Paul Hindemith's Trumpet Sonata Analysis
Faculty Sponsor
Katharina Uhde
College
Arts and Sciences
Discipline(s)
Music History
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Symposium Date
Fall 11-1-2022
Abstract
By 1940, the time Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) emigrated to America, Hindemith was at the height of his creative powers, having established in the 1930s "a well-regulated and standardized compositional technique, thanks to the purest possible operation of the principles of the ‘two-voice framework’, ‘harmonic fluctuation’ and ‘progression in 2nds’", elements which Hindemith scholar G. Schubert has noted as essential markers of this decade. But there was one more element that differentiated Hindemith's 1930s style: "an individual formal structure" for each piece, often inspired by timbre. Specifically, Hindemith's sonatas are "tailored [...] snugly to the character of the solo instrument [...] [like] portraits of the instruments themselves, the music being generated by the unique qualities of each individual timbre." Building on, and expanding, the research of Paul Davis Morton (1995), Erik Mahon (2000), and William C Rabun (2016), this research paper investigates Hindemith's Trumpet Sonata in light of G. Schubert's above-named stylistic elements and tests their validity in this 1939 composition, thereby throwing new light on a little-discussed piece in Hindemith's oeuvre.
Recommended Citation
Metzger, Kurt A., "Paul Hindemith's Trumpet Sonata Analysis" (2022). Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 1120.
https://scholar.valpo.edu/cus/1120
