Customer Reviews

Selected Letters of Paul Hindemith

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One of my teachers told me that letters by famous people are usually very dull. Sad to say this seems to be the case here.

Skelton wrote a book on Hindemith and while that's great these selected letters seem to be missing a lot, a possibility suggested when Skelton says he didn't include material he considered of too personal a nature. I don't know if the Hindemith institute asked this or not but excerpts of some of the most interesting letters are missing, particularly the "moral conquest" letter he sent enclosed with Ludus Tonalis (which you can get in the Urtext edition); there he wrote scathing remarks about the Leningrad symphony and the American policy of promoting Russian music over German or italian music during the war years. The read is so dry I haven't even finished it yet and I get the strong sense that you wouldn't learn much more from this book than Skelton's earlier book. I've read A Composer's World and other books by Hindemith and can't shake the suspicion that Hindemith's letters were dull or, at least as likely, Skelton and co. wouldn't let us see the most readable parts.