Theme with four Variations

CONTENT
The thematic concept behind this ballet is the philosophy of the four temperaments of ancient times which categorised human beings into four character types: melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic and choleric. This work has a great signifi cance in the history of ballet as one of the earliest works without a plot and paved the way for subsequent abstract ballets.

COMMENTARY
Hindemith’s initial contacts with the choreographer and dancer George Balanchine went back to the year 1937. The Russian-born Balanchine had been a member of Serge Diaghilev’s famed Ballets Russes up to 1929 and was then the director of the American Ballet in New York from 1933 onwards. In September 1940, Hindemith told him of ‚a nameless suite which could be danced to‘ for piano and string orchestra which he completed at the beginning of November. The premier was planned for the end of May 1941 to launch an American Ballet in New York tour of several months to South America, but only a few days before the planned fi rst performance, the Germans sank a British warship which had served as an escort for American trade ships. The overwhelming reaction in the press to this event prompted the organisers of the ballet tour to remove the composition of the ‚hostile foreigner‘ Hindemith from the programme. The concertante performance of the work was given in Winterthur in March 1943 and the ballet première was not given until 1946 by Balanchine’s newly established Ballet Society in New York.
Hindemith composed the music for this ballet according to the absolute musical concept of theme and variations: ‚A brief instrumental introduction without dance with a simple uncomplicated theme, then four variations (dances) on this piece according to each of the temperaments.‘ On the musical structure of the variations he wrote: ‚C is a type of waltz, D a shorter piece and E becomes completely wild.‘ He divides the introductory theme into three contrasting sections, thereby making the variation work on each of the individual movements into an extremely complex matter. In the third variation (Phlegmatic), he reduces the string orchestra to a group of soloists: the fi rst section is played by an unaccompanied string quartet, the second section by a solo piano with brief interjections from the quartet and the third by the quartet augmented by a double bass. (Susanne Schaal-Gotthardt)