Dieter Rexroth and his work for Hindemith
On the occasion of his death
by Giselher Schubert
Dieter Rexroth, who completed his doctorate on Arnold Schönberg as a theorist of tonal harmony in Bonn in 1969, joined the Hindemith Foundation, which had been established a few years earlier in 1968, in 1972: after having worked as a journalist for the Frankfurter Rundschau, the Bonner Generalanzeiger and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, for various radio stations and with a thesis on Wagner's vocal style, originally undertaken as a habilitation scholarship from the Thyssen Foundation. He maintained this dual focus - serious musicological work on the one hand and journalistic commentary on musical life on the other - when the Hindemith Foundation entrusted him with the management of the Hindemith Institute in Frankfurt am Main and gave him generous opportunities to shape the institute. At the Institute, he supervised academic publications such as the Hindemith Yearbook, of which he published 15 volumes between 1972 and 1987, and the Institute's Frankfurter Studien series with volumes on Hindemith's work in the 1920s and on The Aspect of Nationalism in New Music. He organised elaborate Hindemith events with concerts and symposia in collaboration with renowned institutions such as the "Secretariat for Joint Cultural Work" in North Rhine-Westphalia, the Munich Academy of Music, the Mozarteum Salzburg, the Berlin Festival or the Leningrad Conservatory, and organised an institute concert series in Frankfurt am Main, mostly with young musicians, whom he got to study and perform neglected works or new music - unforgettable concerts include a performance of the two piano sonatas by Charles Ives or string quartets by Gloria Coates - and supervised course programmes at the Hindemith Foundation's music centre in Blonay with musicians such as Bruno Giuranna, Saschko Gawriloff, Rainer Kussmaul, Alois Kontarsky, Siegfried Palm, Thomas Brandis and many others. He succeeded in stimulating a lasting interest in Hindemith among musicians. He also succeeded in getting composers such as Hans Otte, Tilo Medek, Peter Michael Hamel, Manfred Trojahn and Wolfgang Rihm to contribute to the Hindemith Yearbook with their Hindemith references, whose music had otherwise remained rather alien to them. He also published a selection of Hindemith's letters for the first time in 1982 and in 1988 he contributed to the compilation of a elaborate Hindemith monograph with numerous documents from Hindemith's estate, which he also designed graphically.
But Rexroth by no means neglected his own interests and preferences, which included above all music by Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Mahler, and, following an edition of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, published a Beethoven monograph (1982) and finally an introduction to Beethoven's symphonies (2005) or worked as a dramaturge on a production of Fidelio in Bonn, which Gottfried Wagner supervised.
With all these successful, sometimes even spectacular activities, other institutions were happy to seek Rexroth's co-operation. From 1980 to 1994, he worked as a permanent freelance Dramaturg at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, played a key role in directing the "Frankfurt Feste" and organised elaborate portraits of composers such as Messiaen, Rihm, Stockhausen, Kagel, Nono, Henze, Bussotti and Cage, which also resulted in substantial book publications. He then left the Hindemith Foundation in 1991, organised the 1200th anniversary celebrations of the city of Frankfurt, worked as artistic director in St. Pölten (Austria) in 1995/96, took over the management, directorship and leading dramaturgy of the Rundfunk-Orchester und -Chöre GmbH Berlin from 1996 to 2006 and, in this capacity, brought Kent Nagano to Berlin, whose close dramaturgical advisor and friend he became.
In addition to his involvement in numerous other institutions such as the Ensemble Modern and the Körber Foundation Hamburg, he has directed the Kassel Music Days for 10 years since 2006. He last spoke about Hindemith in 2013 in a lecture on Paul Hindemith at the Römer in Frankfurt on the 50th anniversary of the composer's death, Paul Hindemith. Life - Survival - Afterlife (published in Hindemith Yearbook 2014), in which he also reported on his personal Hindemith experiences.
Dieter Rexroth, who was born on 6 March 1941 in Dresden as the son of a lung specialist, grew up in Lohr am Main and studied musicology, German studies and philosophy in Vienna and Bonn in particular, passed away relatively unexpectedly in Berlin on 9 April 2024 despite health problems. He will be remembered by his many colleagues and friends as a truly well-educated, extremely competent, unobtrusively persuasive, energetic, reliable and patient partner with a keen sense of what is reasonable and appropriate, and especially for standards and quality. He was a stroke of luck for the cultivation of Hindemith's œuvre.
Fondation Hindemith
Tabea Zimmermann
François Margot
Christian Höppner
Laurenz Lütteken
Andreas Schober
Hindemith Institut Frankfurt
Susanne Schaal-Gotthardt
Luitgard Schader
Heinz-Jürgen Winkler