DESCRIPTION:
Paul Hindemith leads the Collegium Musicum of Yale University School of Music.

Hindemith began the American phase of his life teaching at the University of Buffalo. At the time, the music program at Yale was in turmoil, and a planned reorganization had stalled for lack of focus. Hindemith was invited to the School as a guest lecturer in the spring of 1940, and a year later was asked to join the faculty as a full-time professor.

Although a newcomer to the School, Hindemith immediately proposed a bold plan to reorganize its 85-year-old teaching program on the model of his former school in Berlin. While the plan was rejected, it served as the catalyst for a compromise reorganization that resulted in the creation of separate music programs at Yale—a graduate music department and a conservatory-style school that over time accepted only advanced students.

Many of Hindemith’s other ideas found their way into the School’s curriculum and organization. The study of composition was separated from that of music theory; every composition student was required to participate in music-making; a liberal arts requirement was added to the initial degree programs; and the School developed one of the world’s strongest programs in the history of music theory.

Hindemith’s presence alone soon began to attract top students to Yale and eventually gave the School a worldwide visibility that many say would have been impossible without him. Its full-time and visiting faculty has since included composer Quincy Porter, noted for his chamber music; Normand Lockwood, a composer of tonal pieces and expressive vocal works; composer, conductor, and teacher Gunther Schuller; jazz pianist and composer Mel Powell; the prolific composer Elliott Carter, a creator of ballets, and orchestral, vocal, and chamber music; and Anthony Davis, virtuoso pianist and composer of dance and operatic works. Among the school’s more notable alumni are Hindemith students Norman Dello Joio, a composer and teacher whose bold works include opera, Catholic church music, and jazz; and Lukas Foss, a diverse composer-conductor whose works range from early music to the improvisational and electronic.

Some 400 students took classes with Hindemith during his 13 years at Yale. Many were not regular students, but attended one or more of his open lectures. Those who studied directly with him took part in every class he taught, spending as much as 16 hours a week in the classroom with him.

The composer’s creative output while at Yale was prodigious, especially in light of the fact that he often taught for 12 hours a day. He composed 50 major pieces, including those most often performed today. They included a ballet, The Four Temperaments, written for George Balanchine; Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber; the oratorio When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd; and Die Harmonie der Welt, a symphony that later became an opera based on the life of astronomer Johannes Kepler. He also wrote two books, A Concentrated Course in Traditional Harmony and Elementary Training for Musicians.

While writing his own music, Hindemith also found time to expand on an earlier interest in Baroque and Renaissance music. He founded Yale’s Collegium Musicum, a group that studied works from the 12th to the 17th centuries and performed them on original instruments, many of which came from Yale’s own rich collection. Hindemith and the Collegium Musicum are widely credited with having started the early-music movement in this country.