Work - Change - Identity: The Mozart- and Beethoven-Variations by Max Reger as Musical Ego-Documents

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Christiane Wiesenfeldt
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 269968085

Max Reger's successful and important Beethoven-Variations op. 86 and Mozart-Variations op. 132 were identity-generating works, which the composer later reworked for orchestra (in case of op. 86) and piano (in case of op. 132). For him, these adaptations were of equal value as the "originals" - a perspective, which in its time around 1900 with a disappearing emphatic concept of work, provokes further investigation. With an intense genetic textual analysis of the sources - sketches, working manuscripts, proofs, etc. - the reworking process should become visible in a first step of the project. In a second step the results should be reflected in context of the ego-documentary research. The key question in this analysis is to locate those moments in the musical material that disclose its creator and can be read as personal testimony or as self-revelatory, the moments where music opens its self-reflective coherence to the outside and grants us a deeper view. To be consistent, assuming that the work of art is a coherent system, one would have to seek objective instances - those moments in which fractures, breaks, assembly-points, or projective surfaces in the aesthetic subject itself (are made) visible. If one accomplishes this aim, these moments can then be read as symbols of subjective shapes and forms. Additionally, the project wants to revise the view on Reger as a fragile, foreign-determined artistic personality.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Cooperation Partner: Professorin Dr. Susanne Popp