When Paul Hindemith wrote a parody of Tristan into an early opera, the offense to Wagner stirred up a resentment in his native Germany that lingered on for years. In the '30s, when his music had attained the clean, clear shape of neoclassicism, the Nazis banned it because of its antiRomantic ring. And after the war, when Hindemith returned to Europe after 13 years in the U.S., he was widely considered a walking anachronism by the new musical revolutionaries. In youth, he had been called "the playboy." In age, he was "the...
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