Paul Hindemith
Symphony Mathis der Maler

“In the pale twilight, it towers fearfully: Christ on his cross. A rough-hewn trunk, across it a half-stripped branch, bending under the weight like a taut bow, longing to snap upwards in a convulsion of pity and hurl the miserable flesh towards heaven, away from this ground soaked in disgrace, where it is still pinned fast by enormous nails.”

Such is the description of Matthias Grünewald’s Tauberbischofsheim Altarpiece in Joris-Karl Huysmans’ 1891 novel Là-bas (Down There), which marked the beginning of the renaissance painter’s rediscovery in modern times. After visiting Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar, the French writer confessed: “Compared to this clamour, this wildness, everything else seems toneless and insipid. One leaves Grünewald and remains forever under his spell.” Expressionists such as Lovis Corinth, Oskar Kokoschka, Emil Nolde, and Max Beckmann found inspiration in Grünewald’s work, as did artists of the New Objectivity movement, including George Grosz and Otto Dix. Following the Nazi rise to power, Grünewald’s reception gained further momentum – as an expression of resistance. In 1937, the same year Paul Hindemith completed work on his Grünewald opera Mathis der Maler, Dix finished his painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony, which, along with his Seven Deadly Sins of 1933, represents a pinnacle of anti-fascist Grünewald reception: horrifying visions of hell as a mirror of present reality. Grünewald’s paintings seemed to anticipate what was yet to come, which is why Elias Canetti, after his first visit to the Isenheim Altarpiece in 1927, wrote: “Everything terrible that is to come is foretold here. The finger of John, immense, points to it: this is it, and this is what will come again.”

Hindemith’s opera Mathis der Maler is also part of this anti-Nazi reception of Grünewald. After Wilhelm Furtwängler had premiered Hindemith’s orchestral work Philharmonisches Konzert with great success in 1932 on the occasion of 50^th anniversary of the the Berliner Philharmoniker, he commissioned another work from the composer. Hindemith decided to extract three instrumental sections from the unfinished stage work he was still composing at the time and shape them into a symphony, with each movement directly referencing the Isenheim Altarpiece. “Through musical means,” the composer wrote in the programme notes for the Berlin world premiere, “an attempt is made to approach the same emotional state that the paintings evoke in the viewer.”

The opening movement, Angelic Concert, is inspired by the left half of the central Nativity scene, where angels in magnificent robes make music. The score exudes radiant mysticism, with the trombones quoting the chorale-like melody of the folk song “Es sungen drei Engel” after just a few measures. The second movement is dedicated to the Entombment, depicted on the altarpiece’s predella: a sorrowful lamentation. The symphony concludes with The Temptation of Saint Anthony (the right wing of the altarpiece), a highly contrasting finale. After demonic orchestral outbursts and fierce percussion attacks, the work ultimately celebrates the triumph of the spirit over all earthly tribulations.