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Paul HindemithGerman composer and conductor
Date of Birth: 15.11.1895
Country:  Germany |
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Biography of Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, conductor, pedagogue, and music theorist. He was born on November 16, 1895, in Hanau am Main. Hindemith began studying music at the age of 9, initially learning to play the violin. He received further musical education at the Frankfurt Conservatory under the guidance of A. Rebner (violin), A. Mendelssohn, and B. Sekles (composition). From 1915 to 1923, he served as the concertmaster of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra and the second violinist (later violist) of the Rebner Quartet. From 1922 to 1929, Hindemith was a violist in the Amar-Hindemith Quartet, with which he toured all countries in Europe, including the USSR. He also performed as a soloist and conductor. He was the organizer of the "Chamber Music" movement. In 1927, he was invited to be a professor of composition at the Berlin University of Music. In 1935, he emigrated from fascist Germany and lived in Turkey, England, and Switzerland, giving concerts in America. In 1940, he arrived in the United States, where he served as a professor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, from 1940 to 1953. He also lectured on poetics at Harvard University in 1949-1950. In 1947, he visited Europe and periodically returned to teach at the University of Zurich starting in 1951. In 1953, he settled in Switzerland. Hindemith was a laureate of the Sibelius Prize. He died on December 29, 1963, in Frankfurt am Main.
Description of Hindemith's Work
Hindemith's formation as a composer took place in the 1920s, a time characterized by intense struggles between antagonistic currents in music, explosive atmospheres surrounding scandalous premieres, and heated debates. This period became a turning point for composers in many European countries, defining the face of 20th-century music, including Hindemith's.
Just after the last shots of the recent war had been fired, music, along with other arts, was faced with the challenge of expressing the turning point that was taking place in people's thoughts and feelings due to the recent global catastrophe. In Germany and Austria in the early 1920s, expressionism, a movement indirectly reflecting the degree of shock experienced by human consciousness, began to have a noticeable influence. However, expressionism cannot claim to convincingly disclose the causes and consequences of the imperialist war. The expressionist artist, due to the limitations of their creative method, is unable to deeply analyze these phenomena. They escape reality, which appears to them entirely in dark colors and terrifying visions. They experience the fear of isolation, causing them to perceive everything around them with sensual exaggeration. Therefore, expressionistic art constantly feels a certain painful twistedness, reaching cries of horror and cries of despair. All of this together is a dead-end that sooner or later would have provoked the desire to overcome it.
One of the representatives of the new trends in German music was Paul Hindemith, whose work had a significantly healing effect on the extremely heated atmosphere of the country's musical life. Hindemith's aesthetics are based on a rejection of the viability of romantic traditions, which still strongly influenced German music at that time. These traditions also influenced the formation of the aesthetic credo of expressionism, a kind of "exaggerated romanticism." Hindemith stands against them, seeing in the music of Bach and the old polyphonists of the Bachian era the fruitful foundation on which the music of our century should be based. He revives and develops ancient polyphonic forms, enriching them with new sound material and content. With this activity, he laid the foundation for a new movement in European music - neoclassicism. In his best works, Hindemith successfully avoids the danger of auditory academism that can arise from this approach. His music has a sharp "topicality," the true temperament of a publicist responding to all the events of the day.
Even in those years, Hindemith's exceptional productivity was astonishing. He created many works for piano (sonatas, the suite "1922") and various chamber ensembles, songs, quartets, instrumental concertos, and operas. He also composed a multitude of "pieces for practical use" ("Gebrauchsmusik"), addressed to a wide range of music lovers as materials for home music-making. In this democratic direction, Hindemith decisively differentiated himself from many representatives of the musical "avant-garde" who arrogantly ignored their audience. In some of his early compositions, Hindemith used sharply dissonant combinations of sounds and bold polytonal combinations. However, his music always exudes robust emotional health, strength, and optimism, so even such "rigidities" do not evoke associations with the typical hysterical character of expressionism. Over the years, the composer's style became more and more balanced, gradually eliminating all foreign elements.
Notable works:
- Operas (about 10): "Mathis der Maler" (1938), "Harmony of the World" (1957)
- Symphonies, orchestral concertos, including for viola (1935)
- Chamber instrumental ensembles
- Piano and choral works
- Vocal cycle "Life of Mary" (2nd edition, 1948)
