Trauermusik

Paul Hindemith was a virtuoso viola player as well as a composer, and it was in that capacity that he found himself in London when King George V died on 20 January 1936. He was due to perform one of his own concertos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Instead, in the space of six hours, he composed a completely new work in three movements for viola and string orchestra—something more suited to a period of national mourning. Trauermusik (Mourning Music) is a short, heartfelt lament that moves through three stages of grief, with viola as chief mourner, before finding a sort of peace in an old hymn tune that Hindemith, as a German, knew as Bach’s chorale Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit, but which British listeners will have recognised (and drawn consolation from) as The Old Hundredth. It was premiered in a live national broadcast on 22 January 1936; the conductor Adrian Boult recalled that many of the musicians wept as they played.