Hindemith and the Viola

Rationale

There is no other composer who has written as much music for the viola. The breadth, depth and sheer quantity of Hindemith’s output for the viola is staggering on its own, but, when viewed within his overall compositional output one is overwhelmed by his monumental productivity. A view of a true “renaissance man” appears – a musician with immense technical virtuosity on the violin and viola, and an unnaturally natural ability to quickly and effortlessly play almost any other instrument. Hindemith showed the same effortless capacity for learning languages, teaching, conducting, drawing, painting, creating puppet plays, writing theatrical works for his friends ironically called “Dramatic Masterworks”, philosophy and acoustics.

Hindemith started his musical journey on the violin, not an unusual place to start for many violists, and he tried playing the viola for the first time shortly before the first World War started – just for fun! His leap to the alto clef only took place “officially” after the war. Hindemith’s concertmaster position in the opera orchestra from 1915 as well as second violin in his teacher, Adolf Rebner’s Quartet, kept him firmly on the violin pathway until he returned from the front. Within six weeks of his coming home he had started the op.11 no.4 sonata, and also decided to “move chairs” in his teacher’s quartet to the “viola seat”. That sealed it – Hindemith never looked back. Like a pragmatic evangelist, he sought immediately to write music he could play for his newly-chosen instrument, hence, the start of the waterfall of music that ensued. The op.11 no.4 sonata was composed in early 1919 before Hindemith and had it’s first performance with the composer playing his own works on both violin and viola. It was in this same year when the Schott publishing house took on Hindemith’s music.

It is hard to pin down all of the threads of Hindemith’s life from 1919 onwards as he was rapidly a sought-after viola soloist, violist of the Amar Quartet and produced an incredible variety and quantity of music in the early 1920’s – much of it viola and other solo and duo string sonatas, quartets, trios and chamber music with voice and other instruments where the viola is a noticeable narrator and force. Hindemith’s marriage to Gertrud Rottenberg 1924 was a union that seemed to inspire an outpouring of music with voice, viola and other combinations. Around the time Hindemith’s wrote parodies for the Amar Quartet to perform at festivals, often using the viola as the joker! One could compare the impact of Hindemith’s viola compositions and playing with that of Lionel Tertis, even though the latter was not primarily a composer, he inspired and commissioned music from hundreds of British composers for the viola. In some way Tertis and others paved the way for Hindemith, a little more than ten years later as the latter launched himself as a soloist etc. Until Tertis, the viola had generally been looked down up as a solo instrument, and as history has shown, with the exception of some viola-loving composers and those committed to chamber music writing, the viola did not really get a look in.

In 1927 Hindemith began teaching composition in Berlin, and at the same writing for unusual and electronic instruments, amateur music, all whilst managing a hectic performing career in the Amar Quartet and as a viola soloist. Hindemith even found time to premiere William Walton’s Viola Concerto in London, after Walton had been snubbed by the British viola virtuoso Lionel Tertis.

The viola thread can be followed right through to the end of Hindemith’s life (albeit it quite thin towards the end), and for the very first time this book reveals an alternate and much needed biography on Hindemith. One through the viola!