As a young man, Paul Hindemith frequently played in string quartets, in addition to his work as a concertmaster and composer. During one quartet rehearsal, an older colleague delivered a peroration extolling the profound beauty and spirituality of the opening fugal movement of Beethoven’s Opus 131. After he left the room, Hindemith shrugged and said to the others, “What’s all the excitement about? All he was trying to do is write a decent fugue.”

Misha Amory

Paul Hindemith was clearly not one to put on airs as a composer, and if his music is often beautiful and profound, it may be in spite of, rather than because of, the compositional goals he set himself. His philosophy of “Gebrauchsmusik” (literally, “utility music”) called for a pragmatic way of composing, an approach where the work satisfied a definite purpose, be it a specific event, a certain type of audience, or an unusual group of available instruments. His muse was the servant of the occasion, not the master of it.

Hindemith’s four solo sonatas for viola are good exemplars of this philosophy. He wrote all four as vehicles for his own solo performance, and the pieces clearly cater to a flashy and idiosyncratic technique. There are three early sonatas and one later one: Opus 11, No. 5 (1919); Opus 25, No. 1 (1922); Opus 31, No. 4 (1923); and the 1937 sonata, respectively. It is the last two of these that I will present in Morse Hall on October 9 at 6 p.m.

What is striking about these two works, especially in juxtaposition, is their depiction of the same musician at two different times in his career. In 1923, Hindemith was 28 years old, and certainly very much on the map as a composer, but he was probably equally active as a violist and would continue to be so for several more years. Accordingly, he wrote a work that places heavy emphasis on virtuosity and physical stamina. The Opus 31, No. 4 Sonata was explicitly written to take the place of Opus 25, No. 1 on Hindemith’s solo programs. It is much more demanding than that work, and one has the impression that the young violist was exploring his own limits as a player. Many passages in the piece are notable for their obsessiveness, a hammering persistence that ventures beyond what would seem to be the reasonable limit. This character pervades the entire first movement, which is a perpetual motion, and many passages of the last movement, which is an extensive passacaglia. The sonata’s message is “over the top”—a vehicle for an enfant terrible who was exhibiting his fantastic violism.

What a different story is told by the 1937 sonata, written on tour in America 14 years later. If Hindemith was still an active performer, his reputation as a composer was in the ascendant. To be sure, the sonata is still virtuosic, but decorously circumscribed. Sections of the work are in elegant proportion to one another, and the well-shaped outer movements symmetrically flank a somewhat longer middle movement. Climaxes come in logical places. One very clever “players’ trick,” involving pizzicato by all four right fingers, is neatly contained in the middle movement’s central passage, and serves as textural contrast. All in all, there is a sense that Hindemith’s object of showcasing his viola playing is now just one facet in a larger creative endeavor.

Interestingly, Hindemith did not pursue publication of either of these works during his lifetime. He disparaged the Opus 31, No. 4 as being “really much too hard” and complained that the 1937 Sonata was not well received by audiences. Obviously, I respectfully disagree with his dismissals. Both pieces are innovative, compelling, and vivid in their different ways, and they more than deserve to stand alongside their earlier counterparts in his output.

Misha Amory has been on the faculty since 1995.