Der 100. Psalm

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I've listed this article for peer review because, in the Reger Year 2016, I would like to see article on his greatest choral work as good as it can be. I would like it to complete my work on the composer this year. Thankful for comments in the previous Requiem, I invite ideas for improvement.

Thanks, Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:16, 3 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Scribolt

Hi, I've started looking at Peer Review and found this. Very well written and interesting article. I'm no subject matter expert (or Wikipedia expert), but I've got some feedback should you want it.

Lead

• "Reger structured the text in four movements, as a choral symphony, and scored it for a four-part choir, with often divided voices, a large symphony orchestra and organ, and additional brass players for the climax in the last movement when four trumpets and four trombones play the melody of Luther's chorale "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott"." is quite a complex sentence and I kind of lost my way inside it. Not being familiar with the content at all, did you mean

"Reger structured the text in four movements, as a choral symphony. It was scored for a four-part choir (with often divided voices), a large symphony orchestra and organ with additional brass players for the climax in the last movement when four trumpets and four trombones play the melody of Luther's chorale "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott"?

Or

"Reger structured the text in four movements, as a choral symphony for a four-part choir (with often divided voices). They are accompanied by a large symphony orchestra with organ and are joined by additional brass players for the climax in the last movement when four trumpets and four trombones play the melody of Luther's chorale "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott"?

Thank you for your comments and correction. I am no native speaker of English and like language improvements. I prefer the active voice whenever possible, so will try that. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Background

• This is the background of Reger, not the Psalm. I haven't looked at enough to know if this is a standard heading, but maybe re-naming the heading might be appropriate. Composer or Max Reger even?
• "A year later he began the composition." to "A year later he began the composition of Der 100 Psalm."

Background is a general term. The section is meant to explain briefly to those who don't know the composer how he came to write this. more later. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

History

• I'm assuming he was born in 1873 and not 1973 ;-). I've corrected this already

Thank you ;) --GA

• There's quite a lot of German here... Don't have a problem with that necessarily, but I'm really not sure that we need the original German of the dedication, particularly as it doesn't really add anything that the translation doesn't.

I'd like to ask others about that and leave it for now. It has some of the style of his writing, for those who know. If needed it could go to a footnote. --GA

• If we're going to have the German text for the receptions, someone with a better knowledge of German than I do needs to look at the translation of the first quote. I suspect there are some colloquialisms that don't really work, 'sticking a listener to a wall' was never something I aspired to during a performance. Also I'd suggest leading with the translations with the German originals in brackets.

There was already a discussion of this translation on Ritchie's page. I wonder if some translation is in English literature about Reger that I don't know. --GA

Structure and Scoring

• "In the final movement, an additional brass ensemble of four trumpets and four trombones plays the cantus firmus of Luther's chorale "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott".[1] Reger used Lutheran hymns in the tradition of Johann Sebastian Bach often in his work. He had written already a chorale fantasia on the hymn, Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott, Op. 27 in 1898."

to

"In the final movement, an additional brass ensemble of four trumpets and four trombones plays the cantus firmus of Luther's chorale "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott".[1] In the tradition of Johann Sebastian Bach, Reger often used Lutheran hymns in his work and had already written a chorale fantasia based on this same hymn in 1898.

I would do that if I didn't want to show Reger's slightly different rendering of the hymn. --GA

Erkennet

• "Horns and trombones play first in unison three times the same note, which could be the sung as the first word, "Erkennet" (Realize)“

to

"Horns and trombones play same note three times in unison, which are also sung with the word "Erkennet" (Realize)“. (I'm not quite sure what was meant in the second half of the sentence. In anycase, it didn't read properly)

tried differently --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:06, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The Swiss quote is the formatted the opposite way to the German ones above (e.g. English with German translation in brackets). Whichever way is chosen, it should be consistent.

No, it's no translation in this case. Do you think a translation should be added? --GA

Hm, in which case I'm not entirely clear exactly how the text is structured then. "The Swiss musicologist Michael Eidenbenz, writing for the Zürcher Bach Chor (de), describes the section as mystical and reflective ("mystisch-reflektierend")." When I read it, I thought the ("mystisch-reflektierend") was a quote of what he said, and the "mystical and reflective" was the translation (in which case my previous comment applies). If mystical and reflective is not a quote, but a paraphrase, why is there a translation of the paraphrase? Sorry, didn't mean to cause confusion, in anycase it stood out for me because it appeared reversed compared to the rest of the article. Scribolt (talk) 06:05, 21 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Evaluation

• The second translated quote "Expressivity instead of understandability, the intention of a shock wave making the audience a relief, relentless modulation, external opulence and inner calculated logic, the naive and unquestioned naturalness of his music", is another one which fails to work in English translated so directly. Needs to be re-written for comprehensibility.

As above, - wonder if there's a kind of official translation out there. --GA

Versions

• "Hindemith "thinned" the orchestra, especially the horns, and the organ which reinforces the voices all the time in Reger's scoring, resulting in a lack of clarity for the polyphon passages. Hindemith used the organ only for climaxes."

to

"Hindemith "thinned" the orchestra, especially the horns. The organ, which reinforced the voices throughout the piece in the Reger's scoring resulting in a lack of clarity for the polyphon passages, he only used for the climaxes."

tried differently --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:06, 20 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]