The Complete Works for Clarinet and Piano

Abstract

This is the best known of the three clarinet sonatas written by Max Reger (1873-1916). Composed in 1909, it is one of the most important works in the clarinet solo repertory. Reger's style mixed strongly traditional formal procedures (dating back from Brahms all the way through Beethoven and Bach) with the harmonic language of Wagner and Richard Strauss. Though musicologist Carl Dahlhaus denigrated Reger as a "pedantic reactionary," Schoenberg admired him, and he falls clearly into the line of Brahmsian formal thinking that influenced the creator of the 12-tone row. His inclination toward absolute music, along with his successful career in the German university system, led him to compose generous quantities of chamber music, of which the present sonata is an excellent example. The work, at 31 minutes, is exceptionally long for a wind sonata; composers are usually more mindful of the fact that playing a wind instrument requires more endurance per unit of time than playing a string instrument.

True to the composer's usual practice, the forms of the work's four movements are entirely traditional (sonata-allegro, scherzo—although this scherzo has an unusually slow trio—a lyrical song form, and a sonata-rondo to close). The sonata is cyclic, unobtrusively quoting music from the scherzo in the slow movement and subjecting the same six-note motive to thematic transformations in both the opening and closing movements. In the finale, it generates a pastoral tune, a chorale, and a dance-like portion. The work ends by quoting both the slow movement and a codetta from the opening movement.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide