Life

Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) was a multifaceted figure who left behind diverse achievements as a composer, performer, music theorist, and conductor. In the development of 20th-century Western music history, he is often overshadowed by the later influence of the Second Viennese School's twelve-tone technique. However, Hindemith embodied "tradition and innovation" in musical creation through a methodology different from that of Arnold Schoenberg and others, leaving behind a significant repertoire of important contemporary music.

Hindemith was born in Hanau, Germany, the eldest of five siblings. Bearing the expectations of his father, who had aspired to be a musician but failed, Hindemith began studying the violin from an early age. His father passionately dedicated himself to raising his children as musicians. Thanks to his efforts, Paul, the eldest son, first distinguished himself as a violinist, and his younger sister and brother later became a pianist and a cellist, respectively.

Hindemith's serious violin education began after 1908, when he became a student of Adolf Rebner. His encounter with Rebner, who was the concertmaster of the Frankfurt Opera and a teacher at the Hoch Conservatory, can be considered the first significant turning point in Hindemith's musical career. While honing his skills as a violinist at the conservatory, Hindemith also studied composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles. Hindemith's first works to be assigned opus numbers (Opp. 1-3) were written between the ages of 19 and 22, during his studies with Sekles.

During World War I, Hindemith served as a military band member in 1918. Towards the end of the war, he was deployed as a sentry in Flanders and recounted in his diary at the time his miraculous survival from enemy shelling. After World War I, Hindemith returned to Frankfurt and resumed his performing activities, but he himself moved from the second violin to the viola position in the "Rebner String Quartet" and began working as a violist. As a composer, the success of his first concert featuring only his own works in 1919 led to a publishing contract with Schott, and since then, Hindemith's works have been exclusively published by the same company. Following the contract with Schott, Hindemith's compositional activities gained momentum, and between 1919 and 1921, he released works across a wide range of genres, from lieder, piano pieces, and string works to operas. That Hindemith composed parodies, film scores, and popular entertainment music during this period can be attributed to his musical background, as he began performing in dance halls, cafes, and cinemas from a young age, equivalent to his junior high school years in Japan.

In the 1920s, as he gained international renown as a performer and composer, Hindemith became one of the central figures in the development of new music after World War I, participating in the planning and operation of the Donaueschingen Chamber Music Festival (1921-1926) and the Baden-Baden Chamber Music Festival (1927-1929). Furthermore, his experience teaching composition at the Berlin University of Music (now Berlin University of the Arts) from 1927 provided him with an opportunity to confront issues in music education while constructing his own musical philosophy. His writings, including Unterweisung im Tonsatz, I: Theoretischer Teil (1937, Japanese translation 1953) and Unterweisung im Tonsatz, II: Übungsbuch für den zweistimmigen Satz (1939, Japanese translation 1958), were written out of educational necessity for his students, but can also be understood as the outcome of a creative endeavor to achieve the purposiveness of Hindemith's own compositional theory and practice.

When Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933 and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) began to establish a dictatorship, half of Hindemith's works were branded as "cultural Bolshevik" by the Nazis and banned, and his activities in Germany were gradually restricted. In a situation where he had no choice but to abandon his domestic work, including his position at the Berlin University of Music, Hindemith worked from 1935 at the request of the Turkish government to improve the country's music education standards. From Hindemith's musical creations after the establishment of the Nazi regime until his exile to Switzerland in 1938, one can discern a complex state of mind, marked by affection for his homeland and pessimism regarding the political reality. Indeed, there was an attempt to explore a relationship with the Nazis to continue his activities in Germany. However, ultimately, after a concert of his own works held in Berlin in 1936, Hindemith's works were banned from performance in Germany, and he was forced into exile.

After his exile from Switzerland to America in 1940 (he obtained citizenship in 1946), he served as a professor at the Yale School of Music from 1940 to 1953. During this period, Hindemith left behind writings such as Traditional Harmony (1943, Japanese translation 1952) and Elementary Training for Musicians (1946, Japanese translation 1957), focusing on completing his music theory and pedagogical methods. Furthermore, after moving to America, Hindemith, while active as a conductor, energetically undertook the composition of numerous commissioned works as the most frequently performed art music composer in America at the time. The highly popular Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943) is one of his representative works from this period. Hindemith's musical activities in America were fulfilling, and also because the center of art music was no longer exclusively Europe, he remained in America even after World War II. However, in 1947, he undertook his first post-war European tour, and during his stay in Germany, while managing a schedule of concerts and interviews at the Frankfurt Radio Station, he reunited with his mother and friends. Moreover, during his European tour in 1948-1949, at the request of the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) in Germany, he stayed in Germany for two months, giving concerts and lectures in the American occupation zone, and contemporary newspaper articles reported that he received immense praise there. During his American period, Hindemith established his position as a music educator and gained worldwide renown as a composer.

From 1951, Hindemith obtained a professorship at the University of Zurich, and after resigning from the Yale School of Music in 1953, he moved to Switzerland, finding a new path in Europe once again. In the 1950s, he focused more on conducting than on university teaching, undertaking performance tours worldwide, including Europe, South America, and Japan, while also working on recordings of his own orchestral works. As a composer, in parallel with revising his early operas and instrumental works, he left behind many works for wind instruments. In his later years, he showed interest in vocal genres such as motets and madrigals, and Mass for Mixed Chorus a cappella (1963) became Hindemith's last work. Due to gastrointestinal discomfort, he underwent a detailed examination at a Frankfurt hospital in November 1963, but died after an unexpected stroke on the night of December 28th of the same year. His cause of death is reported to have been gallbladder cancer. His wife wished for Frankfurt, where Hindemith grew up, to be his burial place, but this wish could not be fulfilled because he resided in Switzerland while holding honorary American citizenship, and he was buried in a neighboring parish in Blonay, his place of residence in Switzerland.

Hindemith's Musical Creation

Hindemith's creative history is generally divided into the following three periods: the first period until around 1922, the second period from 1923 to 1934, and the third period thereafter. From his musical language before World War I, influences from Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss can be discerned, and in particular, Three Pieces for Cello and Piano Op. 8 (1917) and Three Songs for Soprano and Large Orchestra Op. 9 (1917) are strongly imbued with late-Romantic lyricism. Although his style is recognized as having transitioned from Expressionism to New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) during the first and second periods, which overlap with the time from after World War I until the Nazis seized power, he maintained a consistent creative philosophy in his active reflection of the social trends of the time and his pursuit of restoring the connection between musicians and audiences. In this regard, Hindemith possessed a self-awareness as someone responsible for creating music that served some practical purpose, following in the footsteps of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and found value in music that was useful as a performer providing musical works and performances to the public. The accompaniment music for silent films, works for radio broadcast, and "Gebrauchsmusik" (utility music) for music lovers that Hindemith undertook in the 1920s and 1930s suggest how keenly he was aware of the mass society after World War I. Hindemith's musical creations, which sought to prevent musicians from becoming alienated from society, gained attention in the music magazine Melos (1920-1934), published in Berlin, and he was praised as an ideal contemporary music composer who embodied the harmony between composer and performer, creating works widely performed by both professionals and amateurs.

In addition to advanced media such as film and radio, which became widespread after World War I, Hindemith was also a pioneer in incorporating automatic instruments into his compositions. Beginning with the Rondo from Klavierstück Op. 37 (1925) arranged for player piano, and Musik für mechanische Instrumente Op. 40 (1926: partly extant), Hindemith used automatic instruments in two of the five film scores he composed (Felix the Cat (1927) and Vormittagsspuk (1928): both lost). The Weimar Republic period (1919-1933) was an era when cinemas replaced opera houses, and going to the movies became an accessible entertainment for people of all social strata. Hindemith was greatly influenced by the numerous silent films produced at the time through his composition of film music. In particular, opera was a genre that Hindemith continued to compose throughout his life, as it allowed for the direct incorporation of cinematic techniques. He had already composed one-act operas such as Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (1921), Nusch-Nuschi (1921), and Sancta Susanna (1922) in his first creative period, but Cardillac (1926) from the second period owed much to German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s in its plot, music, and staging, and its affinity with the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is noted. Furthermore, Hin und zurück (1927) and Neues vom Tage (1929) are representative works of so-called "Zeitopern" (topical operas), containing a satirical quality towards contemporary society, akin to Charlie Chaplin's comedic films. Moreover, even after Mathis der Maler (1938), whose symphonic version is one of Hindemith's most famous works, he released Die Harmonie der Welt (1957) and The Long Christmas Dinner (1961) in his later years, indicating that opera did not lose its central appeal for Hindemith throughout his long creative life.

The Romantic image of a solitary genius, secluded from the mundane world and immersed in his own musical universe, does not apply to the composer Hindemith at all. He can be said to have pioneered a new musical culture by keenly perceiving the temperament and trends of Weimar culture and American society, as well as the demands of the times. At the root of the artistic movement known as "New Objectivity" (Neue Sachlichkeit), one can indeed recognize the creative realism that responded to the times, as described above, and this is why Hindemith is regarded as a representative composer of New Objectivity. However, when discussing the historical development of Hindemith's creative output in terms of Expressionism, New Objectivity, or Neoclassicism, it is difficult to strictly distinguish each stylistic concept based on the actual substance of his musical works. For example, the use of parody and popular entertainment music, characteristic of New Objectivity, is also prominent in works from his first period, considered the "Expressionist era"; in Ragtime (well-tempered) (1921), he parodied Bach while incorporating the popular jazz of the time, and Suite 1922 Op. 26 (1922) satirically introduced dance music such as the Shimmy and Boston. Hindemith's pursuit of communal value in music and his emphasis on the social function of art as his creative philosophy, rather than technical "innovation," is crucial for understanding his creative history under the stylistic concepts of Expressionism and New Objectivity.

In the first place, as mentioned above, the consistency seen in Hindemith's so-called Expressionist/New Objectivity period is precisely because both are artistic movements that arose historically in continuity. Especially in the realm of fine arts, just as the grotesque and vivid colors and distorted brushstrokes that flourished in Expressionist painting were carried over as prominent features of New Objectivity, many of Hindemith's works from his New Objectivity period clearly exhibit characteristics such as Expressionistic sharpness of timbre and pitch, abrupt momentary dynamic changes, and irregularly interrupted and resumed articulation. Therefore, at least concerning Hindemith's musical creation, it seems very difficult to draw a clear line between his works from the first to the second period from the perspectives of Expressionism and New Objectivity. The ambivalent mood often felt in many of Hindemith's works, regardless of the period of composition, is imprinted on the listener by the mechanical, intense rhythm and harshness of sound inherent in his music, and the cool sense of desolation brought about by suddenly appearing consonances.

On the other hand, many researchers interpret New Objectivity in Hindemith's creative history as Neoclassicism, or categorize the third period and beyond as Neoclassicism (or sometimes Neoromanticism). Regarding this, as symbolized by the term "Neo-Baroque," Neoclassical characteristics certainly coexisted in Hindemith's New Objectivity period (second period), but his second period was by no means exclusively characterized by revivalism. If one were to evaluate the third period as Neoclassicism in a sense different from the second, one could point to the fading of the avant-garde writing seen in the first and second periods, and Hindemith's transition to stylistically stable compositions based on his own music theory. However, this should not be seen as mere mannerism, but rather as an attempt to harmonize the autonomy of music with the sensibility of the audience, which he idealized. For example, Symphony in E-flat (1940), Hindemith's first work composed in a traditional four-movement structure, and Symphonia Serena (1946), which quotes Ludwig van Beethoven, possessed a splendor that met the demands of American orchestras and audiences of the time, and was rich in spectacle reminiscent of Hollywood film scores.

Therefore, when interpreting Hindemith's works, rather than presupposing the stylistic concepts mentioned above, we should keep in mind that he consistently achieved musical and social actuality in his works for each era, while utilizing compositional techniques rooted in the tradition of music history. That is Hindemith's "innovation," living in an era where the gap between art music and popular music became critically severe, and it is his legacy in 20th-century music history.