A friend of mine the other day was talking a piece of music about a painter, and it reminded me of earlier this year, when we talked about how some works of art can shine a light on other works of art.The composer he was telling me about was a German named Paul Hindemith, and the composition was a piece called Matias der Maler, which in English just means “Matthias the painter.”
Hindemith was born in Germany near Frankfurt in 1895.His father was a painter.He started his musical training with the violin.In the 1920s he started composing and in 1927, became Professor of Music at the prestigious Berlin University of the Arts.From 1933 to 1935 he worked on music that would grow into an opera based on the life of a German painter named Matthias Grunewald who lived from 1470-1528.He wrote the music first—a symphony-length work called Mathis der Maler.(So that title can refer to either the symphonic suite or the opera itself)
The music had its first performance in March 1934 in Berlin.The conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic was criticized by the government because the Nazi party had already labeled Hindemith’s work as degenerate, which was their word for anything they didn’t like.The orchestra conductor resigned in protest.
Hindemith transformed the musical suite into a full opera in 1935 and used the story of Matthias the painter to talk about freedom of expression in a repressive political climate. The Nazis didn’t miss the theme. One of Hitler’s henchmen called Hindemith an “atonal noisemaker,” and he was labeled a cultural bolshevist. The Nazis tended to label everyone they disagreed with as either degenerate or a communist.
He and his wife got out of Germany two years later and went to Switzerland.The opera Mathis der Maler finally had its premier there in Zurich that year. It wasn’t staged in Germany until 1956.
Hindemith and his wife went the U.S. in 1940, where he taught music at several universities.He returned to Switzerland in 1953. All in all, he wrote nine operas, five ballets (one based on the life of St Francis) and a huge amount of orchestral music, including symphonies, concertos, quartets, trios, smaller ensembles, and vocal music.
When he died in December 1963 it made the front page of the New York Times.The paper called him one of the foremost composers of the 20th century.