# Hindemith's Great Opera



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Hello friends,

The relative obscurity of Hindemith's great opera _Mathis der Maler_ is something that really puzzles me since it remains my third favourite 20th century opera right after Debussy's _Pelleas et Melisande_ and Pfitzner's _Palestrina_.

Here are the mostly negative/lukewarm reactions from the critics over the past 50 years:

_ * 'Mathis' is not an easy work to hear. The austere, almost academic passages, the skewed fugues and quirky counterpoint, can sound more like arguments than like opera.

* A third rate German opera that is musically inane and even worse than Pfitzner's Palestrina.

* This opera is a sanctimonious bore, way overlong and diffuse. The Nazis banned this work, and they were right, if for the wrong reasons.

* How does one create festive beginnings from an opera like Mathis der Maler? Hindemith's historical essay on art and ethics -- earnest, dour, little seen in opera houses and better known for its symphonic representation -- makes an altogether plainer cousin to Verdi's glamorous Otello.

* Mathis der Maler is not the sort of thing that will bring tears to your eyes or put you beside yourself with excitement. It is not a score of overwhelming grandeur or even of direct and simple lyricism. The only moment of expressive melody is Regina's lament at the start of Scene. Elsewhere, there is simply a continuation of Hindemith's familiar pseudo-Bach contrapuntal mastery grinding away more or less meaninglessly in low gear. I am afraid that Mathis der Maler is a bore.

* Gerard Mortier preferred another Hindemith opera, Cardillac, a lively, tightly packed tale. In contrast, Mathis is thick and drawn-out, with three and a quarter hours of music in seven tableaux, in a musical language of intimidating polyphonic and contrapuntal mastery. The infectious vitality displayed in his earlier operas is almost completely absent here. Only in the last (seventh) tableau does the composer's formidable inspiration surface.

* I am tolerably persuaded that Mathis der Maler, in the last analysis, is food only for a German audience, for a public that finds satisfaction in Pfitzner's Palestrina. I know there are vast and essential differences between a Hindemith and a Pfitzner. Yet for all these differences between the 2 composers and the two works, Mathis der Maler reminds me subtly and persistently of Palestrina. Not only in the oppressive length of both works, but in the enveloping aura of a certain spiritual purpose.

* A masterpiece? No, I will not go that far. And it really does seem as if Hindemith the opera composer is sliding into history.

* Mathis der Maler is a curious work and very different from Hindemith's earlier operas. The score, even at its best, leaves one almost continually aware of problems and cerebrations. If only heaven had bestowed on this composer warmth of heart and a lyrical faculty when it dowered him so plentifully with brains, systems and counterpoint.

* I have no love and only moderate admiration for it, and feel that it merits only occasional revival. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give Mathis der Maler a 3.

* Hindemith's opera is dignified, terribly noble and, in spots, terribly dull. Once in a while, as in the scene in the Cardinal's study, when Ursula sings her big aria, there is a sense of exaltation. Almost everywhere else the listener's attention is drawn more to the philosophical meaning of the opera than to its quality of song. Mathis der Maler is an opera one can respect but it lacks the red blood ever to become a repertory work.

* I tell you, Mathis makes Pelleas look butch. You'd think "Mathis" is going to be about how Mathis transforms his doubts and sufferings into great art. No. It's about giving up, putting away the tools of your art and just sitting down waiting to die. Now, that theme isn't necessarily morbid: look at "The Tempest" or the Four Last Songs. But these are works of old men: they know what they're writing about. When he wrote Mathis, Hindemith was 38, an age when most men still feel like they can conquer the world. I think that's one reason the whole resignation theme rings false. The other is that the character doesn't have much of anything to disengage from: Mathis is no Hans Sachs. My guess is that the historical Mathis tired of having to watch his back all the time and said to hell with it, I can make my art without all this political crap. But Hindemith depicts that type of masochistic romantic renunciation stuff that needs a Wagner to avoid bathos. And (need I say it) Mr. Hindemith, you're no Dick Wagner.

* The best music in the score is undoubtedly in the opening prelude (Concert of Angels), the interludes and the final 20 minutes of the opera. The rest of the piece is discursive and drab. It outstays its welcome because Hindemith was not an instinctive musical dramatist. I won't feel deprived if I don't see it again for another 20 years._

****************

Needless to say I couldn't disagree more with all of them. And to be honest, Regina's little folk song early in the first tableau "Es Wollt ein Maidlein waschen gehn Bei einem kuhlen Brunnen" is the only real weakness/annoying passage in the score that I can think of.

I did manage to find just 2 positive/enthusiastic responses by Allen Hughes and Peter Davis.

* _It is impossible not to feel a considerable respect for the mastery, the sincerity, indeed the singular quality of imagination that fill pages of this score. There is also a large amount of robust, vigorous music, music of no particular melodic value or line, fragmentary and orchestrally often overinflated, but nevertheless music that has "punch". Several solo and concerted numbers, especially in the later scenes, exercise a curiously searching effect._

* _The last half-hour of Mathis der Maler is an extraordinary piece of sustained musical invention. I know of nothing else in 20th century opera more haunting or brushed with such luminous beauty._

The next big production is next week (!) at the Zurich Opera with Thomas Hampson and Daniele Gatti conducting. I will be closely following the reviews at TheOperaCritic.com as they start to trickle in and I REALLY HOPE I don't see the words 'academic', 'ponderous', 'dry', 'third-rate', 'Germanic', 'tedious', 'pedestrian', 'diffuse'... trotted out for the thousandth time! 

Are there any Mathis lovers here?

Regards,

Fasolt


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I generally don't like Hindemith. Even his Trauermusik I don't really like (as a viola player.) I've never liked his attitude towards atonal music.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I don't know the opera, but the symphony of the same name, based on themes from the opera, is among my favourites of the 20th century.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I haven't heard it either, but I've read a synopsis. Three hours-plus does seem a long time to devote to what reads like a standard medieval 'artist as unwitting hero caught up in turbulent times of religious/socio-political upheaval' plot but I suspect that its principle interest lies with the inevitable comparisons with Hindemith viz-a-viz what was beginning to unfurl in 1930s Germany. I like Hindemith's orchestral and chamber music very much but his operas I haven't yet investigated (probably because most of the available recordings are so bloody expensive) - if I were to dip my toe I'd probably go for a couple of his early shorter ones like Das Nusch-Nuschi or Sancta Susanna or one of the couple that feature a more contemporary setting, such as Neues vom Tage (which DID upset Hitler). It's a pity the critics were generally negative (perhaps because they heard it with preconceived ideas based on Hindemith's reputation for an academically-driven lack of warmth when composing for other genres) but no-one is immune - even the comparatively God-like Richard Strauss was accused of spreading his ideas too thinly with some of his longer operas.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

I just bought the Kubelik - EMI recording as LPs and am enjoying it. If you like the intensity and slightly Gothic feeling of Busoni´s "Doktor Faust", this opera also has it.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

All I have to say is, it's on Tommasini's list of the top 100 operas - and so I'm going to have to give it a try!


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## Rangstrom (Sep 24, 2010)

I was listening to Cardillac this weekend and that DG release has a healthy chunk of MdM (with DFD, Ludwig conducting). it was a pleasant reminder of the warmth and glow you can find in much of this opera. You do have to take it at its pace. 

Now I'll have to pull out my LP of the Kubelik recording.


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