Wikipedia entry for Max Reger
MAX REGER, whose ponderous figure we still seem to see before us at the piano or on the conductor’s platform, was born on March 19, 1873, at Brand in Bavaria, and died on a visit to Leipzig on May n, 1916. The Weimar sculptor Professor Richard Engelmann, a friend of the composer, who happened to be in Leipzig, took the death mask and still has it in his possession.Professor Engelmann writes about the taking of the mask: “On the morning of May 11 I was visiting Klinger’s studio in Leipzig. I found him deeply depressed. In the course of our conversation he asked me whether I had heard of Roger’s death. I was deeply affected, for I was bound to Reger by ties of friendship, and I hastened to the little hotel near by, where I found Mrs. Reger. The dead man himself was lying in a little room, with a wonderful and radiantly peaceful look on his face. On a little table beside him was a sheet of music in his own handwriting. The good state of preservation and the remarkable beauty of the face suggested the taking of a mask, and this was of peculiar interest to me because Reger had already arranged with me to model his bust early in June. I quickly succeeded in finding a moulder, and towards midday moulds had been taken of the mask and both hands. All three have since been kept in my studio. Whilst I was engaged in the work I was particularly struck by the remarkably beautiful modelling of the forehead and eye-sockets in comparison with the powerful formation of the lower half of the face. The bust, which I modelled from memory with the help of the mask, is of Untersberg marble. It is in the Municipal Museum at Nuremberg.”Black & White Photos and quotations from: Benkard, Ernst, & Green, Margaret (1927). Undying Faces, A Collection of Death Masks. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.