Symphony: Mathis der Maler (Matthias the Painter) is among the most famous orchestral works of German composer Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

. The symphony is based on themes from Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler

Mathis der Maler (opera)

Mathis der Maler is an opera by Paul Hindemith. The libretto is also by the composer.The opera's genesis lay in Hindemith's interest in the Protestant Reformation...

, which concerns the painter (in German, "Maler") Matthias Grünewald

Matthias Grünewald

Matthias Grünewald or "Mathis" , "Gothart" or "Neithardt" , , was a German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.Only ten paintings—several consisting...

 (or Neithardt).

Hindemith composed the symphony in 1934, before he had completed work on the opera. The conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...

 asked him at that time for a new work to perform on an upcoming Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

The Berlin Philharmonic, German: , formerly Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester , is an orchestra based in Berlin, Germany. In 2006, a group of ten European media outlets voted the Berlin Philharmonic number three on a list of "top ten European Orchestras", after the Vienna Philharmonic and the...

 concert tour, and Hindemith decided to use themes from the opera in a symphony as a 'trial run' for the music. Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic gave the first performance on March 12, 1934. The first performance outside Germany was given by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in 1936, conducted by Daniel Sternberg

Daniel Sternberg

Daniel Arie Sternberg was a conductor, pianist, composer, and educator. He lived and worked in Central and Eastern Europe until 1939, when he emigrated to the United States to escape World War II.-Biography:...

.

The symphony was well received at its first performances, but Furtwängler faced severe criticism from the Nazi government for performing music that seemed to oppose party ideology. Hindemith completed the full opera by 1935 but, because of the political climate, its premiere was delayed until 1938 in Zürich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

Structure

The symphony has three movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:

1. Engelkonzert (Angelic Concert)
2. Grablegung (Entombment)
3. Versuchung des heiligen Antonius (The Temptation of Saint Anthony)

which correspond to the opera as follows:

1. Overture
2. Orchestral interlude from the last act
3. Orchestral reworking of a visionary scene in the opera

Each movement relates to Grünewald's paintings that comprise the Isenheim Altarpiece

Isenheim Altarpiece

The Isenheim Altarpiece is an altarpiece painted by the German artist Matthias Grünewald in 1506-1515. It is on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, now in France....

, which were influenced by the feelings of German peasants toward their oppressive overlords in the 16th century. Hindemith's music draws sharp parallels between the Protestant Reformation

Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

 and the political strife of his own times.

Hindemith's principle of harmonic fluctuation is readily apparent in this work. For example, the second movement opens on a perfect fifth sonority and gradually introduces more dissonant pitches. The result is an implied tonal center, although his music is rarely triadic. This technique was meant to make his music more accessible, a concept generally known as Gebrauchsmusik

Gebrauchsmusik

Gebrauchsmusik is a German term, essentially meaning “utility music,” for music that exists not only for its own sake, but which was composed for some specific, identifiable purpose...

(in German, "music for use").