Arts and Letters

In this century, the name of Paul Hindemith came the nearest to exemplifying the musical world's concept of the complete musician. His intellect was matched by his energy and whatever he did, he did with the utmost conviction. Those of us who knew him remember this well as he sang, played, taught, philosophized, raged, and laughed. The core of his musical thought was summarized in a memorable remark, "There are only twelve tones; they must be treated carefully."

Hindemith might have stepped into this century from a Breughel canvas, a German deeply rooted and in tune with his heritage. Responsible to the tradition of humanism, the body of his art was, as he himself styled it, "the bread…. I leave it to others to write the spice."

Those who came within the orbit of his influence were often the objects of his fierce and at times brutal candor. Still others submitted to him as to a confessor. Yet for all of Hindemith's passionate intransigence, to know him was to respect him as much for what he stood for as for what he challenged.

His music is a model of technical mastery and stylistic consistency put to the promulgation of an unswerving view of life. He wrote: "A composer's horizon cannot be far-reaching enough; his desire to know, to comprehend, must incite, inspire, and drench every phase of his work. Storming the heavens with artistic wisdom and practical skill must be his least ambition."

In the recent past, Hindemith was witness to the impatience with which men regarded what might be termed the old-fashioned virtues. His moral stance and religiously held artistic convictions were in seeming decline. In the complex of our time this is no doubt in the transient order of things. Yet to the mind of such a man the nagging thought persisted that until comparable substitutes for the time-tested values were found, the philosophical void in our century was not to be filled by caprice or shock.

The specious he pinned with unerring accuracy, and his irony was directed as much to himself as to others. He interrupted a discourse one day in class on hearing some students rehearse an early work of his to say, "Why do they waste time on that?" His scalpel bit mercilessly into sham, and irrational eccentricity that paraded as the new was to his sober mind akin to self-indulgent hysteria. As with all moralists, he was suspicious of the individual; he preferred man in the abstract.

The sum of his ever-practical compositions is a testament to his beliefs. "Music," he said, "as an agent of moral elevation seems to have lost its position. Sound and its effect on our auditory nerves apparently is the only factor considered essential. Instruments have degenerated into mere distributors of superficial sounds and the more sparkling and alluring the sounds appear, the higher the rating. It is the curse of virtuosity that it can beget nothing but virtuosity."

At his death Hindemith's musical eminence was secure, though his conservative posture made him the logical target for those who had abandoned the stringencies of his uncompromising sobriety. The stern moralist had been left to play his lonely role: that of preaching that good and evil do exist. To him, to deny right and wrong was to reduce man and to make artistic mockery of life itself.

In sum, the living Paul Hindemith is no more. The legacy he left will be subject to the vagaries of fashion. However, of one thing one is certain: he now resides with those who shaped our great traditions.