Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith ( POWL HIN-də-mit; German: [ˌpaʊ̯l ˈhɪndəmɪt] ; 16 November 1895 – 28 December 1963) was a German and American composer, music theorist, teacher, violist, and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as Kammermusik, including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. His other notable compositions include the song cycle Das Marienleben (1923), the oratorio Das Unaufhörliche (1931), Der Schwanendreher for viola and orchestra (1935), the opera Mathis der Maler (1938), and the symphony Mathis der Maler (1934), the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943), and the oratorio When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1946), a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem.