New Publication
Walter Jens attests “a sharp power of observation and wit in the manner of Lessing” to Paul Hindemith as a composer and human being. Hindemith’s frequently cited humour is not only amply evident in his writings, letters, drawings and his ironical remarks on his own artistic activities, but also of certain in his compositions. Some of these compositions spiced with humour are introduced by Maria Goeth in her contribution, in which she points out instances of “humoristic inappropriateness” and “thought out” wit.
Throughout his life, Paul Hindemith occupied himself with the music of Max Reger, both as a young violinist and violist during the 1920s and as a seasoned orchestral conductor after the Second World War. In his Hamburg lecture of Bach given in 1950, Hindemith characterised Reger as a musician who was “untroubled over scholarly insights and downright wild in his impulsive creativity […], wild to the point of recklessness”. The enormous importance that the music of Reger had for the young composer Hindemith is shown by the violinist and pianist Kolja Lessing in his examinations of Hindemith’s solo violin compositions.
Michael Heinemann takes on the solo organ works of Hindemith, pointing out the different conceptions of the compositions. It was a long path from the two early single pieces to the three organ sonatas composed in 1937 and 1940. Whereas the two pieces written in August 1918 were still influenced by Max Reger, interspersed with freely tonal passages, Hindemith in the sonatas shows himself to be the responsible heir to historical traditions of form and genre which had to be creatively assimilated.
Hindemith’s Sonata for Harp (1939) – one of the instruments that Hindemith did not himself play – was composed during a highly productive period, when he had moved out of Nazi Germany and found a new residence with his wife Gertrud in the Swiss mountain village of Bluche. He used the peace and isolation there to compose copiously. The composition of this piece and the collaboration with the dedicatee, the harpist Clelia Gatti Aldrovandi, which is documented in letters, is illuminated by Elisabeth Plank in her article.
Luitgard Schader, Editor–in-Chief of the “Hindemith Complete Edition”, provides explanations of the various forms of publication of Hindemith’s musical and literary work, also introducing Hindemith’s collaborations with diverse editorial projects.
Letters from Hindemith to a friend from his youth, the pianist Irene Hendorf, written in the years 1914 to 1920, are presented by Susanne Schaal-Gotthardt. In these documents, Hindemith reveals his unbridled zest for music-making and his budding compositional ambitions to “always bring new things to light”.
Heinz-Jürgen Winkler