does anyone know any good books on Hindemith?

i'm doing my A2 music project on him, and its hard to find much information on him.

thanks

hornplayer

I found it really difficult to get detailed information on him when I needed to write my diploma programme notes last year. I couldn't find any books dedicated completely to him, but there were odd chapters about him in lots of different music encyclopedias. Groves probably has the best information. Good luck!

QUOTE (hornplayer @ Oct 16 2004, 12:52 PM)

does anyone know any good books on Hindemith? i'm doing my A2 music project on him, and its hard to find much information on him.

If you have web access, you could start with http://www.classicalarchives.com/bios/codm.../hindemith.html, which is a short bigraphy quoted from the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Music. I don't know of any books about him, but I have some good ones by him: his "Elementary training for musicians" (every serious musician should own that one) and "The Craft of Musical Compositions" in two volumes.

Do you play the Horn Sonata or the Kleine Kammermusik for wind quintet?

I need the information for a comparison between two horn sonatas, one of which being the hindemith horn sonata (1939).

Im playing the whole of the sonata for various solos and auditions, and I really love it. I cant understand why more people don't listen to and like Hindemith.

It really irrates me when I go to auditions, and present the first movement and the arrogrant pianist who always sight reads the accompaniments loudly announces that he "strongly dislikes hindemith and the majority of the time playing the right notes sounds the same as playing the wrong notes". On that partipular audition I was still successful, but the accompaniment was so far from what it should have sounded like one of the members' of the audition panel actually stood up and looked over the pianist's shoulder to try and understand where I was in relation to what the pianst was playing!

sorry, rant over!

The grove Dictionary which I've tried in indeed very good, but I was hoping there was a book or website out there that focused especially on the period 1930-1945 or on his various sonatas.

I have also looked at the classic music archive previously and it was a good starting point. thank you kenm and hgirl.

QUOTE (hornplayer @ Oct 16 2004, 09:34 PM)

I need the information for a comparison between two horn sonatas, one of which being the hindemith horn sonata (1939).

You do need a good pianist for the Hindemith horn. What's the other one?

QUOTE

Im playing the whole of the sonata for various solos and auditions, and I really love it. I cant understand why more people don't listen to and like Hindemith.

I like the flute, oboe and clarinet sonatas also, but I think the best of all is the one for trumpet.

There are very few books on Hindemith, let alone any decent ones!

Hgirl, there are some books just on him, actually: by Kemp, Neumeyer and Skelton, for instance. Skelton is mostly biography though, Neumeyer is heavily analytical, and Kemp is okay but not very detailed. So I'm not sure they'll help you with your project, Hornplayer. If you read German, there are more possibilities.

There are also quite a few articles on various aspects of Hindemith, although they might be difficult to get hold of unless you can get access to a decent university library. The best bet would be to contact the Hindemith Institute (his archive) - www.hindemith.org - and ask them for help.

Claire (did PhD on Hindemith, knows the problems...)

Thanks claire21, I did try to get hold of his trilogy "The Craft of Musical Composition" and it took Chappells nearly 2 months to tell me that the third was never written and I'm still waiting for the second volume! and it's been about 3 months now!!!

I've now realised that as my project can be a maximum of 2000 words (stupidly short), I only need about 200 words background on hindemith at the most, and I'm only comparing 1st movements from both sonatas.

thanks for you help.

hornplayer xx