Music for Amateurs
Stimulated by contact with Fritz Jöde, Hindemith strived towards a collaboration between the Chamber Music Days and the Youth Music Movement. Between the Baden-Baden music committee and the Amateur Musicians' Guild led by Jöde, it was arranged for 1927 that the "Reichsführerwoche" of the Amateur Musicians' Guild would take place at the same time as the Baden-Baden Chamber Music Days in the neighbouring town of Lichtental. The members of the Musicians' Guild would receive access, free of charge, to rehearsals and concerts in Baden-Baden. In exchange for this, the music festival participants could attend the events of the Amateur Musicians' Guild. Hindemith mediated between the two events by directing an evening concert in Lichtental and also by playing in the amateur orchestra.
The renewed coordination of both events in 1928 could not hide the fact, however, that there were irreconcilable differences between the persons responsible for the Chamber Music Days and for the Amateur Musicians' Guild. In a draft of a letter probably addressed to Jöde, Hindemith formulated in early 1929: «It is of course possible that the apparent difference between your opinion and ours concerning the festival lies in a completely different attitude to music.»
Hindemith was suspicious of the amateurs' tendency towards «eccentric sect-like behaviour» and their lack of musical expertise: «Music is not good because it is not played by others. An instrument does not have to be re-introduced because it was in use hundreds of years ago. [...] Not all old music is good. There was rubbish in former times as well. It should be played just as rarely as the new nonsense.»
There was no further collaboration between the Amateur Musicians' Guild and the Baden-Baden Music Festival in 1929, although an entire evening of the four-day event was dedicated to «Music for Amateurs».