One of the charms of these pieces is the wit and quirky sense of humor that Hindemith displays. A significant element in the most compelling pieces here is his rhythmic inventiveness, which is considerable, and is most evident in the more energetic and propulsive fugues and interludes. Hindemith's harmonic palette in these works is fairly narrow, and he's not an outstanding melodist, so some of the slow movements sound like contrapuntal meandering. It's not too broad a judgment to note that, in general, the slow movements hold less interest than the fast ones. Ludus tonalis is not the most consistently engaging of Hindemith's scores, but the moments that delight and astonish far outnumber the dry. The composer, however, deflects an overly serious assessment by the title he gives it, which can be translated as 'Tonal Game,' and games should be fun. The work's subtitle, 'Studies in Counterpoint, Tonal Organization and Piano Playing,' contributes to intimations of portentousness. As the largest and most ambitious piano piece by one of the twentieth century's leading composers, self-consciously modeled on a great monument of keyboard music, it's a work that demands to be taken seriously. Ludus tonalis - a 50-minute cycle of 12 fugues, one in each of the major keys, connected by interludes and framed by a prelude and postlude - is clearly related to the structure of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. There is a striking symmetry around the center of the cycle (the march).According to conventional wisdom, the adjective that most aptly describes Hindemith's music is 'dry,' just about as damning an assessment as exists, barely a step up from 'mind-numbingly dull' or 'unlistenable.' Who wants to listen to dry music? Hindemith was remarkably prolific, and it must be admitted that he perhaps wrote more than his share of dry music, but he also wrote music of great energy, expressiveness, and wit. Postludium: Retrograde inversion of the Praeludium.Fuga undecima in B ( canon): Accompanied canon.Fuga nona in B ♭: Subject transformation fugue.Interludium: Romantic miniature ( Brahms style).Interludium: Romantic miniature ( Chopin style).Fuga tertia in F: Mirror fugue, where the second half is an exact retrograde of the first, except with voice paddings at their end exits.

In this system, the major-minor duality is meaningless and the practice of modulation is dropped, although subject modulation occurs in the second fugue, to create growing tension. The affinity of each note with the keynote is directly related to its position on the harmonic scale. Ludus Tonalis can be thought of as the most direct application of Hindemith's theory that the twelve tones of the equally tempered scale all relate to a single one of them (called a tonic or keynote). Unlike Bach's work, though, the non-fugal pieces in Ludus Tonalis frequently repeat the work's main theme. Ludus Tonalis was intended to be the twentieth-century equivalent to J.S. The tonalities of the fugues follow the order of his Serie 1 and use the keynote C (see The Craft of Musical Composition). In between, there are twelve three-part fugues separated by eleven interludes, beginning in the tonality of the previous fugue and ending in the tonality of the next fugue (or in a different tonality very close to that). The piece, which comprises all 12 major and/or minor keys, starts with a three-part Praeludium in C resembling Johann Sebastian Bach's toccatas, and ends with a Postludium which is an exact retrograde inversion of the Praeludium. It is in effect, a veritable catalogue of the composer's mature style.' The piece explores 'matters of technique, theory, inspiration, and communication. It was first performed in 1943 in Chicago by Willard MacGregor. Ludus Tonalis ('Play of Tones', 'Tonal Game', or 'Tonal Primary School' after the Latin Ludus Litterarius), subtitled Kontrapunktische, tonale, und Klaviertechnische Übungen ( Counterpoint, tonal and technical studies for the piano), is a piano work by Paul Hindemith that was composed in 1942 during his stay in the United States. From the first and final movements, respectively.

Hindeminth ludus tonalis