Steve Schwartz said about Hindemith's first sonata:

>The first sonata, subtitled "Der Main" (the River Main, pronounced
>"mine"), leads one to expect something programmatic.  The work fails to
>call up any images for me, and I assume that the title refers to where the
>piece was written (Frankfurt, a major teaching post for Hindemith), rather
>than to any extra-musical inspiration.

I got the score a couple of days ago, and apparently the sonata was
inspired by a rather exalted poem by Holderlin of the same name.  For
what it's worth, here is a rough stab at a translation (with apologies
for incorrectly anglicized Greek words):

   The Main

   Many a land I'd like to see on the living Earth, and often my heart
   flies out over the hills, and my desires wander across the sea, to
   those shores that I have heard praised as greater than those I know;
   yet no distant land is dearer to me than the one where the sons of
   the Gods sleep, the grieving land of the Greeks.

   O!  there I would like to alight one day on Sunium's coast and ask
   the way to your columns, Olympieion!  There, before the storm of the
   North buries you, too, in the rubble of the Athenian temples and
   their idols - for you have long stood lonely, O pride of the world
   that is no more!  - And O you beautiful islands of Ionia, where the
   winds blow cool from the sea to warm shores as the grape ripens under
   the powerful sun; O!  where a golden autumn transforms the poor
   people's sighs into song when the lemon trees and the pomegranates,
   full of purple apples, and the sweet wine and the drums and the
   cithara call the dejected to the Labyrinthine dance.

   You islands, perhaps one day a poet without a home will chance upon
   you, for he must wander from stranger to stranger, and the free Earth,
   alas, must serve as his Fatherland while he lives and when he dies -

   Yet however far I may wander, never will I forget you, beautiful
   River Main, and your much-favoured banks.  Proud one!  you hospitably
   took me in and gladdened the eye of the stranger, you taught me
   quietly floating songs and a silent life.

   Calmly with the stars, you happy one, you surge and swell from morning
   to evening towards brother Rhine; and then with him joyfully into
   the ocean!

"Felix Delbrueck" <[log in to unmask]>