Mathis der Maler

CONTENT
Mathis who is in the services of Cardinal Albrecht aids the peasant leader Schwalb and his daughter Regina in their flight from the federal army. Mathis defends his support of the peasants before Captain Capito with his mercenaries breaks his way into the house of the Lutheran citizen Riedinger and confiscates books. He announces Luther’s challenge that Albrecht should marry. Riedinger’s 65 Mathis der Maler daughter Ursula who is in love with Mathis must now decide whether she wishes to marry Albrecht. Mathis rejects her plea to be allowed to go with him as he intends to support the peasants. She reconciles herself to her fate while the books are being burnt on the market place. Mathis soon sees the futility of his support for the peasants and, following the death of Schwalb, takes in his orphaned daughter Regina. Albrecht rejects the suggestion of marriage. In a vision Mathis sees his companions as symbols of wealth, power, sensuous pleasure, self-denial and wisdom. Paulus (Cardinal Albrecht) points Mathis back in the direction of art: ‘Go back and create!’ Mathis completes the Isenheim Altar. Ursula is looking after Regina who is dying. Albrecht offers a home to Mathis, but he refuses this invitation. Having now become weary, he is searching for solitude and takes his farewell.

COMMENTARY
Mathis der Maler is the most prominent document of a stylistic change which with its homogenous and greater predominance of string colouring, a clear tonal orientation and clear formal structures had been insinuating itself since 1930. The work also employs several of the technical mediums which Hindemith would subsequently theoretically substantiate in his Unterweisung im Tonsatz (1937). The practice of adapting folk and chorale melodies for his own musical diction which Hindemith had already employed in his Konzert für Klavier, Blechbläser und Harfen op. 49 (1930) is extended in the opera into a characteristic stylistic device which he would go on to use in some of his later works (e.g. the viola concerto Der Schwanendreher). The selection of the subject matter and the history of the origins of Mathis der Maler for which Hindemith wrote his own libretto were closely linked with his personal situation from 1933 onwards. The painter Mathias Grünewald (ca. 1475-1528) is placed at the centre of a multilayered concept drama against a background of historical events at the time of the peasant wars. Mathis is searching for an answer to the question of the function of art and its creators in times of political crisis. According to the conclusion of the opera, art and artists have a moral obligation towards society, but Mathis fails in his obligation: ‘Where there is room only for combat and blood, art cannot thrive’ (Scene 6, Act 3). Mathis’ renunciation reveals the autobiographical traits of this opera.
 The three instrumental movements composed alongside Hindemith’s work on the text - ‘Engelkonzert’, ‘Grablegung’ and ‘Versuchung des hl. Antonius’ [Angelic concert, Entombment and Temptation of St. Anthony] – were combined to form the Symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’ which received its first performance in Berlin played by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Furtwängler in March 1934. 
The outstanding success of this work was followed by a massive wave of propaganda denouncing Hindemith spread by NS cultural politicians. After Furtwängler’s failed attempts to protect Hindemith, the composer retreated stepwise from Germany, emigrating to Switzerland in 1938 and in 1940 to the USA. (S. Sch.-G.)