Stephen Luttmann - Paul Hindemith: A Research and Information Guide

Series Editor: Jennifer C. Post

COMPOSERS

Isaac Albniz (1998)

Walter A. Clark

C. P. E. Bach (2002)

Doris Bosworth Powers

Samuel Barber (2001)

Wayne C. Wentzel

Bla Bartk,

2nd Edition (1997)

Elliott Antokoletz

Vincenzo Bellini,

2nd Edition (2009)

Stephen A. Willier

Alban Berg,

2nd Edition (2009)

Bryan R. Simms

Leonard Bernstein (2001)

Paul F. Laird

Johannes Brahms (2003)

Heather Platt

William Byrd,

2nd Edition (2005)

Richard Turbet

Elliott Carter (2000)

John L. Link

Carlos Chvez (1998)

Robert Parker

Frdric Chopin (1999)

William Smialek

Aaron Copland (2001)

Marta Robertson and

Robin Armstrong

Frederick Delius,

2nd Edition (2009)

Mary Christison Huismann

Gaetano Donizetti,

2nd Edition (2009)

James P. Cassaro

Edward Elgar (1993)

Christopher Kent

Gabriel Faur (1999)

Edward R. Phillips

Christoph Willibald Gluck,

2nd Edition (2003)

Patricia Howard

Charles Franois Gounod

(2009)

Timothy S. Flynn

G.F. Handel,

2nd Edition (2004)

Mary Ann Parker

Paul Hindemith,

2nd Edition (2009)

Stephen Luttmann

Charles Ives,

2nd Edition (2009)

Gayle Sherwood Magee

Scott Joplin (1998)

Nancy R. Ping-Robbins

Zoltn Kodly (1998)

Mchel Houlahan and

Philip Tacka

Franz Liszt,

3rd Edition (2009)

Michael Saffle

Guillaume de Machaut

(1995)

Lawrence Earp

Gustav and Alma Mahler

(2008)

Susan M. Filler

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

(2001)

John Michael Cooper

Olivier Messiaen (2008)

Vincent P. Benitez

Giovanni Pierluigi da

Palestrina (2001)

Clara Marvin

Giacomo Puccini (1999)

Linda B. Fairtile

Maurice Ravel (2004)

Stephen Zank

Gioachino Rossini,

2nd Edition (2009)

Denise P. Gallo

Camille Saint-Sans (2003)

Timothy S. Flynn

Alessandro and Domenico

Scarlatti (1993)

Carole F. Vidali

Heinrich Schenker (2003)

Benjamin Ayotte

Alexander Scriabin (2004)

Ellon D. Carpenter

Jean Sibelius (1998)

Glenda D. Goss

Giuseppe Verdi (1998)

Gregory Harwood

Toms Luis de Victoria

(1998)

Eugene Casjen Cramer

Richard Wagner (2002)

Michael Saffle

Adrian Willaert (2004)

David Michael Kidger

GENRES

American Music

Librarianship (2005)

Carol June Bradley

Central European Folk Music

(1996)

Philip V. Bohlman

Chamber Music,

3rd Edition (2009)

John H. Baron

Church and Worship Music

(2005)

Avery T. Sharp and James

Michael Floyd

The Concerto (2006)

Stephen D. Lindeman

Ethnomusicology (2003)

Jennifer C. Post

Jazz Scholarship and

Pedagogy, 3rd edition,

(2005)

Eddie S. Meadows

The Musical (2004)

William A. Everett

North American Indian

Music (1997)

Richard Keeling

Opera, 2nd Edition

(2001)

Guy Marco

Piano Pedagogy (2009)

Gilles Comeau

The Recorder,

2nd Edition (2003)

Richard Griscom and

David Lasocki

Serial Music and Serialism

(2001)

John D. Vander Weg

String Quartets (2005)

Mara E. Parker

The Violin (2006)

Mark Katz

Women in Music (2005)

Karin Pendle

In writing a book such as this, with its frequent cross-references and multiple indexes, one is remindednot without a little wistful envyof the indexing practice for the German scholarly monographs that appeared when Hindemith was a youth, and which has yet to fully die out. Such works typically had no indexes at all. And why should they have had any? Everybody knew that books were to be digested, to be absorbed, to be taken to heart (if not quite learned by heart), not skimmed for relevant passages, let alone mined for quotes. One read the whole thing, and one read many of them if one aspired to mastery.

Mastery, of course, is an elusive goal, and Hindemith was suitably modest about this when it came to music. Geoffrey Skelton notes his amusement with the pretensions of an American degree program: My God, how can anyone ever be a master of music? (item 40)and remarks of his about music doctorates, perhaps fortunately, have not come to light. But he was certainly imbued with the same sense of responsibility that the traditional German scholarly monograph assumed of its readers. Here was a man who never made it to high school and yet taught himself Latin (as well as English, French, and more than a little bit of a few other languages), and read 2,000 years worth of music theory. Stories of his understanding, and even occasional sympathy, for his students failings abound, but ultimately he expected from them the same degree of devotion to the cause that he did from himself. Another anecdote from Skelton: If a student complained of a lack of time, he would reply in all seriousness: Well, theres always between two and four in the morning (item 40).

One wonders how Hindemith would have reacted to the notion of a guide to research of his own music; he probably would have dismissed it with a remark similar to the one that serves as the epigraph to Andres Briners biography: If anyone wants to busy himself with me, he should look at my works (item 38). Of course, when one considers the lengths he went to in order to master music theory (or the life and thought of Johannes Kepler, to name just one more example), he probably would have dismissed the entire notion of a guide to research with something of a dismissive sneer. If you want to know anything about a subject, he might have said, you must read and learn everything. Implied by a sentence like this is an even more challenging reproach: Thats what I tried to do.

This book, therefore, seeks to assist the serious student or budding scholar in reading everything, whatever that everything might be. It seeks to do so in no small part by organizing the impressive (yet insufficient) quantity of research on Hindemith, his music, and his thought; and by attempting to point out that which is useful, worthwhile, and frequently excellentas well as how it might be useful, worthwhile, or excellent. This is perhaps all the more crucial with regard to those areas of Hindemith scholarship conducted primarily in German. Students of musical analysis can rely on a body of Hindemith scholarship in which a goodly number of central works happen to be in English (and as Allen Forte points out, to some degree they have Hindemith to thank for this; see item 445), but in other areas English is of little use. Nor are these insignificant topics. Research on his style of viola performance, on his revisions of his own works, on his attempt to work harmonikale Grundlagenforschung (a term that does not seem to have been translated in English-language Hindemith research) into his musical theories and his magnum opusall this has appeared almost entirely in German. (Two pages in Neumeyers essential book, item 602, constitute a rare and striking exception.) Of course the student with more than a passing dedication to the subject will simply have to learn German, but the present work might aid in determining which essays yield the most knowledge, and which yield little more than language practice.

Owing to the astonishing amount of worthwhile literature published in the past several years, the selection criteria for the second edition have had to be even more stringent than those for the first. The net increase of 64 citations over the first edition obscures the addition of 204 new citations and the deletion of 140. Most items included in the first edition despite their unavailability have subsequently been annotated, if they are included here at all, the exception being several Ph.D. dissertations. For this second edition, the following criteria apply: