MAY 2010

BASED IN ENGLAND

MEMBERS AREA

CATHEDRAL MUSIC

recall the remarks and dubious technique of editing in his published editions, when I think of these, then I dread this  un-ingenious, career-obsessed, business-minded cantor [choirmaster] of St. Thomas’s Church, who could not compose. What has the chief pastor at St. Thomas’s brought about, to get him [Straube] into this post, without application, without audition, to the indignation of others, who were at least equally worthy and who, in accordance with the rules, had applied; e.g., the great Paul Gerhardt from St. Mary’s Church in Zwickau, who played the entire literature on his 108-stop organ and had been committed, as well, to Reger since 1900!, and as organ-composer enjoyed the highest reputation! I shall remain silent over the calculated NS [Nationalsozialist: National-Socialist, “Nazi”] history of early party-members (that concerns only him), of his wooing Goebbels’ favour, which was entirely unsuccessful. But there comes to my mind the question: has this man just once in his life laughed heartily?
Dealings with people were essential for him. Matters couldn’t go well between Karg-Elert and Straube. Karg-Elert was, according to the words of his friend Johannes Piersig, a “fizzer” [one who effervesced]; he “fluttered, blathered, spoke, fought, demonstrated” and let loose “whole cascades of ideas” (quoted by Sonja Gerlach in the foreword to her index of Karg-Elert’s works). He had a tendency to attract attention and always wore clothes corresponding to that. He was an eroticist of the highest degree and made no secret of that. He who has actually named an organ piece Profumo sottile del fiore magico (Subtile Düfte der Wunderblume [Subtle Fragrances of Magic Flowers] Onirot id Alle-Ir-Bag) and at the same time leaves the declaration that the magic flower is called Gabriella from Turin! [The piece is No. 33 in the col­lection Portraits, Op.101 (1923), strictly for harmonium, not organ.]
Survivor as organ-composer
If one views the works of Karg-Elert as a whole, it appears that he survives as organ-composer of the first order, as well
as also producing a rich output in the fields of piano and chamber-music and songs.
Johann Sebastian Bach model
From the start the composer pushed as much for large forms as for intimate miniatures. In this he shows the influence of Liszt (Karg-Elert was a pupil of the Liszt-pupil Alfred Reisenauer), Schumann and Grieg. Grieg has pointed out to him emphatically that his gift formerly as pianist predestines him as composer. Above that stood Johann Sebastian Bach as the great model for Karg-Elert throughout his life; indeed there is hardly a piece of his in which the magic tone-sequence B-A-C-H is not to be discovered, openly presented or mysteriously veiled.
Karg-Elert devoted himself for years composing for “simple” or art-harmonium, prompted by one of his publishers [Carl Simon]. At any rate his pre-occupation with the harmonium was of great significance for his successfully turning to the organ in 1907. His first great original work for organ was the collection of the 66 Chorale-Improvisations, Op. 65.
In every chorale-adaptation the form has been newly invented
Karg-Elert knew of course Reger’s 52 Chorale-preludes, Op.67 (1902). But how completely differently did he set to work! If Reger had four or five historical types of a certain similarity to modify time and again, so Karg-Elert invented in his Chorale-adaptations of Op.65 (and later Op.78) the entire form newly, as it were, with each piece. The position is also similar in the Chorale-fantasies. At the latest, in the Chorale-partitas on “O Gott, du frommer Gott” [“O God, thou faithful God”], BWV 767 and “Ach, was soll ich Sünder machen?” [“Ah, what can I, a sinner, do?”], BWV 770 by Bach, there is the type of chorale-variation with especially lavishly shaped concluding stanza. Mendelssohn in his 6th Organ-sonata does no differently, likewise Rinck in several partitas. Heinrich Reimann has not found new paths, as is often claimed, in his Morgenstern-Fantasie [Morningstar-
fantasia]. He was never a model for Reger. However, Reger has repeated the old scheme seven times, with or without introduction or lavish concluding stanza (concluding fugue). Karg-Elert has achieved the truly new in his Symphonic Chorale “Jesu, meine Freude” [“Jesu, my Joy”], Op.87/2 (1911), for which there is really no model.
The fascination of Dante’s
“Divine Comedy”
Dante’s Divine Comedy must have exercised a tre­mendous fascination not only on Reger and Karg-Elert.  Reger writes to Paul Marsop on 20th April 1904 that he has written his Symphonic Fantasy, Op.57 (1901), the so-called “Inferno-fantasy”, under the impression of a lecture on Dante’s Inferno. And in fact one can recognise in this fantasy, if one wishes, the episode of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta out of the fifth canto.
A spiritual world-theatre between
dread and deliverance
Karg-Elert names the first movement of his symphonic chorale “Introduction/ Inferno”. But whilst he sketches, as it were, a spiritual world-theatre between dread and deliverance in the first three movements, he proceeds thoroughly as if by Reger. Especially in the introduction to the real inferno, he develops formally something completely new.
The tonal language of Karg-Elert has reached its highest maturity in this symphonic chorale. If one from now on glances ahead to the colossal works of the last period (the Symphony in F sharp minor, Op.143; Kaleidoscope, Op.144; and Music for Organ, Op.145), it appears that the boundary to atonality has already been crossed; the three movements of Op.145, for instance, have no uniform key any longer. Overstated one could put it: atonality here attains traditional structured sounds.
The situation in the sphere of piano and chamber-music is similar, as well as in the songs. Karg-Elert has written (from the model of the Sonata in B minor of
continuation