Hindemith and Ginastera

Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963)

A German. Very much so. He was very Germanic in the traditional sense, believing (like Brahms) that music should be functional. His most famous piece for solo piano is the Suite "1922." The piece is pretty cool, using early 20th century dances as the 5 movements. All of the movements sound like their title, except that they are quite dissonant. The first, a march, is what you would expect from a march, quite rhythms in a march tempo. The second, a "Shimmy" is a popular early 20th century dance, and has grinding rolls up into a repetitive rhythmic figure, all of which sounds very dissonant, but yet quite danceable at the same time. The third movement, a Nocturne, isn't much of a dance, but it is slow and steady. It opens very steadily, and feels like it isn't really going anywhere. The fourth movement, a "Boston" sounds to me like it opens more like a nocturne than the previous one, before going into the slightly turbulent section before winding down back into solemness. There is a recognizable grace note, sounding somewhat like the first Chopin ballade or something.. The last movement, "Ragtime" is probably the most popular, it has a repetitive rhythmic figure, that repeats, very much like an awesome parody on Joplin. Its my favorite of the batch.

Ginastera (1916 - 1983)

His music is characterized by a rhythmic percusivness which gives it drive. It it usually very exciting to listen to, and is alot of fun to play.

The first sonata is what I have to listen to. It is quite exciting, and has an extremely memorable opening motive in the first movement. The second movement is fast and pianissimo, sounding like the Carl Vine sonata. The third mvement is slow and kind of lyrical. It has some dissonant arpeggioes rising, always rising, until a brief cadenza-like thing that brings it back down a bit. It kind of floats around like this. The last movement is fast and exciting, and sounds like it could easily be the sound-track for some mortal combat game or something of the sort. The rhythm gives it drive (as one might expect with Ginastera).