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Hindemith's Early Songs for Voice and Piano

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1982

Kurt Von Fischer
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Extract

In May 1917 Paul Hindemith wrote to his friend Emmy Ronnefeldt:

I realize more and more that it is high time I got free of all that old conservatory stuff! What is it that links me to all these people? Tradition! When I want to know something, nobody can help me. I can't talk seriously about music with anybody because no one any longer has ideals, and because the whole art has been reduced to craftsmanship… I want to make music I don't care whether it pleases anybody. Music has only to be true and genuine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 109 , 1982 , pp. 147 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 Paul Hindemith Briefe, ed. D. Rexroth (Frankfurt, 1982), 60; English translation, as for all the quotations, by the author of this paper.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 66.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 70.Google Scholar

4 See P. Cahn ‘Hindemith's Lehrjahre in Frankfurt’, Hindemith-Jahrbuch, ii (1972), 23.Google Scholar

5 Paul Hindemith, Sämtliche Werke, vi/1: Klavierlieder I, ed. Kurt von Fischer (Mainz, 1983) (hereafter cited as Gesamtausgabe). For all the references to musical examples, dates, sketches etc see this volume.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 25–30.Google Scholar

7 This letter is published in ‘Jugendbriefe von Paul Hindemith aus den Jahren 1916–1919’. Hindemith-Jahrbuch, ii (1972), 190–91. The Kunstblatt, edited by Paul Westheim, first appeared in Weimar in 1917.Google Scholar

8 Gesamtausgabe, vi/5, ed. H. W. Kaufmann (1983). See also the substantial article by D. Rexroth on Hindemith's settings of texts: ‘Widerklang des Dichterischen’, in Gottfried Benn, Briefwechsel mit Paul Hindemith (Wiesbaden and Munich, 1978), 151ff.Google Scholar

9 See Paul Hindemith Briefe, 60.Google Scholar

10 The original text reads: ‘Um diese Zeit bin ich herumgewackelt und wusste nichte, was los ist. Aber schliesslich bleibt einem nichts übrig, als zu komponieren’; see also Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, p.x.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 25–6.Google Scholar

12 See Hilse, W. B., ‘Hindemith and Debussy’, Hindemith-Jahrbuch, ii (1972), 48ff.Google Scholar

13 See the article mentioned above in footnote 4, p. 24.Google Scholar

14 Paul Hindemith Briefe, 66.Google Scholar

15 See Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, 31–46.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. xi (Introduction).Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 171 (Critical Commentary).Google Scholar

18 See Danuser, H., ‘“Vom ewigen Leben”, Franz Schrekers Gesange nach Walt Whitman’ in Neue Zurcher Zeitung, no. 18 (23–4 Jan. 1982).Google Scholar

19 See Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, 31–6.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 39–46.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 37–8.Google Scholar

22 See P. Cahn's introducton to vol. v/6 of the Gesamtausgabe, p. xiii. The text of the second Hymn is dedicated by Whitman to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.Google Scholar

23 See Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, 170 (Critical Commentary).Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 149–61.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 1–6.Google Scholar

26 See Gesamtausgabe, v/6, 185–6.Google Scholar

27 See P. Cahn's article mentioned in note 4, p. 31.Google Scholar

28 See Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, 7–22.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 47–70.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 63–7.Google Scholar

31 See above p. 147.Google Scholar

32 See Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, 71–145. The only Rilke texts Hindemith composed later on are five songs in the 21 New Haven Songs (1942–4).Google Scholar

33 See Rexroth in Gottfried Bern, Briefwechsel mit Paul Hindemith, 170.Google Scholar

34 See Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, 27–30.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 52–4.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 85–8.Google Scholar

37 See Stephan, R., ‘Hindemith's Marienleben’, Zur musikalischen Analyse, ed. G. Schumacher (Darmstadt, 1978), 422ff.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., 435.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 435.Google Scholar

40 See Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, 61–2.Google Scholar

41 ‘Die ethischen Notwendigkeiten der Musik und die moralischen Verpflichtungen des Musikers’, ice Preface to the second version of the Marienleben (1948), p. in. See also P. Cahn, ‘Paul Hindemith in Frankfurt’, Hindemith-Jahrbuch, v (1976), 40.Google Scholar

42 See Critical Commentary to vol. vi/1 of the Gesamtausgabe: notes to Marienleben, nos. 5, 8, 11 and 13.Google Scholar

43 See Gesamtausgabe, vi/1, p.xii (Introduction).Google Scholar

44 Ibid., p. xiv.Google Scholar