Weill, Kurt (Julian)

Weill, Kurt (Julian) (b Dessau, 1900; d NY, 1950). Ger.-born composer (Amer. cit. 1943). Opera coach at Dessau 1918–21 and th. cond. at Lüdenscheid. Founded new sch. of popular opera which attracted wide attention in Ger. and also attracted implacable hostility of Nazi régime when it achieved power. First opera Der Protagonist, Dresden 1926. In 1927 collab. with Bertolt Brecht in radio cantata about Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic and in ‘Songspiel’ Mahagonny which in 1929 they reworked into 3-act opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a satire on Amer. life. His outstanding success came in Berlin in 1928 with updated version of The Beggar's Opera called Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) containing satirical topical references to Ger. life at the time and evoking by its jazzy and harsh but brilliant scoring the atmosphere of that particular period even for those who did not experience it. Brecht's lyrics and the singing of Lotte Lenya, who became Weill's wife, were significant factors in its success. Its ‘hit’ num-ber was Mack the Knife. Driven from Ger. in 1933, Weill went to Paris, then to London, and finally to NY in 1935. In America he wrote several successful Broadway musicals, lacking the pungency of his Ger. operas but of high merit nonetheless. The evocative melody ‘September Song’ was written for Knickerbocker Holiday (1938) and Street Scene is a vivid picture of NY tenement life. After his death, The Threepenny Opera was given an Eng. lib. by Marc Blitzstein and ran successfully in NY. Weill's music, like Coward's on another level, captures the flavour of an era and also successfully fuses jazz with classical elements. Prin. works:OPERAS, MUSICALS, etc. (librettist in parentheses): Der Protagonist ( Kaiser) (1925); Die Dreigroschenoper ( Hauptmann, Brecht) (1928); Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) ( Brecht) (1927–9); Der Zar lässt sich photographiern (The Tsar has his photograph taken) ( Kaiser) (1927); Happy End ( Hauptmann, Brecht) (1929); Der Jasager ( Brecht) (1930); Die Bürgschaft ( Neher) (1930–1); Der Silbersee ( Kaiser) (1932–3); Marie galante ( Deval) Paris (1933); Der Kuhhandel (Vamberg) (1934), rev. as A Kingdom for a Cow, ( Arkell) London (1935); Der Weg der Verheissung ( Werfel) (1935), rev. as The Eternal Road, NY (1936); Johnny Johnson (Green) NY (1936); Knickerbocker Holiday ( Maxwell Anderson) NY (1938); Davy Crockett (Hays) NY (1938); The Railroads on Parade ( Hungerford) NY (1939); Ulysses Africanus ( Anderson) NY (1939); Lady in the Dark ( M. Hart, I. Gershwin) NY (1940); One Touch of Venus ( Perelman, O. Nash) NY (1943); The Firebrand of Florence ( Mayers, I. Gershwin) NY (1945); Down in the Valley ( Sundgaard) NY (1945–8); Street Scene (Rice) NY (1946); Love Life ( Lerner) NY (1948); Lost in the Stars ( Anderson) NY (1949).BALLET: Zaubernacht (1922); Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden), sop., male ch., orch. (1933).ORCH.: syms.: No.1 (1921, unperf. until 1958), No.2 (1933–4); Quodlibet, Op.9 (1923); vn. conc., wind ens., Op.12 (1924); Der neue Orpheus, Op.16, sop., vn., orch. (1925); Vom Tod in Wald, bass, 10 wind instr. (1927); 3 Walt Whitman Songs, bar., orch. (1940); Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (suite from Threepenny Opera).CHORAL: Recordare, unacc. ch. (1923); Das Berliner Requiem, ten., bar., bass, ch., ens. (1928); Der Lindberghflug, radio cantata (with Hindemith), ten., bar., bass, ch., orch. (1928, re-scored by Weill 1929, rev. 1930 as Der Flug des Lindberghs); The Ballad of the Magna Carta, soloists, ch., orch. (1939); Kiddush, ten., ch., org. (1946).CHAMBER MUSIC: str. qt. in B minor (1919); vc. sonata (1920); str. qt. No.1 (1923).SONGS: September Song; Ballade vom ertrunken Mädchen; Happy End; Bilbao Song; Surabaya Johnny; Matrosen Tango; Havanalied; Alabama Song; Der Silbersee; Lied der Fennimore; etc.

14 MSS of Weill compositions were discovered in NY in 1983. All date from before 1921 and are available for study at the Weill/Lenya Research Center, NY. They include an orch. suite in E, an Intermezzo for pf., a song-cycle to 12th-cent. Jewish texts, and 3 Lieder to Ger. Romantic texts.