Paul Hindemith Symphony 8

In 1933, 38 year old German composer Paul Hindemith began writing for an opera inspired by Mathis Grunewald, a 16th-century painter. In the opera, Hindemith tells a fictionalized story about how Mathis abandons painting to join the Peasants’ Revolt of 1524. After he becomes disillusioned by the violence of revolution and experiences several visions, Mathis concludes that his best contribution to society is to throw himself into his God-given work — that of painting, and of making art.
Before finishing the opera, Hindemith wrote a symphonic version of
Mathis der Maler with the encouragement of Berlin Philharmonic conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. The three movements of the
Mathis
symphony are inspired by separate panels of an altar piece painted by the artist Mathis Grunewald himself, at the Isenheim abbey in Alsace, France. The first movement is meant to depict the panel “Concert of Angels”, which illustrates Mary and baby Jesus being …show more content…
The second, “Entombment”, shows Jesus’s crucified body being placed in his tomb, representing the end of Mathis’s life in the opera. The third movement, based on the altar piece’s painting “The Temptation of St. Anthony”, is a beautiful harmonic depiction of the opera scene where Mathis envisions himself as St. Anthony, and decides to return to his art.
The symphony received favorable reviews at its premiere with Furtwängler and Berlin Philharmonic in March of 1934; yet only a month or so later the Nazi Party banned much of Hindemith’s music due to supposed condemning comments made about Hitler by the composer. While Hindemith finished the actual
Mathis
opera in 1935, the criticism he was receiving from the Nazis for his Jewish connections (his wife was part Jewish, and he maintained friendships with Jewish artists) and his “degenerate” music made it politically impossible to premiere the work in

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