Hindemith-Jahrbuch 2014/XLIII
The new Hindemith-Jahrbuch first takes a backward glance at the Hindemith Memorial Year of 2013. The speech delivered on 28 December 2013 by Professor Dr. Andreas Eckhardt, President of the Fondation Hindemith, on the occasion of the hour of commemoration at the Frankfurt Römer and the lecture by Dr. Dieter Rexroth, former Director of the Hindemith Institute in Frankfurt, open the volume.
Within the framework of his studies on the reception of Gesualdo, Roland Abels dedicates an extensive chapter to the "encounters" of Paul Hindemith with this eccentric composer (1566-1613), whose unusual music aroused the interest of important composers of the 20th century including Igor Stravinsky and indeed Paul Hindemith, with its chromatic progressions and unusual harmonic successions.
The German literature expert and Novalis specialist Josef Schreier takes on the 1933 Novalis Lieder of Hindemith, a work that has not been published so far. Dealing with the composer's conceptions of the texts to be set and explaining his proximity to the hermeneutic approaches of Novalis, Schreier examines how Hindemith's precarious situation after the so-called "seizure of power" is reflected in several of these Lieder.
The Israeli musicologist Irit Youngerman presents the correspondence between Paul Hindemith and the Jewish musician and composer Heinrich Jacoby, who was Hindemith's pupil during the latter's years as Professor at the Berlin Music Academy (1927-1937) and still valued Hindemith's judgement of his compositions following his period as a student. In addition, these letters document the difficulties and worries encountered by a German Jew emigrating to Palestine: loss of homeland and a longing for a European-influenced cultural life.
In his contribution, Ronald de Vet, editor of the Dutch Willem Mengelberg Society, draws our attention to a so-far unknown interview given by Hindemith in the newspaper De Telegraaf during the course of his guest appearance in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in November 1928. Hindemith's replies to his astonished interviewer document his humour and unpretentious attitude.
Heinz-Jürgen Winkler