain, fear, death, and suffering—common associations with chromaticism since the sixteenth century", according to FitzGibbon. Both the recurring refrain and the descending chords reappear in the later setting of the poem in the Hebbel Requiem.
The motet was published under the title Requiem as the closing part of (Ten songs for men's chorus), , with earlier compositions from 1904.
Lateinisches Requiem
After the outbreak of war, Reger intended to compose a work commemorating the soldiers who had died or were mortally wounded, a choral work of "" (in great style). By the autumn of 1914, he was in discussion with a theologian in Giessen about a composition, tentatively titled "" Last Things [Final Judgment and Resurrection])". The organist Karl Straube, who had premiered several of Reger's organ works, recommended that Reger compose the traditional Latin Requiem instead, because would only be a variation on Ein deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms. Following his advice, Reger managed the composition of the introit and Kyrie, combining both texts into one movement. He announced the project, a composition for soloists, chorus, orchestra and organ, to his publisher on 3October 1914. The Dies irae remained unfinished. Reger wrote to Fritz Stein, his friend and later biographer, that he was in the middle of its composition, but had been interrupted after the line "statuens in parte dextra".
The Lateinisches Requiem is scored for soloists (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), a four-part (SATB) choir, three flutes (also piccolo), two oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, three percussionists and strings. It is Reger's only choral composition to use four soloists. The four "" are used like the several choirs in compositions by Heinrich Schütz. The first movement opens with a long organ pedal point, which has been compared to the beginning of Wagner's Das Rheingold and the Brahms Requiem.
The work remained unfinished at Reger's death, and his publisher named the first movement the , . The music was first performed by Stein in Berlin on 28May 1938 with four soloists and the enlarged choir of the Musikhochschule Berlin. For this performance, the liturgical Latin text was replaced by a German text, adapted to suit Nazi ideology. Hellmut von Hase titled his text (Rite of the Dead) and managed to serve "the Nazi adulation of the fallen war hero" (as FitzGibbon said), dropping references to the bible. He replaced for example "" (Hear my prayer; to you shall all flesh come) by "In sorrow we mutely lower the flags, for into the grave sunk what was dear to us." This version was published in 1939 by the Max Reger Society.
The unfinished Dies irae was published in 1974 and first performed in Hamburg's St. Jakobi on 3November 1979 by Yoko Kawahara, Marga Höffgen, Hans-Dieter Bader, Nikolaus Hillebrand, the NDR Chor and NDR Sinfonieorchester, conducted by Roland Bader.
The Lateinisches Requiem is officially catalogued as WoOV/9.
Hebbel Requiem
History Johannes Brahms, in his (A German Requiem), had already opened the way for the composition of a non-liturgical Requiem, written in a language other than Latin while still addressing the traditional theme of rest () for the dead. In this tradition, Reger's 1915 Requiem, , is also not a setting of the Requiem in Latin, but of Hebbel's poem. He composed it in Jena, a year before his own death, this time for a solo voice (alto or baritone), chorus and orchestra. The Requiem, , was combined with (The Hermit), , a setting of a poem by Joseph von Eichendorff, as (Two songs for mixed chorus with orchestra), . Reger titled the autograph of the piano version: / Requiem / (Hebbel), and he wrote the dedication: (To the memory of the German heroes who fell in the War 1914/15).
Reger completed the composition on 25August 1915. He wrote to the publisher on : "I've finished two choral works (Der Einsiedler and Requiem). I think I can safely say that they're both among the most beautiful things I've ever written." (Ich habe nun zwei Chorwerke (Der Einsiedler und Requiem) fertig. Ich glaube sagen zu dürfen, daß diese beiden Chorwerke mit das Schönste sind, was ich je geschrieben habe.) Requiem was first published by in 1916, edited by Ulrich Haverkampf, with the dedication Dem Andenken der im großen Kriege gefallenen deutschen Helden (To the memory of the German heroes who fell in the Great War). Simrock also published a vocal score as prepared by Reger himself.