One night at least a month ago, perhaps two, I was browsing in my 22,469 mp3 files*, looking for some classical piece to listen to before bed--something no more than fifteen minutes or so in length, and not overly intense or demanding. This album caught my eye: not the image, but the words "solo viola."

The dates on the files tell me that I acquired this album in 2007, probably for next to nothing. But I had never listened to it. I had barely heard of Max Reger, and had only a vague idea that he was an early 20th century composer. But I do like the viola quite a lot, so I gave it a try, half-expecting it to be half-listenable early 20th century hostility to the ear.

What a happy surprise! The first suite is in G minor, with four movements. The first movement is slow and somberly melodic. It immediately put me in mind of Bach's cello suites, and I have no doubt that Reger meant that it should. The second movement begins energetically and tunefully, goes to a section more like the first movement, then back to energetic. This was definitely interesting and not at all inaccessible music. I listened to the whole suite, which is only a dozen or so minutes long. I liked it, and returned to it the following night, and then again, and with every hearing I only liked  it more. 

I went on to the second and third suites, and over a period of weeks I must have listened to all of them at least half a dozen times each. As of this moment I think I like the third one, also in a minor key (E minor) best. But that may change the next time I listen to one of the others.

I don't suppose these suites measure up to Bach's. I don't know that Reger expected them to, though, as I said, he surely must have been inspired by them and intended the association. Perhaps they're not as profound and complex. But they do possess a similar atmosphere. Rather than flail around trying to describe the music, I can offer you the opportunity to hear it for yourself, thanks to YouTube.

The suites are perfect for the sort of occasion on which I first discovered them, a quiet time when you want to hear some music that's interesting and thoughtful but not dramatic and stimulating. Or long. They're like a late-night conversation with a good friend, reflective and unhurried, sometimes lively but not contentious, and not without humor.

For the first several hearings of all three suites, I listened to the recording I have, the Kobayashi one pictured above. It's a strong, even forceful, performance with very clear and close sound. Then I began to wonder about other performances, and thanks to Idagio I had a number of choices--though the suites had been unknown to me, they are well-known and well-regarded enough that there are a fair number of recordings to choose from. I liked this one best. It's more lyrical than Kobayashi's. 

The question now, obviously, is: what other music by Reger would I like? And would I like it as much as I like this? That would be nice.

* Exact count (maintained by the software, Media Center from J. River)

Today, November 22nd, is St. Cecilia's feast day (and also that other day that many of us remember). Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern observes the occasion with Dryden's "Song For St. Cecilia's Day," a wonderful poem which you should read. Read it twice, actually: once slowly and perhaps haltingly for comprehension, making sure you've straightened out the sometimes complex or roundabout syntax, then again with a natural flow. It's not so much about St. Cecilia as a brief history of the cosmos, from birth to death, in terms of music--really. That last line is wonderful.

The poem made me recall that Handel wrote an Ode For St. Cecilia's Day, which I had never heard. Well, now I have, only once, but that was enough to show me that it will be worth getting to know better. Here, plucked from YouTube's initial offerings and without knowledge of the ensemble, is the second movement, containing the first stanza of the poem. The first movement is an instrumental overture. 

I'm downright amazed at the way Joseph Bottum and Sally Thomas keep putting out these wonderful posts at the rate of five a week. The poems are always at least interesting, and the commentaries are both erudite and sensitive. As I think I said last time I mentioned the site, it's a continuing education. You should subscribe, preferably a paid subscription, but you don't have to have that in order to read it. 

I've been putting off writing this post, even more than is accounted for by my normal level of procrastination. The reason, upon examination, was pretty simple: I didn't want to write it. And the reason for that was, similarly, more than is accounted for by my normal laziness: I didn't know what I wanted to say. And the reason for that was that I don't like the book as much as I had hoped and expected and indeed wanted to do, and am reluctant to damn with faint praise the work of a novelist whom I consider to be a great one--or, I have to admit, to put in the work of sorting out the good from the bad, what works and what doesn't work, in the novel.

This is a sequel to The Wild Orchid, in that it's a separate volume, but, as with the three volumes of Kristen Lavransdatter and the four of Olav Audunsson, the two are effectively a single story, the story of the life of Paul Selmer up to a point well into middle age. I wonder why it stopped there, instead of going on until the death of the protagonist, as in the other two novels. And I speculate that perhaps Undset herself may have recognized that the story was not succeeding in the way her massive medieval stories did. 

Paul seems to have been born around 1890. The Wild Orchid ends in 1914, with him in his twenties, recently married, with a baby and a successful business, and the Great War having just broken out. The Burning Bush begins two years later. Norway is not directly involved in the war, but it's having an adverse effect on his business. His marriage, which we could clearly see was going to have problems, is having them. Through the first book he was on an intellectual and spiritual trajectory which was clearly toward the Catholic Church, and I was mildly surprised that he did not get there. Part of the reason was an intense love affair which tended to push everything else, including his career, aside--he had expected to become an academic, but had given that up in part so that he could marry the girl, only to have the relationship end abruptly. 

I say the affair was "intense," but for the most part I didn't really get that sense of it. And that points toward what is, for me, the central problem with the novel (in which I include both volumes): it never really caught fire for me, and one important reason is that Paul always seemed to me a bit of a cold fish. We we are told that he is quite passionate in that first love, but to me he generally seemed a bit detached, a bit overly rational. The reader--this one anyway--seems to be looking at the affair from the middle distance: we see what's going on, but we aren't close to it. We don't really feel what Paul feels. Or at least I didn't. The same is true of the depiction of his marriage, though there is more justification for it there, as he has more or less blundered into marriage to a young woman whom he doesn't really love. And in general his family and other relationships seem marked by a certain coolness and distance. 

He does, fairly early in the second volume, make his way into the Catholic Church. And it becomes the center of his life even as it creates problems for him, especially with his wife and other family members: one in particular, a cousin named Ruth to whom he is close, laments that he seems to be lost to the family. His faith and his determination to live it as thoroughly and honestly as he can never seriously falter; I add "seriously" because he is tested, and given to understand how far short he still falls. 

I'm afraid I'm making this sound more negative than I would like. It is an interesting story, and I did enjoy it. I never had any sensation of having to force myself to continue. The situations that arise toward the end do become quite moving. Certain facts about the events of the first volume are revealed, showing them to have been tragic instead of merely ordinary difficulties and mistakes, and the occasion of vast regret.

But I can't describe this duology or evaluate it without having those two masterpieces standing beside it and making it look comparatively small. While the central drama of Paul's life may not have the tension and impact it should and no doubt was meant to--or that either Kristen's or Olav's have--there is a great deal along the way to interest the philosophically and religiously inclined reader. Much of that involves the fairly frequent more or less abstract discussions of the Catholic faith, and the not at all abstract bearing of that faith on the crisis of modern secular liberal civilization.

And lesser in both number and significance, but still interesting, are glimpses of the way the world looked from Norway in the early 20th century. Here is Paul's wife, on hearing that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was likely to cause a war: "Pooh! They have such heaps of archdukes down there that it can't matter so very much."

[There should be a picture of the book's cover here, but Typepad's image insertion feature isn't working. You can see it at Cluny Media's site.]

---

ADDENDUM, a day later

I've just re-read the chapter in which that "occasion of vast regret" occurs, and I see that I haven't really been fair to Paul, or to the book. It is very powerful, as well as profound. Paul at that point in his life is certainly no stranger to the deepest passions.