Cadence and Form
in
Hindemith's “Lilacs” Requiem
by
Jonathan J. Turner
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Supervised by
Robert Gauldin
Department of Composition
Eastman School of Music
University of Rochester
Rochester, New York
1996
ii
Curriculum Vitae
The author was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 4 December,
1946. He attended Florida State University from 1965 to 1970, where he
studied composition with Harold Schiffman and John Boda, graduating
with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1970. He won the Florida Composers
League prize (1969) for his Fantasy for Two Pianos. He received grants for
composition and performance from the Connecticut Commission for the
Arts in 1976 and 1978. In the fall of 1987 he began graduate studies in
music composition at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of
Music. During those studies he held a teaching assistantship in electronic
music (1988-91) as well as teaching positions in the summer computer
music seminar (1989-91) and the Eastman School of Music’s Community
Education Division (1991). He also was student director of the Academic
Computing Center and served on the Academic Computing Advisory
Committee (1990-91). In addition to composition studies with Samuel
Adler, Warren Benson, Sydney Hodkinson, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph
Schwantner (composition thesis advisor), he studied orchestration with
David Liptak and computer music with Allan Schindler, as well as theory
subjects with David Beach (Schenkerian analysis), Robert Gauldin (16thand 18th-century counterpoint, theory pedagogy, and research thesis
advisor), and Robert Morris (atonal theory).
iii
Abstract
In 1946, Paul Hindemith set to music the complete text of Walt
Whitman’s poem of 1865,When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom’d.
While Hindemith employs chromaticism beyond the bounds of 18th- and
19th-century tonal practice, his music retains similar traits, specifically, that
of articulating the large-scale thematic/harmonic organization, or form, of a
tonal work by means of cadences. Hindemith’s forms and cadences have
been examined by several writers reviewed here, including Hindemith
himself. The pattern of tonal movement in the Requiem is outlined by
cadences of various types and magnitudes, with the most common type
being the cadence from the upper leading tone.
The structure of the Requiem is a large-scale projection of the initial
five-tone motive found in the first five measures of the Prelude, where,
against a C# pedal, the upper voice sound the tones A-C-F-E . The Prelude
and Nºs 1, 2, and 3 are associated with the tone C#; Nºs 4, 5, 6, and 7 are
associated with the tone A; Nº 8 is associated with C; Nº 9 is associated
with F; and Nºs 10 and 11 again confirm the tonality of C# with E as its
minor third. A crucial refinement in the understanding of the parallelism
between the Prelude motive and the large-scale structure is obtained from
knowledge of Hindemith’s own theories of chromatic tonal relations,
specifically, his postulation of interval-roots.
When the four tones of the Prelude motive’s upper voice (A-C-F-E)
are weighed against the C# pedal to determine their respective interval-roots,
the tone C# prevails as the interval-root of each tone-pair except the initial A.
iv
This tonal conflict explains why, of all the large sections associated with a
tone of the opening motive, the section associated with the tone A (Nºs 4, 5,
6, and 7) is the only such section not to be harmonically closed—because
the unique interval-root conflict engendered by the initial A of the motive
must be resolved (Nº 7 ends with the strong cadence on E) to unify the
overall tonality on C#. Thus, the initial Prelude motive, informed by
Hindemith’s interval-root theory, provides a plausible accounting of the
large-scale harmonic structure across the entire Requiem.
v
Table of Contents
Curriculum Vitae ................................................................................. ii
Abstract ................................................................................................ iii
List of Figures....................................................................................... vi
List of Symbols.....................................................................................vii
List of Abbreviations .......................................................................... viii
Foreword ............................................................................................... 1
Ch. 1. Historical Background.............................................................. 3
Ch. 2. Basic Aspects Of Cadence And Form ..................................... 10
Ch. 3. Hindemith’s Theories ............................................................. 13
Ch. 4. Other Music Literature........................................................... 27
Ch. 5. Overview Of Formal Structure ............................................... 30
Ch. 6. Discussion Of Section One..................................................... 39
Ch. 7. Discussion Of Section Two .................................................... 45
Ch. 8. Discussion Of Section Three .................................................. 48
Ch. 9. Discussion Of Section Four .................................................... 53
Ch. 10. A Requiem “For Those We Love” .......................................... 56
Bibliography........................................................................................ 61
vi
List of Figures
Figure
Title
Figure 1.
Hindemith’s Series 1 and 2 as shown in Craft I. Series 1 ranks the
chromatic degrees according to their decreasing affinity with the
initial degree. The arrows in Series 2 indicate the roots of the
respective intervals. Note that each series begins with the interval
of the octave (asserting the premise of pitch, before pitch-class).
The tritone, whose root, Hindemith says, is “indetermined,” does
not appear in either series, leaving the question of the distribution
of the root balance in the tritone unresolved.
15
Hindemith’s tonal relationships and their symbols, expressed in the
key of the Requiem, C#. The chromatic scale is presented on an
oval whose rightmost point represents the tonic (given the Greek
“phi” for “fundamental” tone by Hindemith). Shaded squares
represent black piano-keys. Hindemith adopted Schenker’s flagged
half-notes to represent the traditional IV and V (stems down and
up respectively). Black arrows connect dominant and subdominant
with their respective functionally equivalent leading-tone degrees a
tritone away. Grey lines indicate cycles of perfect fourths and
fifths.
16
Formal Overview of Hindemith’s Requiem. A roughly proportional
layout of the four quarters shows the basic structural features. The
treble clef indicates emphasized melodic tones, while the bass clef
shows general areas of respective tonal prolation. Nota Bene:
accidentals are applied within but not between numbers.
32
Prelude motive as projected into large scale forms of both the
Prelude and the Requiem. At the top are the opening five bars of
the prelude, with the orchestration noted. Below, the formal
projection of the P-motive is shown, with the corresponding
measures of the Prelude above the staff, and the corresponding
movement Nºs of the Requiem below the staff. The lower brackets
show the four quarters, as detailed in Figure 3.
35
The music of For Those We Love, with music as printed in the
source hymnbook. The text shown is the first of William Charter
Piggott’s seven stanzas.
57
Figure 2.
Figure 3.
Figure 4.
Figure 5.
Page
vii
List of Symbols
Hindemith’s symbols for tonal relationships among the twelve chromatic
degrees appear in this paper as adapted by Neumeyer (1986):
Hindemith
Symbol
Pitch
Class
Traditional
Designation(s)
Scale-Degree
Description
↑
−
11
VII / vii
lower leading tone
VII
10
VII / vii (VII)
minor seventh
VÍ
9
VI / vi
major sixth
VÌ
8
VI / vi (VI)
minor sixth
7
V/v
dominant, perfect fifth
6
IV, V
tritone, aug. fourth, dim. fifth
5
IV / vi
subdominant, perfect fourth
IIÍ
4
III / iii
major third
IIÌ
3
III / iii (III)
minor third
II
2
II / ii
major second
−
↓
1
II / ii
upper leading tone
φ
0
I/i
tonic, fundamental
∨
o
viii
List of Abbreviations
Works frequently cited have been identified by the following abbreviations:
Craft I
Hindemith, Paul. The Craft of Musical Composition, Book 1.
English translation by Arthur Mendel. New York: Schott
Music Corporation, 1942. (Fourth Edition, 1970)
Craft II
Hindemith, Paul. The Craft of Musical Composition, Book 2.
English translation by Otto Ortmann. New York: Schott
Music Corporation, 1941.
Craft III
Hindemith, Paul. Unterweisung im Tonsatz III, Übungsbuch
für den dreistimmigen Satz. Mainz: B. Schott's Söhne, 1970.
CT&P
Boatwright, Howard. CHROMATICISM Theory and
Practice. Fayetteville, New York: Walnut Grove Press, 1994
(distributed by Syracuse University Press).
HJB
Hindemith Jahrbuch.
Letters of PH Hindemith, Paul. Selected Letters of Paul Hindemith. Edited
and translated from the German by Geoffrey Skelton. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
MPH
Neumeyer, David. The Music of Paul Hindemith. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
PH
Skelton, Geoffrey. Paul Hindemith: The Man Behind the
Music. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1975.
PH in U. S.
Noss, Luther. Paul Hindemith in the United States. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1989.
PHSW
Paul Hindemith Sämtliche Werke.
Requiem VS
Hindemith, Paul. When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd.
New York: Associated Music Publishers, Inc., 1948. Vocal
score: scored for mezzo-soprano and baritone soli, SATB
chorus and piano (orchestral reduction).
1
Foreword
Like many young instrumentalists, I was first exposed to Paul
Hindemith’s music through his sonatas (the 1937 flute sonata in my case).
Although I did not understand the harmonic language of the sonata, I found
the melodic material engaging and ultimately playable. During my studies
at Eastman, I encountered little discussion of Hindemith or his music,
compared to the attention given to his contemporaries (Bartok, Stravinsky,
Schoenberg), except in lessons with composers Samuel Adler, who shared his
experience of lessons with Hindemith at Harvard, and Warren Benson, who
provided insight into Hindemith’s valuable contributions to the pedagogy of
composition. Only later did I begin to appreciate the depth and breadth of
Hindemith’s work.
I first heard Hindemith’s Requiem performed at Eastman Theater,
conducted by Robert Shaw in May 1991, and the dramatic musical
performance had a profound effect on me. After some preliminary research,
I undertook this work as the subject of my doctoral thesis. I was initially
intrigued by finding musical parallels between the smallest scale motive and
the largest overall strucure. The first bars’ thematic phrase is also the overall
proportional pattern of tonal centers in the hour-long Requiem. The
dramatic conflict of the poetry is consistently reflected in the motivic
structure of the music. In reviewing Hindemith’s theories, I found reasons
for extending the parallels I had previouly noted, through an increased
understanding of Hindemith’s perception, and conception, of the
fundamentals of tonal relations among simple intervals.
2
After an outline of the historical circumstances surrounding the work,
there follows a short, general discussion of cadences and how they demarcate
formal designs in tonal compositions. In addition, some aspects of
Hindemith’s theories are discussed, along with Hindemith’s own views on
cadence and form, in particular. Other literature by David Neumeyer, Peter
Cahn, and Howard Boatwright is then considered.
The analysis consists of a summary overview of the tonal
proportionality of the entire Requiem, and a detailed investigation of the
incipit motive and how its elements are projected throughout the Requiem.
Other uses of the motive are noted, such as its projection into the overall
form of the Prelude, and its varied appearances among melodic details.
Finally, a detailed four-part summary traces the dramatic and musical
narrative, along with details of how specific cadences (degree-progressions,
preparations, resolutions, types, musical forces, etc.), within and across the
individual numbers, contribute to the formal organization.
3
Chapter 1.
Historical Background
This commentary and analysis of Paul Hindemith's Requiem
originated with a concert of the work at Eastman Theater, Rochester, New
York, on 11 May 1991, conducted by Robert Shaw, who comissioned the
work and conducted the first performance at New York City Center on 14
May 1946. 1 This solemn but dramatic cantata, an hour-long setting of
Walt Whitman’s 1865 poem When Lilacs last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd, is
scored for mezzo-soprano (“alto”2 ), baritone, mixed chorus and orchestra.
Shaw has championed the Requiem throughout his career, and recorded a
definitive version during his long tenure with the Atlanta Symphony. Shaw
conducted it at Carnegie Hall in New York on 15 January 1995,3 during the
Hindemith centennial year.
Paul Hindemith’s great natural talent and adroit technique in both
performance and composition placed him at the forefront of new music in
post-World-War-I Germany. He was, in the words of Luther Noss, “at the
top of his profession in Germany by 1930.”4 He taught at the Hochschule
für Musik in Berlin through the 1920s and early 30s, and observed the
unravelling of German society and the political rise of the National
Socialists, who forced him into an indefinite leave-of-absence and eventually
1 PHSW ix.. Skelton, PH, 220, gives the date of the first performance as 5 May 1946, but this is corrected
in his recent English translation and edition, Letters of PH (see below).
2 Hindemith, Paul. “When Lilacs last in the Door-yard bloom'd,” score, 1946, Paul Hindemith
Collection, Yale University Music Library. Composer's manuscript of completed orchestral score uses
the term “alto.”
3 Taruskin, Richard. “In Search of the ‘Good’ Hindemith Legacy.” New York Times, Sunday, 8 January,
1995, sec. H, 25.
4 Noss, PH In U. S. 13.
4
banned his music. Hindemith ultimately realized the dire circumstances
that he and his wife Gertrude, who was part-Jewish, faced. Oliver Strunk,
through his leadership position at the Music Division of the Library of
Congress, arranged Hindemith’s first concert tour of the United States, in
1937. 5 During this tour he completed the important first volume of
Unterweisung im Tonsatz, or The Craft of Musical Composition.6 After two
more concert tours (1938, 1939), the Hindemiths fled from Nazi Germany
through Switzerland to the United States, where, in 1940, he began his
lengthy and influential tenure on the faculty of Yale University (19401953).7 Throughout the entire American engagement in World War II
(1941-45), Hindemith taught and composed at Yale. The couple became
citizens of the United States in 1943, and, as a gift to the judge who
administered the oath of citizenship, Hindemith wrote a brief song based on
a small section of Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard
Bloom’d.” This same song, transposed down a whole step, became the
shortest number of the 1946 Requiem, Nº 5.
Months after the end of World War II, in the midst of his relentlessly
energetic activities at Yale, Hindemith responded to Shaw’s commission
after the death of President Franklin Roosevelt by turning to Walt
Whitman’s entire Civil War elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard
Bloom’d.” Hindemith knew this and other Whitman poems in his late
5 ibid, 10.
6 Herein, the three completed volumes are referred to as Craft I, Craft II, and Craft III.
7 Gertrude, it should be pointed out, functioned as Paul’s administrative and social arm, managing her
husband’s files and correspondence, doing all his typing (he didn’t type), taking notes in his classes(!),
with an energy and enthusiasm that apparently rivaled his own. During this time she also obtained a
Masters Degree from Yale in comparative philology. (Source: personal notes of comments from various
surviving friends and collegues at 1995 Hindemith conference at Yale.)
5
teens, and he set three short songs to Whitman texts (all in German
translation, one having the same text, but not music, as the 1943 song and
Nº 5 in the Requiem). Letters from the immediate post-war period reveal
that Hindemith was deluged by requests from parties in Germany to return.
However, he showed little interest, since he felt his name was being sought
for exploitation.8 Thus, safely emigrating to America before Pearl Harbor
drew the country into the war, a new U.S. citizen as the dawn of the nuclear
age emerged, Hindemith produced the score of the Requiem in the spring of
1946.
Whitman’s 226-line poem, written in the wake of then-President
Lincoln’s death, mourns the dead of the American Civil War and evokes
poetic imagery surrounding the funeral train of President Lincoln as it
makes its way from Washington to Springfield, Illinois, after his
assassination in the spring of 1865. The poem uses the “lilac” and “everreturning spring” as metaphors of the cyclic return to life; a “bird” as
metaphor of the presence of the living and the will to “sing on;” the “star” as
metaphor of death’s approach; and the “long black trail” of smoke as
metaphor of the wake of mourning and grief that follows death’s arrival.
Images of 19th-century America abound in the text: armies of brothers,
sisters, comrades and companions, the living and the dead, the armies of
humanity connected across city and countrysides. The poem parallels the
process of death’s arrival, from the appearance of signifiers of life (spring) to
a signifier of death (star); to the despair (deceptive cadence) as one
contemplates death; through remembrance and sensation of the joys and
8 Skelton, PH, 221-223.
6
agonies of living (mezzo-soprano ariosos, rushing heartbeats of marches) to
the end of denial, the final steps of the journey, and the ironic peace of the
dead. At the beginning of the poem, “ever-returning spring” represents life’s
joyful and peaceful continuation, while the harbinger of death, the “Western
star,”appears “full of woe.” By the poem’s end, this is reversed: it is but the
living who remain to mourn and suffer—death is not a singularity but
“continuously arriving,” bringing a serene peace, and a celebration, “O sane
and sacred death.” By invoking Walt Whitman’s vision of the death of
Lincoln and others at the end of the Civil War, Hindemith alluded to the
recent demise of Roosevelt, as well as all the dead of World War II. The
poem makes universal distinctions between life and death in a typicallyAmerican transcendental framework. Although specific places in the United
States are named in the poem (e.g., “Manhatten,” “Mississippi”), the
narrative is neither political or ideological: it is transcendentally theological
as it celebrates the cyclic dichotomy of existence: life—and death.
The poem’s full title was incorporated by Hindemith, while the
shorter appellation “Requiem,” commonly used here and elsewhere, follows
from the composer’s subtitle, “A Requiem ‘for those we love’.”9 At the
recent Hindemith in the U.S.A. Conference at Yale Universiy (October
1995), the question of whether the phrase “For those we love” referred to an
actual musical work (in the manner of a Renaissance parody mass), or not,
was answered with the uncovering of the hymn whose incipit is indeed “For
those we love,” and whose musical line is quoted fully in Nº 8, in the
9 This capitalization (but with double quotes) is used on the autograph title-page.
7
original E minor.10 Later, this paper will consider musical elements of the
variant hymn tune which may be related to the musical basis of the Requiem,
since it is not inconceivable that the musical content of “For those we love,”
(and, to some extent, for the other American melody, “Taps” in Bb, which is
fully quoted in the orchestral battlefield of Nº 10) contributed significantly
to the musical formulations of this work. It is clear that the expressiveness
of the Requiem resulted from a significant emotional investment on
Hindemith’s part. He felt it to be among his best works, and he conducted
it often, particularly when he finally returned to the post-war European
musical scene.11
10Kowalke, Kim. “Hindemith, Whitman, and an American Identity in Music,” Paul Hindemith in the
U.S.A. conference at Yale University, 21 October 1995.
11Skelton, ed. Letters of PH, 234-5. In a telling 1956 letter to his American lawyer, Harvey Cox,
Hindemith assesses his decade-old Requiem in the context of complaining about artistic and political
freedom (and anti-Semitism) in the United States. Hindemith had been previously informed by Cox
that his U.S. citizenship would lapse if he didn’t revisit the country before 1958 (he was living in
Zurich). As the following passage from Hindemith’s reply (written in English) shows, Hindemith was
insulted by the requirement and refused to comply. This passage illustrates Hindemith’s perceptions of
art and politics in America and provides a context for his astonishing assessment of the Requiem:
I hope you are not too cross about my reactions to the Passport Division’s suggestions,
as reported to you by Gertrude. As a last word in this case let me just recapitulate: If the
procedures suggested—whiningly offering one’s services, making propaganda for American
music in America Houses, concerts, lectures, etc., etc., indulging in cocktail parties and other
nonsense—are the conditions for keeping one’s passport, one should have been warned at the
time the application for citizenship was filed. I never would have applied. Certainly we, like
many other artists and other people, escaped political oppression and were grateful for
American political etc. freedom (although I still remember some of our Jewish friends who,
after having been spared Hitler’s ovens, never found any place in New England where they
could spend their holidays, because of the “restricted clientele”), but, to be quite frank, in our
art we did not find any freedom. In music, freedom does not exist in America: the musician,
especially the composer, lives in medieval slavery, being the serve [serf] of all kinds of
Managers, union bosses, conductors, professional societies, against which no individual can do
anything, unless he has millions to spend and has the background of his musical activities in
old Europe. I think you saw glimpses of this deplorable situation in my own case. Of course I
have no complaints, as the whole world is still open to me and gives me more than the US with
their one and only resource of college teaching ever will, but people in America should learn to
see the difference and should not think that they have created and maintain the ideal
conditions for creative musical work. Nothing can be said against the above mentioned
conditions, as long as some little singers or their likes are concerned: they may, even ought to,
8
Until 1986, when Schott published a full score with critical notes as
part of its edition of Hindemith’s complete works, only the piano-vocal
score of 1948 was widely available. 12 The composer’s manuscript score,
donated by his widow to the Paul Hindemith collection of the Yale
University Music Library, is comprised of 161 single-sided pages, 10.5 by 14
inches in size: one unnumbered title page and 160 pages (numbered from 3
to 162) of systems assembled from pasted-on staves or groups of staves.13
These staves were cut from what appears to have been taller full-score pages.
All the musical notation is done in a notably neat hand, using a fine-tipped
pen and black ink. Other marks found in the score include many light-blue
pencil guidelines, and a few brief comments in German (purple or green
pencil) between the composer and his publisher, Willi Strecker. Aside from
standard Italian terms, verbal indications in the score are entirely in English.
Shortly thereafter, Hindemith himself translated the Whitman libretto into
German (along with the English score indications). The concluding section
of critical notes in the 1986 edition compares this score with the several
other versions and variants (the differences are non-substantive).14
Hindemith’s appreciation of, and aptitude for, literature extends back
to his well-read childhood in Frankfurt, where the precocious yet well-
climb up the ladder of success by offering services, play and sing in all the America Houses
possible, and drink all the cocktails offered. A musician’s services can be had by the
government for the asking—but I have the experience, that your doings and sayings will be
ignored if ever you dare having a different opinion from the general “we are perfect” one. I was
fourteen years in America and did my best to collaborate in the development of American
music. Nobody ever bothered to call me an American musician, I always remained for them a
foreigner, although I even wrote the piece that in due time and after the waning of that musical
ignorance may well become one of the few musical treasures of the nation (“When lilacs....”).
12PHSW VII,2 and PH RequiemVS (Schott ED 3800), respectively.
13PH Requiem Manuscript. See note 2.
14PHSW VII,2 185-201.
9
adjusted youth wrote and mounted puppet plays and musicals with his
brother, sister, and whomever else he could enlist. His effortless memory
aided his eventual fluency in many languages, including Latin and Greek.
Thus we see his parallel activity in letters, in his opera libretti, and, of
course, in his instructional books, lectures, programs and other writings. As
his influential professorship at Yale demonstrates, Hindemith was an
uncommon teacher of great physical and intellectual energy. He laid out his
curricular approach to the pedagogy of composition in several volumes of
writings, especially the three-volume Craft of Musical Composition which he
viewed in the direct tradition of Zarlino. Hindemith was a composer who
could, in language and musical example, effectively explain and demonstrate
the basis for much of the musical detail found in his own works. Ironically,
Hindemith’s significant contributions to music theory literature may have
the unfortunate side-effect of shading his considerable compositional
achievements by deflecting attention away from what he did, toward what
he said.
10
Chapter 2.
Basic Aspects Of Cadence And Form
In the Requiem, Hindemith employs a large-scale harmonic and
thematic architecture not only in the spirit of the traditional common
practice era, but also reflecting his own refined insights into chromatic
relationships. In keeping with tradition, the arrival of an important
harmonic area is prepared for and dramatized by the musical details of a
cadential passage, where a suitable antecedent phrase gives way to a basssupported arrival at the new harmonic area. The preparatory phrase, in
order to progress from the prior harmonic area, relies on musical
intensification to create heightened expectation. Then, at the point of
resolution, a phrase of marked contrast commences. Thus the typical
cadence provides a structural downbeat, preceded most often by some kind
of preparatory upbeat. In the reductive analysis of a typical tonal
composition, when the overall pattern of cadences is mapped, the various
harmonic regions are usually delimited as well. Generally speaking, our
provisional awareness of tonal musical structure derives from our physical
and aural perception of the impact of these peak events.
The collection of the traditional cadence types15 (authentic, plagal,
half, deceptive, phrygian, etc.) accounts for virtually all the conjoinings of
structural musical phrases within the Baroque and Classical Eras.
Throughout the Romantic Era, chromatic progressions, derived within the
major-minor system from cross-modal third relations and enharmonic
15e.g., see Gauldin, A Practical Approach to Eighteenth-Century Counterpoint. Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1988. 13-15.
11
duplicities, become more common as both length of phrase and continuity
of texture increase. Cadential details in such works tend to reflect this trend.
Generally, the use of the authentic (V–I) cadence declined, since its effect is
so immediate and unambiguous, while the use of the plagal cadence and its
chromatic variants increased.
As the modern period of the 20th-century unfolded, a rich brew of
alternative harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic styles were emerging, some
based on folk or national traditions, others on artistic philosophies like
atonality and neo-classicism. Mostly, the cadences of phrase-groups
continued to provide a reliable locus of points outlining the basic structures
of mainstream musical works. In the case of Hindemith’s music, we see a
style rooted in the motivic formulations of the 19th-century masters,
augmented by the chromatic expressionism of his own youthful inclination,
but informed by the learned styles of the Baroque and the Renaissance.
Hindemith’s generously chromatic yet highly rational tonal vocabulary
retains the organizing technique of cadential emphasis.
In the hour-long Requiem, there are, therefore, a number of cadences,
of various types. Cadential points are spread across the various numbers,
delimiting the forms within the numbers, and across them. Some possess a
slow-moving inevitability sustained by the sparest details, particularly those
few numbers involving the spiritual alto, and several involving the
protagonist baritone. Others use the baritone, chorus and orchestra for
loud, dramatic moments, or for tutti finali. Within the lines and musical
surfaces of the important cadences, the motivic underpinings lurk near,
waiting to be found. Later, our discussion will turn to the most significant
12
of these cadences. Interestingly, the artistry employed in the living music of
these cadences contrasts markedly with the essentially simple-minded twoand three-tone cadence examples which populate the Craft (see below).
13
Chapter 3.
Hindemith’s Theories
Since this paper explores musical form and cadential gestures, we
cannot avoid considering some of the composer’s own opinions on
“cadence” and “form.” Moreover, ex post facto, it must be said that some of
Hindemith’s theoretic propositions (especially the implications of intervalroots) tend to be germane, not only in illuminating the inner workings of
this piece, but also in understanding Hindemith’s way of hearing and
thinking about chromatic relationships and tonality in general. In short,
knowledge of Hindemith’s theories can indeed inform one’s understanding
of Hindemith’s style, but it does not follow that his theories, as such, had
any role in shaping his compositional output other than representing
articulate but provisional literary expressions of the way he heard all music
work (for example, consider his tonal analysis at the end of Craft I of a
section of Schoenberg’s Klavierstück, Opus 33a).16
Almost all of the theoretical postulations offered by Hindemith are
given principally in a pedagogical context, such as part-writing or
composing exercises, as opposed to developing an exclusively-retrospective
reductive method of music analysis (as did Schenker). Some of Hindemith’s
points suffer from ambiguity, inconsistency or incompleteness, and as such,
are open to scholarly scrutiny and criticism. He is concerned with formal
abstraction, insofar as it expresses his intellectual rationalizations for his
hearing and composing. His examples throughout the three volumes of the
16Craft I, 217-9.
14
Craft are brief and clear, in two, three, and four parts, not unlike historical
predecessors. And many of his theories are compatible with the wellfounded common practice of tonal harmony: for example, triadic or perfect
consonances are the goals of phrases, and stepwise movement is the
fundamental melodic material.
However, the relationship between the tonic and its eleven chromatic
neighbors is reformulated on a significantly different premise, which Allan
Forte characterizes as “establishing the twelve chromatic degree-centers from
the prior twenty-four keys.”17 Hindemith sees the continuous and
equidistant chromatic scale as the basic tone pallette, without preconditions,
and rejects the traditional distinction between closely-related (diatonic) and
distant (chromatically-altered) keys. The twelve chromatic degrees relate to
each other according to the characteristics of the interval formed between
each pair. The axiomatic characteristics of chromatic intervals are set forth
by Hindemith in his Series 1 and Series 2, shown below in Figure 1.
Hindemith refers to these series repeatedly throughout the Craft, so
that an understanding of their meaning is prerequisite to any understanding
of his chain of reasoning. In what he calls Series 1, Hindemith ranks the
chromatic degrees by their declining affinity with an arbitrarily designated
tonic degree. This affinity pertains to pairs only—not to any implied chords
or more complicated situations (yet). In Series 1, the first pitch is measured
against each subsequent pitch, in order of the increasing relative intensity of
the intervals’ respective tone colors. Then, in Series 2, all of the two-toned
17Forte, Allan. “Hindemith’s contribution to Music Theory in the United States,” Paul Hindemith in the
U.S.A conference at Yale University, 21 October 1995. Quoted from personal notes.
15
intervals (except the tritone) are found to have roots, an attribute formerly
reserved for traditional tertian harmony of three or more notes.
In Hindemith’s view, these interval-roots form the basis for
determining the overall chord-root of any collection of three or more pitches.
In a strictly melodic direction, note-to-note interval-root successions may
account for subtle distinctions in rhythmic stress among otherwise-similar
melodic segments.
Figure 1. Hindemith’s Series 1 and 2 as shown in Craft I.18 Series 1 ranks the
chromatic degrees according to their decreasing affinity with the initial degree.
The arrows in Series 2 indicate the roots of the respective intervals. Note that
each series begins with the interval of the octave (asserting the premise of pitch,
before pitch-class). The tritone, whose root, Hindemith says, is “indetermined,”
does not appear in either series, leaving the question of the distribution of the
root balance in the tritone unresolved.
Hindemith’s conceptual framework reëvaluates the tonal motivation
behind the chromatic motion of tones. Series 1 and 2 together form the
foundation of Hindemith’s arguments, but he warns against seeing their
relationships as straight lines; he suggests the more appropriate analogy of
planets, whose orbits bring them to exert varying gravitational effects upon
each other.
To elucidate Hindemith’s chromatic frame of reference with respect
to the following discussion, Figure 2 combines the chromatic circle of half18Craft I, 96. But in MPH, 31, Neumeyer’s omission of Hindemith’s arrows pointing to the interval roots
in Series 2. Without this axiomatic information, serious misunderstandings of Hindemith’s theory
seem inevitable.
16
steps with Hindemith’s own chromatic-degree symbols (a collection of
Roman numerals, adapted Schenkerian symbols, graphic symbols and the
Greek letter phi for the tonic).19 The note-names of degrees are given
relative to C#, the tonic of the Requiem. The tonic degree is placed at the
rightmost to indicate its status as the outcome of a temporal progression.
The progressions which Hindemith considers the least ambiguous (from the
dominant, subdominant, and the two leading-tone degrees) share relatively
equivalent vertical displacements (above and below the tritone-tonic axis).
SUBDOMINANT
TRITONE
DOMINANT
UPPER LEADING TONE
TONIC
LOWER LEADING TONE
Figure 2. Hindemith’s tonal relationships and their symbols, expressed in the key
of the Requiem, C#. The chromatic scale is presented on an oval whose
rightmost point represents the tonic (given the Greek “phi” for “fundamental”
tone by Hindemith). Shaded squares represent black piano-keys. Hindemith
adopted Schenker’s flagged half-notes to represent the traditional IV and V
(stems down and up respectively). Black arrows connect dominant and
subdominant with their respective functionally equivalent leading-tone degrees a
tritone away. Grey lines indicate cycles of perfect fourths and fifths.
19Tonic, dominant and subdominant symbols are introduced in Craft II (93), with the tonic phi rotated
onto its side. In Craft III (98-9), an unwieldy system of Roman fractions is presented. The symbols
used in this paper are based on Neumeyer’s adaptation (MPH, 55).
17
At the end of Chapter 3 in Craft I, Hindemith gives his views on
chromaticism:
All composers nowadays make use of the extended
melodic and harmonic relations that result from the use of the
material of the chromatic scale, but for lack of an adequate
theoretical foundation they still try to cram every manifestation
within the narrow confines of diatonic interpretation.
Anyone who has once realized how many complicated
and unclear explanations can be avoided by the assumption of
the chromatic scale as the basic scale of musical theory…will
appreciate it.
Everything that can be expressed in the diatonic system
can be equally well expressed with this chromatic material,
since the diatonic scales are contained in the chromatic. The
advantages of tonal connection and of chordal and melodic
interrelation are as much as they ever were.20
Building upon his Series 2, Hindemith’s concept of harmony leads to
new functional definitions of intervals, chords, and roots. At the beginning
of his section on chord analysis in Craft I, Hindemith gives three critical
guidelines for analyzing chords built from any chromatic pitch collections:
1. Construction in thirds must no longer be the basic rule for
the erection of chords.
2. We must substitute a more all-embracing principle for that
of the invertibility of chords.
3. We must abandon the thesis that chords are susceptible of a
variety of interpretations. 21
To satisfy his first point, Hindemith asserts that any collection of
pitches, and not just the triadic varieties, may be considered a chord whose
root can be determined. He begins by establishing the interval-roots (Series
2).22 By evaluating a chord of three or more tones according to interval
20Craft I, selected from 47-49.
21Craft I, 94-5.
22Craft I, 68-84.
18
content (and their relative “roots”), the “best interval” may be found; thus,
the “root” of that interval represents the root of the chord as a whole.
Following the reasoning which developed Series 1 and 2, Hindemith sorts
triads, chords, and other pitch-set sonorities into six main categories and
several sub-categories of internal harmonic tension. Criteria for chord
classification include: the absence or presence of a tritone (Group A or B),
seconds/sevenths interval content, root determinability (or not), and
inversion (the root is or is not in the bass ).23
In some cases (such as the fourth-chord, the augmented triad, the
diminished-seventh chord) a chord root may be “indeterminate.” Here, as
well as in the cases of the “indefinite third” (major triad with a sixth, or
minor-seventh chord), the root may be determined by the chord’s
realization in pitch-space. By using major and/or minor triads, Hindemith
shows that, in a root-progression, a degree has the potential of progressing to
any of the other eleven chromatic degrees with satisfactory voice-leading.24
Again, the idea of chromatic equality represents a departure from traditional
formulae for harmonic distance and progression.
Pursuing his second point, Hindemith recognizes only two significant
“inversions” of chords: either the root is in the bass, or it is above. A chord
whose root is in the bass has more structural authority, or strength of
assertion, than a chord whose root is above the bass. The germane
rhythmic/structural implication is simply stated: the presence of a root in
the bass will give an arriving chord a greater measure of accent than
otherwise. This does not mean that Hindemith is insensitive to the
23Craft I, 224-5 contains Hindemith’s table of chord classes, with examples.
24Craft I, 121-3. More examples in Craft III, Ch.16.
19
distinctions between inversions. In fact, the Requiem contains examples of
triads in specific inversions.25 However, in the context of expanded
harmonic resources, traditional meanings for inversions are untenable, and
only the chord-root’s presence or absence in the bass has practical
significance.
Hindemith’s third point is aimed at the problem of the tritone, and
the fact that the successful classification of certain chords containing tritones
“…does not, of course, abolish the harmonic uncertainty of the tritone.”26
Hindemith is mainly referring to the problem of implications resulting from
various “spellings” of diminished-seventh chords. Undoubtedly, the third
point refers to the four possible resolutions of any diminished-seventh
chord, regardless of spelling (or, by further implication, preceding context).
There is, moreover, another “spelling” example which is directly implicated
in Hindemith’s harmonic practice. Let us examine the tonal functionality
found in the enharmonic usages of the chromatically identical dominantseventh and German-sixth chords.
First of all, since in the chromatic system a configuration of tones is
considered independent of its diatonic spelling, Hindemith’s theory would
reject the spelled “root” of the augmented-sixth (enharmonically, a tone
below the root of the dominant-seventh chord). The actual root is that of
the enharmonically-spelled dominant-seventh chord, and the actual rootprogression of resolution is by descending half-step. This implies that a
major-minor-seventh chord may have two equally-viable “dominant”
resolutions: the root may move down a perfect fifth, or down a semitone.
25 U-chord, Prelude, m.. 22, also Nº6, mm. 12-16; and P-chords, beginning of Nº 10.
26Craft I, 100.
20
Each of these progressions allows the tritone to resolve traditionally to the
root and third of one degree or the other. Or, in the case of progressions of
seventh-chords, the seventh and third resolve to the third and seventh, in
reality descending a semitone in parallel.
Extending the logic one step further, we may ask whether a kind of
functional equivalence exists between a root-progression of falling fifths and
one of descending half-steps, exclusive of chord type. To answer in the
affirmative, one has to look no further than the chromatically- and modallyexpanded tonal harmony of American jazz and popular music to find, as
part of its common practice, widespread use of “tritone substitution,” a
method of reharmonization where, in a chord-progression of descending
fifths, every other chord is replaced by one whose root is a tritone away.
This root-progression, of course, yields a line of descending semitones: for
example, the root-progression E-A-D-G-C becomes E-Eb-D-Db-C.
Different types of seventh-chords are commonly employed in half-step
progressions, such as: Em7-Eb7-Dm7-Db7-CM7. Most commonly, such
tritone substitutions are placed on upbeats, preserving a diatonic character
across the level of strong beats (E…D…C). This line of speculation has
been explored in this paper because the fall of the chord-root by a
semitone—that is, from the upper leading tone—to the tonic at cadential
points is very common in (and typical of) Hindemith’s music.27
27In Craft III, 89, Hindemith defines the names of the leading tones according to their directionality, and
not their relative positions, clearly intending to associate the names with their respective arrow symbols:
↑− = aufwärtsgehender Leiteton (h in der Tonalität c)
↓− = abwärtsgehender Leiteton (des in der Tonalität c)
In view of the functional importance Hindemith places on the twin leading tones, the reticence (and
confusion) in the English-language literature surrounding the English terms “upper leading tone” and
“lower leading tone” was surprising. Both Neumeyer and Boatwright reverse the intuitive sense of these
terms, so that the English adjectives “upper” and “lower” indicates the tones’ positions in relation to a
21
Using Hindemith’s methodology, any succession of sonorities,
whether simple intervals in two parts28 or complex non-traditional
harmonies, may be considered as a linear progression of chord-roots, which
he calls a degree-progression. In the case of larger musical spans, degreeprogressions trace the most prominent structural chord-roots and thereby
chart the large-scale tonal movement. Hindemith does not so much
promote reductive analysis, but instead advocates a purposeful
compositional technique when, at the end of his discussion of modulation in
Craft 1, he states:
The tonal centers of all the tonalities of a composition
produce, when they are connected without the inclusion of any
of the intervening tones, a second degree-progression, which
should be constructed [my emphasis: note the didactic tone]
along the same lines as the first one, built of the roots of all the
chords. Here we see the full unfolding of the organizing power
of series 1. The entire harmonic construction of a piece may
be seen in this way: against one tonal center chosen from
among many roots others are juxtaposed which either support
it or compete with it. Here, too, the tonal center that appears
most often, or that is particularly strongly supported by its
fourth and its fifth, is the most important. As a tonal center of
tonic degree rather than the direction in which each tone may progress. This is opposed to Hindemith’s
intention, and makes his arrow symbols counter-intuitive. In MPH , Neumeyer never distinguishes
between the upper and lower by name, relying on the unexplained symbols. He refers initially to a
“lower leading tone” (55) and once to an instance of the “upper leading note” (74). In Boatwright’s
CHROMATICISM, the term “upper leading tone” is explicitly defined as the opposite of its intuitive
sense (76 ). In spite of the fact that, in a personal interview, Mr. Boatwright said that Hindemith did
used the terms just as he and Neumeyer did, I cannot help but suspect that this was a provisional
semantic compromise on Hindemith’s part early in his teaching at Yale. Perhaps he never thought of
“upward” or “downward,” or “rising” or “falling”—or simply connecting the terms with a hyphen:
“upper-leading tone” or “lower-leading tone.” Having made this point of clarification, in this thesis, I
yield to the established English usage: the terms lower leading tone for [ ↑− ] and upper leading tone for
[ ↓− ].
28Craft II, Ch.VII.
22
a higher order, it dominates a whole movement or a whole
work.29
Distinguishing the degree-progression of chord-roots from the linear
shapes of the outer voices, Hindemith dissects the latter by means of the
step-progression, the usually-stepwise connections among the more important
melodic tones in any melodic line, most significantly in the upper and lower
lines. While melodic figuration may implicate an underlying chord-root,
other linear properties yield the nature of its melodic characteristics. As
Hindemith explains:
…More important are those tones which are placed at
important positions in the two-dimensional structure of a
melody: the highest tones, the lowest tones, and tones that
stand out particularly because of their metric position or for
other reasons. The primary law of melodic construction is that
a smooth and convincing melodic outline is achieved only
when these important points form a progression in seconds.30
Hindemith’s subsequent examples show that several step-progressions
may be traced simultaneously in a “well-constructed” melodic phrase.
Hindemith’s point-of-view here, as it is throughout the Craft volumes, is not
descriptive but prescriptive: the idea of step-progression is advanced
primarily to augment compositional technique; the secondary purpose is
analysis. The Requiem contains many examples of such stepwise linear
connectivity at various levels of formal design.
Having reviewed aspects of Hindemith’s theory (chromatic degrees,
Series 1 and 2, interval-root, chord and chord-root definition, degreeprogression, step-progression), we now arrive at his comments on the
29Craft I, 151.
30Craft I, 193. Examples, 194-6.
23
cadence. However, discussion of specific cadence-types found in
Hindemith’s music will be deferred until the review of literature, since other
scholars have contributed essential groundwork on this subject.
It is not difficult to appreciate the elegant directness in Hindemith’s
own characterization of cadential function: “In the cadence, form, having
previously lost the upper hand to melodic and harmonic elements, regains
it.”31 Throughout his practical writings, the subject of “cadence” is
repeatedly emphasized. He sees it as the rhythmic event which periodically
focuses all the melody, harmony, voice leading, and texture, creating largerscale structure, or form. Or, as Neumeyer puts it, “Hindemith views the
cadence as the point at which harmony and melody within a phrase intersect
with the structural forces of tonality and form.”32 In each of the three Craft
volumes, there is considerable space devoted to discussions and pedagogic
examples.
In Craft I, Hindemith discusses the distinctive characteristics of
cadential passages:
Cadences are chord-progressions of which the effect is
strongly final, and which in many styles are actual formulae of
conclusion, composed, like all chord-successions, of rhythmic,
melodic, and harmonic elements, but in which the tendency to
bring a development to a provisional or complete ending is allpowerful. In them, the rhythm confines itself to a few clear
and unmistakable time-divisions, the melodic steps proceed
directly to their goals, the two-voice framework employs the
simplest intervals, and the harmonic fluctuation exhibits the
most unambiguous progression from less satisfactory to more
satisfactory chords, from tension to relaxation. Their rootsuccessions cannot produce anything different from what is
31Craft I, 180.
32Neumeyer, MPH, 44.
24
contained in any other chord-progressions, but the
predominating structural purpose of the cadence results in an
intensification of root relations. Thus, …the final tone of the
cadence is so strong that it becomes the tonal center. The
extent to which every element in the cadence subordinates
itself to the structural drive towards finality is shown by the
fact that in the chords making up a cadence even the highest
laws of clean writing are often disobeyed, and consecutive
parallels, both opened and covered, ugly melodic leaps,
chromatic slides, and other devices which would ordinarily be
used only with the greatest reserve and only for particular
expressive effects, are employed without hesitation.33
Craft 2 is concerned with two-part writing. Throughout the noteagainst-note examples, the degree-progressions resulting from simple
intervals are constantly emphasized. Hindemith opens his discussion of
cadences by referring to an example (141) which ends with the well-known
subdominant-dominant-tonic root progression of IV-V-I (or, in
Hindemith’s system, - -φ). Hindemith does not immediately refer to the
functional labels when he states:
In figure 141, we note an especially important and
effective tone succession in the last three tones of the degreeprogression. By means of this the φ is determined with
remarkable definiteness. This is one of several patterns
functioning in the construction of degree-progressions and the
harmonic progressions built upon them. They are similar to
the melody formulae used in melodic progressions. They are
chiefly adapted to the creations of endings, since they definitely
determine the φ, and we call them cadences. A cadence in a
degree progression consists of at least three tones, of which the
last is always the φ. The other two tones drive forward into
this last tone. For the closing effect of a cadence, the
relationship among the three tones (of its degree-progression)
is of the utmost importance. If the precedes the φ, and either
33Craft I, 138-9.
25
the precedes the or else the is preceded by its own , we
obtain the strongest possible cadence.
The further the relationship between the next-to-last
tone and the φ is removed, the weaker does this final cadencing
progression become. The strength of the cadence-beginning,
on the other hand, is in the highest degree dependent upon the
relationships existing between it and the remaining two tones
of the cadence pattern. The interplay of this relationship
among the three cadence tones permits the construction of the
most diverse closing formulae.34
This introduction is followed by many practice exercises in which
various arbitrary “cadential” step-progressions are to be realized (in two
voices). Further remarks include the following:
The statement is often made that all harmonic
progression is nothing more than an extended or elaborated
cadence. This, like all such statements, is only partly true.
Nevertheless, the cadence is such an important part of the
supply of materials for tone-setting that by linking several
cadences, entire pieces can be filled out harmonically;
moreover, in its formal fixity the cadence is a dependable
architectural part, always ready at hand to help round out
difficult and unpolished sections. Above all, the student can
always lean and depend upon it. For this reason, cadences
expressed by means of the degree-progression are here granted
relatively full treatment, although in a two-voice setting a
cadence cannot be developed to full auditory and harmonic
effectiveness.35
In Craft 3, Hindemith presents a detailed survey of possible final steps
(in cadential terms, penultimate-ultimate) to include the four permutations
of major and minor triads (major-major, major-minor, minor-major, and
minor-minor), again using each unique interval to supply the bass motion.
He provides rationalizations for comparing their effects, and he refuses to
34Craft II, 98-99. N.B.: unlike Crafts I and III, the symbol for tonic degree in Craft II is rotated ninety
degrees, a horizontal phi. However, when quoting from Craft II, the vertical phi will be used.
35ibid, 101.
26
exclude any possibility, even though he explicitly considers some
degree/mode progressions weak, awkward, unlikely, or to be avoided.
In spite of Hindemith’s detailed discussions and musical examples, his
pedantic approach does not constitute or suggest a methodology for
addressing many of the questions that his theories raise. For example,
having developed the premises of Series 1 and 2, and having established the
three-tone model for cadence-building (except for the special two-chord
cases36), Hindemith does not continue into a methodologically-rigorous
evaluation of the 110 possible cadential degree-progressions involving three
non-duplicated chromatic tones (that is, two tones preceding an arbritrary
tonic degree). Rather, he depends on his experience and intuition to
enumerate and evaluate the possibilities, a narrative method which is
sufficient for his (and his students’) purposes.37
36Craft I, 139, 142.
37Preliminary research by this writer, growing out of his discussions with Howard Boatwright and others,
has shown the analytical potential of just such an undertaking: trichordal cadential segments and their
permutations are completely enumerated and grouped by their respective set-classes; their linear intervalroot directionalities are plotted; then, the simple durational heirarchies that result are examined.
However, further discussion of this study it is beyond the scope of this thesis.
27
Chapter 4.
Other Music Literature
Only a few discussions of the Requiem can be found in the analytical
literature. As mentioned above, however, Kowalke’s recent discovery of the
source for the hymntune “For those we love” is relevant, and will be
discussed following the central analysis, below.38 Previously, the brief
section in David Neumeyer’s Music of Paul Hindemith was the sole study to
address to any degree the general musical structure of the Requiem, which he
calls “Hindemith’s only profoundly American work.”39 Neumeyer’s points
on various pieces throughout the book are well argued and make use of a
variety of methods, as a reviewer noted, “in an attempt to uncover the truly
important aspects of a work.”40 but the major problem with his analysis of
the Requiem is his over-reliance on the pre-existing 1943 song (Nº 5) to
supply all the motivic precursors (in particular, the falling minor-third
motive) of the Requiem. Nonetheless, he provides a complete reductive
analysis of Nº 5, and traces the use of the “thrush motive” in Nº 2 and Nº
10. Although Neumeyer does eventually mention the crucial incipit motive
of the Prelude, he overlooks its significance (perhaps because it begins with a
rising minor-third).41 Where he gives a diagram of the eleven numbered
movements and their tonal centers, he excludes the orchestral Prelude from
the analytical scheme, overlooking the source of many motivic and
38Kowalke, op. cit. See note 10.
39Neumeyer, MPH, 216.
40Gauldin, Robert. Review of The Music of Paul Hindemith, by David Neumeyer. Music Theory Spectrum
10 (1988): 139.
41ibid, 221.
28
structural features, especially the clear tonal projection of the Prelude motive
into the musical structure (see Chapter 5 below).42
The letters and writings of Robert Shaw are valuable for their
historical evidence and interpretive illumination, but they do not disclose
any new insights into the specifics of the musical form. Two other writers
use individual musical examples from the Requiem, the earlier being Peter
Cahn’s 1971 paper in Hindemith Jarbüch I on Hindemith’s cadences,43 and
the more recent citation being in Howard Boatwright’s 1994 volume,
CHROMATICISM—Theory and Practice.44 Boatwright, a Hindemith
student during the 1940s, inherited the instructional responsibility for
Hindemith’s theory course when the latter left Yale for Zurich.
Boatwright, who bases his CHROMATICISM—Theory and Practice
on the material Hindemith taught at Yale, uses the introductory orchestra
passage from the beginning of No.3 to demonstrate the favored Hindemith
cadential degree-progression: by descending-half-step, from the upper
leading tone, occurring here in the top voice (mm. 12-14).45 In spite of his
routine reliance on this cadential path, Hindemith nonetheless descibes the
effect of the cadence as “mild.”46
Peter Cahn’s broad paper classifies cadences by the type of
penultimate degree- or step-progression: falling fifth, plagal, thirds, whole
steps and half steps down and up, and the tritone. As an example of the last
type, Cahn cites the Requiem at the end of No.3 (mm. 161-71). He shows
42ibid, 218
43Cahn, Peter. “Hindemiths Kadenzen.” Hindemith Jahrbuch 1 (1971), 80-134.
44Boatwright, CT&P, 77.
45ibid, 76-7.
46Craft I, 142. “The use of the minor second (upwards or downwards) just before the tonal center results,
owing to its leading-tone tendency, in the mildest of all cadences.”
29
in the accompaniment how a g-minor triad is followed by a tonic c#-minorseventh chord, while at the same time the baritone melody also traverses the
tritone G-E-D-C#. This observation reveals an elusive motivic feature of
the composition, the subtle, recurring relationship of G to the tonic C#
(especially near cadences). Cahn clearly shows that Hindemith could—and
did—use every interval to construct cadential steps in actual compositions.
But Cahn’s survey stops short of looking at more than the final two tones
and their interval, except in the cases of steps upward or downward.
30
Chapter 5.
Overview Of Formal Structure
The principal harmonic and melodic features of Hindemith’s
Requiem are shown graphically in Figure 3. This two-line framework
symbolically differentiates, at a glance, the most general musical structure,
namely: (1.) in the treble clef, the graphic notes represents the emphasized
tones of various melodic step-progressions in the main vocal and orchestral
lines; and (2.) in the bass clef, the graphic notes show the most prominent
chromatic degree-centers—the prominent chord-roots in successive areas of
tonal prolongation. Each of Hindemith’s twelve movements (the eleven
numbers, or Nºs, plus the Prelude) is reduced to a single “measure” whose
length is proportionally based on the timings of Robert Shaw’s recorded
performance. The final bar-line of each number is shown (but internal
double barlines are not). Thus, the entire Requiem, in its crudest
proportionality, may be viewed at once.
The duration of the Requiem divides neatly into two halves, and once
again into four quarters, or sections, each of which exhibits a self-contained
musical structure with a significant final cadence. Each quarter of the
Requiem is displayed in its own respective graphic musical system. The top
line of each system shows the movement number (Prelude, Nºs 1-11),
timing information (minutes:seconds). Below that, the kinds of musical
forces are noted, using the mnemonically-chosen uppercase A, B, C, and O
to represent, respectively, the Alto (mezzo-soprano), Baritone, Chorus and
Orchestra. The middle line, in treble clef, contains the barest, and by no
31
means exhaustive, outline of some important melodic tones, principally in
the voices. To maintain the simplicity of the two-part outline, some
baritone pitches have been displayed in the upper octave.
At the bottom of each system, a staff with a bass clef shows the most
established degree-progression within each movement, with a modest amount
of subsidiary details (as space allows, not necessarily to scale). Downward
arrows above the bass staff, and measure numbers below, mark the respective
finali of the most important cadences.
32
Figure 3. Formal Overview of Hindemith’s Requiem. A roughly proportional
layout of the four quarters shows the basic structural features. The treble clef
indicates emphasized melodic tones, while the bass clef shows general areas of
respective tonal prolation. Nota Bene: accidentals are applied within but not
between numbers.
33
The first system of Figure 3 shows the orchestral Prelude plus Nºs
1,2, and 3, which together form a single continuous exposition of tonic
material, opening, closing, and repeatedly asserting the domain of C#. In
the second system of Figure 3, Nºs 4, 5, 6, and 7, the music dwells first on
the tonality of the minor-sixth degree, A, but ultimately moves to E, a fifth
above, for the fugue of Nº 7, where the E major finalis creates a powerful
midpoint climax. In the third system (which begins the second half of the
Requiem), the two numbers Nº 8 and Nº 9 are each harmonically selfcontained, in C and F, respectively. Nº 10 and Nº 11 together form the
fourth and final section. After Nº 10’s initial tonic-P chord (which links
the tone F to C# once again), passages in three different harmonic areas
alternate (Bb-F#-D-Bb-F#-D-Bb-F#-D). The baritone joins the orchestra in
the first two Bb sections, but is replaced in the third Bb section by an offstage
trumpet sounding “Taps” (in Bb, over the same music as before, again
asserting the tone F as a non-degree-center). As the battle music subsides,
the timpani D ( Nº 10, mm. 242-53) prepares the unconditional surrender
to C# (Nº 11, m. 1), the primary tonal area of the Requiem.
The tonal movement between pairs of adjacent quarters is invariably
by descending major-third degree-intervals: first, from the concluding C#
of Nº 3 to the beginning A of Nº 4; then from the E of Nº 7 to the C of
Nº 8; the last major-third is between the final F of Nº 9 and the opening Pchord of Nº 10, which signals the reemergence of C# in the final quarter.
In its ultimate reduction, the tonal movement is a complete cycle of
descending major-thirds whose cadential goals outline the augmented triad
34
C# (first quarter) to A (beginning of second quarter) to F (end of third
quarter) to C# (final quarter).
At the opposite end of the temporal scale, the overall degreeprogression of the Requiem is explicitly stated in the first five tones of the
composition, at the beginning of the Prelude: a pedal C#, followed by the
phrase A-C-F-E in the trombones (figure 4, top). This incipit motive
(henceforth referred to as the P-motive), along with its salient musical
characteristics, is found projected into the deepest background level of the
Requiem’s degree-progression (figure 4, bottom). The internal structure of
the Prelude also projects the motivic line (also figure 4, bottom). This
motive is also found melodically, embedded in the musical details of the
musical surface and nearby levels, an observation to which we shall return.
Thus, the C# is projected into section one, the A into section two, C
and F discretely in section three, but in the fourth section, the E of the
motive returns not as a tonicized degree, but as the minor-third of the
opening—and prevailing—tonic C#. In fact, E is a frequent degree-center:
in Nº 1, Nºs 4 and 7, in Nºs 8 (“For those we love”) and Nº 9, but,
significantly, in neither Nº 10 nor Nº 11, where it subserves the final C#.
After its strong assertion as the minor third of C# at the final cadence of the
Prelude, E is the degree-center at the midpoint cadence of Nº 7. The shift
of the overall tonal center from tonic minor to relative major, by way of the
pivotal lowered-sixth degree is a centuries-honored musical formula (i-VIV/VI=III) commonly found in minor-keyed sonata-formed pieces.
35
Figure 4. Prelude motive as projected into large scale forms of both the Prelude
and the Requiem. At the top are the opening five bars of the prelude, with the
orchestration noted. Below, the formal projection of the P-motive is shown, with
the corresponding measures of the Prelude above the staff, and the corresponding
movement Nºs of the Requiem below the staff. The lower brackets show the four
quarters, as detailed in Figure 3.
Let us consider the singular position of the degree-center A.. Why is
the second quarter, largely in A, left harmonically opened by a significant
cadence on its dominant degree, E, when every other equivalent formal
section (conforming to the P-motive/degree-centers projection indicated
above) is closed? The tone A, in opening of the upper voice in the Prelude,
immediately asserts the deep musical (that is to say, harmonic) conflict in
terms of the resultant interval-root energy distribution: a tone and its
minor-sixth. Does some characteristic of this initial interval suggest a
36
musical rationale to support this hypothetical accounting of the motive-tostructure symmetry?
The short answer is: yes, there is a motivic rationalization, and it
derives from an axiomatic feature of Hindemith’s theory, the interval-roots
expressed in Series 2. If, in the first five bars, we determine the intervalroots which occur when superposing the upper voice A-C-F-E against the
initial C# bass, only in the case of the interval C#-A is the interval-root not
C#. In spite of the upper voice’s linear assertion of F as the central degree,
the interval-root dominance of C# under both F and E confirms that the
actual center remains the pedal C#.
In the P-motive, the equally distant tone A produces a paradoxical
conflict between the initial bass C# and the melodically accentuated F. The
tonality of the initial C# pedal is destabilized by the syncopated interval-root
shift to A., and, although F is unquestionably in harmony with a C# degreecenter, F has acquired degree-strength by the preceding triadic outline of A
to C. In the large-scale form of the Requiem, this conflict is expressed in
the second section (Nºs 4-7) by the initial tonality A , which then partiallyresolves as the degree-progression modulates to E (mm. 21-31) for the
fugue which concludes Nº 7. At that triumphal cadence, the upper-voice
G# succeeds directly from A. (m. 182), linking the upper step-progression to
the baritone’s opening G#. Therefore, since the initial A presents the actual
tonal conflict in the P-motive, the section whose degree-center begins on A
(Nºs 4-7) is harmonically opened, while the others whose degree-centers
correspond to the other tones of the P-motive are harmonically closed, since
all their intervals are rooted on C#, and, thus, present no such intrinsic
37
conflict. In this case, elements of Hindemith’s own theory illuminate the
motivic and formal conflicts which shape the Requiem and contribute to its
formal coherence.
Between the extremes of the opening five bars and the overall formal
projection, the interval contour of the P-motive is found elsewhere in the
Requiem. In the Prelude, the P-motive is used literally and repeatedly in
contrapuntal development, but it can also be seen in a formal projection (see
Figure 4). In other places, the P-motive is partially revealed under melodic
prolongation and embellishment, sometimes appearing incomplete or
deceptively modified. Here are some places the P-motive may be located:
various places in Nºs 1-3, incomplete, often hidden when complete;
opening of Nº 1, incomplete, complements dorian modality; final cadence
of Nº 7 on E major, deceptive and incomplete; in Nº 8 (mm. 12-3, 85-6)
embedded; in Nº 9, in ciaccone (e.g., mm. 42-5, 67-70, 137-9), embedded;
in Nº 11, the hidden embedding at the final pentultimate phrase (mm. 904).
The P-motive plays a role in several cadences, most notably at both
the midpoint cadence on E and the final descent to C#. In these cases, the
P-motive is transposed a minor third lower than the incipit: F#-A-D-C#.
At the midpoint cadence (end of Nº 7) the chorus delivers a rhythmic
syncope of the first two tones. However, the next tone is not the expected
fifth-fall to D, but the half-step down, F#-A-G#, over the bass E (Nº 7,
mm. 180-2, “Lo! this land.”), deceptively incomplete. At the end of Nº 11,
the solo voices complete the motive, and the final cadential step is from the
upper leading tone.
38
The critical evaluation of such a large, dramatic work is a different
task from the analysis of smaller works or single movements, since the
required abundance of musical detail expands the composer’s possibilities
and responsibilities. And, the existence of a text contributes its own rhythm
and sound, as well as literal meaning. Of course, text affects form to the
extent that the composer allows (for example, consider Verdi’s revisionary
demands upon his various librettists, Piave, Boito, etc.). Nevertheless, in
general, the lengthier the text, the more it tends to influence the composer’s
musical choices. Ideally, the music preserves and reinforces the text, and
their respective forms are parallel. This is the case in Hindemith’s Requiem,
where the ornate, lyrical text is carefully laid out and clearly delivered,
colored by Hindemith’s distinctive tonal modernism.
The following four chapters discuss specific cadential and formal
details in each of four respective groups of individual movements,
corresponding to the four reductive systems of Figure 3.
39
Chapter 6.
Discussion Of Section One
Prelude
Nº 1. “When lilacs”
Nº 2. Arioso, “In the swamp”
Nº 3. March, “Over the breast of spring”
The first section of the Requiem is comprised of the Prelude and Nºs
1, 2, and 3, which, as a whole, represent the large scale expression of the Pmotive’s initial pedal C#. The persistence of C# is summarized in the bass
clef of the first system of Figure 3, above.
The C# bass tone, sustained beneath the entire Prelude, opens and
closes each of the three subsequent numbers, and thus sets the entire first
quarter of the Requiem as as an expository area of tonic harmony. In the
Prelude, the P-motive is contrapuntally developed, through eight exactly
repetitive points of imitation, whose subsequent downward stepprogressions lead to a cadence on A. (m. 22, in first inversion, due to the C#
pedal). Then, through a series of broken major-triads, the strings slowly
climb to an additional C# pedal point in the high treble, followed in the
middle by the entrance of the brass choir. Four P-motives follow (mm. 3141), transposed up a perfect fifth (E-G-C-B). The first three are
harmonized with increasing density, but the last presents a cadence point
(m. 38), where the C is sustained, joined by an Ab below—an interval only,
duplicated across three octaves.
40
Within ordinary tonal circumstances, this major third would
represent an arrival on the dominant degree to C#. In this case, the
sustained brass diminish and change (m. 41, C to B), accompanied by the
slowly-falling string figure (C#-A#-G#-F-E…), revealing that the tonic
pedal still prevails. Even at the rhythmic cadence (m. 38), the C# pedal is
fully in control of the harmony, in terms of interval-roots. The move of C
to B (m. 41) completes the P-motive contour, and the strings conclude their
sequence by alternating F and E, suggesting both the major and minor
modes of C#. Measure 38 provides an explicit example of the initial
harmonic suggestion of the P-motive: the linear cadence of the motive
occurs at the fall of the fifth, but, in terms of vertical harmony, that tone
arrives on a major third above a lower voice (F above C# at the beginning,
and C above Ab at m. 38).
In measure 45, the P-motive is again taken into canonic imitation as
before, at its original pitch (A-C-F-E). But, after three entrances, the
counterpoint pivots on a hidden first-inversion G-minor chord (second half
of m. 51) and ascends through minor-degrees in whole steps for the final
cadence (mm. 52-5, A-B-C#). As depicted by the measure numbers above
the bottom staff in Figure 4, the formal shape of the entire Prelude
emphasizes, on a broader scale, the same sequence of tones found in the
incipit P-motive.
Thus the form of the Prelude is articulated by three cadential points:
the arrival on A by downward step-progression (m. 22), the deceptive arrival
on Ab in the brass (m. 38), and the final cadence by the upward whole-step
motion of A-B-C# (mm. 52-54).
41
After the motivically expository Prelude, the virtually continuous Nºs
1, 2, and 3 form the opening dramatic scene (the ends of Nºs 1 and 2 are
marked attacca). Nº 1 introduces the baritone soloist in the protagonist
role. Across the progress of the poetic text, he represents and expresses the
consciousness of man, in terms of visions, thoughts and knowledge.
Thematically, Nº 1 opens with the the lyrical C# Dorian theme in the
baritone (“When lilacs last in the Door-yard Bloomed…”), a theme
reappearing in this number in both the chorus and the baritone reprise, and
also in Nº 3. This opening suggests the contour of the P-motive (mm. 1-2,
G#-B-E) with the final semitone descent avoided—all other tones of the C#
Dorian mode are presented except the D#, which is reconnected with
emphasis at the end of the phrase-group, in measure 8. Within these first
phrases, a number of other motivic themes are set up. In measure 3, the
pitch contour B-D-C is connected with the image of Death, the “great
star.” This same pitch contour appears in significant cadential passages in
Nºs 10 and 11 (see below). In measure 4, the intact P-motive appears on
the musical surface, the occasion cited by Neumeyer.47
There are three internal sections in Nº 1, yielding a three-part form
(ABA'). In the first, The baritone’s move to the key a minor third higher
allows the E minor arpeggiation to add the major-sixth (thus temporarily
pulling the tonic C# into the tonal sphere of its closely-related minor third
above) as the ornamental upper neighbor of B (in all, E-G-B-C#). That
Dorian theme is taken into the key of F with explosive energy by the
entering chorus, representing Death’s first appearance to the consciousness
47Neumeyer, MPH, 216, note 14.
42
of man. After a churning final measure over G (m. 23), the C# of tempo
primo reemerges, with much the same music, including the modulation to E
minor with the same harmonic ornamentation (minor triad plus major sixth
upper neigbor). The descending solo line creates a cadence by virtue of the
coincidence of falling interval-roots (B-G, G-E, B-E) that exist in such a
trichordal sequence.48 The crucial difference is, as the baritone settles on
degree-center E (m. 29, the last word of “a sprig with its flowers, I break”),
the pedal C# (assisted by its perfect fifth, G#) arrives, creating a dramatic
deceptive cadence to the oddly-major-sounding sonority of the “relative
minor.” This cadence is effected by a single change in harmony, where the
two degree-centers involved clash directly and decisively.
The alto’s role in the Requiem is to portray the spirit of life, the will
to sing, the fertile, the nurturing, the giver of life. Her material is confined
to three solo songs, Nºs 2, 5, and 8, all arioso set-pieces, one of which
becomes the single duet of the Requiem when the baritone adds his
obbligato to the reprise of Nº 8, and another of which is the previously
existing Whitman song of 1943 (Nº 5, transposed down a whole tone). The
alto also joins the ensemble at the sustained closing of Nº 11, and this
accounts for her entirely circumscribed role, as opposed to the dramatic,
even heroic varied role of the baritone.
An english horn introduces the alto’s first song, also in C#, as the
prior musical texture continues into the beginning of Nº 2. But the lyrics
are of a mortally-wounded bird (“Song of the bleeding throat! Death’s
48This is the kind of interval-root analysis I am systematically carrying out on the 19 harmonic and 110
melodic trichord classes. Here, note that the C# is the root of the E and the B, but has no effective
relationship with the tritone G. Thus E is the root of the tetrachord E-G-B-C#, by a vote of 3 to 2
among the intervals, with one abstention.
43
outlet song of life”). The harmonic implication of measure 20 of Nº 2 is
rare in the Requiem in that the E# tone briefly suggests the major third of
the tonic C# (“thou would’st surely die”). This final cadence on C# is set
up by the respective major-seventh-chord harmonies of the previous two
measures, A and D, and thus the cadential interval is a semitone down, or
from the upper leading tone.
The song for baritone and chorus that is Nº 3 takes up the opening
Dorian theme again, but with martial as well as lyrical overtones, as life
prepares to do battle in the face of Death. Nº 3 begins with a passage cited
by Boatwright as demonstrating a cadence from the upper leading tone
(mm. 12-3), and concludes with a cadence from the tritone cited by Peter
Cahn (mm. 164-8). Since the ubiquity of the upper leading tone cadence is
so widespread in Hindemith’s music, and since the tritone relation to the
tonic is of interest as a motivic element in the Requiem, only Cahn’s example
will be discussed further.
In spite of Cahn’s valid observation that the root progression at the
finalis of Nº 3 moves between the tonic and its tritone, a case can be made
that, here, the chord of the tritone is neither structurally nor functionally
penultimate, since the tonic has arrived before this point. Rather, it
represents a motivic appogiatura which supports the text symbolically. By
repetition, an expectation has been created for a tonically-supportive G# at
measure 164; thus, when the ascending line culminates not in G# but G (on
the word “coffins”), the descending step-progression is clearly heard as
connected to the previous G#s. This G functions as a continuation of the
linear descent of the main baritone line as it approaches C#. Since the final
44
bars of Nº 3 are similar to the two passages cited from Nº 1, the value of
both the tone G and the chordal accompaniment is primarily symbolic: the
G# falling by halfstep to G is similar to the final fall of D to C# at the
outset of Nº 11.
By moving from a chord on G to a chord on C# (mm. 165, 166-7,
169), Hindemith gives a more practical demonstrate of how even the “mostremote” tritone degrees can be joined in a progression, and, moreover,
joined in a cadential progression. But the final linear arrival on C# is not
directly from G. Instead, the unaccompanied step-progression in the
baritone line moves to the C# from D (mm. 167-8). Thus, although the
tritone sonority lingers nearby, the upper leading tone is once again the direct
linear antecedent to cadential arrival.
45
Chapter 7.
Discussion Of Section Two
Nº 4. “O western orb”
Nº 5. Arioso, “Sing on, there in the swamp”
Nº 6. Song, “O how shall I warble”
Nº 7. Introduction and Fugue, “Lo! body and soul”
The next four numbers, Nºs 4, 5, 6, and 7, are also essentially
continuous and express, in their large-scale tonal centers and movements,
the symbolic conflict between the opening A of the P-motive and the
established C# pedal. As the second system of Figure 3 demonstrates, each
respective number begins on the tonal center A, but, unlike the first section,
the endings of numbers are tentative or modulatory. The ultimate cadence
on E major (Nº 7, m. 182) is signalled by a shortened and diverted Pmotive (F#-A-G#), and alters the structural tension between C# and A by
asserting a degree center with close relations in both prior tonal spheres
(relative major of C#, dominant of A).
In a duet for baritone and chorus, Nº 4 forcefully develops a poetic
image representing (among other things) the reality Whitman, as a nurse in
the Civil War, knew of firsthand: the star, the sailing star (“O western orb”)
is a metaphor of the speeding bullet of war. Much of the imagery can be
interpreted as a temporal expansion of its report, its path and its effects.
And, at the largest time scale, it can be also seen as the image of the front
lamp of funeral train, smoking and lumbering into the interior of the war-
46
torn nation. At the conclusion of this number, the ambiguously drawn
vocal lines thin and evaporate on distant degrees (mm. 84-99). The
expectation of a complete P-motive contour (mm. 88-91) is met with
surprise as the baritone drops a whole step to D natural (mm. 90-1,
“concluded”).
The short, impressionistic Arioso in Nº 5, extensively studied by
Neumeyer, is the source of several motives used in the Requiem, the most
significant of which is the “thrush” motive (mm. 3-4). However, as
discussed above, this number does not appear to contain the motivic kernal
from which the full work has sprung. Due to its brevity and lack of
harmonic fluctuation, there is little cadential activity upon which to remark,
except to note that the overall structure remains harmonically closed, in A.
Developing the following number out of the previous harmonic
material, Hindemith has nonetheless provided much harmonic contrast and
variety in the lyrical Nº 6, where various chords, major and minor, triads
and sevenths, many in first inversions, follow in colorful, successions in
which movement by (mostly whole) step predominates, occasionally
suggesting faux bordon. The music of the number is divided into two threepart sections (ABA-ABA), with the most well-defined cadence on G, from
Bb-C (mm. 18-9 and mm. 65-6, all major triads). In each case, a choral
section follows, beginning on A. This recasts the cadence on G as a
“secondary” goal, the primary goal being A, up a whole tone (as well as the
interval-root of the interval G-A).
Approaching the beginning of the fugue of Nº 7, the tonality shifts
away from A toward E, arriving (m. 31) after a series of phrases whose
47
respective tonal centers descend chromatically, each established as the prior
degree becomes the upper leading tone of the subsequent. The thunderous,
dramatic vehemence of the cadence at the close of Nº 7 is due to its long
and careful preparation. As the fugue begins, the chromatic descent from A
to E seems unremarkable, and possibly reversible, especially since the
prevailing tonality of the fugue itself shifts with the diverse patterns of
imitative entrances. After returning to E in an orchestral interlude
(mm. 151-63), the music shifts to a turbulent C minor (m. 164), with Ebs
in the upper voice, and implications of Ab major and B major in the inner
parts. This pulls the tonal context from E or A. However, a degree
progression of rising steps (C-D-Eb-E) swiftly delivers the music to E-minor
from C-minor (mm. 175-6, “In the light”). However, E-minor is not the
final goal, and the degree-progression continues through A-major to Dmajor, C#-minor, to F#-major (mm. 179-80), perhaps the most traditional
diatonic progression in the entire Requiem. Note the rotated, transposed Pmotive embedded in the degree-progression A-D-C#-F#. As the soprano
reaches the C# in measure 179, the stage is set for three last tones (“Lo! this
land.”) continuing the P-motive melodically, F#-A, and then turning, not to
D-C#, but to G#, the major-third of E, doubled and sustained in the chorus
and supported by full tutti in the orchestra.
48
Chapter 8.
Discussion Of Section Three
Nº 8. “Sing on! you grey-brown bird”
Nº 9. Death Carol, “Come, lovely and soothing death”
Section three includes two large numbers whose respectively closed
key areas, C and F, express the two tones of the P-motive which form the
interval of the falling fifth. The motivic symbolism of this most
fundamental of cadential intervals is highlighted by other cooperative
details: Nº 8 is the only number in which both solo voices are joined, where
the alto again represents life’s continuity, and, in the duet reprise, the
baritone turns in vain desperation toward life in the face of death (“I fled
forth…”); Nº 9 is a relentless passacaglia for the chorus, which praises
death’s continuous arrival as a blessing from the “Dark Mother” and
“Strong Deliveress.” In the passacaglia’s realization, the recurring
movement of F to E creates an additional motivic implication. The general
outlines of these numbers can be seen above, in the third system of Figure 3.
Nº 8 contains a traditionally-structured (ABA) operatic duet, which
begins (with solo alto) and ends (the same alto part, with the addition of the
baritone obbligato) using the same strophic music, opened and closed in C
each time. Within the solo/duet music is a symbolic allusion to C# minor
as the alto sings “yet the star” (mm. 18-9 and mm. 91-2), preceded in each
ocassion by the chord of the tritone, G. Between the alto solo and the
reprise duet, the baritone delivers a dramatic recitative, then pauses as the
49
orchestra sounds the hymn “For those we love,” in its original key of E, but
with reharmonization and orchestration.
The music leading up to the hymn is related to the precadential
passage of Nº 7 (compare Nº 7, mm. 164-7, tenor line, with the baritone,
Nº 8, mm. 35-7, among others). And as before, this material builds toward
a cadence on E. After the baritone line ascends momentarily to the tonic
tone (Db), a change in the text (m. 46 “lo! then and there”) over sustained
quasi-dominant harmony (see below) accompanies the stepwise falling of the
baritone line toward E, and the subsequent orchestral quotation of the
hymn tune whose name is given in the subtitle and score (m. 52).
At measure 46 of Nº 8, Hindemith arrives at the orchestral quotation
of the E-minor hymntune, “For those we love” (m. 52), by using an
embellished kind of dominant-seventh chord, which, as Hindemith pointed
out previously, can move directly and establish a cadential goal without
further antepenultimate involvement. Parts of this chord (the embedded allinterval tetrachords: here, either F-Eb-A-D or B-Eb-A-D) are commonly
used in jazz harmony as substitute dominant-seventh chord, whose
respective effects are the addition a major-sixth or a minor third to the
incomplete dominant-seventh trichord (root, major-third, minor-seventh).
The unusual situation that Hindemith gives this sonority is in the bass,
where two tones at the tritone, F and B, compete for control of the upper
voices, with the F assisted slightly by the C above it. Thus, at this cadence,
the resolution (the baritone’s E and the beginning of the hymn in E minor)
arrives from both dominant degree and upper leading tone degree (B and F
respectively), while the baritone line descends throught the upper leading
50
tone, m. 51). This is the only significant two-step dominant-tonic cadence
in the Requiem,
The final cadence of the orchestra’s hymn (mm. 58-9) is achieved
using the same intervals as those concluding the Prelude, ascending whole
steps. Here, however, each of the tones C -D-E supports major harmony.
At this cadence, the baritone reenters (“And I knew Death”) to add brief,
lyrical responses between the orchestra’s phrase-by-phrase reprise of the
hymn (mm. 60-73). In the course of the poem, this represents the end of
denial, for the “thought of death” has now been joined by the “sacred
knowledge of death.” As the baritone sings “And I in the middle,” we find
the triadic contour of the P-motive (B-D-G), unambiguously reinforcing the
degree-center of G (the tritone degree). The full P-motive embedding is
completed by the F# of measure 72. But only the baritone, but not the
orchestra, finishes the hymn phrase on the prevailing degree E (emphasizing
the connection of E to G in the word “companions”). This motivic
figuration suggests (to this writer) that the P-motive may have been
developed by Hindemith from the last, triadic phrase of the hymntune (see
the further discussion of the hymn “For those we love,” below).
The entirely choral Nº 9, in F, is the first number Hindemith wrote.49
The first part of Nº 9 (mm. 1-31) is the slow, lyrical Death Carol, and the
voices move through the text together. The second part (beginning at
m. 32) is a spiralling ciaccone based on a rhythmic five-measure passacaglia
figure that begins on F, then simply passes through E-B-F# (e.g., mm. 3249PHSW VII,2. IX. Hindemith reports the order in which the movements were completed (using
Roman numerals), beginning 19 January and ending 20 March, 1946. In Arabic numerals, Hindemith’s
order of Nºs is: 11, 1, 2, 3, Prelude, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11.
51
36) to arrive at F again. Over this figure, the P-motive is subtly and
ornamentally woven into the varied choral fabric, often in a melodic manner
suggestive of the opening Dorian theme (e.g. as outlined in the tenor,
mm. 38, 41, 44, 45).
This passacaglia is, in effect, a repeated cadential phrase, and
Hindemith exploits its possibilities to the utmost in many ingenious
melodic and harmonic progressions, as well as different orchestral and choral
textures and affects. The repeated arrival, and tonal focus, on F is somewhat
equivocal, since the process by which F arrives is the same process by which
F departs: the prior tone is taken as the upper leading tone of the
progression (F#-F, then F-E). Moreover, as noted above, the movement
from F to E recalls the P-motive as well. The other tone, B, forms the
interval of a tritone with F, while creating a pair of descending fourths in the
intervening interval succession. The “opening” effect of the descending
fourths further contrasts with the “closing” effect of the semitone
progressions. Yet, this unusual, symmetrical interval cycle poses not a
barrier but a multitude of expressive opportunities for Hindemith.
The final choral statement, “with joy, with joy, to thee, O Death,”
brings the passacaglia to the top line leading to a cadence on unison F
(m. 170). The lyrical closing phrase in the orchestra still uses the passacaglia
phrase as its progression. Note that the harmony which leads directly to the
final choral F is an augmented triad built on F# (mm. 168-9, on the word
“thee”). The final step of the cadential progression can be characterized as
proceding from an augmented triad, where one of the member tones (in this
52
case, F#) is taken as an upper leading tone. This cadential movement is
further elaborated in the structure of Nº 10 (see below).
53
Chapter 9.
Discussion Of Section Four
Nº 10. “To the tally of my soul”
Nº 11. Finale, “Passing the visions”
The last two numbers form the final section of the Requiem, with Nº
10 forming a large retransition and cadential preparation to the unequivocal
reassertion of C# in Nº 11. In terms of expressing the implications of the Pmotive, in Nº 10, the tone F is retained, but its previously-established
degree-centeredness is subverted, while, in Nº 11, the tone E now serves,
not as a degree center, but in fealty to the prevailing C# minor tonic. The
musical progression is outlined in the fourth system of Figure 3, above.
In the large scale tonal movement of Nº 10, the degree-center moves
cyclically through the tones of an augmented triad (Bb-F#-D, the same
penultimate chord of Nº 9, above), before moving from D at the end of Nº
10 (N.B., the continuous timpani roll on D, mm. 242-53, is not visible in
the vocal score) to the return of the tonic C# at the beginning of Nº 11,
once again, a cadence from the upper leading tone.
At Nº 10, the “thrush” motive of Nºs 2 and 5 reappears, modified,
emerging in the clarinet from the F of the previous Death Carol. Before the
clarinet begins its descending thirds, however, the traditional signifier of a
cadence—a tonic P-chord—intervenes below. Described more specifically, a
parallel sequence of three major P-chords ascend by semitones, with the
tonic C# chord, the longest and in the middle, supporting the clarinet F.
54
The last P-chord is centered on the upper leading tone D, and the clarinet
phrase finishes on that tone likewise (m. 6). In view of Nº 10’s closing
passage on D, noted above, the intervening musical material is framed with
clear cadential borders.
Within Nº 10, the equidistant Bb, D, and F# rotate as tonal centers,
each with its respective, largely martial music. After two accounts of the
visions of the dead, the baritone is silenced as, behind his previous orchestral
accompaniment, “Taps” in Bb is played offstage, and the roar of battle
diminishes. In the Bb prolongation a major triad unfolds in a similar way to
the third phrase of “For those we love,” thus illustrating but one interesting
parallel. In “Taps,” the high F (here the dominant tone of Bb) is connected
with the opening clarinet F of the same number, a feature noted in Figure 3.
Then, the timpani’s D leads us past motives from the Requiem’s great midpoint cadence on E, (specifically from the the brief and oblique passage over
C preceding it). The orchestras lines converge on D, and the tolling of C#
begins Nº 11. Since the harmonic fluctuation of Nº 10 provides the
retransition to and cadential preparation for the arrival of the tonic degree
C# at Nº 11, it is fair to consider the entire fourth section as tonic, in the
structural sense, thus closing the entire work.
The final cadence at the end of the composition (No.11, mm. 67-94)
is a similar musical situation to that at the end of Nº 3: in this case, the
baritone’s melodic G# (m. 67) functions as the upper leading tone and
“resolves” unexpectedly to the half-step below, a move which is reinforced
melodically by the G Dorian melody of the continuing baritone line
(mm. 68-70), but is challanged by the harmony, two octatonic chord (m. 68
55
and m. 73) based on the superposition of two diminished-seventh chords.
The missing vertical member of the octatonic chord is the tonic tone C#,
which is presented in the continuing baritone line as a “failed” ascent to D
(the Db of mm. 71-72, 76-77); this passage again links the tonic to the
tritone. Note also the horn and flute lines converging on G, descending by
semitone through A and G#.
The baritone resolves downward, passing from C# to Bb (but unlike
Cahn’s example, without the passing reinforcement of the upper leading
tone) to an unaccompanied G (m. 81). Then the orchestra and chorus enter
with three root-position minor chords setting the text “Lilac…star…bird”
(mm. 83-88). The first two trace the rising thirds of a G-major triad: Bminor and D-minor. The last chord is an A-minor chord, with a C in the
soprano. Thus the line in the upper voice (B-D-C) recapitulates the “great
star” motive of Nº 1 (m. 3), the phrase that originally moved the baritone
line from its Dorian beginning. The last cadential move to C# is
accomplished through melodic means alone, from the lower-sixth (A)
descending through the major triad of the upper leading tone (D) to the
tonic: A-F#-A-F#-E-D-C#. Note that the interval contour of the P-motive
(A-C-F-E) is embedded, transposed, in this final descent (…F#-A…D-C#).
56
Chapter 10.
A Requiem “For Those We Love”
In the course of this research, the author attended the centennial
“Paul Hindemith in the U.S.A.” conference at Yale University (20-22
October 1995), where Kim Kowalke reported the musical source of the
subtitle “For those we love,” showing that Hindemith fully quotes the hymn
tune in the Requiem. In light of its relevance to the present study, let us
briefly consider how the musical material of the hymn may relate or
contribute less directly to the Requiem.
The phrase “For those we love” appears, with quotation marks, twice in
the score: as in the subtitle (A Requiem…) on the front page, and at Nº 8,
measure 53, in the score (Hymn…). The connection of the Requiem and the
hymn tune went unnoticed until Kim Kowalke undertook the search for
musical variants on hymn settings of William Charter Piggott’s 1915 poem
whose incipit is “For those we love.” Of those several hymnals which
included the same poem, all but one had identical music. However, in
Yale’s Episcopal hymnal of that time a completely different musical setting
appears. The hymnal credits the music not to a particular composer, but to
a “Traditional Hebrew Melody” from “GAZA.,” and “adapted 1919.” This
melody appears verbatim in the Requiem, beginning where Hindemith
indicates in the score, at measure 52 of Nº 8. The orchestra alone plays the
hymn once, then, with baritone interpolations, a second time. The melody,
although reharmonized and with slight rhythmic variants, is the same as the
hymn, in the same key of E-minor. The music of the original hymn, as
57
reported by Kowalke, is shown in Figure 5.50 The text has seven verses of
four lines each, the first three being in iambic tetrameter, with the last line
enclosing a final two iambic feet.
e: i
V#
III
iv/iv iv
VII
=V/III
iv
i6
V#
I#
Figure 5. The music of For Those We Love, with music as printed in the source
hymnbook. The text shown is the first of William Charter Piggott’s seven
stanzas.
The hymn begins on an incomplete minor triad, that is, the minor
tonic harmony is established by a single interval, which is the case at several
points in the Requiem. The repetition of the tonic tones which announce
the incipit text “For those we love” is suggestive of Hindemith’s use of the
tonic pedal tone in the Requiem. When the melody finally steps off the
50Kowalke, op. cit. See note 10. The page of the Episcopal Hymnal (1940) with “For those we love”
(222) appeared as photocopied in his handout (Example 6).
58
tonic through F# to G, the ascending minor third of the P-motive is
established.
After the first line’s continued stepwise ascent to the fifth scale-degree,
a leap down a fifth to the tonic is followed by a leap up to the minor-sixth
degree (“Who once”), intervals which both figure prominently in the incipit
motive of the Requiem. The unfolding outline of the major triad (“thank
thee, Lord; for they”) in the third phrase is a point of commonality between
this hymn and the other melody quoted in the Requiem, the bugle tune
“Taps.” As mentioned in the general discussion above, the baritone’s
motivic gloss of this phrase in the Requiem (Nº 8, mm. 69-70) suggests that
the unfoldings of triadic contours in the hymn may have contributed to
Hindemith’s development of the principal motivic components of the
Requiem.
In the Requiem, a rare tonicization of the major mode of the tritone
degree G occurs momentarily (Nº 8, mm. 70-1) as the baritone’s
interpolated response to that hymn phrase (“and I in the middle,” m. 70)
outlines the P-motive intervals (completed by the F# in measure 72,
“hands”).51 In this passage (mm. 69-73), the intervals of the second half of
the hymn are echoed closely by the baritone. The F# in the orchestra leaves
the reprise of the hymn incomplete, with the baritone alone sounding the
final tone (m. 73, “companions”). The minimal arrival on E-minor is
swiftly followed by the duet reprise in C (m. 74 onward). In addition, the
B-D-C segment can be found in the cadential preparations to C#, prior to
the beginning (Nº 10, mm. 242-53, above D in timpani) and ending
51Two other cadences on G are noted in the discussion of Nº 6, above.
59
(mm. 83-8, “lilac…star…bird”) of Nº 11. The initial presentation of this
pitch motive is traceable to the second baritone phrase of Nº 1 (m. 3, “great
star…”), following, and chromatically moving away from, the Dorian
theme. This same phrase introduces two descending fourth intervals
(mm. 3-4, Bb-F and E-B), whose interval-roots coincide with the keys of
“Taps” and “For those we love,” respectively.
The fall of a fourth—the penultimate melodic interval of the hymn
(“cloud-less”)—is used at several other places in the Requiem, such as the
baritone’s prior entrance at the first ending of the hymn quotation (Nº 8,
mm. 58-9, “And I knew Death”). The ending of Nº 4 contrasts to its
strong beginning (in A), where the downward Eb-Bb at the end of the final
passage marks an uncertainty of closure (Nº 4, mm. 95-8). An additional
example of the harmonic fall of two consecutive fourths (which figures
prominently in Nº 9) is found in the method the music employs to return
to the tonic from the relative major, by way of bIII–iv/iv–iv–iU. This also
creates an inner step-progression of F-E, suggesting Hindemith’s favorite
upper leading tone. All the harmony is triadic, embellished by chromatic
alteration and suspensions, but entirely without seventh chords of any kind.
When the verses are sung in sequence, a shift of mode from major to
minor occurs six times as the G# of the final E-major triad moves to the
opening E-G interval. The bass at the final cadence also emphasizes the
minor-major change, outlining a triadic contour similar to the P-motive (in
the minor mode: G-B-E, or iU–V–i#). In light of the melodic contour, the
iU-chord avoids an expected cadential P-chord, and parallel octaves as well.
60
And at the final cadence of the hymn, in a concerted musical gesture of
sadness, all four voices fall.
61
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