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52-683: First violin Second violin Viola Cello From c. 1914 Paul Hindemith , a graduate of Hoch Conservatory at Frankfurt am Main , had taken the second violin desk in the Rebner Quartet of Frankfurt, led by his violin teacher Adolf Rebner . He continued to play in quartets during the war while in military service, and after the war took up the viola and asked to be moved to that desk. He had written string quartets in 1915 (Op. 2) and 1918 (Op. 10), and in 1920 produced another (Op. 16) which

104-454: A U.S. citizen in 1946, but returned to Europe in 1953, living in Zürich and teaching at the university there until he retired from teaching in 1957. Toward the end of his life he began to conduct more and made numerous recordings, mostly of his own music. In 1954, an anonymous critic for Opera magazine, having attended a performance of Hindemith's Neues vom Tage , wrote: "Mr Hindemith

156-506: A foundational tone , and use musical forms and counterpoint and cadences typical of the Baroque and Classical traditions. His harmonic language is more modern, freely using all 12 notes of the chromatic scale within his tonal framework, as detailed in his three-volume treatise, The Craft of Musical Composition . Paul Hindemith was born in Hanau , near Frankfurt , the eldest child of

208-480: A sonata for double bass, and a concerto for trumpet, bassoon, and strings (both in 1949). In the 1930s Hindemith began to write less for chamber music groups, and more for large orchestral forces. He wrote his opera Mathis der Maler , based on the life of the painter Matthias Grünewald , in 1933–1935. This opera is rarely staged, though a well-known production by the New York City Opera in 1995

260-469: A "real master", and he was appreciated and greatly respected. Toward the end of the 1930s, Hindemith made several tours of America as a viola and viola d'amore soloist. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1938, partly because his wife was of part-Jewish ancestry. At the same time that he was codifying his musical language, Hindemith's teaching and compositions began to be affected by his theories, according to critics such as Ernest Ansermet . Arriving in

312-639: A new music pedagogy in the era of president Kemal Atatürk . His deputy was Eduard Zuckmayer . Hindemith led the reorganization of Turkish music education and the early efforts to establish the Turkish State Opera and Ballet . He did not stay in Turkey as long as many other émigrés, but he greatly influenced Turkish musical life; the Ankara State Conservatory owes much to his efforts. Young Turkish musicians regarded Hindemith as

364-537: A prolonged decline in his physical health, Hindemith composed almost until his death. He died in Frankfurt from pancreatitis , aged 68. He and his wife are buried in Cimetière La Chiésaz, La Chiésaz , Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Hindemith is among the most significant German composers of his time. His early works are in a late romantic idiom, and he later produced expressionist works, rather in

416-550: A range of Hindemith's works. Philipp Jarnach Philipp Jarnach (26 July 1892 – 17 December 1982 in Börnsen ) was a German composer of modern music (" Neue Musik "), pianist, teacher, and conductor. Jarnach was born in Noisy-le-Sec , France, the son of a Spanish sculptor and a Flemish mother. Besides composer such as Hindemith , Jarnach is considered one of the leading and formative composer of

468-721: A series of recordings for EMI with the Philharmonia Orchestra and for Deutsche Grammophon with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra , which have been digitally remastered and released on CD. The Violin Concerto was also recorded by Decca/London , with the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and David Oistrakh as soloist. Everest Records issued a recording of Hindemith's postwar When Lilacs Last in

520-533: A social or political purpose and sometimes written to be played by amateurs. The concept was inspired by Bertolt Brecht . An example of this is Hindemith's Trauermusik (Funeral Music), written in January 1936. He was preparing the London premiere of his viola concerto Der Schwanendreher when he heard news of the death of George V . He quickly wrote Trauermusik for solo viola and string orchestra in tribute to

572-554: A string quartet. In May 1918 he was deployed to the front in Flanders , where he served as a sentry; his diary has him "surviving grenade attacks only by good luck", according to New Grove Dictionary . After the armistice he returned to Frankfurt and the Rebner Quartet. In 1921, Hindemith founded the Amar Quartet , playing viola, and extensively toured Europe with an emphasis on contemporary music. His younger brother Rudolf

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624-404: A traditional key signature . Like most tonal music, it is centred on a tonic and modulates from one tonal centre to another, but it "attempts ... the free use of all the twelve tones of the chromatic scale ", rather than relying on a diatonic scale as a restricted subset of these notes. He even rewrote some of his music after developing this system. One of the core features of Hindemith's system

676-405: Is a ranking of all musical intervals of the 12-tone equally tempered scale, from the most consonant to the most dissonant . He classifies chords in six categories, on the basis of dissonance, whether they contain a tritone, and whether they clearly suggest a root or tonal centre. His philosophy also encompassed melody—he strove for melodies that do not clearly outline major or minor triads. In

728-558: Is no virtuoso conductor, but he does possess an extraordinary knack of making performers understand how his own music is supposed to go." Hindemith received the Wihuri Sibelius Prize in 1955. He was awarded the Balzan Prize in 1962 "for the wealth, extent and variety of his work, which is among the most valid in contemporary music, and which contains masterpieces of opera, symphonic and chamber music." Despite

780-439: Is the idea of dissonance resolving to consonance. Much of Hindemith's music begins in consonant territory, progresses into dissonant tension, and resolves in full, consonant chords and cadences . This is especially apparent in his Concert Music for Strings and Brass (1930). Hindemith's complete set of instructional books, in possible educational order: Hindemith was a prolific composer. He conducted some of his own music in

832-460: Is written for a different small instrumental ensemble, many of them very unusual. Kammermusik No. 6 , for example, is a concerto for the viola d'amore , an instrument that has not been in wide use since the baroque period, but which Hindemith himself played. He continued to write for unusual groups of instruments throughout his life, producing (for example) a trio for viola, heckelphone and piano (1928), seven trios for three trautoniums (1930),

884-525: The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra , and then of Mannheim National Theatre , as first violin and Walter Caspar as second. The violinist Licco Amar remembered: "Shortly before the holidays I [...] received a telegram from Donaueschingen from Heinrich Burkard, a music director completely unknown to me. He proposed that I participate at the upcoming music festival in Donaueschingen, the first of its kind, with another violinist [Walter Caspar] and perform

936-796: The Frankfurt Opera Orchestra in 1914 and was promoted to concertmaster in 1916. He played second violin in the Rebner String Quartet from 1914. After his father's 1915 death in World War I , Hindemith was conscripted into the Imperial German Army in September 1917 and sent to a regiment in Alsace in January 1918. There he was assigned to play bass drum in the regiment band, and also formed

988-618: The London ( BBC -sponsored) debut was given (December 1926). Soon afterwards he left again permanently and Frank returned as cellist. The personnel of the Quartet with Amar and Caspar as violinists and Paul Hindemith as violist remained unchanged until Hindemith's departure in April 1929. Erich Kraack became Hindemith's successor in 1929. The Quartet disbanded in 1933. The Amar Quartet performed about 500 concerts from 1921 until 1933. They played in

1040-694: The University at Buffalo , Cornell University , and Wells College . During this time he gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard , from which the book A Composer's World (1952) was extracted. Hindemith had a long friendship with Erich Katz , whose compositions were influenced by him. Also among Hindemith's students were the future rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and the composers Franz Reizenstein , Harald Genzmer , Oskar Sala , Arnold Cooke , Robert Strassburg , and dozens of other notables . Hindemith became

1092-943: The 1920s Jarnach worked in Berlin as a pianist, conductor and composer. In 1927 he became a teacher in composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln . In 1949 he founded the Hamburger Musikhochschule (Hamburg Music Academy) which he directed until 1959 and at which he taught until 1970. His students included Ivan Rebroff (Hans Rolf Rippert as he was then, during his attendance at the Hochschule between 1950 and 1958), Kurt Weill , Otto Luening , Wilhelm Maler , Bernd Alois Zimmermann , Jürg Baur , Walter Steffens , Colin Brumby , Eberhard Werdin and Nikos Skalkottas . In 1982, he died in Börnsen . Jarnach composed

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1144-644: The Amar Quartet met with unanimous enthusiasm amongst composers and reviewers. Anton Webern wrote to Alban Berg from the music festival in Salzburg in 1922 about performances of his Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5 and Schoenberg's F-sharp minor Quartet, Op. 10 as follows: "I don't need to tell you about the incredible effect of the F-sharp minor Quartet. Or maybe I do: for it was a very rare event. The Hindemith Quartet played excellently. As far as my Quartet

1196-448: The Amar Quartet played works of Schumann, Verdi and Dvořák. The ensemble rapidly became known for its unfussy, clear interpretations of the classics. The Amar Quartet was of towering importance in concert life of the 1920s thanks to its indefatigable commitment to contemporary music. The fact that the works of Paul Hindemith stood at the centre of these efforts is not surprising, in view of the personal union of composer and interpreter. But

1248-439: The Amar Quartet was also committed to performing the works of other composers. Strings quartets by Béla Bartók, Max Butting, Alfredo Casella, Alois Hába, Philipp Jarnach , Ernst Krenek, Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern and many others were included on their programmes. A considerable number of premieres of contemporary works were given by the Amar Quartet. The interpretations of contemporary music by

1300-670: The Dooryard Bloom'd ("A Requiem for Those We Love") on LP, conducted by Hindemith. A stereo recording of Hindemith conducting the requiem with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra , with Louise Parker and George London as soloists, was made for Columbia Records in 1963 and later issued on CD. He also appeared on television as a guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra 's nationally syndicated "Music from Chicago" series;

1352-524: The U.S. in 1940, he taught primarily at Yale University , where he founded the Yale Collegium Musicum. He had such notable students as Lukas Foss , Graham George , Andrew Hill , Norman Dello Joio , Mel Powell , Yehudi Wyner , Harold Shapero , Hans Otte , Ruth Schönthal , Samuel Adler , Leonard Sarason , Fenno Heath, Tony -winning composer Mitch Leigh , and Oscar -winning film director George Roy Hill . Hindemith also taught at

1404-555: The attention of an international audience. The next year, he composed the song cycle Das Marienleben ( The Life of Mary ) and began to work as an organizer of the Donaueschingen Festival , where he programmed works by several avant-garde composers, including Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg . In 1927 he was appointed Professor at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Hindemith wrote

1456-576: The baton of Hugh McMillan, conducting the Boulder Symphonic Band at the University of Colorado. The piece is representative of Hindemith's late works, exhibiting strong contrapuntal lines throughout, and is a cornerstone of the band repertoire. He recorded it in stereo with members of the Philharmonia Orchestra for EMI in 1956. Most of Hindemith's music employs a unique system that is tonal but non- diatonic , often notated without

1508-716: The ensemble like a snake and carries everything away with it. The result is that the artists can perform their pieces in a tempo that would make one dizzy without sacrificing a single note. For example, if the first movement of the String Trio (Op. 34) could be performed more modestly, it might be seen that the piece is actually quite pretty." The Amar Quartet made recordings for Polydor Records and Parlophone Records : Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith ( / ˈ p aʊ l ˈ h ɪ n d ə m ɪ t / POWL HIN -də-mit ; German: [ˌpaʊ̯l ˈhɪndəmɪt] ; 16 November 1895 – 28 December 1963)

1560-469: The final chapter of Book 1, Hindemith seeks to illustrate the wide-ranging relevance and applicability of his system, analyzing musical examples from the medieval to the contemporary. These analyses include the early Gregorian melody Dies irae , compositions by Guillaume de Machaut , J. S. Bach , Richard Wagner , Igor Stravinsky , Arnold Schoenberg , and a composition of his own. Hindemith's 1942 piano work Ludus Tonalis contains twelve fugues , in

1612-409: The late 1930s Hindemith wrote an instructional treatise in three volumes, The Craft of Musical Composition , which lays out this system in great detail. He also advocated this system as a means of understanding and analyzing the harmonic structure of other music, claiming that it has a broader reach than the traditional Roman numeral approach to chords (an approach strongly tied to diatonic scales). In

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1664-580: The late German Romantic and early modern (" Neue Musik ") eras. Until 1914 he lived in Paris , where he studied piano under Édouard Risler and harmony under Albert Lavignac at the Conservatoire de Paris . During the First World War he was a student of Ferruccio Busoni in Zürich . He later completed the opera Doktor Faust which Busoni had left unfinished on his death in 1924. In

1716-496: The late king, and the premiere was given that same evening, the day after the king's death. Other examples of Hindemith's Gebrauchsmusik include: Hindemith's most popular work, both on record and in the concert hall, is probably the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber , written in 1943. It takes melodies from various works by Carl Maria von Weber , mainly piano duets, but also one from

1768-1011: The major German metropolises as well as in numerous provincial towns. With travels to Denmark, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia, the Quartet became renowned beyond German borders as well. During the winters of 1927/28 and 1928/29, the Quartet undertook two extended concert tours to the Soviet Union, during which Hindemith was able to gain an impression of contemporary Russian music. He also encountered Dmitri Shostakovich at this time. The Amar Quartet presented an extraordinarily extensive and varied repertoire at its concerts, including not only string quartets but also works for trio, quintet or sextet combinations. They intentionally concentrated on works that were not considered standard works of classical and romantic chamber music. For this reason, quartets of Haydn and Beethoven were relatively rarely played on their programmes; instead

1820-438: The manner of Johann Sebastian Bach , using traditional devices like inversion, diminution, augmentation, retrogradation, stretto, etc. Each fugue is connected by an interlude to the next, during which the music moves from the key of the last to its successor. The order of the keys follows Hindemith's ranking of musical intervals around the tonal center of C. Another traditional aspect of classical music that Hindemith retains

1872-526: The music for Hans Richter 's 1928 avant-garde film Ghosts Before Breakfast ( Vormittagsspuk ) and also acted in the film; the score and original film were later burned by the Nazis . In 1929, Hindemith played the solo part in the premiere of William Walton 's viola concerto , after Lionel Tertis , for whom it was written, turned it down. On 15 May 1924, Hindemith married the actress and singer Gertrud (Johanna Gertrude) Rottenberg (1900–1967). The marriage

1924-693: The opera Mathis der Maler (1938), the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943), and the oratorio When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1946), a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem . Hindemith and his wife emigrated to Switzerland and the United States ahead of World War II, after worsening difficulties with the Nazi German regime. In his later years, he conducted and recorded much of his own music. Most of Hindemith's compositions are anchored by

1976-461: The overture to his incidental music for Turandot (Op. 37/J. 75), and transforms and adapts them so that each movement of the piece is based on one theme. In 1951, Hindemith completed his Symphony in B-flat . Scored for concert band , it was written for the U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own" . Hindemith premiered it with that band on 5 April of that year. Its second performance took place under

2028-437: The painter and decorator Robert Hindemith from Lower Silesia and his wife Marie Hindemith, née Warnecke. He was taught the violin as a child. He entered Frankfurt's Dr. Hoch's Konservatorium , where he studied violin with Adolf Rebner , as well as conducting and composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles . At first he supported himself by playing in dance bands and musical-comedy groups. He became deputy leader of

2080-547: The performances have been released by VAI on home video. A complete collection of Hindemith's orchestral music was recorded by German and Australian orchestras, all conducted by Werner Andreas Albert and released on the CPO label. An annual festival of Hindemith's music has been held at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, from 2003 through at least 2017. It features student, staff, and professional musicians performing

2132-571: The quartet of a composer utterly unknown to me named Paul Hindemith. I of course accepted with pleasure. Without knowing any further details, I went to the Black Forest during the holidays and received the score and parts of the [...] String Quartet, Op. 16. I would not claim that I understood this new kind of music from an initial reading of the score, but I remember very well that something special grabbed me from these notes: an energy and vitality that I grasped more instinctively than consciously. I

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2184-554: The style of the early Schoenberg , before developing a leaner, contrapuntally complex style in the 1920s. This style has been described as neoclassical , but is quite different from the works by Igor Stravinsky labeled with that term, owing more to the contrapuntal language of Johann Sebastian Bach and Max Reger than the Classical clarity of Mozart . The new style can be heard in the series of works called Kammermusik (Chamber Music) from 1922 to 1927. Each of these pieces

2236-580: The thirties, with Hindemith falling in and out of favour with the Nazis. During the 1930s, Hindemith visited Cairo and also Ankara several times. He accepted an invitation from the Turkish government to oversee the creation of a music school in Ankara in 1935, after Goebbels had pressured him to request an indefinite leave of absence from the Berlin Academy. In Turkey, he was the leading figure of

2288-664: Was a German and American composer, music theorist , teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as Kammermusik , including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo- Bachian spirit. Other notable compositions include his song cycle Das Marienleben (1923), Der Schwanendreher for viola and orchestra (1935),

2340-483: Was accepted for performance in the new 1921 Donaueschingen Festival . However Gustav Havemann , leader of the Havemann Quartet engaged for it, refused to perform the work, and therefore Hindemith was obliged to form a group to give his own premiere. He chose his younger brother Rudolf (dedicatee of the work) as cellist, and recruited Licco Amar, a Budapest Conservatory graduate and 1915–1920 concertmaster of

2392-477: Was an exception. It combines the neo-classicism of earlier works with folk song . As a preliminary stage to the composing of this opera, Hindemith wrote a purely instrumental symphony also called Mathis der Maler , which is one of his most frequently performed works. In the opera, some portions of the symphony appear as instrumental interludes; others were elaborated in vocal scenes. Hindemith wrote Gebrauchsmusik (Music for Use)—compositions intended to have

2444-556: Was childless. The Nazis ' relationship to Hindemith's music was complicated. Some condemned his music as " degenerate " (largely based on his early, sexually charged operas such as Sancta Susanna ). In December 1934, during a speech at the Berlin Sports Palace , Germany's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels publicly denounced Hindemith as an "atonal noisemaker". The Nazis banned his music in October 1936, and he

2496-513: Was concerned: performance (Hindemith) very good. Really played like music." The Quartet attracted particular interest when they interpreted Hindemith's own works. A critic was both fascinated and amazed when he wrote the following in November 1927 after a concert in Zurich: "Hindemith writes for his viola, his quartet, so that they follow his lead, only that his viola part sometimes jerks through

2548-544: Was most astonished when I came to Donaueschingen as agreed and was received by two slight young people, who in fact looked like children, at the railway station. One was Paul Hindemith and the other was his brother Rudolf, who took on the cello part in this quartet. These two, who looked so slender, took possession of my baggage – I can still see this before me – and carried it away. [...] In eight days we had rehearsed this quartet very well, whereby both Hindemith brothers proved themselves outstanding quartet partners. The performance

2600-603: Was subsequently included in the 1938 Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) exhibition in Düsseldorf . Other officials working in Nazi Germany , though, thought that he might provide Germany with an example of a modern German composer, as, by this time, he was writing music based in tonality, with frequent references to folk music. The conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler 's defence of Hindemith, published in 1934, takes this line. The controversy around his work continued throughout

2652-549: Was the original cellist. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as Kammermusik . Reminiscent of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos , they include works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. In 1922, some of his pieces were played in the International Society for Contemporary Music festival at Salzburg , which first brought him to

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2704-410: Was – to put it briefly – a thunderous success." The performance was duly given, and in 1922 the Quartet became permanent and began giving recitals, specialising in modern music, and was soon extremely busy. Rudolf Hindemith, who found working under his brother's authority irksome, left and was replaced by Maurits Frank ; but Rudolf returned for a period during which the quartet's recordings were made and

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