Hindemith's Experiment

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 772, 7 May 1954, Page 17

Hindemith's Experiment

"Music enjoyment must be brought back to simple form," Paul Hindemith has said. "In this way only can we offset the growing degeneration caused by those who attempt to turn music into an obscure atid complicated art to be understood and enjoyed only by the specialist." And Hindemith suggests that the alarmingly wide gulf between composer and audience might be bridged by letting the audience participate in a musical work of art. Last year Paul Hindemith had the chance to try: out his.theory when his new work, The Canticle to Hope, written in collaboration with the French poet Paul Claudel, was performed for the first time. The Canticle to Hope is an orchestral and choral work written specially for UN and the International Music Council, and the collaboration in writing it took place entirely by correspondence between America and France. The music was written in three months and was designed for audience participation. The work was first performed at a gala concert in Brussels in honour: of the Unesco International Conference on Music Education. Visitors and delegates from 40 nations were present, and 10 nations were represented in the amateur orchestra. Hindemith himself conducted the huge ensemble of 100 instrumentalists, a choir of 250, a fanfare of 36 brass and a grand organ. When the time came for the audience to take up the responses he turned his back on the orchestra and conducted the whole theatre. A recording of this first performance of The Canticle to Hope is to be heard from all YC stations at 8.30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 12.