Kurt Weill

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. □

Kurt Weill , 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.

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.

Weill, Kurt (1900–50) German composer. He is best known for his satirical operas, which include Der Protagonist (1926) and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1927), the latter with a libretto by Bertolt Brecht. Weill parodied commercial music as a means of social criticism. The Threepenny Opera (1928) was a modern version of John Gay's Beggar's Opera, again with a libretto by Brecht. After moving to the USA in 1935, Weill composed musicals for Broadway. His wife, Lotte Lenya, was a respected interpreter of his work.

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