German composer Paul Hindemith was born in Hanau, Germany on November 16, 1895. A major innovator of musical modernism, he was a composer, conductor, violist, educator, and a scholar. In his early teens he studied the violin at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt and composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles.
Hindemith acted as concertmaster for the Frankfurt Opera House Orchestra from 1915-23, interrupted only by time spent in army service. ; Initially establishing his reputation through his chamber music and expressionistic operas, Hindemith subsequently turned to neo-classicism in his Kammermusiken (1922-27). This series of seven chamber concerti pay homage to Bach’s Brandenburgs, while employing distinctly modern elements, notably jazz.
Besides chamber works, Hindemith composed in other genres including lieder, and music for amateurs as well as school children. ; Hindemith produced masterpieces including: the opera Mathis der Maler (1934-1935) in which he dramatized the dilemma of the artist in society and reflected the need for greater responsibility to art; the ballet Nobilissima Visione (1938) based on the life of St. Francis; and, the choral work Six Chansons (1939) to French poems by Rilke.
He also wrote several sonatas for every major instrument, which became part of the standard repertory. ; The Nazis forced Hindemith to leave Germany where his works were considered “culturally Bolshevist.” In 1938 he began his exile in Switzerland followed two years later by an exile in the United States, where he joined the Yale University faculty (1940-53).
The 1940s were witness to what is generally considered the apogee of Hindemith’s output and critical standing with such masterpieces as: Symphony in E Flat (1940); The Four Temperaments (1940); Sonata for Two Pianos (1942); Ludis Tonalis (1942), an homage to Bachâ’s Well -Tempered Clavier; Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber (1943); and, Sinfonia Serena (1945). In 1953 Hindemith left the United States for Switzerland. There he composed the opera Die Harmonie der Welt, where his search for an all-encompassing harmony was realized.
In 1963 Hindemith became ill in Frankfurt and died there in December.
https://www.kennedy-center.org/artists/h/ha-hn/paul-hindemith
QUARTET FOR CLARINET, VIOLIN, CELLO AND PIANO
Paul Hindemith’s quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano is a major work of imposing scale. Also celebrated during his lifetime for his virtuosic viola-playing, as a composer Paul Hindemith was a “revolutionary of the 20th-century musical world” (Emmanuel Loubet). Unusual among his contemporaries for his fascination with contrapuntal technique (with models like Bach and Handel), the passionate music theorist nonetheless described in his treatise the need for an expanded tonality that surpassed major-minor harmonic structures to find a new foundation in a hierarchic order of intervals. Composed in 1938 as he was emigrating from Germany under the growing storm of Nazism, Hindemith’s quartet performed here perfectly mirrors his dual ambitions of combining Baroque-inspired contrapuntalism with neoclassicism and other more modern compositional techniques.
WIGMORE ENSEMBLE
8.15pm Tuesday May 22 1979
Perth concert Hall
Paul Hindemith Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano (1938)
Graham Wood (violin) Jill Cole (cello)
Jack Harrison (clarinet) David Bollard (Piano)
Players respond to Challenge
By Derek Moore Morgan
The main aim of the recently formed Wigmore Ensemble is to achieve flexibility of repertoire by altering the number and content of the group after the fashion of Britain’s famous Melos Ensemble. Last night’s Perth Concert Hall appearance for Musica Viva by W.A. artists Graham Wood, Jill Cole, Jack Harrison and David Bollard produced just the sort of piece which can so easily suffer neglect – the quartet for violin, cello, clarinet and piano of 1938 by Hindemith. This is a work which exploits a fine range of ideas and moods suffering not at all from the dryness which can affect this composer at times. The players had a well integrated and developed work under their fingers and they responded to its challenge. David Bollard’s handling of the prominent toccata-like piano climax had the right driving energy. The Wigmore ensemble can be very pleased with this their Concert Hall debut. [1]
| 22.5.1979 | Paul Hindemith Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano (1938) | Jack Harrison (clarinet) The Wigmore Ensemble Graham Wood (violin) Jill Cole (cello) David bollard (piano) | Musica Viva Perth Concert Hall |
[1] The West Australian Wednesday May 23 1979