Jennifer Grucza

We’ve been rehearsing Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler (my hands keep trying to type Mahler!) for our upcoming Longwood Symphony concert, and now I’m in a total Hindemithy mood.

It’s funny, when I first started listening to Hindemith’s music, it tended to give me a headache (literally). It’s not that it’s atonal or really dissonant - it’s not. Hindemith had a very well-defined harmonic scheme - one that’s not all that far different than the traditional diatonic harmonies of Bach and Brahms. But it is different, and for me, it took a little getting used to. What did the trick was actually playing some of it. Somehow when I’m playing a piece, I start to understand it better. I guess it would be weird if that wasn’t the case, actually. At any rate, once my ears got used to the sound, I’ve liked it ever since.

I may not really believe in acquiring tastes when it comes to food (I don’t think I’ll ever like beer or wine, thank you very much), but when it comes to music, I definitely believe you should give a piece or composer a second, third, or fourth chance if you don’t get it the first time around. Sometimes your ears need a little time and repetition to adjust to and appreciate something new.

The other Hindemith pieces I’ve been listening to on my iPod lately are Symphonic Metamorphosis, Der Schwanendreher, Kammermusik No. 5, and Konzertmusik, Op. 48. And I just realized I haven’t ripped the viola sonatas yet - I think I’ll do that now!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 10:37 pm and is filed under Classical Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.