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Paul Hindemith is not an obvious candidate for my recent thread on musicians as artists. But the sleeve above is from Hyperion's recording of Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis played by John McCabe and the illustration is adapted from a special edition of the work illustrated by the composer.
Hindemith's twenty-five 'Studies in counterpoint, tonal organisation and piano playing' were composed in 1942 and their true importance is obscured by an unjustified reputation as dry academic studies. As amazon.com says; if you like The Art of Fugue, or Bach's 48 and Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, or Kurtág's Játékok, you should try Hindemith's 'tone games' or Ludus Tonalis.
Hindemith was, of course, no stranger to the world of artists. His 1934 Symphony Mathis der Maler was drawn from material from his banned opera of the same name. Mathis der Maler (Mathis the Painter) is based on the life and ideals of the early-sixteenth century artist Matthias Grunewald. It was the 1973 Unicorn LP of the symphony shown in my lower photo that made me realise that record covers could be an art form; the painting is The Temptation of St Anthony by Max Ernst from 1945, which is also the title of the finale of Hindemith's Symphony.
The Bob Auger engineered Unicorn LP plays as I write and still sounds magnificent. The sleeve notes remind me that the great conductor Jascha Horenstein also recorded Robert Simpson's Symphony No. 3 and a selection of Andrzej Panufnik's music for Unicorn.
The pairing of Strauss and Hindemith on that LP allows me to retell two delicious stories from Geoffrey Skelton's excellent biography of Hindemith (Gollancz ISBN 0575019883 out of print). There was a healthy creative tension between Strauss, the traditionalist, and Hindemith the prolific progressive, and both were fixtures at the Donaueschingen modern music festival in the 1920s. After Hindemith's new string quartet was enthusiastically received at one festival Strauss asked the composer in his broad Bavarian dialect: "Why do you compose atonal music? You have plenty of talent." Hindemith replied in his equally broad Frankfurt dialect: "Herr Professor, you make your music, and I'll make mine."
The return match took place at a later festival when Strauss attended one of Hindemith's concerts. Afterwards Strauss asked Hindemith how long he had taken to compose the work he had just performed. "Four days," Hindemith replied. Strauss drily remarked: "That's just what I thought."
More adventurous music making from John McCabe here.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
One Sunday morning in December 1950, I wandered into a living-room-sized radio-studio, placed my services at the disposal of a single microphone belonging to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and proceeded to broadcast "live" - tape was already a fact of life in the recording industry but, in those days, radio broadcasting still observed the first-note-to-last-and-damn-the-consequences synodrome of the concert-hall - two sonatas, one by Mozart [K.281], one by Hindemith [No. 3]. It was my first network broadcast...a memorable one...that moment in my life when I first caught a vague impression of the direction it would take, when I realised that the collected wisdom of my peers and elders to the effect that technology represented a compromising, dehumanising intrusion into art was nonsense, when my love affair with the microphone began.
Glenn Gould describes the start of his love affair with the microphone. My source is Kevin Bazzana's highly recommended Wondrous Strange, The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Yale University Press ISBN 0300103743). The header image shows a page from Gould's score of Hindemith's song cycle Das Marienlebenwhich he recorded with the Ukrainian born soprano Roxolana Roslak in 1977. As is usual for Gould there are very few interpretive markings, but the page is covered in editing notes - left click on the images to enlarge them.
The graphic below is very interesting, and it is not a score for a contemporary music composition. It shows CBC technician Lorne Tulk's plan for the epilogue of Gould's radio documentary The Latecomers (1969). The documentary was commissioned to promote CBC's new FM stereo service, and the central line shows the movement of the narrator from right to left of the soundstage. Much attention has been given to Gould's work in the music studio, but his pioneering and innovative "contrapuntal radio documentaries" are sadly neglected. Time for reconsideration perhaps?
Gould was in love with the microphone, now read about the best damn record he ever made, and follow this link for audio recordings from the official Glenn Gould archive.
Both images from Glenn Gould Estate with full acknowledgements. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
"You are not permitted to sell unsanitary macaroni or mustard, but nobody objects to your undermining the public's health by feeding it musical forgeries." Paul Hindemith (left) writing in his 1952 book A Composer's World:" Now read the rest of the story.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
