With his Requiem of 1946, German composer Paul Hindemith honoured not one but two American presidents. In the work, a text written by the poet Walt Whitman in memory of Abraham Lincoln has been set to music, while in the end Hindemith dedicated the Requiem to Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had originally planned to entitle the piece »American Requiem« in reference to Brahms’s »German Requiem«, but in the end he stuck to Whitman’s own title for his poem. Nonetheless, American critics regarded the Hindemith Requiem as a »profound American work«.The expression ...
With his Requiem of 1946, German composer Paul Hindemith honoured not one but two American presidents. In the work, a text written by the poet Walt Whitman in memory of Abraham Lincoln has been set to music, while in the end Hindemith dedicated the Requiem to Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had originally planned to entitle the piece »American Requiem« in reference to Brahms’s »German Requiem«, but in the end he stuck to Whitman’s own title for his poem. Nonetheless, American critics regarded the Hindemith Requiem as a »profound American work«.The expression of mourning and hope is something that many interpreters also hear in Schubert’s »Unfinished« Symphony. After he had already dashed off six symphonies without any trouble, the year 1821 brought unexpected difficulties for the young composer: he started work on a new symphony three times in the course of the year, and each time he abandoned the project before it was complete. The best-known product of this brilliant »failure« has gone down in music history under the name »Unfinished«.Scholars still have no explanation as to why Schubert didn’t complete the score. The work may have remained unfinished – two more movements would be needed to make it a fully-fledged symphony; but the music itself is nothing short of perfect.
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