In the String Quartet No. 1 in C major, Op. 2, Hindemith, who was only nineteen years old, was trying to stand firm against the most highly challenging requirements of chamber music composition. Both musically and stylistically the music is based on a Brahmsian late-Romanticism, which would have been imparted to him by his second composition teacher at the Hoch Conservatory, Bernhard Sekles. Hindemith was concerned with extending and reshaping the traditional forms, which he favored, but without rendering them unrecognizable. In this work this results in an almost rampant, fit to burst musical prodigality, which Hindemith organizes through sophisticated compositional endeavor and which he makes easily comprehensible. The first movement is in traditional sonata form, but one whose formal components Hindemith elaborates in an unusually artful way. He leads the first subject through various forms, while he presents the second subject, which is closely related rhythmically to the first subject, in two different forms which are like variations of each other. In the development section he combines the motifs and themes by the use of strict techniques through both motivic and thematic treatment, as well as through counterpoint. Following the conventional recapitulation the coda is an ongoing continuation of the development.

So the constituents of the form are distinguished from each other not only through their melodic and motivic material but also through their respective compositional structures. Moreover Hindemith colors these formal constituents by means of a subtly differentiated harmonic and tonal conception; the first subject remains firmly in the basic tonality of C major (the tonic), the transition to the next section is in D flat major (Neapolitan), the second subject in its first version is in E major (the mediant), its second version is in G major (the dominant), while the transition to the development section touches on A minor (the relative minor) as well as F major (the subdominant). By adopting such a well-planned compositional approach the nineteen-year-old composer certainly also demonstrates great skill, a skill which he would originally have learned and applied from Sekles's compositional methods, yet he is truly able to breathe new life into them through the freshness and originality of his musical invention.

Hindemith imbues the second movement with the character of a three-part funeral march—unusual enough in string quartet music—while the scherzo which follows, in complete contrast to the robust diatonicism of the first movement, is chromatic. Furthermore, in a lavish display of inventive abundance, he even gives this scherzo two trio sections, of which the first in particular exploits the tonal possibilities of the string instruments. Hindemith writes the final movement in rondo form, in which—clearly modeled on the example of Brahms's Third Symphony—he refers back thematically to the funeral march of the second movement, in the manner of a cyclical rounding off.

Hindemith completed the first movement of the quartet in the summer of 1914 immediately before the outbreak of the First World War and because of the war he at first stopped work on the piece. It was not until March and April 1915 that he continued work on it with the funeral march, a movement clearly relevant to that war when, to Hindemith's surprise, his composition teacher programmed the as yet unfinished work in an evening concert at the Hoch Conservatory. Under the greatest time pressure, which obviously acted as a stimulant, Hindemith duly completed the quartet and, as scheduled, it was given its première on 26 April 1915 in Frankfurt am Main by an ensemble of teachers and students, with Hindemith himself taking the first violin part. The quartet remained unpublished during the composer's lifetime; it was not performed again until 6 February 1986 and was finally published in 1994.

Writer: Giselher Schubert
Translated by: David Stevens