ÿþ<html> <head> <title>Forest Hill Chamber Music Festival 2004</title> <style> a:link {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:active {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:visited {color:888888;text-decoration: none} a:hover {color:000000;text-decoration: none} </style> </head> <body bgColor=ffffff topmargin=15 leftmargin=0 text=555555 link=000000 alink=000000 vlink=000000> <center> <a href="index.html"><img src="title01w.gif" border=0></a><BR> <BR><font size=3> { <a href="p1.html">6/11</a> &nbsp; <a href="p2.html">6/12</a> &nbsp; <a href="p3.html">6/13</a> &nbsp; <a href="p4.html">6/13</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="artists.html">artists</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="notes.html">program notes</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="photos.html">photos</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="contact.html">tickets</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="ack.html">acknowledgements</a> } &nbsp; { <a href="intro.html">about</a> } <BR><BR><BR> <table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0> <TR> <Td align=right valign=top> <table border=0 cellpadding=15 cellspacing=0><TR><TD align=right> <a href="n01-bach.html">Johann Sebastian Bach </a><BR> <a href="n02-beet.html">Ludwig van Beethoven </a><BR> <a href="n03-berg.html">Alban Maria Johannes Berg </a><BR> <a href="n14-druk.html">Jacob Raphael Druckman </a><BR> <a href="n04-dvor.html">Antonín DvoYák </a><BR> <a href="n05-hind.html">Paul Hindemith </a><BR> <a href="n06-mech.html">Kirke Mechem</a><BR> <a href="n07-mess.html">Olivier Messiaen</a><BR> <a href="n08-moza.html">Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart </a><BR> <a href="n09-rohde.html">Kurt Rohde</a><BR> <a href="n10-ss.html">Charles Camille Saint-Saëns </a><BR> <a href="n11-scho.html">Arnold Schönberg </a><BR> <a href="n12-schub.html">Franz Peter Schubert </a><BR> <a href="n13-schum.html">Robert Schumann</a><BR> </td></tr></table> </td> <TD valign=top> <img src="black.gif" width=1 height=310><BR> </td> <TD valign=top width=500> <Table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=15><TR><TD> <font size=5><center><b>Paul Hindemith</b><font size=2><br><i> b. 1895 Hanau (Frankfurt), Germany; d. 1963 Frankfurt, Germany</i></center><font size=3><br><br> <b>Sonata For Solo Viola, Op. 25, No. 1 (1922)</b><br> <br> One of the main innovators of musical modernism, Paul Hindemith was a composer, conductor, violist, educator, and theoretician. Of the four founders of modernism  Schönberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, Hindemith  it can be said that Hindemith was by far the most scholarly and intellectual in temperament. <br><br>After studying at the Frankfurt Conservatory, he began his career as a viola player. He taught composition at the Berlin Hochschule, but during the Nazi regime his compositions were banned because of their dissonance and modernity. In 1935 he was commissioned by the Turkish government to reorganize that country s musical education. <br><br>During his early years Hindemith made his living as a performer, but he also found time to compose abundantly in many genres including Lieder, chamber music, music for newly invented mechanical instruments, music for schoolchildren and amateurs, and opera. His best-known work is the symphony drawn from material for his opera  Mathis der Maler. <br><br>A sought-after educator, he wielded great influence in Europe and the United States between the two World Wars. During World War II he moved to the United States, where he taught at Yale University. He became a U.S. citizen, but ultimately returned to Europe, his music increasingly ignored, where he spent his last ten years teaching at the University of Zürich. <br><br>Hindemith was part of a dying breed of composers who were known for performing their own works. He could play all the standard musical instruments at least passably and was a recognized virtuoso on the viola and viola d amore. He gave the first performance of Walton s Viola Concerto, and he often played his Opus 25, No. 1 solo viola sonata on his tours of Europe and the USA. <br><br>His thrifty productivity became known through this work, about which he stated:  I wrote the two movements (first and fifth) in the dining car between Cologne and Frankfurt, then I went on stage immediately and played the sonata. <br><br>The industrial revolution had a strong influence on Hindemith in writing this work, and there are many parts of the sonata, especially the first and fourth movements, which sound strikingly like a locomotive. <br> </td></tr></table> </td> </tr> </table> </body></html>