The Man

Paul Hindemith was born in Hanau, Germany on November 16, 1895. His father, Robert Rudolf, played the zither and was enthusiastic about music. Robert ran away from home at a young age because his father would not let him become a musician and as a result, he decided his own children should have the career he was not permitted to have. He subjected Paul, his brother, Rudolf, and his sister, Toni, to a strict routine of practice and training.
Paul Hindemith’s childhood was not a happy one. His family lived in utter poverty, and the family relationships were often strained to their limits. Later on in life, Hindemith maintained an attitude of embarrassment about his humble origins. He strove to be accepted in the more affluent households of Germany through his skills as a musician. In other words he insisted on being taken for what he could do and not where he came from.

The Work

The genesis of the Symphonic Metamorphosis was in New York in March of 1940. Hindemith had been collaborating with the dancer Leonide Massine on a ballet based on a series of Brueghel paintings. He then attended the first performance of the ballet and met with Massine backstage afterwards. The dancer then introduced his idea for a ballet based on several four-hand piano pieces by Carl Maria von Weber.

The collaboration was doomed from the start. Every idea that Hindemith submitted to Massine was rejected. Hindemith saw the Weber themes as being rather childish and simplistic and therefore took a lot of liberty with the composition. Massine, on the other hand, basically just wanted an orchestral arrangement of the original themes.

Hindemith was outraged by such a proposition. He was deeply offended at being offered a hack’s job of orchestration. In a letter to his wife he wrote:

“The Weber ballet has gone down the drain. I wrote two nice numbers for it, coloring the music lightly and making it a bit sharper. Ever since I gave Massine the music there have been a lot of phone calls between Buffalo and New York. It seems that the music is too complicated for them and that they simply wanted an exact orchestral arrangement of the original Weber. I am not just an orchestrator and furthermore I had already told them what I was going to do.”

This marked the beginning of the end for the collaboration between these two. The death nail came a couple of days later when Massine attended the premier of Hindemith’s violin Concerto in Boston. Massine came backstage after the performance and basically blamed Hindemith for the “Weber fiasco”, at which time Hindemith retorted loudly and the pair never worked together again.

The relationship was by no means fruitless, however. From these deliberations came the beginnings of the Symphonic Metamorphosis which rose to staggering success in 1943. The four movements that make up this piece show Hindemith’s brilliance in absorbing and developing Weber’s themes in his own style.

The opening movement of the piece follows the fourth of Weber’s Eight Pieces for piano duet, op. 60 rather closely. The piece is in the style of a heavy polka and is orchestrated with vivid colors created by contrasting blocks of woodwind sound against groups of brasses and strings. The introductory segment of the first movement is characterized by rather stark orchestration. At measure 34 the orchestration begins to increase in intensity with the development of the running sixteenth note gestures in the low strings. This gesture is further developed in measure 39 as the basses add into the sixteenth note gesture and the theme is picked up by more of the woodwind section in unison. The theme is then given to the strings in measure 44, and the sixteenths are picked up and developed in the woodwinds. The orchestration grows in earnest at measure 50 with the full string section picking up the theme and the entire woodwind section developing the sixteenth note gesture.

The climax of the movement is leading up to measure 70. At this point, the orchestration is very thick, and the movement of line has reached it’s peak. After 79 and leading up to measure 90, the orchestration begins to become rapidly more stark until it is redeveloped at measure 90. Tension begins to remount again until measure 140, at which point there is an abrupt interruption in the entire wind section (woodwinds and brass). Hindemith then develops the tension in the orchestration until the second climax at measure 159 to the end of the movement.

The second movement shows even more of Hindemith’s originality. The basic structure includes an introductory fantasia, a set of variations, and a fugue based upon a modified form of the theme in a jazz style. The jazz style of the fugue was probably a tribute to his new American home and position as professor at Yale University. The theme for this movement had already been taken by Weber in his Turandot Overture from Rousseau’s Dictonnaire de musique, which in turn had been quoting a melody from the famous Sinologist Father Jean Baptiste Duhalde. The theme, then, is probably a slightly westernized version of an ancient Chinese melody.

When listening to the second movement it is best to keep the notes of the primary theme in the head throughout the entire work. In the introduction the first four notes of the theme are played one at a time in augmentation by the chimes, separated by flute and clarinet statements. Several times throughout the piece the orchestration is broken rather suddenly by the interjection of the percussion break.
The second movement is very much characterized by the contrast of colors provided by Hindemith’s orchestration. The theme is being constantly handed back and forth between different sections of the orchestra; first by the woodwinds, then the basses, brass, strings, and so on.

Hindemith slowly introduces new elements into the theme as the movement progresses. In measure 28, a trill pattern is developed in the woodwinds adding a hint of tension to the theme. The violins then pick up the trill at measure 52, giving the theme back to the woodwinds. A pizzicato element is also developed in the basses in measure 62, creating sort of a walking bass line. The orchestration also becomes thicker at this point, augmenting the energy of the theme.

continue with Paul Hindemith...