Paul Hindemith

Composer

• Born: November 16, 1895
• Birthplace: Hanau, Germany
• Died: December 28, 1963
• Place of death: Frankfurt am Main, West Germany (now in Germany)

German composer

Hindemith, a neoclassicist, used forms that were popular during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He sought to redefine and assert the principles of tonality in the twentieth century in his writings and to reflect those principles in his compositions.

Area of achievement Music

Early Life

Paul Hindemith (HIHN-deh-miht) was the eldest of three children born to Robert Rudolph Hindemith and Marie Sophie Hindemith. There is evidence that Paul’s childhood was not altogether a happy one, because of poor family finances and his father running the household in a strict and authoritarian manner. There appears to have been little affection between father and son for the latter reason. In a series of moves over several years, the father finally relocated the family to Frankfurt am Main sometime in 1902 in search of a better job.

The father, a lover of music and an amateur musician himself, saw to it that his three children received professional musical instruction beginning at an early age. It was there, in Frankfurt am Main, that Paul began the serious study of the violin at the Hoch Conservatory under the supervision of Anna Hegner, a violinist of some accomplishment. Undoubtedly young Hindemith’s extraordinary talent attracted attention, and, when Hegner left the conservatory a short time later, Hindemith continued his study of the instrument with Adolph Rebner, also associated with the conservatory and a violinist of considerable reputation. Later, Hindemith came to play second violin in Rebner’s string quartet and became concertmaster of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra in 1915, no small accomplishment for a young man who had not yet reached his twentieth birthday.

It was sometime during his association with the conservatory, which lasted until 1917, that Hindemith began to reveal to Rebner his interest in composition. He first studied composition with Arnold Mendelssohn at the conservatory and then, when Mendelssohn left the conservatory, with Bernard Sekles. Both were to produce a different but profound and lasting impression on the young Hindemith, although he finally came to regard the academic environment at the conservatory to be too repressive to continue his study of composition.

World War I claimed Hindemith in 1917, when he was drafted. He spent his military service as a member of a regimental band, in which he played the bass drum. His commanding officer respected his talent and treated Hindemith more as an equal than as an enlisted man. He made it possible for Hindemith to form a string quartet and to give concerts.

The years immediately following the war were professionally and personally important ones for Hindemith. With the end of the war, he returned to Frankfurt am Main and resumed his association with the Rebner Quartet and the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, this time as a violist. He soon left the Rebner Quartet and in 1921 formed the Amar Quartet, in which he continued to play the viola and in which his brother Rudolph played the cello for a time. The quartet came to be recognized as one of the leading quartets in Europe. Later, partly because of the performance activities of the quartet and also his desire to find more time for composition, Hindemith left the orchestra.

Hindemith, with Sekles’s encouragement, submitted several compositions for consideration to the Schott and Sons publishing house. The acceptance of these early pieces by the firm began a lifelong association with the Schott firm and with the two Strecker brothers, who owned and operated the business after the death of their father. The success of his early published compositions did much to advance young Hindemith’s reputation as a talented composer.

Hindemith became a member of the planning committee of the Donauschingen Festival in 1922. The festival was active in the promotion of contemporary music, and Hindemith played a major role on that committee, which further advanced his reputation and position in the music committee. The festival brought young and old composers, representing a diversity of styles, together in the spirit of friendship and cooperation. In his later years, Hindemith would speak highly of his experiences at the Donauschingen Festivals that were held in the early 1920’s.

Hindemith married Gertrud Rottenberg in 1924. She was the daughter of the conductor of the Frankfurt Opera. She was trained as a musician, but she never pursued a career in music. Instead, she increasingly became the manager of Hindemith’s career, handling his correspondence and carefully controlling other people’s demands on her husband’s time. The role she played in assisting Hindemith in his career cannot be overestimated.

Life’s Work

Hindemith’s early postwar compositions were experimental in nature. Among several works surrounded in controversy were three one-act operas: Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen; Sancta Susanna; and Das Nusch-Nuschi. Particularly scandalous was the opera Sancta Susanna, which dealt with the sexual fantasies of a nun. These three operas, among other works, reflect Hindemith’s fleeting interest in expressionism and atonality.

Beginning with the seven works entitled Kammermusik that were composed from 1922 to 1927, Hindemith moved toward a style that has been described as neoclassic or perhaps more appropriately neo-Baroque, so called because of his interest in contrapuntal texture, reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bach, and also his interest in Baroque forms. The emphasis was on the linear movement, and, though decidedly dissonant, his use of the music material was rooted in tonality. Hindemith continued to refine his technique but maintained this essential style throughout his career.

Hindemith left Frankfurt am Main to accept a position as professor of composition at the Berlin Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in 1927, a position that he held for ten years. His decision to enter academe turned out to be a good one. The contact with students challenged him to articulate his philosophy of composition and stimulated him in his own compositional activity as he attempted to construct a theory that reflected his own compositional practices. The natural outgrowth of the process was his book entitled Unterweisung im Tonsatz (The Craft of Musical Composition), which was published in Germany in 1937, appearing in English translation in 1941. Criticized by some and hailed as a major contribution by others, the first volume was followed by two additional volumes, the last being published posthumously.

Hindemith’s professional good fortune gradually began to change when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. His music was held in low esteem by the Nazi authorities, who viewed it as decadent. Hindemith, reluctant to abandon the country of his birth, initially attempted to work within the repressive guidelines of the Third Reich. In 1935, he accepted an invitation by the Turkish government to reorganize the music and music education systems in that country. Hoping for a change of attitude from the German government in his absence, Hindemith busied himself with the Turkish project, which often saw him out of Germany, until its completion in 1937. Hindemith finally tired of waiting for the Nazi regime to change its mind and resigned his position at the Hochschule in 1937; after a brief time in Switzerland, he went, in 1940, to the United States, where he was to remain for the next thirteen years.

Ironically, the opera Mathis der Maler, one of his finest and most popular works, was composed in 1934, during this period of Nazi harassment. The subject of the opera, which involved the sixteenth century painter Matthias Grünewald, proved to be politically too sensitive, and the Nazi regime banned the opera’s performance. A symphony based on the themes from the opera was performed in that same year and was enthusiastically received. The opera was not to be performed until 1938 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Hindemith accepted a professorship at Yale University in 1940. His thirteen-year tenure at Yale yielded only a handful of graduates under his supervision. While attracting a number of the brightest students that the United States had to offer, he also acquired the reputation of being a rigorous and exacting, if enthusiastic, taskmaster. Hindemith had long had an interest in the generally neglected works of great composers of the medieval and Renaissance periods. Having the rich resources of talented musicians and materials at his disposal while at Yale, he assumed an active role in the performing and conducting of early music.

He continued to produce important works in what was to become his adopted country in 1946, when he became an American citizen. Most notable was Ludus Tonalis for piano in 1942, a masterful exercise of the composer’s contrapuntal skill. The Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, composed in 1943, was, perhaps, his most popular work. It was for an orchestra and implemented several themes taken from works by the early nineteenth century composer of the title. Finally, the requiem he composed in 1945 in response to the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt remains one of his most expressive and heartfelt compositions. The work was based on Walt Whitman’s poem on the death of Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

Hindemith surprised everyone when he elected to leave his newly adopted country in 1953 and return to Europe, where he settled in Switzerland. The major work of this last decade of his life was his opera Die Harmonie der Welt, which was based on the life of the astronomer Johannes Kepler. He devoted much of the time from these last years to traveling and making guest appearances as a conductor. He died in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, in 1963 following a brief illness.

Significance

Hindemith’s attitude toward music was essentially Baroque, and it manifested itself in various ways that are identifiable. First, he believed that the composer should be writing music for a specific function or purpose, not simply for the sake of inspiration. He was very sensitive about the relationship between composer and performer and believed that the composer should compose music that could be used by performers of varying levels of maturity. One such piece, for example, was Hindemith’s opera to be performed by children, Wir bauen eine Stadt, which was first performed in 1930. He also composed a series of challenging sonatas for a number of the orchestral instruments. He treated the orchestral instrument and the piano in these works as partners in the sharing of the music material. Hindemith intended these to be learning pieces that would be appealing to the performers involved and also appealing to the audiences who had to listen to them. This basic concept has been referred to as Gebrauchsmusik, or functional, utilitarian, music.

The idea also relates to the composer/audience relationship, which had been on a collision course since the early nineteenth century, when the composers had gradually begun to disassociate themselves from the opinions of audiences and patrons. As the musical language became more complex throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century with the emergence of expressionism and atonality, the distance between composer and audience was greater than ever. Hindemith was one of those composers in the twentieth century who attempted to reverse that trend by writing music that would be more appealing and understandable to audiences.

Hindemith was a performer and a composer who was driven to share his ideas with fellow musicians who were less accomplished or knowledgeable, as Bach had done in his day. In Hindemith’s role as teacher, the emphasis was always on practical performance. He was constantly involving his students in the performance problems of music, ancient and modern, and sometimes this even led to the learning of a new instrument. Hindemith did not see his roles as performer, composer, teacher, or music consumer as being separate from one another. To him, they were all part of being a twentieth century musician.

Bibliography

Hindemith, Paul. A Composer’s World: Horizons and Limitations. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952. Based on the six Charles Eliot Morton lectures he presented at Harvard, this book provides interesting insights into Hindemith’s private thoughts about music. It is a good source for the general reader.

Machlis, Joseph. Introduction to Contemporary Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979. Contains some biographical information on Hindemith. Machlis briefly discusses Hindemith’s music and compositional style. This book is an excellent survey of the twentieth century and is intended for the general reader.

Neumeyer, David. The Music of Paul Hindemith. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. Neumeyer’s book discusses Hindemith’s compositional theories. He establishes an analytical procedure for the purpose of describing the technical features of Hindemith’s music. Contains an excellent appendix that provides a dated chronological listing of Hindemith’s works, including city where composed, performance time, and publisher.

Richter, Eckhart. “Paul Hindemith as Director of the Yale Collegium Musicum.” College Music Symposium 18 (1978): 20-44. This article provides an excellent insight into Hindemith, the practicing musician who was active in the study and performance of early music while he was at Yale.

Skelton, Geoffrey. Paul Hindemith: The Man Behind the Music. London: Victor Gollancz, 1975. Skelton’s book is a thorough and detailed historical account of Hindemith’s life. Contains a chronological listing of his works and a discography of recordings involving Hindemith as performer or conductor. This is an excellent book for the general reader.

Teachout, Terry. “The Last German Master.” Commentary 113, no. 1 (January, 2002): 47. Discusses Hindemith’s education, career, and compositions.

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1901-1940: July 17, 1927: Brecht and Weill Collaborate on the Mahagonny Songspiel; 1930’s: Hindemith Advances Music as a Social Activity.