The term ‘historicist modernism’ refers to the way Reger – distinctively among his contemporaries in the years around 1900 – forges a contemporary musical language from a distinctive engagement with the music of the past, especially the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johannes Brahms. In this essay, I will focus especially on two major works of Reger, the Variations and Fugue on a heme of Bach, op. 81, and the Variations and a Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven, op. 86, both from 1904.

It is proper that I should begin by admitting that I am only an apprentice Reger-scholar. In planning this invited paper I evertheless learned much about how and why a British Mahler- and Schreker specialist, interested in the music of Hans fitzner and Franz Schmidt, might have remained so inconsistently ignorant of Reger. Setting aside, for the moment, the specific question of film music, what I have learned is clearly of levance to questions about why Reger appears not to ‘travel well’ internationally and about his reception by a UK audience.