The next level is the 6 madrigals in Paul Hindemith's '12 Madrigals to Poems of Josef Weinheber'. The score was composed over a period of five weeks, between 20 February and 29 March 1958, and was influenced by the music of Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613). Inspired by Gesualdo's music, Hindemith tried to transpose this genre, central to Gesualdo, into the framework of his own musical language. Hindemith's madrigal texts are by Joseph Weinheber, the lyricist and poet who has been at the centre of discussion for the last fifty years. Hindemith was drawn to the contrast of overt pessimism and bitter humour in Weinheber's texts. They seemed to him an ideal textual foundation for all the conditions of the modern madrigal. Hindemith selected 12 different poems written by Weinheber between the age of twenty-five and the final year of his life for his madrigal collection. The composer emphasises that the madrigals are not a closed cycle and that any selection and sequence is possible. The range of states extends from irrepressible humour, obstinacy and caustic irony to a grievously exaggerated fear of death, a self-loathing deception of the weight of existence, human abandonment and bitter denial; from pious hope to a terrifying reprieve for the dead. Only the favourite theme of Gesualdo and his time, theme of love, is absent, not because it would appear sentimental, but because it does not appear in Weinheber's texts. Such sombre themes are based on feelings that are familiar to each person or are yet to come. The third level of composition – a media work, represents a synthesizing beginning, reflections on a person in the conditions of the existence of modern media.