JAVS Fall 2012

3. Hindemith made drawings of a “ Schwanendreher ” in November 1935 and January 1937 (see figures 15 and 16). Figure 15. Hindemith’s drawing from November 14, 1935, the day of the premiere of the work in Amsterdam. 32

4. As it appeared in program notes in December 1938, Hindemith had come to the conclusion that the folksong was “a mocking song (1603) directed, it seems, upon the man who turned the swans in the kitchen upon a spit. (Swans were eaten in those days.)” 33 5. Der Schwanendreher has also been depicted as a storyteller, the teller of “tall tales” like Till Eulenspiegel, Háry János , or Peer Gynt , perhaps rel evant to the “long nose” in the second verse— “and as the person who wrings the swan’s neck and delivers it to the kitchen.” 34 6. With considerable assistance from Dagmar Hoffmann-Axthelm and David Fallows, Ian Kemp took this investigation one step further. Close examination of Böhme’s source, Philipp Hainhofer’s lute book (1603), reveals that the title of the folksong was not Schwanendreher but Schwanen Dretzerdantz . The text for the folksong appears separately after the lute tablature in Hainhofer’s manuscript lute volume with Böhme’s use of dreher seen as dretzer . The German word dretzen means torment, tease, mock, irritate; and the word dantz to dance. 35 It is not clear why Böhme changed the title in his collec tion. It is apparent that he also altered the music as well as the text and title in this folksong. 36 ing the Christmas period in 1935 in which he ridiculed characters within the Nazi Party, casting them as birds. Hindemith cast himself as a goose, Furtwängler an eagle, and Goebbels the cook! The composer also materialized as an “egg bolshevist” in the poem, “Whose eggs had been approaching per fection but which were held back because a new owner took over the farm.” 37 Whatever the darker message lurking behind this satiric attempt might have been, Hindemith’s employment of birds was clearly a symbolic ploy during this period. It is perhaps significant that Hindemith wrote a poem called Die Geflügelzucht (Poultry-keeping) dur

Figure 16. Hindemith’s drawing of Der Schwanendreher from January 27, 1937 (with kind per mission of the Hindemith Institute, Frankfurt am Main).

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