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56-600: One of a group of composers known as the Turkish Five who pioneered western classical music in Turkey , his works show a mastery of Western musical practice, while also incorporating traditional Turkish folk songs and culture. When alluding to folk elements he tends to spotlight one note of the scale and weave a melody around it, based on a Turkish mode . His extensive output includes five symphonies, five operas, two piano concertos, concertos for violin, viola and cello, and

112-454: 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

168-506: 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

224-480: 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

280-469: 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

336-554: A Paris premiere of the first string quartet (1954) and a premiere of the second string quartet (1958) in New York City performed by the Juilliard String Quartet gained him further international exposure. There followed, amongst other works, three more symphonies, concertos for violin and viola and a second piano concerto, and a third string quartet. A fourth quartet remained unfinished at his death. Saygun

392-449: A great deal about string quartets: they became great friends. In 1939 he was invited back to Ankara to further promote Western musical activities and practices. A year later he formed his own organization, Ses ve Tel Birliği , which showcased recitals and concerts throughout the country, further developing public knowledge of Western classical music. Saygun's international acclaim flourished with his oratorio Yunus Emre in 1946. This

448-586: 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

504-754: A performance in English at the United Nations led by conductor Leopold Stokowski with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1958. This same year he won the Stella della solidarietà and the Jean Sibelius composition awards. The success of Yunus Emre encouraged Saygun to compose further large-scale works. In the 1950s he wrote three new operas, his first two symphonies, a piano concerto, and several pieces of chamber music pieces, of which

560-537: 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

616-721: 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

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672-485: A series of works in memoriam of the 100th birthday of the composer in 2007. The records are including Symphonies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Piano Concertos 1, 2, Violin Concerto, Viola Concerto, Cello Concerto, Anatolian Suite and String Quartets 1, 2, 3, 4. Turkish music historian Emre Araci published a comprehensive biography and catalogue of Adnan Saygun in 2001 (Yapı Kredi Yayınları, in Turkish), based on his 1999 PhD thesis from

728-533: 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

784-618: 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

840-404: 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

896-400: A wide range of chamber and choral works. The Times called him "the grand old man of Turkish music, who was to his country what Jean Sibelius is to Finland, what Manuel de Falla is to Spain, and what Béla Bartók is to Hungary". Saygun was growing up in Turkey when he witnessed radical changes in his country’s politics and culture as the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had replaced

952-405: 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

1008-491: Is an hour-long work written for four vocal soloists, a full chorus and full orchestra that sets a number of poems by the 13th century Anatolian mystic poet Yunus Emre . This work captures Yunus Emre' s legacy with the use of Turkish modes and folk melodies, although it is written in the post-romantic style. Since its premiere in Ankara in 1947, the oratorio has been translated into five languages and performed worldwide, including

1064-558: 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

1120-439: 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

1176-460: 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),

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1232-796: 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

1288-477: The Ottoman Empire —which had ruled for nearly 600 years—with a new secular republic based on Western models and traditions. As Atatürk had created a new cultural identity for his people and newly founded nation, Saygun found his role in developing what Atatürk had begun. Ahmet Adnan Saygun was born in 1907 in İzmir, then part of the Ottoman Empire – in today's Turkey. There were frequent concerts given by

1344-638: The Ottoman military bands , and performances of Western works by chamber music ensembles at the time and this influenced Saygun to start his first music lessons in elementary school. He started playing the piano, the Ottoman short-necked lute and the oud at an early age and quickly found his passion writing music at the age of fourteen. His father who was a mathematics teacher and scholar of religions and literature taught him English and French as well as world religions at an early age. Through rigorous study Saygun

1400-694: 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

1456-469: The University of Edinburgh . The Turkish Five The Turkish Five ( Turkish : Türk Beşleri ) is a name used by some authors to identify five pioneers of Western classical music in Turkey . They were all born in the first decade of the 20th century, within about three-and-a-half years of each other, and composed their best music in the early years of the Republic of Turkey , especially during

1512-670: 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;

1568-916: The Istanbul State Conservatory (later connected to the Mimar Sinan University and named "Mimar Sinan State Conservatory" in 1986). Following his death, the Ahmet Adnan Saygun Center for Music Research at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, was founded where his original manuscripts and archives are also kept. His works were played by orchestras such as NBC Symphony Orchestra , Vienna Philharmonic , Vienna Symphony Orchestra , Berlin Symphony Orchestra , Munich Philharmonic , Bavarian Radio Orchestra , NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover and numerous others. The German label CPO has launched

1624-524: 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

1680-608: 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

1736-576: 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

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1792-469: 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

1848-472: The heroism of the Turks and Atatürk's devotion to his country and people. Saygun quickly finished his second opera Taşbebek in that very same year. This was the year that marked Saygun's career as the musical "voice" of the newly founded republic of Turkey. He now was the musical symbol of his country and had dedicated his works and life for the people and his country, like his great admirer Atatürk. Following

1904-409: 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

1960-496: 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

2016-438: 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

2072-526: 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

2128-403: The music of these composers. Notes Sources Further Reading This article about the culture of Turkey is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . 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)

2184-693: 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

2240-736: The operas he was neglected in Ankara State Conservatory by its founder Paul Hindemith . He moved to Istanbul as part of the theory faculty at the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory. In 1936 Béla Bartók visited Turkey to research the native folk music. Saygun accompanied Bartók on his travels around the country, collecting and transcribing folk songs all through the Anatolia and Osmaniye (a region of Adana ), Turkey. Saygun gained immense knowledge of Bartók's style of writing during this trip and learned

2296-461: 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

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2352-437: 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

2408-547: 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

2464-490: The presidencies of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and İsmet İnönü . They all shared contacts with the two presidents and were highly encouraged as such, both on a personal level and also through the general drive towards westernization in Turkey. The Turkish Five composers are: These composers set out the direction of classic music in the newly established Turkish Republic. The use of Turkish folk music and traditional/modal elements in an entirely western symphonic style characterised

2520-554: 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

2576-527: 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

2632-664: 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),

2688-581: Was able to translate the music section of the French Grande Encyclopédie into a music encyclopedia in Turkish . While in high school, he continued his music lessons with lessons in school as well as from a private teacher and through a theory book which he was given at an early age. In 1926, only two years after his graduation from high school he was appointed as teacher of music at a high school in his native city of İzmir. In 1928 he

2744-477: 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

2800-504: Was appointed as the conductor of the prestigious Presidential Symphony Orchestra. That very same year Atatürk approached Saygun, asking him to write the first Turkish opera. As Saygun was a huge follower of Atatürk he accepted his offer with great warmth and in two months time finished writing the first Turkish opera, Özsoy . The opera's theme was the historical friendship between the peoples of Turkey and Iran. Following Özsoy ' s success Atatürk asked Saygun to write another opera suggesting

2856-556: 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

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2912-614: Was known not only as a composer but also as a scholar as he wrote and published many books on the teaching of music. He was also an ethnomusicologist and a teacher. He greatly influenced the development of western music in Turkey and helped to establish several new music conservatories, and was also a member of the National Education Council and the board of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation . Starting in 1972, he taught composition and ethnomusicology at

2968-503: Was performed with great success the same year in Poland and former USSR. In 1931 he returned to Turkey as a music teacher for a new establishment found by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk that aimed to train music teachers with respect to the new law of arts. This suggested that previous training standards had to be changed to meet Western musical standards. Musical education adopted Western musical practices as part of this new era in Turkey. In 1934 he

3024-720: Was recognized nationally and received a grant to study in France by the Turkish state. He attended the Schola Cantorum de Paris where he studied composition with Vincent d'Indy , theory and counterpoint with Eugène Borrel , organ with Édouard Souberbielle and Gregorian chant with Amédée Gastoué . He was further introduced to late-romantic music and French impressionism. During this time his imagination flourished, enabling him to write his first large work for orchestra: Divertimento . This piece won him an award in 1931 in Paris and

3080-603: 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

3136-549: 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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