Hindemith, Paul

[rauschwerk]

If ever there was a composer who has gone 'from hero to zero' after his death, at any rate in this country, it is Hindemith. I have always been mystified by this. When I first started listening to music in a big way, he was still alive and was often spoken of in the same breath at Bartok, Stravinsky and Schoenberg but not now!

Before I heard a note of Hindemith's, I was motivated to listen to it by an essay of Norman del Mar's. Now, thanks to Yan Pascal Tortelier, Herbert Blomstedt, I have a modest collection of orchestral works, Mathis der Maler and Das Marienleben which give me a good deal of pleasure.

What do other boarders think of this composer's music?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I heard a lot of Hindemith's Music when I was at university (and took part in a few performances). I've always enjoyed it whilst listening to it, but it's never got under my skin in a way that makes me eager to seek it out (I have the Leipzig/Kegel boxed set of orchestral works which is available as a cheap Amazon download, which is an inexpensive way of starting a Hindemith collection:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Staatskapelle-Rundfunk-Vorschulkinderchor-Rundfunk-Kinderchor-Rundfunk-Instrumental-Rundfunk-Sinfonie/dp/B00DXZS50G

I'm generally much keener on his work from the early 1920s, which retains its ability to shock me with its boldness - the idiom of the later works seems to me to sound self-consciously "tranquilised", as if the composer were himself the one most shocked by his own early work - an elastic band on its wrist, whenever it gets the urge to be shocking. (I think that this is illustrated in the two versions of the Marienleben: the Music is free-moving in the first, corsetted in the revision - which recording[s] do you have, rauschy?)

But even so, the current neglect of all but a handful of his works isn't justified: he may not have been as "good" as his contemporary reputation suggested, but he certainly isn't as "bad" as the neglect implies.

[Pulcinella]

I first came across Hindemith's music in the sixth form, when a fellow student introduced me to this Heliodor LP, a coupling of Mathis der Maler with Bartok's Divertimento.

http://waxvinylrecords.co.uk/shop/lp-vinyl-record/heliodor-89-784-hindemith-mathis-der-maler-bartok-divertimento-kegel/

I was so taken with the piece, especially the opening, that I encouraged it to be used as introductory music for an assembly (not every day had a hymn!); that led to several queries from staff members asking what it was!

Still a favourite piece (it was included in the live afternoon concert earlier this week), and I like the viola concerto (Der Schwanendreher) and Trauermusik very much too. Not many CDs in my collection: they include the Blomstedt 3CD set, Concert Amsterdam's Kammermusiken (I think Chailly's version is better though of), the organ sonatas, and the harp sonata. But the CD most often played is a Sony compilation of Mathis der Maler (Philadelphia/Ormandy) with the Symphonic Metamorphoses and Walton's Variations on a theme of Hindemith (Cleveland/Szell): highly recommended (by me).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Symphonies-Orchestras/Mathis-Maler-Variations-Theme-Hin-Hindemith/B0000028X0

[BBMmk2]

His Symphonic Metamorphese on themes by Carl Maria von Weber, is always good to hear. I have the Chandos cycle of Yan Pascal Tortelier's, which is certainly a very good survey of Hindemith's orchestral works.

[teamsaint]

Some more discussion here, also prompted by Rauschy.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?7555-What-price-Hindemith-now&highlight=hindemith

For those who fancy a free download, but more importantly a great listen, there is a complete Kammermusik, and some other works available in the Avant Garde Project, specifically installments 35, 36, 50, 152, and 153.

( You have to download them in order to listen in any case).

[rauschwerk]

(I think that this is illustrated in the two versions of the Marienleben: the Music is free-moving in the first, corsetted in the revision - which recording[s] do you have, rauschy?)

I have Isokoski in the revised version. However, I have just noticed that the Roslak/Gould take on the original version is downloadable at a reasonable price so I shall lose no time in acquiring that.

Norman del Mar, who generally approves of the revisions, nevertheless writes, ".. in many places the burning virility and direct sincerity of the original work has faded to a comfortable glow of accomplished writing."

[Richard Barrett]

I'm generally much keener on his work from the early 1920s, which retains its ability to shock me with its boldness - the idiom of the later works seems to me to sound self-consciously "tranquilised", as if the composer were himself the one most shocked by his own early work - an elastic band on its wrist, whenever it gets the urge to be shocking. (I think that this is illustrated in the two versions of the Marienleben: the Music is free-moving in the first, corsetted in the revision).

Indeed, and this seems largely to be the result of his deciding to codify his compositional style, see for example his book Unterweisung im Tonsatz in which he tries (as others have) to derive his harmonic practice from the natural harmonic series so as to give his concept of tonality a pseudo-scientific basis, although what happens at around the same time in the 1930s is that he also loses interest in the pungently coloured orchestration of things like the Kammermusik series, Cardillac and the other music of the 1920s, in favour of the kind of insipidly blended sonorities of things like Nobilissima Visione. I can't stand the Weber Metamorphoses but I do have time for a few of the later pieces like Mathis der Maler and Der Schwanendreher. I have the feeling that this change in attitude came about as a result of trying (unsuccessfully) to ingratiate himself with the cultural norms imposed by the Third Reich. Eventually he gave up on the attempt and left Germany, but by then the damage had been done, plus he landed in the USA where musical culture was relatively conservative at the time. And all of this puts the iconoclastic quality of his earlier works somehow into question - if it was so easy for him to abandon it, maybe it wasn't more than skin-deep in the first place.

[Serial_Apologist]

The fact that my first exposure to Hindemith's music was via a school LP of the "Harmonie der Welt" symphony, whose volcanic opening strains still blow me away, followed by a broadcast coupling of the Clarinet Concerto for Benny Goodman, with its quirky scherzo second movement, and the Symphony for Wind Band, did somewhat positively colour my appreciation of the later works. It's undoubtedly the romantic in me that goes for the beautiful melodies to be found in many of the slow movements, where Hindemith's circumlocutory chromaticism allows them to expand and soar - the Clarinet Concerto has one. Unlike most of the influential modernists (but in this respect alone like Prokofiev) Himdemith was a "natural melodist", which, while the same could be said of Schoenberg by this stage, tends to detract from the potential found in reduced scale, motivic origination, and the Cubistic cut-and-paste forerunnings Varese took from the Stravinsky of the "Noces" period, though the alternative formulations of enharmonic movement, incorporating pre-diatonic modal formulations, have audibly affected the thinking of jazz composers from George Russell onwards, although generally unacknowledged, except in the case of Kenny Wheeler. That said, I agree with Ferney and Richard that the early works, from the extraordinary Viola Sonata Op 11 with its angrily distorted contrapuntal invention, to the very fine early 1930s Philharmonic Concerto, deserving of a return to the schedules, that are the most gripping in terms of arguably evoking the claustrophobic atmosphere and grimacing sense of utter foreboding of the times in Germany, a kind of follow on from Mahler and the Strauss of "Elektra" made even more twisted. I think Richard is right in his assessment of the turn to a more conservative idiom reflecting the environment: much the same happened to Kurt Weill, at one time so radical a thinker (qv the near-atonal Violin Concerto); and even Eisler was moved to self-criticism over some of his exile music.

[Stanfordian]

I saw Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler at Semperoper, Dresden in 2016. I thought it was stunning!

This disc is excellent too:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hindemith-Violin-Concerto-Christoph-Eschenbach/dp/B00DW7OQ6C/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1487335375&sr=1-5&keywords=Hindemith%2C+ondine

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

And all of this puts the iconoclastic quality of his earlier works somehow into question - if it was so easy for him to abandon it, maybe it wasn't more than skin-deep in the first place.

Plausible - but perhaps countered by the Marienleben revision; if the earlier harmonic language here wasn't at least a little more than "skin deep", then the revision wouldn't be quite so "scarring" as it is? To go all metaphysical for a moment, perhaps Hindemith himself wasn't quite as iconoclastic as his earlier Music is?

Ommmmmm .....

[rauschwerk]

Some fascinating critiques here of PH's compositional career. What really interests me is: how does good music disappear from the schedules? The Violin Concerto of 1939 was good enough to be recorded by Oistrakh and Stern: how many of their successors know it? The Cello Concerto of 1940 was recorded several time by Paul Tortelier: how many cellists promote it nowadays?

I have heard it suggested (perhaps because he wrote with such fluency) that PH was too prolific and that his work was uneven. Yet his last work with an Opus number (50) was published when he was 35: Beethoven had reached Op. 57 by that age.

Yan Pascal Tortelier, who firmly believes that PH deserves to be judged by his best work, made a number of excellent recordings of his orchestral pieces, yet they don't seem to have caught on. It's all a mystery to me why not. Perhaps promoters have decided (as they have with Haydn) that Hindemith doesn't sell.

[BBMmk2]

Rauschy, I think that PH's music is like that of some of the British composers, who have fallen from favour, or who were never in favour, eg Bax, Bantock, Bridge, etc.

[Bryn]

Some fascinating critiques here of PH's compositional career. What really interests me is: how does good music disappear from the schedules? The Violin Concerto of 1939 was good enough to be recorded by Oistrakh and Stern: how many of their successors know it? The Cello Concerto of 1940 was recorded several time by Paul Tortelier: how many cellists promote it nowadays?

I have heard it suggested (perhaps because he wrote with such fluency) that PH was too prolific and that his work was uneven. Yet his last work with an Opus number (50) was published when he was 35: Beethoven had reached Op. 57 by that age.

Yan Pascal Tortelier, who firmly believes that PH deserves to be judged by his best work, made a number of excellent recordings of his orchestral pieces, yet they don't seem to have caught on. It's all a mystery to me why not. Perhaps promoters have decided (as they have with Haydn) that Hindemith doesn't sell.

In addition to those by Paul Tortelier, currently available recordings of the 1940 Cello Concerto on CD include those by Johannes Moser, Raphael Wallfisch, David Geringas, Christian Poltéra, Tibor de Machula (with Kondrashin, no less), Enrico Mainardi, Pieter Wispelwey and Miklós Perényi. I got hooked on the work via Walton's Variations on a theme from the second movement.

[rauschwerk]

Rauschy, I think that PH's music is like that of some of the British composers, who have fallen from favour, or who were never in favour, eg Bax, Bantock, Bridge, etc.

IMHO it's better than either Bax's or Bantock's (especially the latter's)!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Some fascinating critiques here of PH's compositional career. What really interests me is: how does good music disappear from the schedules?

Well, perhaps because there's so much other - and even "better" - Music that needs the time? Hindemith was well represented in his time, and received some exemplary performances and recordings - but if even Oistrach, Stern and Tortelier snr can't "sell" it (let alone Tortelier jnr, Kegel, Blonstedt et al) then maybe it's just found its level of appreciation. Whilst I think it's a lot better than Bbm's damning condemnation ( ) there's so much more Music by other composers that I personally would prefer to be given the opportunity to hear.