I was going to post this in the Senfter thread, but decided that the music deserved a thread of its own:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-ckm7kgJk
It's gorgeous, isn't it? And it gives us an important context for the discussion of Senfter's music. Reger wrote this in 1903, well before Senfter entered Reger's composition class at the Leipzig Royal Conservatory in October 1908. The difference, I think, is that, while Reger's use of constantly evolving chromaticism here is very obvious, somehow he manages not to lose us 'in the sludge', as Dave Hurwitz would put it. And this - i.e. 'getting lost 'in the sludge' - is the difficulty I have with Senfter's orchestral music.
Clearly, I need help...
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesang_der_Verkl%C3%A4rten
<<The work was first performed in Aachen on 18 January 1906 by the municipal choir and orchestra (Städtischer Gesangverein and Städtisches Orchester), conducted by Eberhard Schwickerath. A. von der Schleinitz reported in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik:
It is not enough to call Reger's Opus 71, the ink still wet on its pages, the strangest and weirdest thing that has ever resounded in notes. With its dauntless accumulation of huge masses of sound, its unbridled and randomly modulating counterpoint, its strange harmonies leaping over every commonly accepted connecting link and progression, its audacious agglomeration of ugly sounds rarely interrupted by melodic flow, and its difficulties for every participant, far exceeding anything known to date, it may well reach the outermost limit of musical expression altogether, just as it sometimes seems to be an absurd game played with musical forms by a master whose command of his craft borders on genius.>>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-ckm7kgJk
It's gorgeous, isn't it? And it gives us an important context for the discussion of Senfter's music. Reger wrote this in 1903, well before Senfter entered Reger's composition class at the Leipzig Royal Conservatory in October 1908. The difference, I think, is that, while Reger's use of constantly evolving chromaticism here is very obvious, somehow he manages not to lose us 'in the sludge', as Dave Hurwitz would put it. And this - i.e. 'getting lost 'in the sludge' - is the difficulty I have with Senfter's orchestral music.
Clearly, I need help...
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesang_der_Verkl%C3%A4rten
<<The work was first performed in Aachen on 18 January 1906 by the municipal choir and orchestra (Städtischer Gesangverein and Städtisches Orchester), conducted by Eberhard Schwickerath. A. von der Schleinitz reported in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik:
It is not enough to call Reger's Opus 71, the ink still wet on its pages, the strangest and weirdest thing that has ever resounded in notes. With its dauntless accumulation of huge masses of sound, its unbridled and randomly modulating counterpoint, its strange harmonies leaping over every commonly accepted connecting link and progression, its audacious agglomeration of ugly sounds rarely interrupted by melodic flow, and its difficulties for every participant, far exceeding anything known to date, it may well reach the outermost limit of musical expression altogether, just as it sometimes seems to be an absurd game played with musical forms by a master whose command of his craft borders on genius.>>