Hindemith

Reputation

Hindemith's reputational decline can be attributed at least partly to a lack of "champions" among his pupils. Compared to theorists such as Schenker, Piston, Carter, and Schoenberg, very few of Hindemith's pupils achieved international success. Even those who assumed prominent academic positions, such as Howard Boatwright, generally declined to champion Hindemith's compositional or theoretical legacy. His Unterweisung techniques came to be seen as dogmatic and conservative in the 1950s, especially as appreciation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone system, serialism, and Schenkerian analysis increased. Perhaps the biggest blows to Hindemith's reputation came in the 1960s from composers and scholars associated with the Darmstadt School, which discarded the use of his works in instruction in favor of serialist works by Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Boulez particularly disliked Hindemith and refused to conduct his works.