Hindemith composed Symphonic Metamorphosis in 1943 while teaching at Yale University. Believing strongly that the work should be made available in a band version, he asked his Yale colleague Keith Wilson to make the transcription. After permission was finally granted by the publisher in 1960, Wilson worked on the arrangement for 18 months. He regarded it as his largest and most significant transcription. The important two-bar fragment which is stated by the brass at the outset reappears and is developed at different points of punctuation throughout the movement. There is also a more typical “trio” theme which is repeated and developed. The form is somewhat different than that of a standard march.

Paul Hindemith was born in Hanau, Germany, where he began studying the violin at the age of nine. He entered the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt when he was 14, studying composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernard Sekles. He was appointed instructor in composition at the Berlin Hochschule in 1927, and a few years later he became interested in a movement devoted to music-making among amateurs. His comprehensive Craft of Musical Composition, an outgrowth of his teaching experience, was published in 1937. In addition to dramatic works, symphonies, and numerous other orchestral pieces, Hindemith wrote much music for chamber groups, keyboard instruments, and vocal combinations. His knowledge of wind instruments is apparent in his instrumental sonatas as well as in such original and transcribed works as Concert Music for Band, Symphony in B-flat, Symphonic Metamorphosis March, and Geschwindmarsch.

Program note extracted from Program Notes for Band