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• Major Operas
• Modern Era
• Opera

dies in Mathis’s studio, tended by Ursula. The studio is almost empty. Mathis tells Albrecht that his work is done. He packs away his last possessions. Personalities | Paul Hindemith | Modern Era | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Modern Era

(Poul Hin’-de-mit) 1895–1963 German composer and violist Hindemith began his career as an enfant terrible, shocking conservative audiences with a ragtime based on a theme by J. S. Bach and a trilogy of one-act operas – Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (‘Murder, Hope of Women’), Das Nusch-Nuschi, Sancta Susanna (‘Saint Susannah’) – that mingled themes of sexual obsession ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

by Thornton Wilder. Unfortunately, however, neither this nor Die Harmonie have enjoyed repeated exposure. Introduction | Modern Era | Opera Major Operas | Mathis der Maler by Paul Hindemith | Modern Era Personalities | Marilyn Horne | Modern Era | Opera Techniques | Expressionism | Modern Era | Opera ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

of composers from the hitherto-insuperable limitations of a pianist’s 10 fingers. Among noted figures who took advantage of this to write directly for the new instrument were Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882–1973), Herbert Howells (1892–1983), and the American Conlon Nancarrow (1912–97), who decided to devote his entire output to the medium, as it allowed him incredible ...

• Instruments
• Stringed

and Mendelssohn soon expanded the instrument’s reputation for solo playing. The great works for viola, though, came in the twentieth century. Composers including Bartók, Walton, Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), Benjamin Britten (1913–76), Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75) and Luciano Berio (1925–2003) all wrote excellent solo works. Not only that, but the viola took up a ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

, later withdrawn, and the ‘entertainment’ Façade (1926), instrumental music accompanying rhythmically declaimed poems by Edith Sitwell, but his astringently melancholy Viola Concerto (1929, first performed with Hindemith as violist) demonstrated affinities with both Elgar and Prokofiev. The short and powerful oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast (1931) blew an enlivening blast of fresh air through the venerable English choral tradition ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Instrumentalist
• Modern Era

the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra. In 1929, after four years with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he embarked on a solo career. He gave the first performances of concertos by Hindemith and Walton. A player of great taste and virtuosity, he devoted much time to chamber music, especially with the piano trio that he founded in 1949 with Heifetz ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1864–1949, German Russian-born, yet once a popular German composer, Pfitzner has shrunk into the recesses of memory, not least because his esteemed position was promoted by a Third Reich that, like him, believed German culture was threatened by international Jewry. His works Von deutscher Seele (‘Of the German Soul’, 1921) and Das dunkle Reich (‘The ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

Opera Major Operas | Elegy for Young Lovers by Hans Werner Henze | Modern Era Major Operas | The Bassarids by Hans Werner Henze | Modern Era Personalities | Paul Hindemith | Modern Era | Opera Techniques | Serialism | Modern Era | Opera Techniques | Expressionism | Modern Era | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

fine string quartets, choral and piano music. Recommended Recording: Symphony No. 3, New York PO (cond) Leonard Bernstein (Sony) Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Paul Hindemith | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

their first decade, the courses introduced to many for the first time the music which had been suppressed in Nazi-occupied countries during the war, including that of Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and Anton Webern (1883–1945). But they soon became one of the most important platforms for the rising avant-garde generation, not only its composers – Boulez ...

• Classical
• Modern Era

and a greater emphasis on observable compositional craft. This aim has lain behind such widely differing works as Kleine Kammermusik op. 24 No. 2 (‘Little Chamber Music’, 1922) by Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) and Stravinsky’s Octet (1922–23). Schoenberg also moved from overt Expressionism after his adoption of the 12-note system to a greater use of abstract forms. His pupil Anton Webern (1883–1945), ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Modern Era

Die Dreigroschenoper (‘The Threepenny Opera’). Some sought instead to counter the dangers of ‘an esoteric isolationism’ through music that had a clearly defined social or educational function. One of those was Hindemith, whose name became inextricably associated with the concept of Gebrauchsmusik, literally ‘music for use’, designed for pedagogical or social purposes and often oriented towards children or amateurs. National ...

• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

(‘The Human Voice’, 1959), is a 40-minute monodrama, in which we hear one end only of a telephone conversation between a woman and her soon-to-be ex-lover. Post-war operas by Hindemith, Carl Orff (1895–1982), Milhaud and Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968), although varying in significance, can be seen as continuations of a pre-war tradition. Although in some senses Il prigioniero (‘The ...

• Influences
• Classical
• Modern Era

both its instrumentation and the quasi-improvised woodwind solos over blues harmonic progressions successfully mimic the authentic Harlem sound. Jazz also featured regularly in German instrumental and stage works (those of Hindemith, Ernst Krenek, 1900–91, and Weill especially) until outlawed as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis. Among practitioners of the new idioms, Gershwin made forays into concert music with ...