Attracted to music from a young age, beginning in 1906 Paul Hindemith played violin in an encouraging family environment with his sister Toni, a pianist, and his brother Rudolf, a cellist. Noticed and encouraged by Adolf Rebner, the Austrian violinist and Kappelmeister of the Frankfurt Opera, he began studying composition at the Frankfurt Hochschule in 1912 under the conservative German composer Arnold Mendelssohn, who gave him a taste for religious music. Bernhard Sekles then encouraged him to discover more advanced music when Hindemith studied under him up until 1917. He was also an instrumentalist with the Rebner Quartet, founded by his former teacher, and the Frankfurt Opera while composing his first opuses, including Drei Gesänge, Op. 9 (Three Songs).

After World War I, Hindemith composed extensively in a variety of genres. These include chamber music, such as his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10, parodies, and scandal-provoking works such as the daring operatic trilogy of Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, Hope of Women), Das Nusch-Nuschi, and Sancta Susanna. In 1921 he founded the Amar Quartet, in which he became a recognized violist. As a composer, he was roundly praised at the Donaueschingen Festival for his String Quartet No. 3, Op. 16 and the first of his Kammermusiken.

Hindemith deepened his study of early music while developing a taste for polyphony, leading him to integrate early and conventional musical forms into his opera Cardillac. This was his first manifestation of neoclassicism, something to which he would return later and fully develop. Cardillac was also strongly influenced by the New Objectivity movement. Always seeking to broaden his horizons, Hindemith created a vast repertoire of Gebrauchsmusik (utility music) and opened himself to influences on show at the Baden-Baden Festival from 1926 onwards, such as jazz and popular music, mechanical instruments, and music for film. Hindemith’s collaboration with Bertolt Brecht at this time provided him with the opportunity to absorb many contemporary trends and influences. He was named professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Berlin in 1927 against the backdrop of the Weimar Republic’s demise and the rise of National Socialism. These events led him to clarify his writing and make it more accessible, such as in Symphony: Mathis der Maler, which features three important moments from his opera of the same name.

Caught between popular success and Nazi-fueled disorder, Hindemith found himself in an increasingly difficult situation throughout the 1930s. In self-imposed exile beyond the German border in Bluche, Switzerland, he delved into his appreciation for neoclassicism, greatly increasing his instrumental output. At the same time, he pursued educational activities and defined elements of his harmonic style in his most important piece of theoretical literature, Unterweisung der Tonsatz (1937).¹ After several teaching assignments in Turkey and trips to the United States, Hindemith left Europe with a heavy heart. He taught in Buffalo and at other American universities. He wrote the collection Ludus Tonalis for piano in 1942, before obtaining US citizenship in 1946. In the aftermath of the war, he made several trips to Europe. He harbored a grudge against his homeland and never considered returning to Germany, however. Instead, he accepted a professorship in Zurich in 1951, where he devoted most of his time to the development of his opera Die Harmonie der Welt (The Harmony of the World), before concluding his catalog with Messe for mixed a cappella choir (1963).

^{1. There is also an English translation of this work by Arthur Mendel, The Craft of Musical Composition (New York: Associated Music Publishers, 1942).↩}