Symphony in B-flat for Band was written by the German composer
Paul Hindemith in 1951. It was premiered on April 5 of that year by the U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own" with the composer conducting (Miles, et al. 2010, 953).
The contrapuntal textures used by Hindemith throughout the symphony highlight many instruments individually. This writing takes advantage of the vast color palette that this combination of instruments offers (Sharp 2011, 212).
Richard Franko Goldman, a bandmaster himself and a music critic of the mid-20th century, called the piece "singularly dead". He states that composing for band is difficult because "the agglomeration of instruments is irrational and exasperating". He previously lamented that the piece falls "between the effort to be popular and obvious, and the intention to remain unsmiling and uncorrupted" (Goldman 1958, 127–28)
