Paul Hindemith student Graham George
Toward the end of the 1930s, Hindemith made several tours of America as a viola and viola d'amore soloist.
He emigrated to Switzerland in 1938, partly because his wife was of part-Jewish ancestry.At the same time that he was codifying his musical language, Hindemith's teaching and compositions began to be affected by his theories, according to critics such as Ernest Ansermet. Arriving in the U.S. in 1940, he taught primarily at Yale University, where he founded the Yale Collegium Musicum. He had such notable students as Lukas Foss, Graham George, Andrew Hill, Norman Dello Joio, Mel Powell, Yehudi Wyner, Harold Shapero, Hans Otte, Ruth Schönthal, Samuel Adler, Leonard Sarason, Fenno Heath, Tony-winning composer Mitch Leigh, and Oscar-winning film director George Roy Hill. Hindemith also taught at the University at Buffalo, Cornell University, and Wells College. During this time he gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, from which the book A Composer's World (1952) was extracted. Hindemith had a long friendship with Erich Katz, whose compositions were influenced by him. Also among Hindemith's students were the future rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and the composers Franz Reizenstein, Harald Genzmer, Oskar Sala, Arnold Cooke, Robert Strassburg, and dozens of other notables.
pupil learner apprentice scholar trainee