Paul Hindemith
Piano Works, Volume 4: Ludus Tonalis

THE REVIEW

This CD by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) is recommended for lovers of solo piano, a composer with a strong personality who paid for his independence from the Nazi regime with exile, and who musically faced hostility from his peers for not conforming to the prevailing trends of his time: on one side the twelve-tone dictates imposed by Schoenberg, and on the other the neoclassical counter-reformation championed by Stravinsky.

The "Ludus Tonalis" is a work from Hindemith's mature period, composed in 1942. It is a collection of 25 short piano pieces, totaling one hour. Tonal music, but by no means banal nor nostalgic for the good old days: on the contrary, it sounds very modern, robust in its reliance on counterpoint, and is almost a show of compositional virtuosity where a musical language belonging to tradition (namely tonality) is used to rebel against that very tradition, to create something new from its ashes.

With just a bit of attention, the "Ludus" reveals a very strict organization: like every game, it has its own rules. It should be noted that the tonal game is composed of 12 fugues, corresponding to the 12 keys of the chromatic scale (C, C sharp, D, D sharp, E, F, etc.). If you take any 12 objects and line them up on a table, the objects will be separated by 11 empty spaces. So Hindemith separates his 12 fugues with 11 interludes, which serve as transitions from one fugue to the next: without belonging to any particular key, the interludes move from the key of the preceding fugue to the key of the following fugue. Nice idea, isn't it?

But 12 plus 11 makes 23. Two pieces are still missing to reach 25. So Hindemith places a prelude in front of his house of cards and a postlude at the back, and now everything adds up. Indeed, if you happen to have the score of the prelude in your hands, try turning it upside down, that is, flip it 180 degrees: you will see the notes of the postlude, which is the retrograde inversion of the initial piece. It may be a game, but this too is part of that magic called music.