There he founded, coached and participated in several ensemblesfor early music, stressing on the students’ awareness for both early-musiccompositional techniques and performance practices.Ģ. Having been banned by the Nazis as musically ’degenerate’, he emigrated to the U.S.where he taught at Yale University, holding the position of professor of music theoryfrom 1940 to 1953. In his effort to make contemporary music more easily accessibleto the audience, he wrote very spirited introductory articles, enlivened with his ownwitty illustrations. Hindemith was one of the leaders in theDonaueschingen Festival for New Music for which, apart from contributing his owncompositions, he commissioned and premiered works by a large number of othercomposers of his time. Already at the age of 28 he was appointed professor of composition at theprestigious Hochschule far Musik in Berlin. His work also includes muchmusic of deliberately functional intent (he coined the word Gebrauchsmusik, utilitymusic). Other instnnnents on which he was an accomplishedperformer include the viola d’amore, the piano, and the clarinet.Īs a composer, Hindemith wrote for almost every type of musical medium, from largeorchestral scores, operas (Mathis the Painter, Cardillac, The Harmony of the Worldand three one-act operas), oratorios and ballets to concertos (see Four Temperamentsfor piano and strings, Funeral Music for viola and strings), chamber music for allinstruments, and song cycles (see e.g. He later had a brilliantcareer as one of Europe’s foremost viola soloists and founded the famous Amar Quartetwith whom he toured widely. Hindemith began as a violinist, beingappointed concert-master at the Frankfurt Opera at age 19. First, however, allow me to introduce the composer.įive traits characterize the man Paul Hindemith: his extensive experience as aperforming artist his endeavors to bring contemporary music to a wider audience hisenthusiasm with education his respect for, and active promotion of, early music andhis outstanding wit and sense of humor. On the occasion of this centennial, I have chosen to look at Hindemith’s pianocycle Ludus Tonalis. This year marks the 100th birthday of the German composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963).
The layout of this cycle contains- perceptible for the analyst but skillfully concealed from listeners who might feeldisturbed by too pronounced a sense of "craft" - a wonderful play with symmetries,reflections, symmetrically ordered groulJs and, last but by no means least, just the rightamount of symmetry breaking. It is not even merely "playful" in thesense that it contains an almost complete array of keyboard techniques andperformance colors, and in that the capturing characteristics of many of the fuguesand interludes are suggestive of dramatic characters. 4.Ībstract: The piano cycle Ludus Tonalis by Paul Hindemith is much more than a"tonal play ", or a play with tones and tonalities. Boris Blacher’s Play with Variable Meters,Symmetry" Culture and Sctence, vol 6, no.
Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier:In-depth Analysis and Interpretation Bern/Frankfurt: Peter Lang (1994) Patterned Time. 3, no.2, 187-200 (1992) Symbolic Representations of Divine Attributes inthe Musical Language of Olivier Messiaen, Exemplified in his PianoCycle Vtngt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jdsus, Symmetry: Culture andSctence, vol. (1986) Dte mustkahsche Darstellung psychologtscherWtrkhchkett tn Alban Berg’s "’Wozzeck", Bern/Frankfurt: PeterLang (1992) Symmetry and ~rreversibility in the musical language(s)of the twentieth century, Symmetry" Culture and Sctence, vol. #103, Ann Arbor, MI48104, U S A, E-mad" of tnterest: Interpretive musicology, musical hermeneutms,~nterdisciphnary aspects (music/arts, music/psychology, music/spirituality etc.) performance as ’Gestaltung’.Pubhcattons. Department of Musicology / Institute for the Humanities,University of Michigan, 322 N.
Musicologist/music analyst and pianist (b Hamburg, Germany,1951)Address. SYMMETRY AND DISSYMMETRYIN PAUL HINDEMITH’S LUDUS TONALIS
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