Hindemith Music and Characteristics

Paul Hindemith: His Music and Its Characteristics
Author(s): Marion Scott

Source: Proceedings of the Musical Association, 56th Sess. (1929 - 1930), pp. 91-108
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical Association
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APRIL 15, I930.
F. GILBERT WEBB, ESQ.,
IN THE CHAIR.
PAUL HINDEMITH: HIS MUSIC AND ITS

CHARACTERISTICS
BY Miss MARION SCOTr, A.R.C.M.
NOT long ago I happened to mention to a, clever bus

woman who is an acquaintance of mine, that I pr
speaking on Hindemith. " What is Hindemith ?" she
replied, and by her manner I gathered she thought he was
a new kind of Vim, Bovril, or Mothball from the Father-
land. I hastened to explain that, young though he is,
Hindemith is the acknowledged leader of the " new music "
and of those composers in Germany, who believe in a radical
adaptation of music to modern needs and conditions. He
is hailed as their chief, his compositions are chronicled,
and his developments docketed, with a reverence and care
thoroughly German. Outside Germany, on the other hand,
he is known as the "enfant terrible" of Europe and his
music frequently produces the same effect on his audiences
as that produced by Browning's "Sordello" in old days
on the jolly Philistine who said "There are only two lines
in the poem I understand-the first one says: 'Who will,
may hear Sordello's story told, and the last one isn't true,
for it says: 'Who would has heard Sordello's story told.' "
The truth about Hindemith probably lies between the
extreme views. He himself wishes to be known only in his
works. The trouble in England is that we hear so little
of his actual music and so much of the theories which it is
said to embody. Generally speaking, fine music-like
Herrick's definition of God " is best known in not defining
Him." This passion for turning concrete music into abstract
theories reaches its climax in Germany. I sometimes
feel it is a hindrance, not a help, in our approach to moder
music.
In England the situation is not dissimilar. We are dogged
by such words as tonality, atonality, polytonality, whole
92 Paul Hindemith: His Music and its Characteristics
tone-tonality, quartertonality, modality, polymodality, linear

counterpoint and goodness knows what else, jingling in
the wake of the B.B.C.'s Modern Mondays like Old Uncle
Tom Cobley and all in the refrain to " Widdicombe Fair."
Sir Henry Hadow attacked the position thus some years
ago: " Ladies and Gentlemen, may I beg you to believe
that nothing ending in -ismus ever won any victory or
exercised any influence. All these things are done by people,
not by abstract nouns."
Amen. Atonality, polytonality-all systems past, present,
and to come are not music. They are only its raw material,
even though one of them be that lovely miracle, the natural
series of harmonic overtones which Sir Walford Davies so
aptly calls the rainbow of music.
Paul Hindemith is an apostle of Atonality and Linear
Counterpoint. But he is also a real person in music-a
genuine composer who gives off music as a piece of radium
throws off energy. That is what makes him interesting,
and his music worthy of study.
" I don't know what atonality is," a composer said to me
after hearing Hindemith's Third String Quartet for the
first time, " but if this is it, I like it." There one musician
recognised another; the essential, not the superficial,
elements of music came into play.
For several years after the War, Hindemith was barely
above the European horizon. The foundations of his
fame were laid at the Donaueschingen Festival of I92I,
yet for some time after that, as far as England is concerned,
he was known only to the sagacious chiefs of the International
Society for Contemporary Chamber Music. They produced
several of his works at the Contemporary Music Centre in
London and it is due to their efforts, seconded by those of
the British Broadcasting Corporation that his Chamber
works are becoming known in England. For his operas one
must go to Germany.
Though Hindemith desires to be known only in his music,
a few words on his history are essential. I speak them the
more easily because he is unknown to me personally and
therefore still in the same position as any other historical
figure I might happen to study.
His career is like a modern fairy tale; with the romance
strictly left out, of course!
Hindemith comes of a Silesian family, which settled in
Hanau-am-Main. There he was born on November i6th,
I895, and there he grew up in homely simple conditions.
His vocation for music showed early. Like Haydn before
Paul Hindemith: His Music and its Characteristics 93
him, he was obliged to earn and learn simultaneously. He

became a good player on a number of instruments. By
the time he was thirteen he " played the violin to perfection,"
says an enthusiastic German biographer. He worked in
jazz-bands, cinemas, and so forth. It shows the real fineness
of his musical nature that this apprenticeship to common
music did not debase his playing or his works-it only made
him more practical. He studied composition under Arnold
Mendelssohn at Darmstadt and later under Bernard Sekles
in the Hoch Conservatorium at Frankfort. At the
astonishingly early age of twenty he was appointed L
of the Frankfort Opera House. The date, be it obse
was I915. Whether Hindemith would have got his
so soon without the War is an open question. The thin
is indisputable is that he made good, and was pro
to the post of conductor. Imagine what this mea
be young, gifted, and in command at a first-class Ge
Opera House. Hindemith lived, moved and had his
during his most impressionable years in Opera. Few y
men get such a chance of carrying weighty musical
responsibilities and of learning stage craft at the same time
and nothing speeds up efficiency better than the necessity
of public performance. A sense of the theatre is essential
for an operatic composer. I have often heard Sir Charles
Stanford (who had himself studied in Germany) insist on
this. Stage technique can only be learnt in professional
surroundings. Those oratorios in costume which frequently
pass for opera in England give no idea of the complicated
synthesis attained in a permanent German Opera House.
Words, action, music, scenery, lighting, singing, acting,
dancing, gestures, grouping, colours, orchestra, mechanicians,
electricians, dressers, devices, and an endless complexity
of details are all correlated with the exactness of long
experience, and at their best, under the control of a really
fine conductor and producer, a unity, such as that of the
string quartet is the result. Hindemith learnt his job from
A to Z, to-day his stage craft is brilliant. As an example
of German stage thoroughness I may mention that even
the degree of lateness with which a performance shall begin
is regulated. At Cologne I have actually seen the number
of minutes chalked up on a board in the wings!
If Opera be an art of synthesis, Chamber Music is its
exact reverse-the maximum must be made out of the
minimum means. Stravinsky, Milhaud, Honegger, and
Bartok are the contemporary composers with whom
Hindemith has, most in common, theoretically, and

with whom his name is frequently linked, but in practice
his Chamber Music seems to draw more virtue out of the
instruments employed. This, I think, is due to his own
long experience as a quartet player. He began his
professional life as a violinist. Later the viola attracted
him more strongly, and he became a very fine player. With
his brother Rudolf as 'cellist, Licco Amar as leader and a
second violin (either Caspar or R. Frank, I am not sure which)
he founded the Amar Quartet. It quickly became associated
with modem music of the most advanced type, and took rank
among the best quartets of the day.
In I928 Hindemith was appointed to a teaching post in
the Hochshule at Berlin, where he still is.
From this sketch it will be seen that Hindemith has had
intensive first-hand experience in two specialized forms of
music, viz., Opera and Chamber Music, and that to some
extent the two experiences overlapped. Their reactions
upon him as a composer were marked, and extremely
interesting.
Since the War, Chamber Music has become a cardinal
point in the international creed. Very possibly this is a
natural reaction against the mammoth music of pre-war
years when huge scores and great music were apt to be taken
as synonymous. But Chamber Music is also an economic
necessity. Big orchestras cost too much nowadays.
Hindemith, brilliantly accomplished in Chamber Music,
not only uses it for itself, but takes it over into Opera and
Orchestral Music. He is what I should call an ideal
practicalist. His cheerful acceptance of half a loaf as
than no bread is almost English-but his skill in not w
a crumb is typically German I This applies only to hi
not to his output! On the contrary he writes so mu
pessimists sigh: " Ah ! too much," and shake their h
I will not deny that some of the music is facile and ephe
but in the good old days when Bach, Handel, Haydn,
Beethoven and Schubert worked, no one thought the worse
of them because they composed constantly. Nor do I
suppose that Hindemith is a Bach or a Haydn, but in review-
ing his published compositions one cannot help being struck
by the fact that he often does things in groups-such as set
of Sonatas for his Opus II, four Concertos for his Opus 36,
sets of six or more songs under one cover. Haydn and
Beethoven would do this, but nowadays composers are not
so prodigal of their ideas or else the ideas are more chary
in selecting their composers.
Hindemith's opus numbers run almost to fifty. Not all

these works are available. He holds drastic views to the
effect that his unpublished compositions are nobody's
concern but his own, and, with a self-criticism that disarms
the charge of over-production, he has suppressed his
earliest opus numbers. Nothing is available before Opus
8-a set of pleasant but not startling pieces for Violoncello
and Piano. Opus o1, the String Quartet in F minor, is really
the starting point for his original work.
Tracing his development as seen through the eyes of his
German commentators, Hindemith always appears to be
expressing an -ismus or making some world-startling
advance. His early work is said to be governed by the
Spiitromantik and Impressionismus, then follows a break up
of the Elements, the gradual emergence of his new Style,
with a complete revolt against Romanticism and the
Wagnerian Music Drama. Any number of high-sounding
scientific explanations are given for his proceedings. Put
roughly in English it amounts to about this: that in his
early work Hindemith-like any other young composer-
was influenced by the composers of the day, and in
particular by Richard Strauss, Wagner (with Strauss as the
connecting link), and by Debussy. As one might expect,
these influences pushed Hindemith's harmonic usage to
extremes; there is then a phase in which Hindemith flings
himself upon the semitone, but in which he " still avoids the
direct issues of atonality." In the second String Quartet,
Op. I6, Hindemith appears to me to have got his premises
without his conclusions. His linear counterpoint (one of
his great characteristics) is, however, firmly established
and he glides the parts along by semitones, till they get
into situations as surprising as their escapes from them!
I remember Sir Walter Parratt once advising his students
on the virtues of contrary motion in counterpoint. " You
can do anything by contrary motion," he said enthusiastically,
" You can even strangle your grandmother." I believe
Hauptmann-and not kind Sir Walter-was the originator
of this bloodthirsty creed. But curiously enough contrary
motion and murderous ideas are frequently associated in
Hindemith's Operas, as may be gathered from the r6sum6
of their subjects I shall give in a few minutes.
Hindemith's conversion to Atonality was accomplished by
the time he reached his Opus 22-the Third String Quartet.
Like many converts he insisted upon his creed with a
vehemence that renders his music of this period more
difficult for the public to accept than either his earlier or
later things. With the acceptance of Atonality, a tendency

which had been gradually developing through his work,
became a definite tenet. This is usually referred to as his
return to the formal musical designs of Bach. It would be
just as true to say that the composers of to-day, with
Hindemith in the vanguard, have revived the structural
designs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This
"back to Bach" movement, as it is called, is apt to be
regarded as an arbitrary choice, without any relation to
tonal or atonal theories. If self-preservation be an arbitrary
instinct, then this movement is arbitrary. Otherwise it is
not, and for these reasons.
Design in music is desirable, if that music is to be
intelligible. Without it, great music is impossible. For
design is not a machine made pattern. It is the projection into
human consciousness of a divine and beautiful order.
Composers instinctively know that it is one of the things
that come to them out of the infinite. Just as the laws
behind natural phenomena do not die, so the realities behind
music continue to exist whatever the changing phases of
concrete music. Design is one of the hardest obligations
for a composer to fulfil. In the Golden Age of Pure Counter-
point, melodies formed the entire structure, and even after
the Harmonic period began, melodies still made for a time
the safest girders on which to carry the new harmonic
building. The Air with Variations, the Passacaglia, the
Chaconne and Ground Bass were admirably suited to this
purpose, and Purcell and Bach used them magnificently.
The Fugue, with its intricate weaving of a couple of short
melodies-the Subject and the Counter Subject-provided
another melodic and highly intellectual form. But as
Tonality and the sense of key developed, Melody was
relegated from the structural to the emotional sphere,
Sonata form, built up on Tonality, became definitely
harmonic-so much so that to take a melody as the first
Subject in Sonata Form is a weakness.
Now has come Atonality, and at one blow has dis-
integrated the elaborate relationships of notes in the Diatonic
scale into a communistic group of semitones where each
one is on an equality with the other. How can a composer
deal with the situation ? Obviously Sonata Form has
disintegrated with the diatonic scale though in some
modern works its semblance remains like the grin of the
Cheshire cat. Semitones in a communistic state cannot be
welded with the very limited experience at our command
into great well-ordered harmonic structures. To write
atonally in a harmonic form at present is to produce a

thought " heterodyne." But melody exists wherever there is
a well-arranged string of single sounds. Therefore, if
Atonal composers and compositions are to exist, they can
best do so by means of melody and the essentially melodic
forms of structure. That is why I contend that the "back
to Bach" movement is not a fad, but an act of self-
preservation.
Many men to-day take Bach for their master, but nowhere
can one find such a measure of Bach's own spirit and large
contrapuntal sweep as in Hindemith. It may be said
without irreverence that Hindemith's masterful and quite
terrible music for the mob in his opera " Cardillac" would
have been impossible if he had never known Bach's supreme
treatment of the crowd in the " St. Matthew Passion Music."
It is useless to attempt illustrations of such matters. They
cannot be taken out of their context. But in respect of other
parts of Hindemith's debt to Bach, it may be possible to give
a little idea.
Take, for example, the bass. Hindemith is very fond of
every form of ground bass, from the short pattern of a one
bar ostinato to the extended form of a Passacaglia. Indeed
the more one studies his work, the more one is struck by the
vitality and splendour of his basses. Nearly always they
have a clear melodic figure with rhythmic patterns that lend
themselves to frequent shifting of the accent. Often the
length of the melodic figure does not coincide with the
length of the bar, and this secures automatically a constant
shifting of different notes in the phrase onto the strong
beats. He deliberately makes his basses very strong and
logical, and endows them as melodic and rhythmic entities
because he wishes them to do many things besides support
a superstructure of parts. They are to persuade the ear to
accept, by means of their definite and self-explaining
progress, the complex parts and bewildering juxtapositions
of notes which occur above as the higher parts thread their
individual ways along the score.
Bach .. .. .. .. "Crucifixus"
Hindemith .. Last Scene from " Cardillac "
were played here.
Above that ground bass is developed the magnificent
set of variations which forms the Finale of the opera-music
which has room for the most violent action, and at the same
time sums up and clinches all that has gone before. That
ground bass carries the most tremendous clashes, the most
biting discords, and makes them intelligible. Indeed it is

extraordinary how throughout the opera these biting sounds
and the staccato style draw one like a magnet. " Cardillac "
shows Hindemith in the finest aspect of his discipleship to
Bach.
Honesty compels me to say, however, that there are other
times when this discipleship runs to seed. Hindemith gets
reeling off contrapuntal stuff by the mile in figures made
of a quaver and two semiquavers, the figure apparently
exercising a hypnotic power to prevent him from stopping.
As a sample of this false Bach, we are going to show you the
beginning of one of the pieces in the "Reihe kleiner Stiicke "
for Pianoforte, Opus 37. Were it not for the bite of
Atonality there would be nothing in the piece at all. In
fact, when Hindemith is in this mood, it may be said that
his Bach is worse than his bite.
The Third Piece in the "Reihe kleiner Stiicke"
played here as an example.
Having heard that example, I think it is only fair to let
Hindemith get his own back, so to speak.
Here is a sample of him doing Bach in a reticent
beautiful way. It comes from the Serenade, Opus 35, and is
the opening of the First Movement of that quite remarkable
little Cantata for Soprano Voice, Oboe, 'Cello and Viola.
In it settings of romantic poems and little movements for
instruments alone alternate with each other.
Whether the opening phrase is a real or an imaginary
quotation from Bach I have not been able to ascertain, but
it is worked out with perfect sincerity and fine skill.
Now comes Hindemith's little jest. He names that piece
a "Barcarole."
Other matters besides the return to Bach are bound u
with Atonality. Hindemith deals with them logicall
Key signatures being unnecessary, they disappear from h
scores, and are replaced by accidentals when required.
A more subtle corollary is found in his treatment
rhythm. Just as Atonality dissolves the scale into twelv
equal semitones, so Hindemith dissolves the old Tim
Divisions of Simple and Compound Time into their
constituent elements of the minim, crotchet, or quaver and
takes one or other of them as the pulse for the whole.
Accordingly though time signatures and bar lines appear
they shift continually under the stress of his rhythms, and
only the crotchet-or whatever it may be-remains as a
stable element. Perhaps the most subtle corollary of all is
Hindemith's use of melodic in contradistinction to thematic
development. It is not easy to define this method, but
examples can readily be found in the music of our English
composer, Herbert Howells. In Hindemith's case, I have
a shrewd suspicion that his propensity for Atonality and his
melodic development proceeded side by side.
Hindemith, having arrived at his essential creed in 1927,
defined what one may call his moral attitude towards music
thus: "What is generally regretted to-day is the loose
relation maintained by music between the producer and the
consumer. A composer these days should never write unless
he is acquainted with the demand for his work. The times
for consistent composing for one's own satisfaction are
probably gone for ever. On the other hand the need for
music is so great that it is urgently necessary for composers
and hearers to come to some understanding at last."
Here, then, we have Hindemith's declaration of artistic
faith, and with it a clear light upon his own contributions
to the corpus of contemporary music. Operas are wanted
in Germany: he has written them. Chamber works, and
especially String Quartets have been found necessary during
his career: he has written them. Songs will be required
as long as human beings exist: Hindemith provides them.
Wind instruments have a limited repertoire. Hindemith
enlarges it. Cinema music, and other forms of mechanized
music are now a daily need. Hindemith supplies it.
Finally, education occupies-and always will occupy-a
place in professional music. Accordingly he writes good,
easy, graded educational music.
Roughly speaking, nearly all Hindemith's published
compositions fall into one or other of these classes, and as
it is also easier to consider them in groups, I shall depart from
chronological order. The educational pieces need not detain
us, though they show the hand of the accomplished composer.
Nor shall I review his mechanical and cinema music, though
it includes " Felix the Cat," for I have only been able to
hear one example myself-" Der Lindbergflug," broadcast
from Berlin not long ago. Hindemith and Weill had
collaborated on the music, which was brief, bright, and
realistic. The snoring phrases when Lindberg struggles
with sleep and the machine drone bass when Lindberg talks
to his motor were most entertaining. Mozart once composed
for a mechanical clock-the result was his great F minor
Fantasia in which modern experts detect his daemonic
element. "Lindberg's Flight" has no daemonic elements
and runs off the reel like a film. Hindemith does his job
0oo Paul Hindemith: His Music and its Characteristics
in a perfectly brisk, businesslike way. If one does not like

this, one can lump it. Indeed his taste for common music
reminds me of a story which Father Andrew, a real saint
working in the East End of London, tells against himself.
He was remonstrating with a parishioner for never coming
to Church. " Well, you see, Father, it's this way," said the
man, " every one 'as their 'obby. Yours is church. Mine's
pigs."
Hindemith's compositions for the theatre are a very
different affair. The operas contain some of his finest, most
original work, and every one of them shows his amazing
flair for the stage. Roughly speaking they fall into two
groups. In the first the works written prior to his
emancipation from Music Drama and Strauss: in the second
his three mature, atonal operas. In almost every instance
he has got hold of a technically effective libretto, though
with the exceptions of " Cardillac" and " Hin und Zuruck "
I do not suppose the English censor would pass one of them.
The very titles of the earlier works give a guide to their
character. Here is the list of them, with my own comments.
Op. 12. " Morder, Hoffnung der Frauen." Opera in One
Act, I921.
(A horrific Music Drama, evidently an attempt to out-
do Strauss.)
Op. 20. " Das Nusch-Nuschi." A play for Burmese
Marionettes. One Act, g921.
(Naughty, amusing, and too facile.)
Op. 21. " Sancta Susanna." Opera in One Act, I921.
(Prodigiously melodramatic, and wonderfully scored.)
Op. 28. "Der Damon." Dance Pantomime for ten instru-
ments. I924.
(Hindemith quite frankly enjoys being horrible, and
gives his demon all the best stage accessories.)
Altogether the list reminds me of that immortal one made
by Isabella for Catherine in Miss Austin's "Northanger
Abbey." You will remember the passage. Catherine,
delighted with the mysteries of Udolpho, tells her friend
she would like to spend her whole life reading it. Isabella
replies:-
"Dear creature, how much I am obliged to you; and
when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian
together, and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more
of the same kind for you."
"But are they all horrid ? Are you sure they are all
horrid ? "
Paul Hindemith: His Music and its Characteristics o10
" Yes, quite sure, for a particular friend of mine, a Miss

Andrews, a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the
world, has read every one of them."
* * * *
In that resp
tions: I have read all these works, and can assure you of
their horrific contents. Their musical brilliance is equally
certain, and "Sancta Susanna" is the cleverest of the
bunch. Here Hindemith's use of three flutes to express the
midnight gale screaming against the church is already
famous as a bit of orchestration.
Without opus number (perhaps because it is unlike any-
thing else in the series !) there is :-
"Tuttifintchen "-the music to a Christmas play. Pretty
and ingenious as a German Christmas card.
The three later operas (all atonal) are:-
Op. 39. "Cardillac." Opera in Three Acts. 1926. A
tragic theme treated with queer, almost cold-blooded
intensity and concentration.
Op. 45a "Hin und Zuriick." A Chamber Opera. I927.
Called by Hindemith a Sketch with Music; we should
call it a " Skit," for the plot works forward to a point at
which half the characters have been killed. Then as a
turning point comes a ghostly Fate apparition which I am
pretty sure is a jest at Wagner's expense-and from there
everything-action and music-works backward till the
opera ends as it began with the deaf old Aunt sitting
knitting without noticing anything. "A fig for Fate,"
Hindemith seems to say-" if it exists nowadays, the old
Aunt is the true symbol."
Latest of the operas is " Neues vom Tage," produced in
Germany last summer, and hailed by Hindemith's followers
as the only real solution of the problem of putting moder
life into opera. Whether that is so, I cannot tell on mere
acquaintance with the score. I should have supposed Max
Brand's " Machinist Hopkins" also deserved mention. But
one thing is clear. If Hindemith's work seems brilliant
when read, it would be a hundred times more brilliant in
stage performance, for he has an almost uncanny skill in
meeting the exact requirements of every situation. (One
can prove that by comparing the same scene given in (I) a
theatre, and (2) a concert room.)
"Cardillac" and "Neues vom Tage" are Hindemith's
masterpieces. One is grim tragedy; the other tearing farce.
His invention and technique are amazing in both.
"Cardillac" is the story of a goldsmith, a great artist,

to whom art is more than money, love and life; who commits
murders for it, and dies at the last, a martyr in its defence.
The story must have appealed to Hindemith from his intense
belief that Music should spring out of the primary joy of
Music, and not out of any necessity for personal com-
munications. He has set this story to music as remarkable
as any goldsmith's chef d'oeuvre-and with profound
consistency has fashioned it in forms as artificial as gold
and silver ornaments. The structural devices of the eighteenth
century are used with consummate skill and startling effect.
The action begins with a mob surging on to the stage from
three directions crying Murder. It ends with the same
crowd trampling Cardillac to death. This is the final scene
which is built on a Ground Bass.
As a proof of Hindemith's powerful correlation between
music and action, I may cite the following. Hans Strohbach,
one of the most gifted producers in Germany, told me that
when he was first given " Cardillac" to produce at Cologne,
he could make nothing of it. and could not decide whether
to follow the action, or the music in designing his production.
He finally decided for the music. When the whole thing
was put together at the first rehearsal he found that music,
action, and production all fitted perfectly!
Hindemith's concentration and economy function at
their highest power throughout the opera. Everything
converges upon Cardillac the Goldsmith. The contrapuntal
parts, tingling, darting with vitality, are complex in appear-
ance, clear in reality. Two of the most tremendous effects
in the music are made by means so simple that one almost
gasps on realizing how violently-on account of the context
-one reacts to them. The first is the dead silence when
Cardillac murders the Cavalier; the other is the long soft
common chord of Eb on which the opera ends. For two
hours Hindemith has held one, so to speak, in a clenched
fist, listening to his atonal, strangely staccato style. Then
at last comes this diatonic, legato chord. The fist opens, one
drops out, exhausted and amazed.
It is impossible to give an illustration of this, but as an
example in miniature of the value Hindemith gets from
common chords, Madame Hore will play you a couple of
lines from a pianoforte piece in the " Reihe kleiner Stticke."
Opera and Chamber Music interact with each other most
interestingly in Hindemith's work. Again and again he
takes the chamber orchestra into his operatic scores-the
very reverse of Tschaikowsky, who sought in his string
quartets for the sonority of a full orchestra. Nor are

Hindemith's debts one-sided. He carries over from opera
into chamber music his unerring flair for a good " up-curtain "
and for getting off the mark in record time. Both his operas
and his chamber works start at the height of action. The
First String Quartet, the Sonata for 'Cello and Piano, Op. ii,
and the Viola Concerto offer splendid examples. I am
certain Haydn placed great value on a strong launching
impetus for the First Movements of his Quartets; Hinde-
mith follows the same practice.
To describe Hindemith's chamber works separately is
not possible here, the more so that the number of regular
chamber works is increased by his things for Chamber
Orchestra.
As music the String Quartets are probably the most
significant. The First, Second and Third are all landmarks
in their way, and the Fourth is full of vigorous ideas
expressed with energy, and ends in a fine Passacaglia and
Fugato. The Third Quartet, however, is more generally
attractive. Its five movements make a delicately intellectual
pentagram, and the middle movement is a real inspiration.
This work is usually accepted as showing the final establish-
ment of Hindemith's Atonality and Linear counterpoint.
But it is a mistake to label him henceforth as exclusively
Atonal. He employs Polytonality, and even reverts to
tonality when it happens to suit his purpose.
Examples of clashing discords produced by linear counter-
point were then played, the examples taken from " Absterge,
Donime " by Tallis, Farrant's service in G minor, "Awake,
put on thy strength," by Wise, a Fantasia of Four Parts by
Purcell and the " First Movement of Third String Quartet" by
Hindemith.
The Six Sonatas in Opus I for various instruments are
diverse in interest. Those for Violin and Piano owe some-
thing to Strauss; that for Viola and Piano is the most
poetic, and the one for 'Cello and Piano affords a clever
example of Organ style put to an unexpected purpose.
Of the Four Sonatas in Opus 25 only two are published:
they are respectively for Viola and 'Cello alone-elaborate,
intellectual, architectural and rhapsodic.
The String Trio, Opus 34, is a fine work, and contains a
remarkable movement in pizzicato.
The Concertos for Solo Instruments and Chamber
Orchestra, Opus 38, have a good deal in common an
hard nuts to crack-whether for performers or listener
So strong is Hindemith's predilection for Chamber
9 Vol. 56
o04 Paul Hindemith: His Music and its Characteristics
style that even the pianoforte pieces and songs often fall
within its influence. Of the Songs I must not say more here
than that the voice is usually written for in a kind of free
melody following closely the natural curve of the words-
just as in Hindemith's operas.
Of the pianoforte pieces we intend to show you a couple.
"Marsch" and "Nachstuck" from the Suite " 922"
were played here.
Lifting our eyes from the close view of Hindemith and
his works I want to pause for a moment, before I end, in
contemplation of their larger relationship to the world
around.
It cannot be denied that Hindemith, with all his great
ability as a musician, frequently leaves a strange impression
upon his hearers that something is missing. The best
definition of this I know was written by W. H. Haddon
Squire, European Music Editor of the "Christian Science
Monitor"; he described Hindemith's music as "two
dimensional." Another explanation, offered by another
observer, was that Hindemith expressed the Zeitgeist, but
not the eternal, spiritual realities. However that be, one
frequently has a feeling of something manque in his music
and for musicians brought up in the liberal romantic tradition
of Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, it forms a gulf deeper than
any questions of atonality, or polytonality.
A German biographer tells us that the music of the
Everyday people, Craftsmanship, and the Present are the
foundations of Hindemith's creative work. Those words
Craftsmanship and the Present throw a little light on the
problem. We are fond of talking of Art for Art's sake, often
meaning thereby Music to which all human considerations
are compelled to minister. Hindemith, I believe, takes a
slightly different, and more logical view. He regards it
(Music) as an entity absolutely apart from human beings.
With regard to the Present as the material for Hinde-
mith's music we unconsciously resent his faithful
expression of the Post-War world. We are seldom pleased
with photographs of ourselves; still less with photographs
of large groups. Hindemith apparently photographs on a
national scale, giving us German mentality of the day in its
strength and weakness, its wisdom and folly. In some
respects one can see eye to eye with his enthusiasms. There
is a beauty-if we care to look for it-in great machines
and consummate engineering. We have it in England. At
the sight of the Forth Bridge, a G.W.R. engine of the King
class, or a flight of aeroplanes, one's heart inevitably beats
a little quicker. But Hindemith's exclusive concentration

upon the present is a harder thing for us to share because
we instinctively feel (we English romanticists) that no
philosophy can be quite true that excludes the past and
future. But even this difficulty in the path of comprehension
can be passed if we think widely, imaginatively and
sympathetically. It is difficult for us to understand because
-for what victory was worth-we won in the War ten years
ago; our national ideals, such as they were, were not lost.
Germany lost, and her old ideals went down. In that very
terrible German War book, "All Quiet on the Western
Front," the most bitter cry of the young men is: " You have
taken our future from us."
An English composer who fought through the War told me
he believed that though the new composers are unaware of
their own psychology, the instinct which drives them to the
spare, intensely economical style of the new music is horror
at the senseless waste of the War.
Anyone who has seen the pathetically undersized young
Germans and Austrians who were children during the War,
or who has heard a German performance of "Behold all
flesh is as the grass" from Brahms's "Requiem" on
Remembrance Sunday will understand why Germany dreads
looking back.
In concentrating upon the Present Hindemith is typical
of his country.
But I believe that he is too radically a musician to evade
for ever the great emotions that go with genius. If they
thaw the little piece of ice that lies in his artist's heart, the
effect will be amazing.
DISCUSSION.
THE CHAIRMAN: Miss Scott has given us a good dea
think about. She has studied her subject, evidently w
an unpredjudiced mind and with clear insight. There
a great number of points that might be raised, but a g
many of them are metaphysical. The new psycholog
very much spoken of. We hear a great deal about it,
it is not very much understood. Our relations to life n
are different, and we certainly have men who are tryin
express that, and such discourses as we have heard are
helpful.
Mr. W. W. COBBETT: I ask to be allowed to say a few
words confined to the subject of the Chamber Music of Hinde-
mith. Of his compositions in general I cannot pretend to
Io6 Paul Hindemith: His Music and its Characteristics
have an intimate knowledge. When I entered this room

I felt very ignorant about his operas and symphonic poems,
but after hearing Miss Scott's paper I feel quite " knowing"
on the subject. I was present at those concerts of which
Miss Scott speaks, and heard the Hindemith music played
on that occasion. I cannot say that up to the present I have
acquired anything beyond respect for it, but I find Miss Scott's
enthusiasm quite delightful, and I do appreciate to the full
Hindemith's thorough knowledge, that of an accomplished
executant, of the instruments for which he writes. This
one feels constantly when listening to, and still more when
playing his music, except when he indicates, (in German
by the way) that the C string of the 'cello during the per-
formance is to be lowered to B flat, which for obvious reasons
is a very risky experiment in "Scordatura."
He writes difficult passages for strings, but they lie well
under the hand and yield to strenuous practice. The chief
difficulty with these atonal writers is with the intonation
and with the constant metrical changes, which are so frequent
in moder music that few amateurs can cope with them
successfully. One cannot, so to speak, keep in step. This
is a terribly difficult feature in modern music, a feature to
which I think we shall never become entirely accustomed.
Unfortunately this type of music lacks the sweet reason-
ableness of the classics, and let me add, of the romantics.
Hindemith, I think, belongs to the self-styled anti-romantics
a ghastly word, which, if it foreshadows the chamber music
of the future, sounds the death-knell of what most of us
hold dear. I firmly believe that no such fate is in store for
us, though I am obliged to admit that many present-day
composers, affected by the post-war virus, openly express
contempt for the glorious music of Schumann, and even hold
cheap the music of Beethoven himself. They are sowing
their wild oats and will be one day heartily ashamed of
themselves.
Observing that Mr. Edwin Evans in his admirable article
on Hindemith's chamber music in my Cyclopedic Survey
mentioned that the composer had not yet "burned his
boats " when he wrote his early quartet, Op. io. I acquired
this work and tried it only a few days ago. What did I read
among the indications-once more in German language ?
That a passage should be " mystery-full, in the same tempo,
but quite apathetic and devoid of all feeling " empfindungslos
is the German word. Here, surely, was the burning of the
first boat.
The second boat began to smoulder a little later on, when

during a fugato passage it was impossible to discover any
two bars in the same key. Afterwards the fire was damped
down, and the Finale proved quite brilliant and even
ingratiating, though diffuse: (eleven pages for the leading
violin). By the way the Finales of Haydn's quartets run
mostly to two pages. We who play chamber music love
long movements, but I fear that audiences are apt to tire
before the end is reached.
Hindemith's third quartet was played in London by the
Brosa quartet. It contains a very vivacious Gipsy movement
which is extremely beautiful. It would seem that this com-
poser, after all, realizes sometimes that fancy is bred in the
heart as well as the head. Mercifully he is not entirely
" cerebral." If he develops this side of his nature (he is still
young), he will win the love as well as the respect of all of us.
But if he thinks all that sort of thing sloppy, and favours
intellectualism sans emotional fervour, he will win the ad-
miration only of the select few. Is that desirable ? I doubt
it.
Mr. Brosa writes me on the subject of a new chamber work
which Hindemith has on the stocks. It may interest you
if I read his letter, though it is not very explicit:-
" This piece is written in the old sonata form for violin
viola and clavicembalo, and in one of the movements for,
a double bass also. I think there are seven movements.
It aims at representing the life and death of Christ. I
understood that it was not altogether his original composition
but that he harmonised it and put it into sonata form, but
of that I am not certain. It is not yet published.
You will have noticed that certain interpretative indi-
cations were written in the German language. This is a
suitable opportunity, at a meeting of the Musical Association
to make a suggestion, It is that printers should print with
each work a glossary, Italian, German, French and English,
of the indications given in various foreign languages. Com-
posers of all countries, not only German, elect to use their
own tongue for this purpose, and it is rather perplexing for
artists who are not polygot in their attainments. There
is even a comic side to this question. One sees artists serenely
playing on, sublimely oblivious of the meaning of the com-
poser's indications. Provided with a glossary, which would
take up but little room, they would be posted up in advance.
May I add my own tribute of thanks to Miss Scott for reading
us a paper of such outstanding interest.
io8 Paul Hindemith: His Music and its Characteristics
Madame ELSIE HORNE: Perhaps you will forgive me

if I say it is most extraordinarily difficult music to get hold
of and to play. The difficulty lies in so much of this false
relation. One's mind is always trying to put the matter
right according to our usual ideas and one has to re-read
the notes. It is much more simple if one learns a line at a
time, first the right hand and then the left; then they go
well together. Taken like that the music is extraordinarily
reasonable. The rhythm is clean and runs along most easily
but it is the putting of these together, this continual clashing
that Miss Scott mentioned, which is perhaps to all of our
ears and my own fingers so difficult to grasp.
CHAIRMAN: That is very interesting, because the whole
matter is that the old music is based on association, one chord
suggesting another. But when you come to moder music,
every chord, whatever it may be, stands on its own feet,
perfectly irrespective of sequence, preparation and so on.
It is just expressive of one thought rushing through the mind
when you have another predominant thought turned suddenly
by the suggestive idea of something else. That is one of the
difficulties with the moder music, because our brains work
by association of ideas. But when you come to them rapidly
you are up against something which is very difficult to the
trained musician.
At the beginning of that march, for instance, it was to me
indicative of the joys of Hampstead Heath on Bank Holiday.
There you have an example of the idea of the moder com-
poser to express all the jangling that is in modern life.
Unless you can understand it, you cannot really appreciate
it, because moder music now is not judged by standards.
Any means are justifiable if the expression rings true.
You will agree with me that we owe a very great deal to
Miss Scott for giving us so many ideas and showing us so
clearly what Hindemith is trying for, and also to Madame
Elsie Horne for playing. We must all feel the great difficulty
of playing this music.
A vote of thanks to Miss Scott and Madame Elsie Horne
concluded the proceedings.

Hindemith Music and Characteristics

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Paul Hindemith: His Music and Its Characteristics

Author(s): Marion Scott

F. GILBERT WEBB, ESQ.,

PAUL HINDEMITH: HIS MUSIC AND ITS

BY Miss MARION SCOTr, A.R.C.M.

NOT long ago I happened to mention to a, clever bus

tone-tonality, quartertonality, modality, polymodality, linear

him, he was obliged to earn and learn simultaneously. He

Hindemith has, most in common, theoretically, and

Hindemith's opus numbers run almost to fifty. Not all

later things. With the acceptance of Atonality, a tendency

atonally in a harmonic form at present is to produce a

biting discords, and makes them intelligible. Indeed it is

in a perfectly brisk, businesslike way. If one does not like

" Yes, quite sure, for a particular friend of mine, a Miss

"Cardillac" is the story of a goldsmith, a great artist,

quartets for the sonority of a full orchestra. Nor are

a little quicker. But Hindemith's exclusive concentration

have an intimate knowledge. When I entered this room

The second boat began to smoulder a little later on, when

Madame ELSIE HORNE: Perhaps you will forgive me

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