From Stoeckel to Hindemith: The Early Years of the Yale School of Music
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Photograph by Ben Quashen
1948 or later
Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) is recognized as one of the leading composers of the 20th century, and he is also a central figure in the history of music at Yale. Hindemith was an exceptionally versatile musician: in addition to his work as a composer, he conducted everything from medieval to modern music, he played the violin in the Rebner Quartet and viola in the Amar Quartet, and he was known for having a basic competence on almost any instrument. Hindemith was an influential teacher, both in the classroom and in his theoretical writings.
Although he was not Jewish, his relations with the Nazi authorities became increasingly difficult over the course of the 1930s, and in 1939 he left Germany for Switzerland. In 1940 he moved to the United States, where he taught briefly in Buffalo before coming to Yale, where he remained until 1953. He then moved back to Europe, settling in Switzerland until his death.
Although the Yale School of Music numbered many outstanding musicians among its faculty and students in its early decades, it was in some ways still a regional school. Many of the students came from Connecticut or other parts of the Northeast, and a high percentage of the faculty were alumni of the School. Hindemith changed that; he helped give the School a global reputation for excellence, and he attracted and trained a host of remarkable young musicians who went on to impressive careers.
[Sonatas, organ, no. 3] Sonate für Orgel nach alten Volkslieder
MSS 47, the Paul Hindemith Collection, Gilmore Music Library
Paul Hindemith
Sonate für Orgel nach alten Volkslieder
[Organ Sonata No. 3]
Manuscript, 1940
Shortly after arriving in the United States in February 1940, Hindemith served as a visiting professor at the University of Buffalo. While in Buffalo he composed the Organ Sonata No. 3. The manuscript bears the dates June 5 (on the first and third movements) and May 25 (on the second movements), and is inscribed “For Frank Bozyan in Friendship!” Bozyan (1899–1965) was an organ professor at the Yale School of Music. When Hindemith moved from Buffalo to Yale a few months later, he and Bozyan became faculty colleagues. But it was E. Power Biggs who gave the first performance of this sonata, at Tanglewood on July 31, 1940. Each of the movements draws upon a traditional German melody: “Ach Gott, wem sollt ich’s Klagen,” “Wach auf, mein Herz,” and “So wünsch ich ihr [ein gute Nacht].”
Most of Hindemith’s papers are held at the Hindemith Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, but Yale has the world’s second most important Hindemith collection. It was assembled by Luther Noss (1907–1995), who was an organ professor and dean at the Yale School of Music, a close friend of Hindemith, and the author of the book Paul Hindemith in the United States. (Noss’s writings have been an important source of information for this exhibit.) Noss persuaded many of Hindemith’s American associates to donate their Hindemith-related materials to the collection at Yale. Frank Bozyan, who owned the manuscript of the sonata Hindemith had dedicated to him, was one of these donors.