Luther Noss

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was born in Hanau, Germany. A prodigious child violinist, he left school early to study at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt-am-Main. As a teenager he was already a professional string quartet performer and soon became leader of the Frankfurt Opera orchestra, under the direction of Ludwig Rottenberg, whose daughter, Gertrud, later became Mrs. Hindemith.

Hindemith studied composition under Bernhard Sekles and Arnold Mendelssohn and soon established himself at the forefront of the post World War I avant-garde. When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, his music was banned, but not before he was firmly established as a distinguished teacher of composition at the Berlin Hochschule. Since his wife had a Jewish father, he decided to seek another residence, going first to Switzerland and in 1940 to the USA, joining the faculty of the Yale University School of Music, where he remained until his official departure for Europe in 1953.

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