Paul Hindemith

The eldest son of a music-loving house painter father and his wife, Paul Hindemith came from a modest background and began learning the violin at an early age, completing his musical studies at the Frankfurt Conservatory. He joined the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra aged 19, becoming its concertmaster only a matter of months later. He was not yet 20 years old. Simultaneously, he pursued a career as a chamber musician, playing the violin – and later the viola – in the Rebner Quartet, while at the same time devoting himself to composition. Several early works were found shocking by large sections of the general public and precipitated scandals, most notably in the case of his two operas, Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen and Sancta Susanna, which were staged in Stuttgart and Frankfurt in 1921 and 1922 respectively. Notwithstanding his reputation, he became professor of composition at the Musikhochschule in Berlin in 1927, but was obliged to resign his appointment when the Nazis came to power and boycotted his concerts, condemning his works as "the vilest perversion of German music". Like many other artists, Hindemith elected to go into exile, living first in Switzerland and then in the United States, where Yale University appointed him professor of music in 1942. He returned to Switzerland in 1953 and continued to compose until his death. Stylistically eclectic, Hindemith's music is hard to classify, although he himself attempted to explain its powerful and personal character in his Unterweisung im Tonsatz. His works are more often performed in Germany than elsewhere, although at least three have found a place for themselves on the fringes of the mainstream repertory, namely, his opera Cardillac and two symphonies based on two of his other operas, Mathis der Maler and Die Harmonie der Welt.