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Kurt Weill

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Kurt Julian Weill
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(born March 2, 1900, Dessau, Ger. — died April 3, 1950, New York, N.Y., U.S.) German-born U.S. composer. Son of a cantor, by age 15 he was working as a theatre accompanist. He studied composition briefly with Engelbert Humperdinck, and a conductor's post gave him wide experience. For a master class with Ferruccio Busoni (1920), he wrote his first symphony. He gained attention with his one-act opera Der Protagonist (1925); its sparse and spiky style prefigured that of his greatest works. In 1927 he teamed with Bertolt Brecht to write The Threepenny Opera (1928) in a new "cabaret" style; the musical had enormous success in Berlin and elsewhere. In 1930 the two produced The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. When the Nazis took power in 1933, he fled to Paris with his wife, Lotte Lenya, where he wrote The Seven Deadly Sins (1933). In 1935 the couple immigrated to the U.S.; there he collaborated on musicals such as Knickerbocker Holiday (1938) and Lost in the Stars (1949). Two of his songs, the "Morität" ("Mack the Knife") from Threepenny Opera and "September Song" from Knickerbocker Holiday, have remained especially popular.

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American Theater Guide: Kurt Weill
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Weill, Kurt (1900–50), composer. The German‐born composer came to America in 1935 as a refugee from Nazism, accompanied by his wife, Lotte Lenya. American playgoers had already heard his unique, often jittery and staccato jazz‐influenced music in an earlier production of The Threepenny Opera (1933), which had a short run on Broadway. Shortly after his arrival his incidental music for Max Reinhardt's The Eternal Road (1937) was played in the New York production of the play. Weill's American musicals were Johnny Johnson (1936), Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), Lady in the Dark (1941), One Touch of Venus (1943), The Firebrand of Florence (1945), Street Scene (1947), Love Life (1948), and Lost in the Stars (1949). At the time of his death he was working with Maxwell Anderson on Raft on the River, a musicalization of Huckleberry Finn. A 1954 revival of Threepenny Opera became one of the most successful of all Off‐Broadway offerings and revived interest in his work, especially after “The Ballad of Mack the Knife” became widely popular. However, attempts to present his other German musicals have not met with success, although opera companies have staged such works as The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny. Weill was a unique composer, mixing European influences with Broadway razzamatazz and coming up with a distinctive sound of his own. He was also a master of the haunting, melancholy ballad, as seen in song standards like “September Song” and “Speak Low.” Biography: Kurt Weill on Stage: From Berlin to Broadway, Foster Hirsch, 2002.

Music Encyclopedia: Kurt (Julian) Weill
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(b Dessau, 2 March 1900; d New York, 3 April 1950). German composer, American citizen from 1943. He was a pupil of Humperdinck, Busoni and Jarnach in Berlin (1918-23); their teaching informed his early music, including the choral Recordare (1923) and the Concerto for violin and wind (1924), the latter also influenced by Stravinsky. But the deeper influence of Stravinsky, coupled with an increased consciousness of music as a social force, led Weill to a rediscovery in the mid-1920s of tonal and vernacular elements, notably from jazz, in his cantata Der neue Orpheus and one-act stage piece Royal Palace, written between two collaborations with the expressionist playwright Georg Kaiser: Der Protagonist and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren. In 1926 he married the singer Lotte Lenya, who was to be the finest interpreter of his music.

His next collaborator was Brecht, with whom he worked on The Threepenny Opera (1928), The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929) and Happy End (1929), all of which use the corrupted, enfeebled diatonicism of commercial music as a weapon of social criticism, though paradoxically they have beome the epitome of the pre-war culture they sought to despise. Yet this is done within the context of a new harmonic consistency and focus. These works have also drawn attention from the theatre works in which Weill developed without Brecht during the early 1930s, Die Bürgschaft and Der Silbersee (with Kaiser again).

In 1933 he left Germany for Paris, where he worked with Brecht again on the sung ballet The Seven Deadly Sins. Then in 1935 he moved to the USA, where he cut loose from the European art-music tradition and devoted himself wholeheartedly to composing for the Broadway stage, intentionally subordinating aesthetic criteria to pragmatic and populist ones. Yet these works are still informed by his cultivated sense of character and theatrical form.

works:
Dramatic music
  • Der Protagonist (1926)
  • Royal Palace (1927)
  • Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (1928)
  • Die Dreigroschenoper (1928)
  • Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1929)
  • Happy End (1929)
  • Der Jasager, school opera (1930)
  • Die Bürgschaft (1932)
  • Der Silbersee (1933)
  • Die sieben Todsünden, sung ballet (1933)
  • Johnny Johnson, fable (1936)
  • Knickerbocker Holiday, operetta (1938)
  • Railroads on Parade, pageant (1939)
  • Lady in the Dark, musical play (1941)
  • One Touch of Venus, musical comedy (1943)
  • Street Scene, Broadway opera (1947)
  • Down in the Valley, college opera (1948)
  • Love Life, vaudeville (1948)
  • Lost in the Stars, musical tragedy (1949)
  • film, theatre and radio music
Orchestral music
  • Sym. no. 1 (1921)
  • Divertimento (1922)
  • Sinfonia sacra (1922)
  • Conc., vn, wind (1924)
  • Sym. no. 2 (1933)
Vocal music
  • Recordare, chorus (1923)
  • Der neue Orpheus, S, vn, orch (1925)
  • Vom Tod im Wald, B, wind (1927)
  • Das Berliner Requiem, T, Bar, B, chorus (1928)
  • Der Lindberghflug, T, Bar, chorus (1929)
  • Kiddush, T, chorus (1949)
  • songs
Chamber music
  • 2 str qts (1919, 1923)
  • Vc Sonata (1920)

Biography: Kurt Weill
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The operas and other stage works of Kurt Weill (1900-1950), German-American composer, had considerable influence on contemporary Western musical theater.

Kurt Weill was born in Dessau, Germany, on March 2, 1900. He studied piano as a child and composed several works before enrolling at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik at age 18. He left to work in provincial opera houses, returning to Berlin to study with Ferruccio Busoni from 1921 to 1924.

Weill's early compositions were largely instrumental concert works written in the current "advanced" style, but in 1926 he composed a one-act opera, Der Protagonist (The Protagonist; libretto by Georg Kaiser), and concentrated henceforth on stage works. Two short operas containing elements of popular music followed: Royal Palace (1926; by Kaiser) and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (1927, The Czar Has His Photograph Taken; by Ivan Goll).

As a composer, Weill achieved maturity in his collaboration with the poet-playwright Bertolt Brecht. On the eve of the Nazi victory in Germany, the team produced thinly veiled attacks on status-quo social attitudes and corrupt politics. Weill's music - trenchant, ironic, bittersweet - was the perfect setting for Brecht's pessimistic texts. Die Dreigroschenoper (1928, The Threepenny Opera) is their most famous work. This play with music, starring Lotte Lenya (Weill's young bride), was an immediate sensation and was performed throughout Europe. An English-language revival in 1955 ran for over 2, 000 performances.

Other Weill-Brecht stage works included the opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1927-1929, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), the musical play Happy End (1929), and the school opera Der Jasager (1930, The Yes-sayer). With other librettists Weill composed the operas Die Bürgschaft (1930, The Pledge) and Der Silbersee (1932, The Silver Lake) before his works were banned by the Hitler regime and he fled Berlin in February 1933.

Weill lived briefly in Paris and London. His last collaboration with Brecht was an unusual ballet with songs, Die Sieben Todtsünden (1933, The Seven Deadly Sins), with choreography by George Balanchine, and he composed the scores for two musical plays, Marie Galante (1934) and A Kingdom for a Cow (1934). He became a naturalized American citizen in 1936.

The larger American compositions of Weill comprise 10 stage works, including the operas Street Scene (1946; by Elmer Rice and Langston Hughes) and Down in the Valley (1948; by Arnold Sundgaard); the musicals Johnny Johnson (1936; by Paul Green), Knickerbocker Holiday (1938; by Maxwell Anderson), Lady in the Dark (1940; by Moss Hart); and the "musical tragedy" Lost in the Stars (1949; by Anderson).

Weill was a creative genius, an innovator worthy of considerable study, whose music always bears unique stylistic traits of melody, harmony, rhythm, and orchestral color. His best stage works contain a sophistication of technique and a grasp of character delineation often belied by the use of simple means and "ordinary" elements from German folk tradition and the contemporary dance hall. As a whole, the works are innovative in their mixing of singing actors with opera singers, use of films and unconventional staging and design, and their explosive political and social content. Two Weill songs are worldwide popular standards: "Moritat" (or "Mack the Knife") from Threepenny Opera and "September Song" from Knickerbocker Holiday, both characteristic of his best work. He died on April 3, 1950.

Further Reading

Weill's career is recounted in David Ewen, European Light Opera (1962) and The World of Twentieth Century Music (1968). His work with Brecht is discussed in Frederick Ewen, Bertolt Brecht (1967).

Additional Sources

Jarman, Douglas, Kurt Weill, an illustrated biography, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

Sanders, Ronald, The days grow short: the life and music of Kurt Weill, Los Angeles: Silman-James Press; Hollywood, CA: Distributed by Samuel French Trade, 1991.

Schebera, Jurgen, Kurt Weill: an illustrated life, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Taylor, Ronald, Kurt Weill: composer in a divided world, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992.

German Literature Companion: Kurt Weill
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Weill, Kurt, (Dessau, 1900-50, New York) studied music with Humperdinck and Busoni in Berlin. In 1926 he married the actress Lotte Lenya (Caroline Blamauer, 1898-1981) and in the same year composed an opera, Der Protagonist, to a text by G. Kaiser. His experimental style came into its own during his three-year collaboration with B. Brecht: he provided the music for Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper (1928), Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930), Happy End (1929), and Der Jasager (1930), and for the radio cantata Der Lindberghflug (1929, see Ozeanflug, Der). Kaiser wrote the text for Der Zar läßt sich photographieren (1928), Weill the music for Kaiser's play Der Silbersee (1933). The text of Die Bürgschaft (1932) was by Caspar Neher. His only ballet, Die sieben Todsünden, was premiered in Paris in 1933. Weill also set poems by R. M. Rilke and composed incidental music to works by F. Werfel, A. Strindberg, A. Bronnen, and L. Feuchtwanger.

Weill's work attracted the hostility of the National Socialists who branded him as a ‘decadent’ Jewish composer. In March 1933 he fled to France and in September 1935 went to New York for the production of Der Weg der Verheißung (1937), a pageant recounting the history of the Jewish people written in collaboration with Werfel and Reinhardt. This led to the anti-war musical play Johnny Johnson (1936). Though both works proved unpopular with Broadway audiences, he settled in New York, taking American citizenship and writing musicals more suited to American popular taste such as Knickerbocker Holiday (1938) to a text by Maxwell Anderson. Weill's creative exile culminated with his ‘Broadway opera’ Street Scene (1946) and the ‘musical tragedy’ Lost in the Stars (1949), inspired by the novel Cry the Beloved Country by the anti-apartheid South African writer Alan Paton.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Kurt Weill
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Weill, Kurt (kʊrt' vīl), 1900-1950, German-American composer, b. Dessau, studied with Humperdinck and Busoni in Berlin. He first became known with the production of two short, satirical, surrealist operas, Der Protagonist (1926) and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren [the czar has himself photographed] (1928). More popular than these, however, was his melodious Dreigroschenoper (1928), a modern version of John Gay's Beggar's Opera, with book by Bertolt Brecht. Translated and adapted by Marc Blitzstein as The Threepenny Opera, it was first produced in New York City in 1933; revived in 1954, it ran for more than six years and has become one of the classics of the musical stage. Brecht was also the librettist of Weill's satiric opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny [rise and fall of the city Mahagonny] (1927; revised and expanded 1930). All these works were condemned as decadent by the rising followers of Hitler, and, in 1933, Weill left Germany for France.

In 1935 he emigrated to the United States, where he began writing sophisticated musicals, the most notable being Johnny Johnson (1936), Knickerbocker Holiday (1938; written with Maxwell Anderson), Lady in the Dark (1941), and One Touch of Venus (1943; written with Ogden Nash). In these works Weill employed with great facility advanced techniques, including multiple rhythms and polytonality, combined with the idiom of American popular music and jazz. His last works, in a more serious vein, included Street Scene (1947), Down in the Valley (1948), and Lost in the Stars (1949; written with Maxwell Anderson). His wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, played many of the leading roles in his works and was his defining interpreter. Weill also wrote some instrumental works; a cantata, Lindbergh's Flight (1929); and The Eternal Road (1934), a pageant of Jewish history originally composed in German with text by Franz Werfel. Weill became a U.S. citizen in 1943.

Artist: Kurt Weill
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Kurt Weill
  • Period: Modern (1910-1949)
  • Country: Germany/USA
  • Born: March 02, 1900 in Dessau, Germany
  • Died: April 03, 1950 in New York, NY
  • Genres: Ballet, Choral Music, Concerto, Opera, Orchestral Music, Symphony, Music Theater, Vocal Music

Biography

The son of a cantor, Kurt Weill was born in Dessau into a family that took in operatic performances as a main form of entertainment. When Weill was in his teens the director of the Dessau Hoftheater, Albert Bing, encouraged him in the study of music. Weill briefly studied composition with Engelbert Humperdinck and was already working professionally as a conductor when he attended composer Ferruccio Busoni's master classes in Berlin. Delighted to see the positive responses of an audience to his first collaboration with playwright Georg Kaiser, Der Protagonist (1926), he thereafter resolved to work toward accessibility in his music. In 1926 Weill married actress Lotte Lenya, whose reedy, quavering singing voice he called "the one I hear in my head when I am writing my songs."

In 1927 Weill began his collaboration with leftist playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht; their first joint venture, Mahagonny-Songspiel (1927), launched the number "Alabama Song," which, to their surprise, became a minor pop hit in Europe. The next show, Die Dreigroschenoper (The Three-Penny Opera, 1928) was a monstrous success, in particular the song "Moritat" (Mack the Knife). Nonetheless, strain in their association was already being felt, and after the completion of their magnificent "school opera" Der Jasager (1930), the two parted company. Brecht and Weill were brought together once more in Paris to create Die Sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins) (1934). In the meantime, Weill collaborated with Caspar Neher on the opera Die Bürgschaft (1931) and Georg Kaiser again on Der Silbersee (1933), works that garnered the hostile attention of the then-emerging Nazi party. With the rise to power of Hitler, Weill and Lenya were forced to dissolve their union and flee continental Europe. Weill found his way to New York in 1935; rejoining Lenya, Weill became a citizen and devoted himself to American democracy with a vengeance, preferring his name pronounced like "wile" rather than "vile." After a series of frustrating flops, Weill hit his stride with playwright Maxwell Anderson, producing his first hit, Knickerbocker Holiday (1938). In the dozen years left to him, Weill's stature on Broadway grew with a series of hit shows, including Lady in the Dark (1941), One Touch of Venus (1943), Love Life (1948), and Lost in the Stars (1949). Weill had ambitions to create what he regarded as "the first American folk opera"; the closest of his American works to reach that goal is Street Scene (1946), a sort of "urban folk opera" based on a play by Elmer Rice with lyrics by Langston Hughes.

On April 3, 1950, Weill unexpectedly suffered a massive coronary and died in Lenya's arms. Weill's estate was valued at less than 1,000 dollars, and Lenya realized that his contribution to musical theater was likewise undervalued. She commissioned composer Marc Blitzstein to adapt an English-language version of Die Dreigroschenoper; it opened off-Broadway in 1954 and ran for three years, touching off a Weill revival that continues. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide
Wikipedia: Kurt Weill
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Kurt Weill.
Kurt Weill.

Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900[1] – April 3, 1950[1]), was a German, and in his later years American, composer active from the 1920s until his death. He was a leading composer for the stage. He also wrote a number of works for the concert hall.

Contents

Early life

Kurt Julian Weill was born on March 2, 1900 [2], the third of four children to Albert Weill (1867–1950) and Emma Weill née Ackermann (1872–1955). He grew up in a religious Jewish family in the "Sandvorstadt", the Jewish quarter in Dessau, Germany, where his father was a cantor.[1]. At the age of twelve, Kurt Weill started taking piano lessons and made first attempts at writing music; his earliest preserved composition was written in 1913 and is titled Mi Addir. Jewish Wedding Song.[3]

In 1915, Weill started taking private lessons with Albert Bing, Kapellmeister at the "Herzogliche Hoftheater zu Dessau", who taught him piano, composition, music theory, and conducting. Weill performed publicly on piano for the first time in 1915, both as an accompanist and soloist. The following years he composed numerous Lieder to the lyrics of poets such as Eichendorff, Arno Holz, and Anna Ritter, as well as a cycle of five songs titled Ofrahs Lieder to a German translation of a text by Yehuda Halevi.[4]

Weill graduated with an Abitur from the Oberrealschule of Dessau in 1918, and enrolled at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik at the age of 18, where he studied composition with Engelbert Humperdinck[1], conducting with Rudolf Krasselt, and counterpoint with Friedrich E. Koch, and also attended philosophy lectures by Max Dessoir and Ernst Cassirer. The same year, he wrote his first string quartet (in B minor).[5]

Early work and compositions

Weill's family experienced financial hardship in the aftermath of World War I, and in July 1919, Weill abandoned his studies and returned to Dessau, where he was employed as a répétiteur at the Friedrich-Theater under the direction of the new Kapellmeister, Hans Knappertsbusch. During this time, he composed an orchestral suite in E-flat major, a symphonic poem of Rilke's The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke as well as Schilflieder, a cycle of five songs to poems by Nikolaus Lenau. In December 1919, through the help of Humperdinck, Weill was appointed as Kapellmeister at the newly founded Stadttheater in Lüdenscheid, where he directed opera, operetta, and singspiel for five months, and also composed a cello sonata and Ninon of Lenclos, a now lost one-act operatic adaptation of a play by Ernst Hardt. From May to September 1920, Weill spent a couple of months in Leipzig, where his father had become the new director of a Jewish orphanage. Before he returned to Berlin, in September 1920, he composed Sulamith, a choral fantasy for soprano, female choir, and orchestra.

Studies with Busoni

Back in Berlin, Weill had an interview with Ferruccio Busoni in December 1920. After examining some of Weill's compositions, Busoni accepted him as one of five master students in composition at the Preußische Akademie der Künste in Berlin.[6] From January 1921 to December 1923, Weill studied music composition with him and also counterpoint with Philipp Jarnach in Berlin. During his first year he composed his first symphony, Sinfonie in einem Satz, as well as the lieder Die Bekehrte (Goethe) and two Rilkelieder for voice and piano. In order to support his family in Leipzig, he also worked as a pianist in a Bierkeller tavern. In spring of 1922, Weill joined the November Group's music faction. That year he composed a psalm, a divertimento for orchestra, and Sinfonia Sacra: Fantasia, Passacaglia, and Hymnus for Orchestra. On November 18, 1922, his children's pantomime Die Zaubernacht (The Magic Night) premiered at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm; it was the first public performance of any of Weill's works in the field of musical theatre.[7]

Out of financial need, Weill taught music theory and composition to private students from 1923 to 1925. Among his students were Claudio Arrau, Maurice Abravanel, Henry (then known as Heinz) Jolles[8], and Nikos Skalkottas. Arrau, Abravenel, and Jolles, at least, would remain members of Weill's circle of friends thereafter,[9] and Jolles's sole surviving composition predating the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 is a fragment of a work for four pianos he and Weill wrote jointly.[8] Weill's compositions during his last year of studies included Quodlibet, an orchestral suite version of Die Zaubernacht, Frauentanz, seven medieval poems for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, french horn, and bassoon, and Recordare for choir and children's choir to words from the Book of Lamentations. Further premieres that year included a performance of his Divertimento for Orchestra by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Heinz Unger on April 10, 1923, and the Hindemith-Amar Quartet's rendering of Weill's String Quartet op. 8, on June 24, 1923. In December 1923, Weill finished his studies with Busoni.[10]

Success in the 1920s and early 1930s

In February 1924 the conductor Fritz Busch introduced him to the dramatist Georg Kaiser, with whom Weill would have a long-lasting creative partnership resulting in several one-act operas. At Kaiser's house in Grünheide, Weill also first met the actress and future wife Lotte Lenya in summer 1924.[11] The couple got married twice: In 1926 and again in 1937 (following their divorce in 1933). Lenya took great care to support Weill's work, and after his death she took it upon herself to increase awareness of his music, forming the Kurt Weill Foundation.

From November 1924 to May 1929, Weill wrote hundreds of reviews for the influential and comprehensive radio program guide Der deutsche Rundfunk. Hans Siebert von Heister had already worked with Weill in the November Group, and offered Weill the job shortly after becoming editor-in-chief. [12]

Although he had some success with his first mature non-stage works (such as the String Quartet, Op. 8 or the Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, Op. 12), which were influenced by Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, Weill tended more and more to vocal music and musical theatre. His musical theatre work and his songs were extremely popular with the wider public in Germany at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. Weill's music was admired by composers such as Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Darius Milhaud and Stravinsky, but it was also criticised by others: by Schoenberg, who later revised his opinion, and by Anton Webern.

His best-known work is The Threepenny Opera (1928), a reworking of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera written in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht. Engel directed the original production of The Threepenny Opera in 1928. It contains Weill's most famous song, "Mack the Knife" ("Die Moritat von Mackie Messer"). The stage success was filmed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in two language versions: Die 3-Groschen-Oper and L'opéra de quat' sous. Weill and Brecht tried to stop the film adaptation through a well publicised lawsuit that Weill won and Brecht lost. Weill's working association with Brecht, although successful, came to an end over differing politics in 1930. According to Lenya, Weill commented that he was unable to "set the communist party manifesto to music."

Paris, London and New York

Weill fled Nazi Germany in March 1933. As a prominent and popular Jewish composer, he was a target of the Nazi authorities, who criticized and even interfered with performances of his later stage works, such as Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, 1930), Die Bürgschaft (1932), and Der Silbersee (1933). With no option but to leave Germany, he went first to Paris, where he worked once more with Brecht (after a project with Jean Cocteau failed) — the ballet The Seven Deadly Sins.

On April 13, 1933 his musical The Three Penny Opera was given its premiere on Broadway, but closed after 13 performances to mixed reviews.[2] In 1934 he completed his Symphony No.2, his last purely orchestral work, conducted in Amsterdam and New York by Bruno Walter, and also the music for Jacques Deval's play, Marie Galante.

A production of his operetta Der Kuhhandel (A Kingdom for a Cow) took him to London in 1935, and later that year he went to the United States in connection with The Eternal Road,[1] a "Biblical Drama" by Franz Werfel that had been commissioned by members of New York's Jewish community and was premiered in 1937 at the Manhattan Opera House, running for 153 performances. Weill and his wife, the actress and singer Lotte Lenya, settled in New York City on 10 September 1935, living first at the St. Moritz Hotel before moving on to an apartment at 231 East 62nd Street between Third and Second Avenues.[2] Weill became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1943. Weill believed that most of his work had been destroyed, and he seldom (and reluctantly) spoke or wrote German again, with the exception of, for example, letters to his parents who had escaped to Israel.

Rather than continue to write in the same style that had characterized his European compositions, Weill made a study of American popular and stage music, and his American output, though held by some to be inferior, nonetheless contains individual songs and entire shows that not only became highly respected and admired, but have been seen as seminal works in the development of the American musical. Unique among Broadway composers of the time, Weill insisted on orchestrating every note of his scores himself.[13] He worked with writers such as Maxwell Anderson and Ira Gershwin, and even wrote a film score for Fritz Lang (You and Me, 1938). Weill himself strove to find a new way of creating an American opera that would be both commercially and artistically successful. The most interesting attempt in this direction is Street Scene, based on a play by Elmer Rice, with lyrics by Langston Hughes. For his work on Street Scene Weill was awarded the inaugural Tony Award for Best Original Score.[14]

In the 1940s Weill lived in Downstate New York near the New Jersey border and made frequent trips both to New York City and to Hollywood for his work for theatre and film. Weill was active in political movements encouraging American entry into World War II, and after America joined the war in 1941, Weill enthusiastically collaborated in numerous artistic projects supporting the war effort both abroad and on the home front. He and Maxwell Anderson also joined the volunteer civil service by working as air raid wardens on High Tor Mountain between their homes in New City, New York and Haverstraw, New York in Rockland County. In 1943, he became a United States citizen.[1]

Apart from "Mack the Knife" and "Pirate Jenny" from the Threepenny Opera, his most famous songs include "Alabama Song" (from Mahagonny), "Surabaya Johnny" (from Happy End), "Speak Low" (from One Touch of Venus), "Lost in the Stars" (from the musical of that name), "My Ship" (from Lady in the Dark), and "September Song" (from Knickerbocker Holiday).

Weill suffered a heart attack shortly after his 50th birthday and died on April 3, 1950 in New York City. He was buried in Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York. The text and music on his gravestone[15] come from the song "A Bird of Passage" from Lost in the Stars, itself adapted from a quotation from the Venerable Bede:[16]

This is the life of men on earth:
Out of darkness we come at birth
Into a lamplit room, and then -
Go forward into dark again.
(lyric: Maxwell Anderson)

Influence

Over 50 years after his death, Weill's music continues to be performed both in popular and classical contexts. In Weill's lifetime, his work was most associated with the voice of his wife, Lotte Lenya, but shortly after his death "Mack the Knife" was established by Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin as a jazz standard. His music has since been recorded by many performers, ranging from The Doors, Judy Collins, Lou Reed, Todd Rundgren, John Zorn, Dagmar Krause, and PJ Harvey to New York's Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Singers as varied as Teresa Stratas, Ute Lemper, Gisela May, Anne Sofie von Otter, Max Raabe, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Marianne Faithfull have recorded entire albums of his music.

Amanda Palmer, singer/pianist of the 'Brechtian Punk Cabaret' duo The Dresden Dolls, has Kurt Weill's name on the front of her keyboard (a pun with the name of the instrument maker Kurzweil) as a tribute to the composer. In 1991, seminal Swiss Industrial music band The Young Gods released their album of Kurt Weill songs, The Young Gods Play Kurt Weill. In 2008, Weill's songs were performed by Canadian musicians (including Sarah Slean and Mary Margaret O'Hara) in a tribute concert as part of the first annual Canwest Cabaret Festival in Toronto.

Compositions

Stage works

See List of works for the stage by Weill

Concert works

Cantatas

  • 1920 : Sulamith, choral fantasy for soprano, female chorus and orchestra (lost)
  • 1927 : Der neue Orpheus, cantata for soprano, solo violin and orchestra, op.16 (text: Yvan Goll)
  • 1928 : Das Berliner Requiem, cantata for tenor, baritone, male chorus (or three male voices) and wind orchestra (text: Bertolt Brecht)
  • 1929 : Der Lindberghflug, cantata for tenor, baritone and bass soloists, chorus and orchestra (text: Bertolt Brecht, first version with music by Paul Hindemith and Weill, second version, also 1929, with music exclusively by Weill)
  • 1940 : The Ballad of Magna Carta, cantata for tenor and bass soloists, chorus and orchestra (text: Maxwell Anderson)

Chamber music

  • 1918 : String Quartet in B minor (without opus number)
  • 1923 : String Quartet op. 8
  • 1919–1921 : Sonata for Cello and Piano

Piano music

  • 1917 : Intermezzo
  • 1937 : Albumblatt for Erika (transcription of the pastorale from Der Weg der Verheissung)

Orchestral works

  • 1919 : Suite for orchestra
  • 1919 : Die Weise von Liebe and Tod, symphonic poem for orchestra after Rainer Maria Rilke (lost)
  • 1921 : Symphony No.1 in one movement for orchestra
  • 1922 : Divertimento for orchestra, op.5 (unfinished, reconstructed by David Drew)
  • 1922 : Sinfonia Sacra, Fantasia, Passacaglia and Hymnus for orchestra, op. 6 (unfinished)
  • 1923 : Quodlibet, suite for orchestra from the pantomime Zaubernacht, op. 9
  • 1925 : Concerto for violin and wind orchestra, op. 12
  • 1927 : Bastille Musik, suite for wind orchestra (arranged by David Drew, 1975) from the stage music to Gustav III, by August Strindberg
  • 1928 : Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, suite from Die Dreigroschenoper for wind orchestra, piano and percussion, (premiere conducted by Otto Klemperer)
  • 1934 : Suite panaméenne for chamber orchestra, (from Marie Galante)
  • 1934 : Symphony No. 2 in three movements for orchestra, (premiere by Royal Concertgebouw orchestra under Bruno Walter)
  • 1947 : Hatikvah, arrangement of the Israeli National Anthem for orchestra

Lieder, Lieder cycles, songs and chansons

  • 1919 : Die stille Stadt, for voice and piano, text: Richard Dehmel
  • 1923 : Frauentanz op.10, Lieder cycle for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, horn and bassoon (after medieval poems)
  • 1923 : Stundenbuch, Lieder cycle for baritone and orchestra, text: Rainer Maria Rilke
  • 1925 : Klopslied, for high voice, two piccolos and bassoon ('Ick sitze da un' esse Lops'/Berliner Lied)
  • 1927 : Vom Tod im Wald (Death in the Forest), Op. 23, ballad for bass solo and ten wind instruments, text: Bertolt Brecht
  • 1928 : Berlin im Licht-Song, slow-fox, text: Kurt Weill; composed for the exhibition Berlin im Licht, first performance in Wittenbergplatz (with orchestra) on 13 October, and on 16 October in the Kroll Opera (with voice and piano)
  • 1928 : Die Muschel von Margate: Petroleum Song, slow-fox, text: Felix Gasbarra for the play by Leo Lania, Konjunktur
  • 1928 : Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen (In Potsdam under the Oak Trees), song for voice and piano, alternatively male chorus a cappella, text: Bertolt Brecht
  • 1928 : Das Lied von den braunen Inseln, text: Lion Feuchtwanger, from the play by same author, Petroleum Inseln
  • 1933 : Der Abschiedsbrief, text: Erich Kästner, intended for Marlene Dietrich
  • 1933 : La complainte de Fantômas, text: Robert Desnos; for a broadcast of Fantômas in November 1933 (the music was lost, and later reconstructed by Jacques Loussier for Catherine Sauvage)
  • 1933 : Es regnet, text: Jean Cocteau (direct into German)
  • 1934 : Je ne t'aime pas, text: Maurice Magre for the soprano Lys Gauty
  • 1934 : J'attends un navire, text: Jacques Deval, from Marie Galante ; as an independent song for Lys Gauty; used for the Hymne der Resistance during the Second World War
  • 1934 : Youkali (originally the Tango habanera, instrumental movement in Marie Galante), Text: Roger Fernay
  • 1934 : Complainte de la Seine, text: Maurice Magre
  • 1939 : Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, song for voice and piano, text: Robert Frost (unfinished)
  • 1942 : Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, patriotic song arrangements for narrator, male chorus, and orchestra, of the Battle Hymn of the Republic (text: Julia Ward Howe), The Star-Spangled Banner (text: Francis Scott Key), America (text: Samuel Francis Smith) and Beat! Beat! Drums! (text: Walt Whitman)
  • 1942-44 : Propaganda Songs, for voice and piano; written for the Lunch Hours Follies performed for the workers of a shipbuilding workshop in New York, then broadcast:
  • 1942 : Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib? (And what was sent to the soldier's wife?), ballad for voice and piano, text: Bertolt Brecht
  • 1942-47 : Three Walt Whitman Songs, later Four Walt Whitman Songs for voice and piano (or orchestra), text: Walt Whitman
  • 1944 : Wie lange noch?, text: Walter Mehring; premiere: Lotte Lenya

Film music

Select discography

Orchestral, chamber, choral and other works

  • Berliner Requiem / Violin Concerto op.12 / Vom Tod im Walde. Ensemble Musique Oblique/ Philippe Herreweghe (Harmonia Mundi, 1997)
  • Kleine Dreigroschenmusik / Mahagonny Songspiel / Happy End / Berliner Requiem / Violin Concerto op.12. /Ballade vom Tod im Walde op.23 /Pantomime I (from Der Protagonist op.14) London Sinfonietta, David Atherton, Nona Liddell (violin), Meriel Dickinson (mezzo-soprano), Mary Thomas (mezzo-soprano), Philip Langridge (tenor), Ian Partridge (tenor), Benjamin Luxon (baritone), Michael Rippon (bass), (Deutsche Grammophon 4594422, 1999)
  • Kurt Weill à Paris, Marie Galante and other works. Loes Luca, Ensemble Dreigroschen, directed by Giorgio Bernasconi, assai, 2000
  • Melodie Kurta Weill'a i coś ponadto Kazik Staszewski (SP Records, 2001)
  • Complete String Quartets. Leipziger Streichquartett (MDG 307 1071-2)
  • Symphonies 1 & 2. BBC Symphony Orchestra, Gary Bertini (EMI, 1968)

Song collections

  • Lotte Lenya sings Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins & Berlin Theatre Songs (Sony 1997)
  • Speak Low - Songs by Kurt Weill - Anne Sofie von Otter, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (Deutsche Grammophon 1995)
  • Youkali: Art Songs by Satie, Poulenc and Weill. Patricia O'Callaghan (Marquis, 2003)
  • The Unknown Kurt Weill (Nonesuch LP D-79019, 1981) - Teresa Stratas, soprano, Richard Woitach, piano. Track list: "Nanna's Lied" (1939), "Complainte de la Seine" (1934), "Klops-Lied" (1925), "Berlin im Licht-song" (1928), "Und was Bekam des Soldaten Weib?" (1943), "Die Muschel von Margate: Petroleum Song" (1928), "Wie Lange Noch?" (1944), "Youkali: Tango Habanera" (1935?), "Der Abschiedsbrief" (1933?), "Es Regnet" (1933), "Buddy on the Nightshift" (1942), "Schickelgruber" (1942), "Je ne t'aime pas" (1934), "Das Lied von den Braunen Inseln" (1928)

Tributes

See also

Bibliography

  • David Drew. Kurt Weill: A Handbook (Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1987). ISBN 0-520-05839-9.
  • Kim H. Kowalke. A New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt Weill (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986). ISBN 0-300-03514-4.
  • Ronald Sanders. The Days Grow Short: The Life and Music of Kurt Weill (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980). ISBN 0-03-019411-3.
  • Donald Spoto. Lenya A Life (Little, Brown and Company 1989)
  • Lys Symonette & Kim H. Kowalke (ed. & trans.) Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya (University of California Press 1996)
  • (German) David Drew (Editor), Über Kurt Weill (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1975) Excellent collection of texts, including an introduction by David Drew and including texts by Theodor W. Adorno
  • (German) Jürgen Schebera, Kurt Weill (Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2000)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Kurt Weill Dead; Composer, Was 50" (PDF, fee required). The New York Times (The New York Times Co.): p. 28. 4 April 1950. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0D1EFD385F177A93C6A9178FD85F448585F9. Retrieved 2008-04-01. 
  2. ^ a b c Jackson, Kenneth T. (1995). The Encyclopedia of New York City. New York, NY: The New York Historical Society; Yale University Press. pp. 1252. ISBN 0-300-05536-6. 
  3. ^ Stephen Hinton, Jürgen Schebera (editors). Musik und musikalisches Theater - Gesammelte Schriften, 2000: Schott Musik International, Mainz - ISBN 3-7957-0423-5, p 540
  4. ^ Hinton & Schebera, pp 540–541
  5. ^ Hinton & Schebera, pp 541
  6. ^ Hinton & Schebera, pp 541–542
  7. ^ Hinton & Schebera, p 542
  8. ^ a b Musica Reanimata of Berlin, Henry Jolles accessed September 28, 2008
  9. ^ Kurt Weill Foundation for Music Newsletter, Volume 15 no. 1, Spring 1997 accessed September 29, 2008
  10. ^ Hinton & Schebera, pp 542–543
  11. ^ Hinton & Schebera, p 543
  12. ^ Hinton & Schebera, pp 208–209
  13. ^ "The Boys That Make the Noise", Music section, Time (magazine), 5 July 1943.
  14. ^ Tony Award for Best Original Score
  15. ^ Photo of Weill's gravestone
  16. ^ Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (History of the English Church and People) Book 2, Ch. 13

External links



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