Stravinsky vs Bartok vs Hindermith

[Leon]

Stravinsky, Hindemith and Bartók. What are the similarities and differences in their approaches to and uses of musical forms? Why do they approach form the way they do?

All three composers wrote about their use of forms and their reasons for doing so, so that would be a good place to start. Stravinsky's thoughts (largely ghostwritten, but he still took responsibility for them) are most succinctly summarized in his Poetics of Music. For Hindemith, I would suggest A Composer's World, though that book is retrospective and sometimes contains instances of Hindemith trying to rewrite his own history. For Bartok, I would suggest his essay "The Influence of Peasant Music on Modern Music" and, more generally, his collected essays edited by Benjamin Suchoff.

You might also want to research "neoclassicism" and "Gebrauchsmusik."