![]() He later had a brilliantcareer as one of Europe’s foremost viola soloists and founded the famous Amar Quartetwith whom he toured widely. Hindemith began as a violinist, beingappointed concert-master at the Frankfurt Opera at age 19. First, however, allow me to introduce the composer.įive traits characterize the man Paul Hindemith: his extensive experience as aperforming artist his endeavors to bring contemporary music to a wider audience hisenthusiasm with education his respect for, and active promotion of, early music andhis outstanding wit and sense of humor. On the occasion of this centennial, I have chosen to look at Hindemith’s pianocycle Ludus Tonalis. This year marks the 100th birthday of the German composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). The layout of this cycle contains- perceptible for the analyst but skillfully concealed from listeners who might feeldisturbed by too pronounced a sense of "craft" - a wonderful play with symmetries,reflections, symmetrically ordered groulJs and, last but by no means least, just the rightamount of symmetry breaking. It is not even merely "playful" in thesense that it contains an almost complete array of keyboard techniques andperformance colors, and in that the capturing characteristics of many of the fuguesand interludes are suggestive of dramatic characters. 4.Ībstract: The piano cycle Ludus Tonalis by Paul Hindemith is much more than a"tonal play ", or a play with tones and tonalities. Boris Blacher’s Play with Variable Meters,Symmetry" Culture and Sctence, vol 6, no. Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier:In-depth Analysis and Interpretation Bern/Frankfurt: Peter Lang (1994) Patterned Time. 3, no.2, 187-200 (1992) Symbolic Representations of Divine Attributes inthe Musical Language of Olivier Messiaen, Exemplified in his PianoCycle Vtngt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jdsus, Symmetry: Culture andSctence, vol. (1986) Dte mustkahsche Darstellung psychologtscherWtrkhchkett tn Alban Berg’s "’Wozzeck", Bern/Frankfurt: PeterLang (1992) Symmetry and ~rreversibility in the musical language(s)of the twentieth century, Symmetry" Culture and Sctence, vol. #103, Ann Arbor, MI48104, U S A, E-mad" of tnterest: Interpretive musicology, musical hermeneutms,~nterdisciphnary aspects (music/arts, music/psychology, music/spirituality etc.) performance as ’Gestaltung’.Pubhcattons. Department of Musicology / Institute for the Humanities,University of Michigan, 322 N. ![]() Musicologist/music analyst and pianist (b Hamburg, Germany,1951)Address. SYMMETRY AND DISSYMMETRYIN PAUL HINDEMITH’S LUDUS TONALIS ![]() In this system, the major-minor duality is meaningless and the practice of modulation is dropped, although subject modulation occurs in the second fugue, to create growing tension.Symmetry: Culture and SctenceVol. The affinity of each note with the keynote is directly related to its position on the harmonic scale. Ludus Tonalis can be thought of as the most direct application of Hindemith's theory that the twelve tones of the equally tempered scale all relate to a single one of them (called a tonic or keynote). Unlike Bach's work, though, the non-fugal pieces in Ludus Tonalis frequently repeat the work's main theme. Ludus Tonalis was intended to be the twentieth-century equivalent to J.S. The tonalities of the fugues follow the order of his Serie 1 and use the keynote C (see The Craft of Musical Composition). In between, there are twelve three-part fugues separated by eleven interludes, beginning in the tonality of the previous fugue and ending in the tonality of the next fugue (or in a different tonality very close to that). The piece, which comprises all 12 major and/or minor keys, starts with a three-part Praeludium in C resembling Johann Sebastian Bach's toccatas, and ends with a Postludium which is an exact retrograde inversion of the Praeludium. From the first and final movements, respectively. Piano work by Paul Hindemith Opening ( Play ( help
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