The Vienna Wind Soloists

Side One
Ibert
Trois Pièces brèves
1. Allegro 2:10
2. Andante 1:33
3. Assez lent-allegro scherzando 2:45

Janáček
Mládí
1. Allegro 3:37
2. Andante sostenuto 4:52
3. Vivace 3:51
4. Allegro animato 4:56
with Horst Hajek (bass clarinet)

Side Two
Hindemith
Kleine Kammermusik, Op. 24, No. 2
1. Lustig. Mässig schnelle Viertel 2:50
2. Walzer. Durchweg sehr leise 1:42
3. Ruhig und einfach. Achtel 4:56
4. Schnelle Vierte
5. Sehr lebhaft 3:31

Ligeti
Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet 13:02
1. Molto sostenuto e calmo
2. Prestissimo minaccioso e burlesco
3. Lento
4. Prestissimo leggiero e virtuoso
5. Presto staccatissimo e leggiero
6. Presto staccatissimo e leggiero
7. Vivo. energico
8. Allegro con delicatezza
9. Sostenuto. stridente
10. Presto bizzarro e rubato, so schnell wie möglich

Wolfgang Schulz (flute) • Gerhard Turetschek (oboe) • Peter Schmidl (clarinet) • Volker Altman (horn) • Fritz Faltl (bassoon)

-- LINER NOTES --

Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) was born in Paris and held the posts of director of both the Academie de France in Rome and later the Paris Opera. In some ways Ibert might be regarded as an off-shoot of "Les Six," in his rejection of Debussian impressionism, favoring the simpler, more direct, often satirical language of Satie and his followers. The Trois Pièces brèves sparkle with wit and virtuosity. The first piece (Allegro) opens with an arresting ostinato figure which straight away leads into a lilting dance-like melody on the oboe. After a middle section in which the material is subjected to mild development, the oboe theme returns, jubilant, and the piece ends in a blaze of color. The Andante movement is similarly economic and to the point, consisting of a delicate two-part invention for flute and clarinet, the rest of the quintet entering only in the final bars forming a short codetta. The final movement, after a slow introduction, returns to the spirit of the dance featuring a parody of an Austrian ländler.

Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) made extensive studies into Moravian and Slavonic folksong, the influences of which are particularly evident in the first and third movements of the sextet Mládí (Youth) written in 1924. The first movement (Allegro) contrasts a folk-like modal melody on the oboe with a more four-square bassoon theme which has an almost martial accompaniment figure. Both are developed side by side, but it is the more robust music that eventually dominates. In the second movement (Andante sostenuto) one melodic unit--a phrase comprising the intervals of a descending second and third--permeates the whole piece, a kind of continuous variation structure. The third movement, the Scherzo of the suite, is typical of Janáček's more "rustic" mood, based on a lively modal tune in folksong style, accompanied by harmonically static ostinati, and with much exact repetition of sections. The final movement (Allegro animato), like the second, is basically the melodic metamorphosis of a single idea heard initially on the flute. As the piece gathers momentum and a climax is reached, the opening material of the first movement is restated and, together with fragments from the other movements, is integrated into the melodic continuum. The idiomatic writing for the wind instruments is characteristic of Janáček: the double-tonguing and flutter-tonguing, for example, in the finale, and the trills in the first movement. The addition of a bass clarinet to the normal quintet means that lower bass notes can be sustained very softly (as in the second movement), an effect difficult to bring off on the larger bassoon. Also by reinforcing the bass register, it releases the horn more frequently from the murky lower region of the compass where it is often forced to operate in many works in the quintet medium.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) composed the Kleine Kammermusik (Little Chamber Music) opus 24, number 2, in 1922. Like the Trois Pièces brèves it is essentially light in character but extremely refined, and was written during what might be labelled Hindemith's "neo-classical" period, before the opera Mathis der Maler. The forms of each of the five short movements are very clear cut and easily perceptible, the material well defined. Although not diatonic in the traditional sense, tonalities are nevertheless always inherent although rarely established, and constantly veiled by the superimposition of different keys.

György Ligeti (born 1923) was commissioned to write a work for the Stockholm Philharmonic Wind Quintet in 1968, and the Ten Pieces were first performed in Malmö the following year. The structure of the whole alternates tutti and concertante sections, so that pieces two, four, six, eight and ten, feature respectively clarinet, flute, oboe, horn and bassoon, whereas in the other movements all the instruments are of equal importance. Ligeti has described the work as a series of kaleidoscopic images. A limited number of musical ideas and techniques appear in constantly changing relationships and juxtapositions: sometimes expanded, sometimes compressed but never developing thematically in a traditional manner. Various new playing techniques are used: pitchless double-tonguing (in the case of the bassoon, with the reed taken out), and "muted" bassoon, with a cloth stuffed into the upper joint at the beginning of the eighth piece. The work ends abruptly, and here Ligeti quotes Lewis Carroll in the score:

" ... but-"
There was a long pause.
"Is that all?" Alice timidly asked.
"That's all," said Humpty Dumpty. "Good-bye."

-- David Sutton, February 1977

AGP 154

Paul Hindemith, "The Seven Chamber Musics"

SEITE 1
Kammermusik Nr. 1 für kleines Orchester op. 24 Nr. 1
Sehr schnell und wild
Maessig schnelle Halbe - Sehr streng im Rhythmus Quartett: Sehr langsam und mit Ausdruck Finale: 1921 Ausserst lebhaft

Kammermusik Nr. 2 für obligates Klavier und 12 Soloinstrumente op. 36 Nr. 1
Sehr lebhafte Achtel
Sehr langsame Achtel

SEITE 2
Kleines Potpourri. Sehr lebhafte Achtel Finale - Schnelle Viertel
Solo: Maria Bergmann, Klavier

Kammermusik Nr. 6 für Viola d'amore und Kammerorchester op. 46 Nr. 1
Maessig schnell, majestatisch - Doppelt so schnell - Langsam - Sehr zart und ruhig - Im Hauptzeitmass -Variationen Maessig schnell bewegt - Lebhaft, wie fruher
Solo: Ulrich Koch, Viola d'amore

SEITE 3
Kammermusik Nr. 3 für obligates Violoncello und 10 Soloinstrumente op. 36 Nr. 2
Majestatisch und stark. MaBig schnelle Achtel Lebhaft und lustig Sehr ruhig und gemessen schreitende Viertel MaBig bewegte Halbe. Munter, aber immer gemachlich Solo: Martin Ostertag, Violoncello

SEITE4
Kammermusik Nr. 4 für Solovioline und groBeres Kammerorchester op. 36 Nr. 3
Signal. Breite, majestatische Halbe - Sehr lebhaft
Nachtstuck
Lebhafte Viertel - So schnell wie moglich
Solo: Wolfgang Hock, Violine

SEITE 5
Kammermusik Nr. 5 für Solobratsche und grosseres Kammerorchester op. 36 Nr. 4
Schnelle Halbe
Langsam
Maessig schnell
Variante eines Militaermarsches
Solo: Ulrich Koch, Viola

SEITE 6
Kammermusik Nr. 7, Konzert für Orgel und Kammerorchester op. 46 Nr. 2
Nicht zu schnell Sehr langsam und ganz Dritter Satz ohne Titel Solo: Martha Schuster, Orgel

AUSFUHRENDE:
ensemble 13 baden-baden Leitung: Manfred Reichert
Michael Loeckle, Horst Meyer, Flote
Helmut Koch, Oboe Karl Schlechta, Hermann Herbert Fritsch, Klarinette Karl Meiser, Bassklarinette
Helmut Muller, Helmut Backer, Fagott Alfred Steinmuller, Kontrafagott
Robert Bodenroeder,
Baldur Hahne, Trompete
Karl Arnold, Horn
Juergen Ramin, Richard Meyer, Posaune
Gerhard Georgi. Basstuba
Wolfgang Hock, Toshio Mizuno, Violine
Joachim Lemme, Sibylle Haass, Christina Lohss, Elisabeth Wolfgang Roccor, Bratsche
Martin Ostertag, Anton Kasmeier, Albrecht Kuen, Martin Ekkehard Opitz, Violoncello
Sigismund Schwieger, Erik Erker, Konrad Neander, Alek Band, Kontrabass
Maria Bergmann, Klavier
Jurgen Ehret, Akkordeon
Gerold Forker, Schlagzeug


Paul Hindemith's "Kammermusik" works
An introduction by Andres Briner

At first sight the title Kammermusik ("chamber music"), given by Paul Hindemith to a series of his works, seems badly chosen. In the pieces so named, composed between 1921 and 1928, are found a piano concerto, a cello concerto, a violin concerto and a viola concerto, that is to say works of a nature which unquestionably presupposes an orchestra. Uncertainty momentarily increases if one looks around the work of this first mature period of the composer (who was born in 1895 at Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main): the title Kammermusik was employed in the first of the series (Op. 24 No.1) for an ensemble of twelve solo instruments, in the four works of Op. 36 or an orchestra-like ensemble of changing constitution, but in No. 2 of Op. 24-which does not officially belong to the series-for a wind quintet (Kleine Kammermusik). If ensembles with such differing traditions bear the same title, this can be understood only as a conscious stylistic marking, as a trade-mark bestowed by the composer, and as such it then appears clear. Paul Hindemith was concerned that these works should already by their title be clearly contrasted with late Romantic instrumental ensemble music, in which the individual instruments were used above all to produce an atmospheric overall effect, an ensemble of impressionistic tone-values. In the twenties Paul Hindemith lived and composed in opposition to the Romantics, indeed he was one of the most energetic leaders of this opposition in Germany and outside it too. The rallying-point of this musical activity, as sparing in words as highly active in musical deeds, was Donaueschingen in South Germany, where in 1921 were held the first "Chamber-music Performances" (Kammermusik-Auffuehrungen) for the Promotion of Contemporary Music". Hindemith himself celebrated the year of foundation by calling the finale of his first Kammermusik "Finale: 1921". Even in the title "Kammermusik-Auffuehrungen" there was the password "Kammermusik", in very conscious renunciation of the cult of the large symphonic orchestra which the late Romantics had pursued in ever more extravagant fashion.

The first impulses of an artistic opposition movement are mostly the most uncompromising and severe, and it was not otherwise then with Hindemith, who soon became the leading spirit of the Donaueschingen gatherings. His first Kammermusik i.e. Op. 24 No.1 (1921) was not enough to overthrow what was then cherished. This music could be called impudent, if it were realised that an aggressiveness based on art has a legitimate artistic effecr. In this first Kammermusik instruments which the Romantics specially loved, like horns and trombones, are missing. The strings are employed no longer in sensuous profusion, but for a rhythmic pulse and a vital, entirely unsentimental play of movement. Rhythm is the first supporting component in this play, and this rhythm has already taken over much from jazz, which precisely at this time had swept Germany like a mass hypnosis. While Hindemith as composer employed elements of jazz in his work-as Igor Stravinsky had already done before him-he did not fall under the power of this hypnosis: he stole from it a principal means of its seduction and made it serviceable to himself. Moreover, piano and accordion brought this music close to the jazz ensembles of that time, and these ensembles themselves certainly presented chamber music in the original meaning of the term: each part is performed by one player, who was thus as a soloist. Only the direction, in the Kammermusik No.1, that the performers should be placed out of sight of the audience, seems to smack of Romanticism, with its predilection for background ensembles and sunken orchestras, but it in fact leads, from a conception carried to the extreme, to the work's abstraction and the listener's objectivity. In his later Kammermusik works Hindemith no longer asked for the players to be invisible-as they are to the gramophone listener-but this invisibility is in full accord with the consciously objective performance characteristic of this music.

The four concertos of Op. 36 were composed in the years 1924 to 1927; three years thus lie between the first Kammermusik of 1921 and the second, the Piano Concerto of Op. 36-three years in which the Donaueschingen gatherings were consolidated into an institution in which anti-Romantic music in Central Europe found an increasing interest, and in which Hindemith himself (who with the first performance of his Op. 16 Second String Quartet in that same year, 1921, sprang into the centre of the arena) found an immense number of followers. But in accordance with our observation that opposition movements in art, as time goes by, lose their spirit of opposition, in place of which however they may develop a new special sensibility not necessarily, perhaps, opposed to the earlier revolutionary spirit, we find Hindemith in the year 1924 an already changed musician, certainly less bellicose, but settled and far-seeing. He still embodied and had increasingly done so for some time-the type of the "all-round" musician; he not only composed at incredible speed and in astonishing abundance, but played the piano, clarinet and other wind instruments brilliantly, while his principal instruments remained the violin and viola-his instrumental gifts were one of the wonders of musical life at that time. In his Op. 36 (and not only here) he wrote no instrumental part that he himself could not play if-as he himself said-he did a little practice. His thorough practical knowledge of all the instruments employed enabled him to obtain in each case exactly the desired effect, the sought-for coloration, the tested instrumental technique. Much of that which Hindemith demanded of the instruments in these Kammermusik compositions, which have now become, in their own way, classics, has meanwhile entered into the technical equipment of all professional musicians, for Hindemith, like Bartok and Stravinsky also, had written in such a way as to extend the technical possibilities of the instruments through the nature of the music given them. The Op. 36 constitutes, after the aggressive works of the early twenties, the central point of Hindemith the mature, experienced, stylistically far-reaching instrumental composer.

Now the apparent contradictions between the title Kammermusik and the fact that each of the four works of Op. 36 includes an instrument treated as a prominent soloist gradually dissolves for us. While in his first Kammermusik of 1921 the composer threw overboard everything which recalled classical and Romantic usage in orchestral composition, he was now able, in his tolerant mood, to integrate features of the orchestra's symphonic past into his own music. To be sure, in all four concertos he remains far removed from the type of the Romantic solo concertos; the solo parts are set in opposition to the accompanying ensemble, but in a playful way primarily appealing to the performer that recalls baroque or early classical solo concertos. The proportions correspond exactly, the management of form is concise; in each movement one basic mood, one underlying emotion is normally maintained throughout-just as we know from 18th century Italian concertos. In none of the four concertos has the solo instrument to take on a struggle with the Hydra-headed late-Romantic symphony orchestra; here the significance of the term Kammermusik is confirmed: it is music of a small, indeed intimate, cast, though a powerful energy, occasionally indeed a flourish or protest, a signal of revolt, also animates the music. "Kammermusik" here does not imply a seclusion or a restriction to the private or the idyllic; on the contrary, we are dealing with music open to the world, which picks up stimuli from everywhere, from the past as well as from the present. The Italian solo concerto as well as the concerti grossi of Corelli and Handel, the Brandenburg Concertos of Bach as well as the "Sinfonie concertante" works of the early classics, of the Mannheim school, of Haydn and Mozart, with their changing choice of solo instrument-all these influences are brought forward into tre present of the new de-sentimentalised music, which does not on occasion shrink from reminiscences of favourite marches or of dance music of the day. In the work of a composer of less clear-cut individuality this openness could lead to stylistic chaos, to disorientation, to mere imitation or to cheap montage. With Paul Hindemith the first of creative energy is so great, the heat of the crucible of his imagination so intense, that all ingredients are melted down free from dross. The result is four works of unmistakable personality, stamped with unerring individuality and yet belonging to a clearly delineated stylistic range-four works belonging among the best that modern music contains for small instrumental ensembles.

The ensemble for the Piano Concerto (1924) consists (apart from the solo instrument) of twelve instruments. Five of these are woodwind (flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon), three brass (horn, trumpet and trombone) and four single strings (violin, viola, cello and bass). The Cello Concerto limits itself to ten instruments, not counting the solo cello: four are woodwind, three brass, and the viola is missing from the strings. The four movement Piano Concerto takes over the outward model of the three-movement concerto form with a divertimento movement interpolated - for Hindemith this is, in his own words, a "little potpourri". Particularly the first movement and the finale recall the baroque concertos in their consistent basic emotion. Certainly rhythmic accents here are sharp and frequently irregular-as the number of beats also changes frequently. This so-called changeable metre is a direct expression of the overflowing musical energy, difficult to restrain, which manifests itself in the jagged motives, the sharply-etched contributions of the individual instruments and the occasional tuttis. The piano writing almost entirely renounces the chordal, such as distinguishes the Romantic usage of the piano-Hindemith plainly writes for the two hands of a pianist, that is to say mostly in a two-part and therefore "polyphonic" layout...

...The two last works entitled Kammermusik belong to Op. 46 but were both produced in 1927, that is to say almost at the same time as the Viola Concerto. Op. 46 No.1 (Kammermusik No.6) introduces as solo instrument the viola d'amore, much favoured in the baroque period and distinguished by a delicate and warm timbre; in the wind the clarinets, akin in tone, are significantly employed doubled, the other woodwind and brass single. Here too Hindemith primes a solo instrument of relatively low-lying compass with the deepest of the strings, three cellos and a bass. This Kammermusik for viola d'amore and chamber orchestra, with its intimate, singing quality of tone, was first presented by the composer, an honour which had befallen only the Viola Concerto from the Op. 36 concertos. Hindemith, who in those years preferred to appear in public as a violist, took an exceptional interest in the viola d'amore, this quiet sister of the viola; the Kammermusik No.6 is the witness of a private affinity between a musician who was often noticed only in his extravert vein and a rare and sensitive instrument.


An Organ Concerto, as No. 2 of Op. 46, concludes the series of Kammermusik works. Again a personal wish is involved in its origin; this work, which has an inner kinship with the Op. 36 Viola Concerto, was written for the inauguration of a new organ of the Frankfurt Radio, which Hindemith's brother-in-law Hans Flesch directed. The first performance took place on 8 January 1928 in the Frankfurt radio station. In that same year Hindemith had to leave the city of Frankfurt, in which he had made a phenomenal rise, for Berlin, which had appointed him professor of composition at its Musikhochschule. The composer gave the solo instrument in this Kammermusik No.7 an instrumental ensemble of eight woodwind (including a bass clarinet and a double-bassoon), three brass-the trumpet opens the outer movements with a ceremonial call-and three low strings. This score demonstrates in its combination of linear polyphony, such as had for centuries been appropriate to the organ, and modern concerto spirit the unprecedented mastery of musical composition which Paul Hindemith now had at his command. This earlier of Hindemith's two organ concertos crowns the series of Kammermusik works with an incomparable freshness of musical imagination.

AGP 152

AGP 153

Paul Hindemith, "Of the Death of Mary III"

Continued Notes From GSC Recordings GSC 7:

Das Marienleben, XV "Of the Death of Mary III"

GSC RECORDINGS, 2451 Nichols Canyon, Los Angeles, Ca. 90046. PRODUCED BY: Herschel Burke Gilbert, Julian Spear, Don Christlieb. RECORDING ENGINEERS: Steve Markham & Paul Ford. MASTERING ENGINEER: Bernie Grundman.

Paul Hindemith, "Of the Death of Mary II"

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Das Marienleben, XIV "Of the Death of Mary II"

Mr. Dahl requested Miss Bonini to work on Das Marienleben, because he was interested in the original 1923 version of the work and felt it was well suited to her abilities. The successful performance, in 1967, was for Monday Evening Concerts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the recording was made the following day.

Paul Hindemith, "Of the Death of Mary I"

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Das Marienleben, XIII "Of the Death of Mary I"

Peggy Bonini and Ingolf Dahl first worked together in 1952 while Miss Bonini was still a student at the University of Southern California. Mr. Dahl was conducting Menotti's The Consel, directed by Carl Ebert, and Miss Bonini had been chosen to sing the lead. The combination was very successful and for many years thereafter Miss Bonini and Mr. Dahl performed together in concert.

Paul Hindemith, "Consolation of Mary"

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Das Marienleben, XII "Consolation of Mary"

PEGGY BONINI has had a varied career as a singer in concert, opera, musical comedy, and oratorio, and as an actress in the legitimate theatre. She was a principal singer with the New York City Opera company for several reasons. Her versatile vocal talent has allowed her to sing a variety of roles, from Susanna in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, to the title role in Bizet's Carmen.

Paul Hindemith, "Pieta"

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Das Marienleben, XI "Pieta"

In 1945 he [Dahl] joined the music faculty of the University of Southern California where he taught conducting, composition, and music history, directed the University orchestra, and founded the collegium musicum. He was a very strong advocate of contemporary music and gave Los Angeles premieres of works by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Hindemith (including Das Marienleben,), Ives, Copland, and others. He lectured on campuses from Hawaii to Vermont, led the Tanglewood Study Group from 1952 to 1956, and was Director and Conductor of the Ojai (California) Music Festival from 1964 to 1966. He won composer awards from the Society for the Publication of American music, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Alice Ditson Foundation of Columbia University. He was commissioned to compose works for Sigurd Rascher, Benny Goodman, the Koussevitsky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation, and the College Band Directors National Association. Some of these commissions were aided by grants from the Guggenheim and Huntington Hartford Foundations. He died in 1970 while on sabbatical leave in Switzerland.

Paul Hindemith, "Before the Passion"

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Das Marienleben, X. "Before the Passion"



INGOLF DAHL was born of Swedish parents in 1912 in Hamburg, Germany. He was educated there, and in Sweden and Switzerland. In Zurich he served as coach and conductor at the Municipal Opera, leaving that post in 1939 to settle in Southern California, where he became active as pianist, conductor, and composer. He performed regularly at Monday Evening Concerts and occasionally in film and radio studios.

Paul Hindemith, "Of the Wedding at Cana"

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Das Marienleben, IX. "Of the Wedding at Cana"



Happily, the time for polemics on this subject has passed, and this recording makes it possible for every listener to compare the 1923 version with existing recordings of the 1948. It will be more important to make distinctions than to pass judgments.

LAWRENCE MORTON Los Angeles, Calif.

Paul Hindemith, "Rest on the Flight into Egypt"

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Das Marienleben, VIII. "Rest on the Flight into Egypt"



These fifteen songs were composed in 1923. They signaled a change in Hindemith's style, a new orientation toward the neo-classicism of which he became the German symbol as Stravinsky was the Russian and Bartok the Hungarian. Das Marienleben quickly earned a reputation as the composer's best work up to that time (he was then only twenty-eight). But for all its reputation, Hindemith became dissatisfied with it, and in 1948 he published a new version on which he worked intermittently for many years. Some of the songs, he said, were completely rewritten five times in totally different forms, and individual passages were altered more than twenty times. The subjection of this youthful, bold, and spontaneous music to a compositional method developed nearly a quarter of a century later engendered considerable debate, though no one could question the composer's right to revise his own work. In spite of Hindemith's eloquent apologia for the revision, published as a preface to the new edition, not everyone was persuaded by the argument. Musicians who had learned the music when it was new and had come to regard it as an essential element of their musical culture, and younger musicians who, without any prejudice whatever, compared the two versions, were not willing to abandon the original version. Ingolf Dahl, for example, found it impossible to transfer allegiance to the revised version after having performed the original repeatedly since the early 1930's. He felt that the early faults were more tolerable than the later perfections, that the inventiveness of youth was preferable to the moral and ethical certainties of maturity. In these judgments, Dahl intended no disrespect - indeed his loyalty to Hindemith, engendered by the early works, remained constant when others of his generation renounced neo-classicism and allied themselves with the serialists.

Paul Hindemith, "Birth of Christ"

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Das Marienleben, VII. "Birth of Christ"

As in Baroque music, the vocal and instrumental parts are equal partners in a dominantly polyphonic texture. Only in one song, "Pieta," is the piano part reduced to a mere accompaniment, and though this relationship occurs elsewhere, it is only occasional and brief. These roles are often reversed, however, with a resultant Wagnerian relationship between the instrumental and vocal elements.

Paul Hindemith, "Annunciation Above the Shepherds"

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Das Marienleben, VI. "Annunciation Above the Shepherds"

Further relationships between Rilke's poems and Hindimeth's music will become apparent to the attentive listener - who will also be attentive to the composer's personal kind of music-making. Song-writing requires that the music observe its own laws as well as those of the text. Foremost among those laws is the necessity of formal organization, for it is through form that content becomes comprehensible. (The reverse is also true.) Although the dissonance level of Hindemith's music is very high, the course of events is relatively clear because of the repetition of motifs, themes, melodies, and instrumental figurations. With only one exception the songs end with recapitulations, more or less exact, of the opening subjects. And it is mostly repetition that outlines the course of musical events and gives the strongest clues to the formal structures. Some of these structures fall into familiar categories, like the passacaglia of 'The Presentation" and the variation form of 'The Death of Mary, II." And sections within the songs have mini-structures of their own. In "Annunciation to the Shepherds," for example, the four lines beginning at "Oh glances shut from light" are sung over an ostinato in the bass. And the whole passage from "You fearless ones..." to "Cherubim would not surprise you ..." consists of a five-fold, slightly varied eight-bar melody. In short, the musical structures are revealed as clearly here as are distances and directions on a map.

Paul Hindemith, "Joseph's Suspicion"

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Das Marienleben, V. "Joseph's Suspicion"

In "Annunciation to Mary" there is a remarkable passage, perhaps the most imaginative of Hindemith's musical metaphors. The angel's entry is likened to the play of sunbeams in Mary's room. In the upper register of the piano a tiny trumpet sounds, with horn-like echoes below. The trumpet sounds again near the very end where the poet says, "This is startling. And both were terrified." Now nothing in the poem hints at trumpets; but the composer means to say that, after all, it is an angel of the heavenly host who is on this extraordinary mission. The trumpet is like a single palpable element in a scene redolent with mystery. It is almost as though the trumpet were "real" and the poem a metaphor. Something quite similar happens in "Birth of Christ." The poem meditates on this event, even assesses the ephemerality of the gifts bestowed by the kings. But his last line, "He brings joy," reminds Hindemith that this is the first Christmas, and that the joy of Christmas is typically represented by carols. In this instance not literal carols, but the stuff of which carols are made, especially harmony in thirds, which become the dominant figure in the piano part, with imitations of it for the voice.

Paul Hindemith, "Visitation of the Virgin"

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Das Marienleben, IV. "Visitation of the Virgin"

In projecting this image of Mary, Rilke needs no more help from a composer than from a painter. Nor does a composer intend to say again what a poet has already said perfectly. What attracts a composer to a poem is the possibility of creating a musical composition that might illuminate the verse with the composer's kind of light and still live by the laws of music. In this situation, music is metaphor. A few examples at random: In "The Birth of Mary," music is suggested by the image of angels soaring over the house where Mary is being born; of their refraining from song, holding themselves silent. Hindemith's music moves very quietly, hovering harmonically in a state of suspended animation, indulging in no expansive lyricism. It is music that waits. In "Presentation of Mary," the pictorial imagery is Hindemith's point of departure. The description of elaborate space suggests a comparable musical architecture. The form is a passacaglia, twenty variations on a seven-measure subject. This is a cumulative form, growing by addition, just as does Rilke's architectural imagery. Here it gathers power and sonority up to where the poet asks, "How can you bear it?" Then, as the view shifts to Mary, the music is suddenly quiet and slower, and the theme shifts to a higher octave. Lyricism signals Mary's surrender to "the inner signs." At the end the theme descends again to the bass register, the architectural zone.for Mary's fate, as the poet says, is "higher than the hall ... and heavier than the house."

Paul Hindemith, "Annunciation to Mary"

Continued Notes From GSC Recordings GSC 7:

Das Marienleben, III. "Annunciation to Mary"



For all the brilliance of Rilke's pictorialism, it is his portrait of Mary that distinguishes the poems. She embodies simplicity and womanliness. She herself is never aware of the purity, devotion, and inner beauty that mark her. In the second poem, where she appears as a child, it is the praise in her heart. not an awareness of her destiny, that overwhelms the majestic scene. In "The Visitation" she feels her own abundance, not the land's and she craves communion not with some heavenly messenger but with another woman. Later, the star over Bethlehem reveals itself as "the shining of her lovingness," not of her glory. At Cana it is her motherly delight in Jesus' powers that makes her urge him to perform the miracle, though later she realizes how she had brought on the ultimate sacrifice "in the blindness of her vanity." In "Before the Passion," when she asks "Why was I raised in the women's house to weave a clean dress with no seam to press against you?" she is still thinking of her son in his untroubled infancy. What could be more touching than the picture of her giving away her two dresses as she lay dying, or the image of her drawing the heavens so close "that her soul needed but to stretch itself a little further." Rilke's subject is not Mary the Queen of Heaven but Mary the woman and mother.

Paul Hindemith, "The Presentation of Mary in the Temple"

Continued Notes From GSC Recordings GSC 7:

Das Marienleben, II. "The Presentation of Mary in the Temple"
Nevertheless, Rilke's inspiration must have been at least partially pictorial, for the visual imagery of the poems is very rich and powerful. In the second poem, "The Presentation of Mary in the Temple," all consciousness seems centered in the eye: the poet speaks of columns, steps, arches, space, stones, walls, stairways, vaulting, balconies, clouds from incenseburners, all suggesting a kind of Piranesian architectural fantasy. "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" is almost cinematic: fleeing Herod's massacre of the children of Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary wander across the desert, while idols topple in the pagan temples as the couple with their child pass, and a tree bends to give them shade as they rest. Each poem creates its own picture or reminds one of a familiar masterpiece.

Paul Hindemith, "The Birth of Mary"

Notes From GSC Recordings GSC 7:

Das Marienleben, I. "The Birth of Mary"

One should begin with the poetry, which is where Hindemith began.

Das Marienleben is a cycle of fifteen poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), generally recognized as the finest poet lyric writing in the German language in this century. Others of Rilke's large poetic works - especially the Duino Elegies - are better known than Das Marienleben, but this is nevertheless a very beautiful example of Rilke's art, rich in esthetic and human meanings as well as in religious and mystical ones. Dealing with the life of the Virgin Mary, it invites reference to other art works on the same subject - Giotto's series of paintings in Padua, for example, and Durer's sequence of woodcuts. Stephen Spender, in the preface to his translation of the poems, relates that Rilke's cycle originated in an early (1900?) plan for a volume of Marian poetry to be illustrated with drawings by Heinrich Vogeler. But when Rilke actually set his hand to the task a dozen years later, he had evidently lost sympathy with Vogeler's work.

Paul Hindemith, "Langsames Stuck und Rondo" für Trautonium (1935)

Trautonium

Paul Hindemith, "Konzert für Orchester op. 38" (1925)

Continued Notes from Thorofon ETHK 341/4:

VI. The Department of Experimental Radio

In one aspect of his work at the Music Academy, at least, Hindemith has an effect far into the future. The Academy, which at that time was receptive to any and every experiment, had in 1927 set up a department of experimental radio - a logical idea in a city that was pioneering in the area of electroacoustics and radiotechnology. Schünemann outlined the objectives of the new department thus: it was to examine the problems inherent in the broadcasting of music, and contribute to the development of musical forms and electronic instruments specific to radio.

Hindemith had long since tried his hand at the new media, having written some music to a silent film even in 1921. Now, together with students and colleagues, he draws up a dramaturgy of film music, and he himself writes the music to the film "Felix the Cat", for mechanical organ. After mechanical instruments he now becomes interested in electronic producers of sound. Friedrich Trautwein develops the Trautonium, Hindemith and Genzmer compose for the instrument, Hindemith's pupil Oskar Sala performs on it and develops it further. Hindemith even works toward a "gramophone-specific" music by having sound-carriers with recordings of xylophones and voices run at different speeds - thus anticipating musique concrète.