Paul Hindemith: His Music and Its Characteristics

Extract

Not long ago I happened to mention to a clever business woman who is an acquaintance of mine, that I proposed 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 Fatherland. 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.’”