Musical Offerings, Spring 2018

Musical Offerings ⦁ 2018 ⦁ Volume 9 ⦁ Number 1 1 Musical Offerings 9, no. 1 (2018), 1–14 ISSN 2330-8206 (print); ISSN 2167-3799 (online) © 2018, Sharri K Hall, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ) The Personal Tragedy in Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Sharri K Hall Cedarville University athis der Maler was composed in the period after 1930 when Paul Hindemith began to stray from his avant-garde leanings and promote the “Austro-German symphonic tradition. ” 1 The project existed in two forms: opera and symphony. The opera was staged in seven scenes to depict the German Peasant’s War of 1525. The symphonic version of Mathis der Maler , however, was premiered in 1934 in Berlin as a precursor to the opera version. It consisted of three movements (“Engelkonzert,” “Grablegung,” and “Versuchung des heiligen Antonius”) that each depicted one of the so-named panels of the Isenheim Altarpiece near Colmar, which is now in modern-day France . 2 Hindemith then built these three movements into the opera as the overture, the orchestral interlude in the final act, and the visionary scene in Scene 6, respectively. In both forms, the Mathis project was praised for its adherence to traditional tonality and German monumentality. The Mathis project depicts tenets of German nationalism such as monumentalism, and romanticism, and the use of folk song. It depicts an almost autobiographical account of Hindemith’s own conflicts with the Reich as portrayed by Grünewald—the famous historical figure who painted the panels at the altarpiece—and his fictional plights in the opera. Finally, the Mathis project accounts the means by which Hindemith chooses to navigate the social context of musicianship in the Reich. Hindemith’s great work Mathis der Maler captures the complex ideals 1 Michael H. Kater, Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 33. 2 Editor’s note: Colmar lies in the Alsace region of France, which was under German control from 1871–1945. During the 1930s the Isenheim Altarpiece was in French territory, and its depiction by Hindemith as a monument of great German art was a symbol of aggression against its French possessors. M