Kulturbolschewist

In the summer of 1934 Germany's Nazi Kulturkammer (Chamber of Culture), enraged by a much-publicized performance of Paul Hindemith's modernistic, juiceless, but adept suite, Mathis der Maler, declared its composer a pernicious Kulturbolschewist (cultural Bolshevist). Despite a plea by Germany's star conductor, Wilhelm Furtwaengler, who had introduced the work at a Berlin concert, Composer Hindemith's compositions were officially banned from German concert programs. Conductor Furtwaengler resigned his job in protest, cried: "It is a crime to attempt to defame and drive him [Hindemith] from Germany, since none of the younger generation has done more than he for the recognition of German music throughout the world." Since then, Kulturbolschewist Hindemith, though he still lives in suburban Berlin, has had to go abroad to hear or perform his own works in public.

Last week sad-eyed, stolid Hindemith, who is having a curiously unmanaged and unpublicized U. S. tour, bobbed up in Chicago to conduct the U. S. premiere of his latest work, Symphonic Dances, with the Chicago Symphony. In his enthusiasm, Conductor Hindemith tore a page of his score, lost his baton, ended by conducting with his fists. Critics approved his new work unanimously. Also present on a nearly all-Hindemith program was Chamber Music No. 1, a suite for small orchestra whose last movement, a macabre fox trot, is supposed to depict the hysteria of War-torn Europe. Polite Chicagoans missed the point but liked the fox trot, applauded with appreciative giggles.

Nazi objections to Hindemith's music are based not on his race (he is guaranteed pure Aryan), but on the technical character of the music itself. Hindemith discarded the melodious romanticism of traditional German music, defied all conventions of musical syntax, did in music what James Joyce and Gertrude Stein were doing in words. To Nazi censors, who frown on everything antiRomantic, Hindemith's music was pure anarchism.

Unlike many modernist composers, 42-year-old Hindemith has had wide experience as a practical musician, is a virtuoso on the viola. After running away from home at the age of eleven, he earned his own living playing in dance bands, cafes and cinema orchestras. A diligent student, he spent his spare time plowing through courses at the Frankfurt Conservatory, studying violin, viola and composition. In 1915 he became head violinist of the Frankfurt Opera House, rose to the post of conductor. Among German composers his pre-Hitler reputation was second only to that of aging Richard Strauss.

As a musical technician Composer Hindemith can give cards & spades to most of his contemporaries. In 1936 he was to have introduced one of his larger compositions at a London broadcast, but the death of King George V caused the British Broadcasting Corp. to ask for more appropriate music. Hindemith, who was to appear as viola soloist, could find nothing appropriate to play. Two days before the broadcast he gave up the search, decided to compose something himself for the occasion. Result: his Funeral Music, composed in a single day.

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