Kurt Weill Totally Explained

Everything about Kurt Weill totally explained

Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950 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.
   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 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. 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.
   From January 1921 to December 1923, Weill studied music composition with Ferruccio Busoni 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.
   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, and Nikos Skalkottas. 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.
   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. 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.
   Although he'd 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. The Threepenny Opera contains Weill's most famous song, "Mack the Knife" ("Die Moritat von Mackie Messer"). 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."
   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. 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 A Kingdom for a Cow took him to London in 1935, and later that year he came to the United States in connection with The Eternal Road.
   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 home in New City, New York and Haverstraw, New York in Rockland County. In 1943, he became a United States citizen. come from the song 'A Bird of Passage' from Lost in the Stars:
� :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)

Impact

Over fifty 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 as a tribute to the composer.
In 1991, seminal Swiss Industrial music band The Young Gods released their album of Kurt Weill songs, Play Kurt Weill.

List of selected works

1920-1927

1920 – Sonata for Cello and Piano
1921 – Symphony No. 1 for orchestra
1923 – String Quartet, , Op. 8
1923 – Quodlibet. Suite for orchestra from the pantomime Zaubernacht, Op. 9
1923 – for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, horn and bassoon, Op. 10
1924 – Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, Op. 12
1926 – Der Protagonist, Op. 15 (Opera in one act, text by Georg Kaiser)
1927 – Der Neue Orpheus, Cantata for soprano, solo violin and orchestra, Op. 16 (text by Yvan Goll)
1927 – Royal Palace, Op. 17 (Opera in one act, text by Iwan (Yvan) Goll)
1927 – Der Zar lässt sich photographieren, Op. 21 (Opera in one act, text by Georg Kaiser)
1927 – Mahagonny (Songspiel) (Bertolt Brecht)

Works 1928-1935

1928 – Berlin im Licht Song. March for military band (wind ensemble) or voice and piano

1928 – Die Dreigroschenoper, or the Threepenny Opera (Bertolt Brecht)

1928 – Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (Little Threepenny Music), Suite for wind orchestra based on the Threepenny Opera

1928 – Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen for chorus a cappella or voice and piano (Bertolt Brecht)

1928 – Das Berliner Requiem (Berlin Requiem). Cantata for three male voices and wind orchestra (Bertolt Brecht)

1929 – Der Lindberghflug (first version). Cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra. Music by Weill and Paul Hindemith and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht

1929 – Happy End (Elisabeth Hauptmann and Bertolt Brecht) - Tony Nomination for Best Original Score in 1977

1929 – Der Lindberghflug (second version). Cantata for tenor, baritone, and bass soloists, chorus and orchestra. Music entirely by Weill and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht

1930 – Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, or Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Bertolt Brecht)

1930 – Der Jasager (Elisabeth Hauptmann and Bertolt Brecht)

1932 – Die Bürgschaft, or The Pledge (Caspar Neher)

1933 – Der Silbersee, or Silver Lake

1933 – Die sieben Todsünden, or The Seven Deadly Sins. Ballet chanté for voices and orchestra (Bertolt Brecht)

1934 – Marie galante for voices and small orchestra (book and lyrics by Jacques Deval)

1934 – Symphony No. 2 for orchestra

1935 – Der Kuhhandel, or A Kingdom for a Cow (Robert Vambery) (unfinished)

Works 1936-1950

1936 – Johnny Johnson (Paul Green)

1937 – The Eternal Road (Desmond Carter, first, unfinished version in German with a text by Franz Werfel, directed by Max Reinhardt (theatre director))

1938 – Knickerbocker Holiday (Maxwell Anderson)

1938 – Railroads on Parade (Edward Hungerford)

1940 – Ballad of Magna Carta. Cantata for narrator and bass soloists, chorus and orchestra (Maxwell Anderson)

1940 – Lady in the Dark (Moss Hart and Ira Gershwin)

1941 – Fun to be Free Pageant

1942 – And what was sent to the Soldier's Wife? (Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib?). Song for voice and piano (Bertolt Brecht)

1942 – Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory. Patriotic song arrangements by Weill for narrator, chorus, and orchestra

1943 – One Touch of Venus (Ogden Nash)

1945 – The Firebrand of Florence (Ira Gershwin)

1945 – Where Do We Go From Here? (Ira Gershwin)

1945 – Down in the Valley

1947 – Hatikvah Arrangement of the Israeli National Anthem for orchestra

1947 – Four Walt Whitman Songs for voice and orchestra (or piano)

1947 – Street Scene (Elmer Rice and Langston Hughes) - Tony Award for Best Original Score

1948 – Love Life (Alan Jay Lerner)

1949 – Lost in the Stars (Maxwell Anderson)

1950 – Huckleberry Finn (Maxwell Anderson) Unfinished.

Discography

Eastside Sinfoniette: Don't Be Afraid (True Classical 2003)

Lotte Lenya sings Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins & Berlin Theatre Songs (Sony 1997)

The Threepenny Opera. Lotte Lenya and Others, conducted by Wilhelm Brückner-Ruggeberg (Columbia 1987)

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Lotte Lenya/ Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg (Sony 1990)

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. London Sinfonietta, David Atherton (Deutsche Grammophon, 1999)

Kurt Weill à Paris, Marie Galante and other works. Loes Luca, Ensemble Dreigroschen, directed by Giorgio Bernasconi, assai, 2000

The Eternal Road (Highlights). Berliner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester/ Gerard Schwarz (Naxos, 2003)

Kazik Staszewski: Melodie Kurta Weill'a i coś ponadto (SP Records, 2001)

Youkali: Art Songs by Satie, Poulenc and Weill. Patricia O'Callaghan (Marquis, 2003)

Complete String Quartets. Leipziger Streichquartett (MDG 307 1071-2)

Die sieben Todsünden; Chansons B.Fassbaender, Radio-Philharmonie Hannover des NDR, C.Garben (HMA 1951420)

Happy End (Ghostlight Records, 2007) - the cast recording of the 2006 American Conservatory Theatre production from San Francisco

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:

- Produced by Hal Wilner, with performances by various pop (Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Sting) and jazz (Carla Bley, Charlie Haden, John Zorn) artists. (A&M Records, 1987)

September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill (performed by Elvis Costello, PJ Harvey and others) (Sony Music, 1997)

Gianluigi Trovesi/Gianni Coscia: Round About Weill (ECM, 2005)

The Young Gods Play Kurt Weill (Pias, April 1991), Studio recording of the songs performed live in 1989.

Ben Bagley's Kurt Weill Revisited and Kurt Weill Revisited, Vol. 2 on the Painted Smiles label boasts rare titles of his, sung by all-star casts, including Chita Rivera, Ann Miller, Estelle Parsons, John Reardon, Tammy Grimes, Nell Carter, and Jo Sullivan, among others. Individual Songs:

The Doors, The Doors, (Elektra, 1967). Including Alabama Song

Bryan Ferry. As Time Goes By (Virgin, 1999). Including "September Song"

Tom Robinson, Last Tango: Midnight At The Fringe, (Castaway Northwest: CNWVP 002, 1988). Including "Surabaya Johnny"

David Bowie recorded Alabama Song

Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth recorded "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" (from One Touch of Venus) on her album Let Yourself Go.

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