Das Marienleben (The Life of Mary) is German composer Paul Hindemith’s great song cycle for soprano voice and piano. The composition is based on the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. After Bartok, Hindemith has always been my favorite composer of the 20th century. His style, often called neo-classical, is heavily influenced by the German Romantics but owes much to the contrapunctual style of Bach yet showing the atonal quality of contemporaries such as Schoenberg.

There are actually two versions of Das Marienleben, both being available at The Avant Garde Project. The original version was completed in 1923. Both versions deal with the life of Mary, Mother of Jesus. Each of the sections tells of a portion of Mary’s life from just before the birth of Jesus to Mary’s death. Both versions borrow heavily from Baroque form using a chorale fantasy, theme and variation and ground bass and other tycial musical structures of the era. The 1923 version is performed by Peggy Bonini and Ingolf Dahl.

The second version was published in 1948 and is an example of Hindemith’s own artistic evolution. The differences are noticeable but I would be hard pressed to pick the better one. This is a question that has been argued by music critics and historians much more knowledgeable than your humble blogger. The soprano and pianist on the 1948 version is Janet Wagner and John Cobb.

The Avant Garde Project features the two versions on their website in both large FLAC files and more manageable MP3s. Those with lots of hard disc space looking for the best sound should go for FLAC but I think the sound on the MP3 is just fine.

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