Exploring Paul Hindemith's Clarinet Sonata with Stuart King

Labelled as an 'Atonal Noisemaker' of 'Degenerate Music' Paul Hindemith was forbidden from working in his native Germany in the 1930s. Undeterred he embarked on a series of performance/lecture tours to the USA in 1937 and ultimately emigrated there in 1940. This turbulent time in world history proved fruitful for the prolific Hindemith in spite of the ban on his music under the Nazi regime. The Clarinet Sonata of 1939 is one of 17 Sonatas Hindemith wrote in the 5 years between 1935 and his settling in the United States in 1940. It is a four-movement work full of humour, lyricism, brooding intensity and invention. Hindemith showcased his inimitable harmonic style and theoretical ideas about compositional form and structure. To my mind Hindemith is a greatly under-rated composer today. His incredible versatility as a musician deserves to be championed and his ideas influenced a generation of composers both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.