Liszt?) three sweeping piano-sonatas (Op.50, 80 and 105; the second is lost without trace), in addition to a wealth of characteristic pieces, hardly to be overlooked.  An important part of his work consists of pieces with an educational bias.

From Karg-Elert more than 125 songs are known (most with piano accompaniment) on poems from Lessing to Dehmel. It is interesting to see that he (in haste?) sometimes wrote down the songs without adding the text to the vocal part. A comparable action is known to us in the orchestral parts of Joseph Haydn, where the master notated thoroughly only the main outline, in order to incorporate in a second operation the full body of the work (in another ink). Katharina Schwaab-Karg-Elert gave me a number of these “fragmentarily” notated songs and to them the collection of poems Von Stundenleid und Ewigkeit (From Hours of Sorrow and Eternity) by Gustav Schüler, whom her father consulted in this composition. It is not the least problem to lay underneath the vocal part the “intended” text. This specimen carries a handwritten dedication from Karg-Elert:

“These words of painful reality and this wonderfully deep luck, the knowledge of God and the world as provisions for the journey [vaticum] on the bleak thorny path . . .  to my good sister’s soul and my most faithful companion as offering in love. Sigfrid. 26.9.1916”

A postcard from the poet lies near the volume of poems, an authentic sign of his high regard:

“Dear Miss Karg, I sincerely thank you for your lovely card. Indeed, if only I had [more] songs from your brother Sigfried [sic]!

I know only two from the publisher Simon in Berlin. They are wonderful and will be sung, if only they sell. Are there more songs elsewhere which contain my texts? You already know how much I rate the art of Sigfried Karg-Elert!
Sincerest greetings, Yours, Gustav Schüler”

Karg-Elert was soon forgotten in Germany after his death, but in Anglo-Saxon countries he enjoyed a high reputation. He had no influential lobby for himself in Leipzig. Here, people played Reger but not Karg-Elert. With the arrival of the fatal enemy of emotions, the Organ Reform Movement [Orgelbewegung], which had no sympathy for the emotionally extreme music of Karg-Elert, with its richness of colour and form, a type of organ was cultivated which was not especially congenial to the music of our master.

At the start of the year 1964, WDR [West Deutsch Rundfunk: West German Radio]  risked a first Karg-Elert venture (the second of the Pastels, Op.92). (“Karg-Elert?  Never heard the name. Well then, we can have a go.”) In January 1969, the first gramophone recording [in Germany] of a work by Karg-Elert was released by the firm Psallite: “Jesu, meine Freude”. Since then, one can say that Karg-Elert has become the common property of organists nowadays.

I think of the lady student’s comment quoted at the start: shouldn’t both Reger and Karg-Elert be able to exist side by side?