Symphonic Dances
Composed 1937; Duration: 28 minutes
First performance of this work by the BPO.
Paul Hindemith was an exceptional violinist and violist, who relied on performance engagements with his string quartet in equal proportions to his reputation as one of Germany’s leading modernist composers. Even so, he could not be shielded from the emboldened Nazis, who officially labeled his music “degenerate” for its experimental intellectualism, effectively banning it in 1936 after the controversial censorship of his opera, Mathis der Maler. He left his job at the Berlin Academy for steady work in Turkey, and eventually relocated to the United States.
The death of impresario Sergei Diaghilev led to the dissolution of the famed Ballet Russes, and the eventual opening of Léonide Massine’s offshoot, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Continuing the tradition of engaging with leading composers, Hindemith jumped at the opportunity for international work as one of the company’s first projects. Hindemith showed up to a 1937 meeting with Massine with music in hand, but the proposal to create a ballet based on the life of St. Francis of Assisi meant starting over. The result of that project was the 1938 ballet Nobilissima Visione. As for the score that Hindemith worked on before the project-altering meeting, this music was reconfigured into the Symphonic Dances. The same year, he toured the work in London and the U.S.
The 1920s, and especially Weimar Germany, brought about new modes of artistic thought that rejected the emotionalism of Romanticism and its extreme progeny, Expressionism, with what has been dubbed the New Objectivity. Where the Neoclassicism of Stravinsky brought about musical clarity, Hindemith’s brand dug into the dense counterpoint of the Baroque. These cerebral and emotionally detached works were rejected by the Nazis, but Hindemith maintained his voice in the anxiety-ridden Symphonic Dances. The opening movement pairs plodding strings with a vaguely pastoral melody, but shifts into the primary tempo, dictated by a breezy triple meter. Not quite a waltz, the melodies wind amidst dense, contrapuntal textures, reaching brassy peaks before descending into a shimmering close.
The episodic second movement conveys the tone of a sinister scherzo with off-kilter time changes before settling into a mechanized duple meter, made ominous by warlike drums and brass. The tempo stalls with powerful string unisons that are punctuated by brassy major chords that feel more threatening than resolving. The expected return of the opening material is scrapped for a new rhythmic feel, that could almost be called jazzy for its swinging rhythms if not concealed by dense winds.
The dotted rhythms of the third movement evoke a funeral march as a solo clarinet freely leaps with virtuosic dexterity. The flute joins in for an expressive dialogue. Brass lead a monstrous climax, leaving the clarinet to quietly intone the final bars.
With rousing melodies, the finale creaks and moans as it grasps for a triumphant conclusion, as Hindemith’s score is dense with anxious activity. Soloists rise out of the texture, as with a trilling oboe, and later, an extensive bassoon solo. Out of this comes frantic staccato and overlapping melodies that build into a final climactic conclusion.