about the composer

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was a composer, conductor, violist, teacher, theorist, and proponent of Baroque and early music. His hugely prolific musical output includes compositions for all mediums and reflects the development of his own tonal compositional system based "entirely upon the natural laws of sound" (Hindemith). Throughout his career Hindemith also stressed the importance of the practical role of music, himself composing many works for children, amateur musicians, and specific public occasions.

Born in Hanau, Germany near Frankfurt am Main, Hindemith received early music lessons from his father, who expected his three children to become musicians. From 1907 he studied violin with Anna Hegner, who recommended him to violinist Adolf Rebner at the Hoch Conservatory; he later studied composition there with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles. Hindemith joined the Frankfurt Opera House Orchestra in 1914 and became its concertmaster three years later; through it he met many conductors who would later champion his work. He was soon drafted to serve in World War I, during which he performed in a regimental band and formed a string quartet. After the war he returned to the Frankfurt Opera and took up the viola in the Amar (formerly Rebner) Quartet, with which he performed until 1929.

Hindemith began to gain wider recognition in the 1920's. The success of a concert of his music in 1919 led to a lifelong relationship with the publisher Schott's Söhne, Mainz, which provided him a monthly income. He helped to found the Donaueschingen Festival in 1922, where he would program different genres each year and his music was often performed. His Kammermusiken (1922-1927) series of concertos from the time are reminiscent of the Brandenburg Concertos (1721) of J. S. Bach. In 1927 Hindemith joined the faculty of the Berlin Hochschule für Musik; he was one of the first to teach a course in film music, and experimented with works for radio and gramophone.

Political developments in Germany became an increasing problem for the composer. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they restricted performances of many of his works and Joseph Goebbels publicly railed against him; all of his music was banned in 1936. During this period Hindemith composed the opera Mathis der Maler (1933-1935), which contends with issues of art and politics through the life of 16th-century painter Matthias Grünewald. He also focused more on music theory, writing his seminal The Craft of Musical Composition (1937, revised 1940). Hindemith resigned his post at the Berlin Hochschule and travelled several times to the United States; in 1938 he left for Switzerland, settling in Bluche.

Hindemith emigrated to the United States in early 1940 and became an American citizen in 1946. He taught at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and the Berkshire Music Center (now Tanglewood) in Lenox, Massachusetts. He had a significant influence on his composition students, who included Norman Dello Joio, Lukas Foss, Harold Shapero, and Yehudi Wyner. Hindemith's teaching led to further texts: A Concentrated Course in Traditional Harmony (1943) and Elementary Training for Musicians (1946). He also founded the Yale Collegium Museum, which presented highly successful historically-informed performances of early music, important to the resurgence of early music in the United States.

Soon Hindemith became one of the most-performed composers in the US and gained international recognition. Significant works of the time include Symphonic Metamorphosis after Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943) and When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd (1946) on the poem by Walt Whitman. After World War II ended, Hindemith became more active as a conductor, touring throughout Europe many times. He held the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1949 accepted an offer to teach at the University of Zürich. After dividing his time between Zürich and Yale for a few years, he finally settled in Blonay, Switzerland in 1953. He continued his active conducting career, programming a wide range of 20th-century and early music and touring South America and Japan in the mid-1950's. Hindemith died at the end of 1963.