Alabama Song, for voice & orchestra (from "Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny")

• Date: 1927 04 -1929 04
• Composer: Kurt Weill
• Period: Modern (1910-1949)

Review

Before the Doors, before The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and before the Mahagonny Singspiel, the Alabama Song was simply a song lyric tucked in an ersatz prayer book published by Bertolt Brecht in Berlin in the early '20s. Brecht, whose bizarre vision of American capitalism run-amuck in a tropical Klondike derived as much from Chaplin's The Gold Rush as Marx's Das Kapital, wrote his sequence of dirty songs and blasphemous prayers called Domestic Breviary. This book seduced the young composer Kurt Weill, a cantor's song and a disciple of the New Objectivity of Busoni, into writing lurid and lewd songs, songs that, as Weill explained, "corresponded, I suppose, to the better type of American popular song." Weill set five of Brecht's songs in 1927 as the Mahagonny Singspiel, which led to his collaboration with Brecht in Die Dreigroschenoper of 1928 and the opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny of 1929. In both the Singspiel and the opera, the Alabama Song is sung by a crew of louts looking for a good time in a city devoted to drinking, gambling, fighting, and whoring. The melody they belt out in double time is simple, direct, and derived in part from a melody by Brecht. The setting is quick, staccato, and violent. The rhythm is repetitive and relentless. The harmonies are harsh and grating. The song is nasty, brutal, banal, and -- above all -- instantly memorable and forever unforgettable. ~ James Leonard, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
1933 And All That [Original Cast Recording]	2003
American Songbook Series: Kurt Weill
Berlin: Songs of Love and War, Peace and Exile	2008
Georgia Brown sings Kurt Weill & George Gershwin
Kurt Weill: Die Dreigroschenoper; Songs	2011
Kurt Weill: Symphony No. 2; The Seven Deadly Sins; Songs	2009
Lotte Lenya Sings American & Berlin Theater Songs of Kurt Weill	1988
O Moon of Alabama: Historische Aufnahmen 1928-1944	1994
Opera Highlights	1994
Pia chante Bertolt Brecht et Kurt Weill	2006
Round About Weill	2005
Round About Weill	2005
September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill	1997
Stranger Here Myself: Songs of Kurt Weill	1992
The Kurt Weill Project	2008
Time Traveller: Weimar Germany	2012
Travelling Light	2002
Weill: From Berlin to Broadway	2002
Weill: The Seven Deadly Sins	2004

Albums with Excerpt Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Weill: The Seven Deadly Sins and other Songs	1998

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