7.2.1 Introduction

music works for all conceivable ensemble compositions, and for his sonatas for almost every instrument and piano.

He also took a great interest in education. In his efforts to also involve music amateurs in the newly written music he wrote a large number of so-called Gebrauchs- und Hausmusiken [consumer and home music].119

His own students in composition were not spared: for them he wrote a well-wrought music theory, the Unterweisung im Tonsatz (1937)120 together with two practice books, one for two-voice and one for threevoice texture. Until well into the 1950s these books more or less formed the official composition teaching method in German music academies. Between 1930 and 1937, Hindemith frequently visited the Turkish city of Ankara to boost music education there and between 1940 and 1953 having fled the Nazi regime, he taught composition at Yale University. In these two countries as well, his Unterweisung was even more influential. Later in the 1950s, though, it became less and less so in Germany, with the advent of Young Music, whose followers considered Hindemith a symbol of conservatism. Upon his return to Germany in 1953 he was faced with the harsh reality that young composers had no need for him. He then moved to Switzerland where he took a position at the Musikhochschule Zürich

7.2.2 PRINCIPLES121 The basic idea is that all harmonies, chords, and intervals have a root tone; this is a law of nature. Hindemith’s argument for this is the only ‘natural’ given in music, i.e. the overtone series. Because of its presence in all forms of material our hearing is naturally inclined to discern triads, also in melodic lines. By studying this acoustic phenomenon, he aims to reveal universal laws that are constant, even when insights into musical material may differ in various stylistic periods.

Unterweisung im Tonsatz therefore rejects all forms of non-tonal orderings as non-existent. At most, tones may not be treated correctly, which says something about the craftsmanship of the composer. Therefore atonality, and most certainly twelve-tone technique, is impossible; it can be done on paper, but not as a manifestation of sound. For the

119This sense of responsibility was shared by Bartók, who wrote a series of 153 piano pieces for educational use, under the title Mikrokosmos (1926-1939). 120The book was also published in English in 1941 as The Craft of Musical

Composition. 121The following summary is based on an earlier summary of mine, edited by

Paul Scheper, published in Van Aristixenos tot Stockhausen, Wolters Noordhof

Publishers (1990).