Discussion Activities

Questions on the Text

1. Say what you know about Bartok's musical education and en­vironment. What were the main sources of his inspiration? Name his first major compositions.

2. When did Bartok begin his systematic exploration of Hungar­ian folk music? Who accompanied him on his early expedi­tions? What was the outcome of these trips?

3. What other folk music, besides Hungarian, did Bartok study? What conclusion did he arrive at?

4. What is Bartok's significance as a "folk" composer?

5. Find in the text the passage describing how Bartok's musical language was formed. What impact did folk music make on Bartok's concept of tonality, harmony, and rhythm?

Questions about Bartok

1. What other "folklore" composers do you know? Make a comparison between Bartok's approach to Hungarian folk mu­sic and that of Kodaly. Say in what respects they differ.

2. Compare Bartok with Schoenberg and say how Bartok ex­panded the traditional notions of tonality.

3. Why do you think Bartok's musical language is considered to be new and highly individual? How do you understand the following: "Bartok's music is a highly individual blend of ele­ments transformed from his own admirations: Liszt, Strauss, Debussy, folk music, and Stravinsky"?

4. Say what you know about Bartok as a pianist.

5. What do you know about Bartok's visits to Russia?

6. Name Bartok's most important works. Why, in your opinion, are the six string quartets regarded as his greatest achieve­ments?

Discussion Points

1. Do you agree with the following statement: "Bartok, not Schoenberg, is the true revolutionary of the early 20th cen­tury"? Give your reasons.

2. Bartok's role as founder of the Hungarian national school of the 20th century.

PAUL HINDEMITH: HIS LIFE AND WORK (1895-1963)

Those writers who enjoy finding a spiritual kinship between one famous composer and another have described Hindemith (1895-1963) as "a twentieth-century Bach". The relationship between these two composers is not difficult to trace. Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis* has a strong similarity in purpose and method to the Well-Tempered Clavier; and the works grouped under the title of Kammermusik (Chamber Music), can be described as contemporary Brandenburg Concertos. The bond that ties Hindemith to Bach is counterpoint. With both composers, polyphony is the basis of their thinking; with both, polyphony serves as the material out of which mighty archi­tectural structures are built. Yet one might say of Hindemith what was once said so well of Bach: "The best way to listen to Bach's music is to forget the word counterpoint and to listen just for the music."

With Hindemith, counterpoint is not the end, but the starting point. He is no neo-classicist living in the past, but a very modern composer belonging to our times. Though counterpoint is his method, there is independence in his thinking. His music is linear, by which we mean that the voices move with complete freedom of harmonic relationships. It has intensity, concentration, en­ergy - qualities that we associate with contemporary expression rather than with Bach. It is sometimes dissonant, sometimes atonal.

In his treatise, The Craft of Musical Composition - which some writers consider to be the most important theoretical work on music since Rameau's* - Hindemith has given us a clue to his technique by analyzing the techniques of contemporary composers. All tone combi­nations are possible as an altogether new conception of "key" is re­alised; melody is freed from its dependence of harmony.

Strange to say of a composer whose method is so complex and whose language is so remote, Hindemith did not keep himself alto­gether aloof from his public. As a matter of fact, he strongly felt the responsibility of the composer to society. Consequently, he produced a great number of works for mechanical organ, radio, pianola, the­ater, etc. This music has often been described as Gebrauchsmusik* - functional music - a term invented for Hindemith.

Hindemith was born in Hanau, Germany, on November 16, 1895, and studied at the Frankfurt Conservatory. In Frankfurt, Hindemith distinguished himself as a violinist (he was concertmaster of the Frankfurt Opera House Orchestra), conductor, founder and violinist of the Amar String Quartet (which specialized in contemporary chamber music), and, finally, as a composer. His early works, intro­duced at the Donaueschingen Festivals of contemporary music in Baden-Baden between 1921 and 1923, attracted attention. In the half-dozen years that followed, Hindemith became one of the major cre­ative figures in Germany, particularly after the successful premieres of his operas Cardillac (1926) and Neues vom Tage* (1929).

In 1927, he was appointed professor of composition at the Berlin Hochschule,* a post he held up to the time of Hitler. Soon after the Nazis took over Germany, Hindemith became the center of a cele­brated political and musical controversy. The Nazis did not look with favor on Hindemith, despite his international fame. His music was banned on all German concert programs.

In 1935 Hindemith left Germany, and went to Turkey, on the invitation of that government, to help reorganize its musical life. Af­ter that, Hindemith came to the United States and taught at Yale.*

When the war ended, Hindemith's music was again played in Germany. He returned to Europe in 1947, visiting Italy, England, Germany, and other countries. In 1953 he settled in Switzerland. In 1949-50 he spent a year at Harvard University, giving lectures, later published as A Composer's World.

In 1951 he accepted a teaching post at Zurich University, divid­ing his time with his duties at Yale, but in 1953 resigned from Yale

and returned to Europe. In the last decade of his creative life Hindemith concentrated on introspective and spiritual compositions. He also devoted much time to conducting. In 1957 he completed the opera Die Harmonie der Welt (The Harmony of the World), which was staged in Munich in August of that year, with only moderate success.

The best of his music occupies an important place in the history of 20th century compositions.

Based on: The Complete Book of Twentieth-Century Music; The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music

THE COMPOSER SPEAKS: PAUL HINDEMITH

In earlier times composition was hardly taught at all. If a boy was found to be gifted for music, he was given as an apprentice into the care of a practical musician. With him he had to get acquainted with many branches of music. Singing was the foundation of all musical work. Thus singing, mostly in the form of group singing, was one of the most important fields of instruction. The practical knowledge of more or less instruments was a sine qua поп.* Specialization was almost unknown. Frequently a musician may have been better on the keyboard than with the bow and with woodwinds or brass, but that would not have absolved him from playing as many other instruments as possible. And all this playing was done with one aim in mind: to prepare the musician for collective work; it was always the community that came first. Soloistic training was nothing but a preliminary and preparatory exercise for this purpose. Hand in hand with this daily all-round routine in instrumental training went a solid instruction in the theory of music-not only what we call theory in our modern curricula, namely harmony, counterpoint, and other branches of practical instruction, but true theory, or if you prefer another name, the scientific background of music.

The vast stock of general musical knowledge was the hotbed in which the germs of composing grew. If a musician had any talent for composition, he could always draw on this tremendous accumula­tion of practical experience, once he wanted to convert his ideas into audible structures. Composing was not a special branch of knowledge that had to be taught to those gifted or interested enough. It simply was the logical outgrowth of a healthy and stable system of educa­tion, the ideal of which was not an instrumental, vocal, or tone-ar­ranging specialist, but a musician with a universal musical knowl­edge - a knowledge which, if necessary, could easily be used as a basis for more specialized development of peculiar talents. This sys­tem, although it provided for the composer the best preparation pos­sible, did not guarantee him any success. Only posterity decided whether he was to be counted among the few extraordinary creative

musical figures each country had produced throughout the world. (...)

Today the situation is quite different.

First of all, it is almost never the gift of composing that sends young people into this field of musical activity. Musical creative gift cannot, in my opinion, be recognized until after a rather well devel­oped general knowledge of practical music has been acquired. If there is no such evidence, the sole evidence of that gift can be af­forded by written-down attempts at building musical structures. Usu­ally such attempts are not at ail a sign of creative talent. The mini­mum requirements for entering the creative field, such as a good ear for musical facts and perhaps even a feeling for absolute pitch, are too common among all people, musical or non-musical, to be taken for the foundation upon which to build a composer's career. (...)

From: A Composer's World: Its Horizons and Limitations by Paul Hindemith. Ch. 9. Education

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 789