PAUL HINDEMITH (1895-1963)
Chamber Music -Volume VI
Side I:
SONATA No. 2 for VIOLA and PIANO (1939)
Band I : I. Breit, mit Kraft
Band 2: II. Sehr lebhaft
Band 3: III. Phantasie: Sehr Iangsam, frei
IV. Finale: Leicht bewegt (with 2 Variations)
Ernst WALLFISCH, Viola; Lory W ALLFISCH, Piano
Side 2:
SONATA for UNACCOMPANIED VIOLA, Op. 11, No. 5 (1919)
1. Lebhaft, aber nicht geeilt
2. Masssig schnell, mit viel Warme vortragen
3. Scherzo: Schnell
4. In Form und Zeitmass einer Passacaglia
Ernst WALLFISCH, Viola
Biographical Note
PAUL HINDEMITH was born in Hanau, near ·Frankfurt/Main, Germany, on November 16, 1895. At the age of eleven he began to show serious interest in music, particularly in playing the violin. He studied composition at the Hoch' sches Konservatorium in Frankfurt, under Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles.
At twenty, he became concertmaster at the Frankfurt Opera (1915-1923). He then made the viola his specialty, and from 1922 was violist in the Amar-Hindemith Quartet (Lico Amar, Walter Kaspar, Hindemith, Maurits Frank) with which he toured throughout Europe.
About this time Hindemith became one of the organizers of the Chamber Music Festivals in Donaueschingen and, later, in Baden-Baden. These festivals soon became most instrumental in the dissemination of contemporary music and the endeavors to win public recognition of it. About 1926, Hindemith became interested in musical Jugendbewegung, a movement devoted to the furtherance of active musicmaking among amateurs, music lovers, and
young people, in schools and in the home.
His many works of “Music to Sing and Play" (Spielmusik, Gemeinschaftsmusik, Schulwerk, etc.) were written in connection with these communal activities.
In 1927, Hindemith became professor of composition at the Hocbschule fur Musik in Berlin. Out of his teaching activity and experience in this position grew his first theoretical work, The Craft of Musical Composition, first published in German in 1937. This book proved to be a cornerstone in the history of the theory of music -- not since Rameau had any theory of harmony of equal significance appeared on the musical scene, and never before one of comparable comprehensiveness.
In 1935, the Turkish government commissioned Hindemith to plan and establish in that country a system of music education along occidental lines, including the organization of orchestras and conservatories.
The '30s also saw Hindemith's prolific output of sonatas for practically every musical instrument of consequence. (The present set of records provides a fair sampling.)
Hindemith first visited the U.S.A. in 1937,,
touring the country as a concert violist in his own works.
By that time, his music was denounced as un-German by the Nazi authorities, and he was obliged to leave Germany. For a short while he took up residence in Switzerland, but in 1940 he was appointed to the Yale University School of Music. He made his home in the United States and subsequently became an American . citizen.
His teaching activities at Yale had two noteworthy results for "outsiders" as well as for his students. He published a complete set of textbooks for students of conventional harmony: Elementary Training for Musicians, an A Comprehensive Course in Traditional Harmony, Books I and II.
His presence at Yale further resulted in the establishment of the Collegium Concerts held at the end of each school year. In these concerts, Hindemith and his students, singing, and playing old instruments from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York and of Yale, revived the musical treasures of the period between Pope Gregory and Johann Sebastian Bach, infusing them with a unique combination of painstaking scholar-liness, professional skill
touring the country as a concert violist in his own works.
By that time, his music was denounced as un-German by the Nazi authorities, and he was obliged to leave Germany. For a short while he took up residence in Switzerland, but in 1940 he was appointed to the Yale University School of Music. He made his home in the United States and subsequently became an American . citizen.
His teaching activities at Yale had two noteworthy results for "outsiders" as well as for his students. He published a complete set of textbooks for students of conventional harmony: Elementary Training for Musicians, an A Comprehensive Course in Traditional Harmony, Books I and II.
His presence at Yale further resulted in the establishment of the Collegium Concerts held at the end of each school year. In these concerts, Hindemith and his students, singing, and playing old instruments from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum in New York and of Yale, revived the musical treasures of the period between Pope Gregory and Johann Sebastian Bach, infusing them with a unique combination of painstaking scholar-liness, professional skill
favor of conducting, composing, and writing.
In 1950, Hindemith was chosen to be the first recipient of the Bach Prize of the City of Hamburg. In 1954, he received the Sibelius Award. He also was honored with the order Pour le Mérite for the Arts and Sciences (Bonn, 1963).
During the last years of his life, Hindemith, the former rebel, became increasingly bitter about the new musical arant-garde whose works he considered fundamentally wrong and an afront to musical truths. He expressed these ideas in a lecture, given on the occasion of receiving the order Pour le Mérite, which was later published under the title "Sterbende Gewässer" (Dying Waters).
Hindemith died on December 28, 1963, in Frankfurt. In this biographical sketch, we have not touched upon the most important subject: Hindemith the composer, but we feel that the introductory notes, the individual introductions to the various works and, above all, the music itself on the present series of recordings will provide an adequate survey.
KURT STONE
The Music
SONATA FOR UNACCOMPANIED VIOLA, OP. 11, No. 5 (1919)
The first of the two solo sonatas for viola was written before the First String Quartet, even though it did not appear in print until 1923. Of course, both sonatas were written for the personal use of the composer who was an excellent violist. This “customtailored" work gives us a good idea of Hindemith's virtuosity as an interpreter.
The work, in four movements approximately following the traditional sequence of the classical sonata, culminates in the grandiose Passacaglia, Hindemith's earliest example of a form for which he was to show a predilection all his life. Its length equals the total of the three other movements. It is based on the rhythmically varied opening theme of the first movement.
Paul Hindemith gave the first performance of this Sonata on November 14, 1920, in Friedberg (Hessen).
SONATA No. 2 FOR VIOLA AND PIANO in F, (1939)
This second and last Sonata for Viola and
Piano ( often erroneously referred to as "in C”) was written fully two decades after its predecessor (likewise in F, Op. 11, No. 4; 1919). Its place is therefore exactly in the center of the great cycle of sonatas of the years 1935-1943, and none of the others equals it in grandeur, scope and power of inspiration. Here we are indeed faced with one of the most accomplished instrumental works of Hindemith, and there is hardly anything of greater value in the entire literature for these two instruments. This is the utterance of a modern classicist at the height of his creative power.
traditional sense, but of note-faithful rhythmic metamorphoses of a gigantic complex of 73 measures; an absolutely original procedure taken up again by Hindemith in the following year in his "Four Temperaments." The first variation (in the key of B, the "opposite pole" to the tonic, F) is light and airy, scherzo-like in its involved triplet rhythm ("somewhat slower") ; the robust second variation ("very lively"), in 2/2 meter, leads to a grandiose coda in which the tempo broadens gradually.
The first movement is a model of the Hindemith sonata movement. In the varied recapitulation, the firmly resolute 3/ 4 time is transformed into a more lively 9/4. The second movement takes the place of a scherzo. The fairly concise third movement, a rhapsodic Fantasia that develops tremendous power in its middle section ("faster," fortissimo), serves as an introduction to the extensive Finale. This amazing piece, the absolute climax of the Sonata, does not consist of variations in the
The work had its first performance at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., on April 19, 1939, by Paul Hindemith and Jesus Maria Sanroma.
HARRY HALBREICH
(Translated from the German by Herman Adler)
Library of Congress
Catalog Card No. 76-751476
