Although Paul Hindemith was the first to compose a concerto that placed the orchestra at the forefront in concept and title, his pioneering Concerto for Orchestra (1925) and its role in the development of the genre have remained undervalued. The work is mentioned only in passing in monographs and chapters (Levaja and Leontieva, 1974; Kamp, 1984; Neumeyer, 1986) or is omitted entirely (Austin, 1966; Whittall, 1996); even the Concerto's 2025 centenary went largely unnoticed. Such omissions contribute to an incomplete narrative of the genre's evolution, creating a historiographical gap before Bartók's better-known and well-studied Concerto for Orchestra (1943).

This paper has two interrelated purposes: to determine the hybrid nature of Hindemith's Concerto for Orchestra (which interlaces the grosso, ripieno, solo, and chamber concertos) and to consider the Handelian legacy in it. The following methodologies will be applied: solo analysis (classification of solo types, their formal, dramaturgical, expressive, and genre-defining functions), facilitating the examination of scores; comparative analysis, equating Handel's and Hindemith's approaches to the concerto; and stylistic analysis, supporting historical and analytical interpretation of the presentation of musical material.

The hybrid nature of Hindemith's Concerto for Orchestra comes from the fact that each of its movements juxtaposes or fuses two or even three concerto types, which acquire formal and dramaturgical functions and thus determine the musical deployment. The diversity and complexity of concerto combinations uncover a deliberate compositional technique that distinguishes Hindemith's Concerto from other instrumental concertos of the 1920s. This output challenges the widespread view of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos as Hindemith's primary prototype (Kemp 1984; Hinton 1998). It is suggested instead that Handel's Grand Concertos Op.6, with multifaceted fusions of concerto types within a concerto cycle and a single movement (Rakochi, 2025)—though not explicitly referenced in writings on Hindemith's Concerto for Orchestra—exerted an even more direct influence. Hindemith's resulting intertemporal mixture ultimately included not only different Baroque concerto mixtures but also a modern orchestra and twentieth-century harmony, bridging the past and the present within the neoclassical trend of the 1920s. Therefore, the innovative Handelian idea of 1739 became a “transgressive gesture” (Nowak, 2023) at a new evolutionary stage of the concerto, allowing Hindemith to transport the Baroque legacy directly into twentieth-century music.

Selected References:

• Hinton, Stephen. (1998). Hindemith, Bach and the Melancholy of Obligation. In Bach Perspectives. Volume Three. Creative responses to Bach from Mozart to Hindemith (pp. 133–150). Edited by Michael Marissen. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

• Kemp, Ian. (1984). Hindemith. In The New Grove modern masters: Bartók, Stravinsky, Hindemith. Editor Stanley Sadie. New York: W.W. Norton.

• Neumeyer, David. (1986). The music of Paul Hindemith. New Haven: Yale University Press.

• Nowak, Anna. (2023). A New Aesthetic Ideas and the “Memory of Genre” in the 20th and 21st Century Polish Instrumental Concertos. Literature and Arts Review, Volume 2023, 1–13.

• Rakochi, Vadym. (2025). Handel's Grand Concertos Opus 6: Shifts in Compositional Perspectives. New York: Routledge.