ABSTRACT
Introduction Reger’s “An Open Letter” in eff ect continues the argument set out in his “Music and Progress” of some four months earlier. Echoing Strauss’s statement in “Is Th ere a Progressive Party in Music?” Reger asserts that much writing about music — including historical assessments, analytical discussions of style, and predictions about future direction — is useless and often issues from those who are unable to judge music armed with anything beyond the pedantic orthodoxy of theory books. In an essay uncommonly rich in religious and political overtones, he denounces the “clique phenomenon” in critical circles of the period, and
he again aligns himself with Strauss by announcing that the symphonic poem per se is a legitimate form “so long as it is simply music.”1 Finally, Reger again takes up the notion of “progress” in music, and he points out that true progress cannot reside in the categorical pronouncements of ideological parties (Brahms-Reger versus Wagner-Strauss, for instance). For Reger, art never proceeds from romanticized notions of inspiration, rather from a craftsmanlike ability which, only after a long learning process, may be applied “to break the form with a wise hand, that is, to broaden, to deepen it.”
