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Kurt Julian Weill (/waɪl/;[1]German:[vaɪl]; March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer[a][3] active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States.[4] He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations withBertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work,The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose,[5]Gebrauchsmusik.[6] He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen in 1943.
Weill was born on March 2, 1900,[7] the third of four children to Albert Weill (1867–1950) and Emma Weill (née Ackermann; 1872–1955). He grew up in a religiousJewish family in the "Sandvorstadt", the Jewish quarter inDessau inSaxony, where his father was acantor.[8] At the age of twelve, Weill started taking piano lessons and made his first attempts at writing music; his earliest preserved composition was written in 1913 and is titled "Mi Addir: Jewish Wedding Song".[9]
In 1915, Weill started taking private lessons with Albert Bing,kapellmeister at the "Herzogliches 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 numerouslieder to the lyrics of poets such asJoseph von Eichendorff,Arno Holz, andAnna Ritter, as well as a cycle of five songs titledOfrahs Lieder to a German translation of a text byYehuda Halevi.[10]
Weill graduated with anAbitur from theOberrealschule of Dessau in 1918, and enrolled at theBerliner Hochschule für Musik at the age of 18, where he studied composition withEngelbert Humperdinck,[8]conducting withRudolf Krasselt, andcounterpoint withFriedrich E. Koch, and also attended philosophy lectures byMax Dessoir andErnst Cassirer. The same year, he wrote his firststring quartet (in B minor).[11]
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 arépétiteur at the Friedrich-Theater under the direction of the newKapellmeister,Hans Knappertsbusch. During this time, he composed anorchestral suite in E-flat major, asymphonic poem onRainer Maria Rilke'sThe Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke, andSchilflieder ("Reed Songs"), acycle of five songs to poems byNikolaus Lenau. In December 1919, through the help of Humperdinck, Weill was appointed as Kapellmeister at the newly founded Stadttheater inLüdenscheid, where he directed opera, operetta, andsingspiel for five months. He subsequently composed acello sonata andNinon de Lenclos, a now lostone-act operatic adaptation of a 1905 play byErnst Hardt. From May to September 1920, Weill spent a few months inLeipzig, where his father had become the director of a Jewish orphanage, residing in theGottschedstrasse. Before he returned to Berlin, in September 1920, he composedSulamith, a choral fantasy for soprano, female choir, and orchestra.
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Back in Berlin, Weill had an interview withFerruccio Busoni in December 1920. After examining some of Weill's compositions, Busoni accepted him as one of five master students in composition at thePreussische Akademie der Künste in Berlin.[12]
From January 1921 to December 1923, Weill studied music composition with him and also counterpoint withPhilipp Jarnach in Berlin. During his first year he composed his firstsymphony,Sinfonie in einem Satz, as well as the liederDie Bekehrte (Goethe) and twoRilkelieder for voice and piano.[13] Busoni, then approaching the end of his life, was a major influence on Weill. Where Weill's early compositions reflect the post-WagnerianRomanticism andExpressionism common in German classical music of that era, Busoni was aNeoclassicist. Busoni's influence can be seen especially in Weill's vocal and stage works, which moved steadily away from having the music reflect the characters' emotions to have it function as (often ironic) commentary. This was Weill's own path to some of the same notions ofEpic theater and theVerfremdungseffekt (distancing effect) advocated by his future collaborator Brecht.[14]
To support his family in Leipzig, Weill also worked as a pianist in a Bierkeller tavern. In 1922, Weill joined theNovember Group's music faction. That year he composed a psalm, adivertimento for orchestra, andSinfonia Sacra: Fantasia, Passacaglia, and Hymnus for Orchestra. On November 18, 1922, his children'spantomimeDie 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.[13]
Out of financial need, Weill taught music theory and composition to private students from 1923 to 1925. Among his students wereClaudio Arrau,Maurice Abravanel,Heinz Jolles (later known as Henry Jolles),[15]Nikos Skalkottas, andEsther Zweig.[16] Arrau, Abravanel, and Jolles remained members of Weill's circle of friends thereafter,[17] and Jolles's sole surviving composition predating the rise of theNazi regime in 1933 is a fragment of a work for four pianos he and Weill wrote jointly.[15]
Weill's compositions during his last year of studies includedQuodlibet, an orchestral suite version ofDie Zaubernacht;Frauentanz, seven medieval poems for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon; andRecordare for choir and children's choir to words from theBook of Lamentations. Further premieres that year included a performance of hisDivertimento for Orchestra by theBerlin Philharmonic under the direction ofHeinz Unger on April 10, 1923, and theHindemith-Amar Quartet's rendering of Weill'sString Quartet, Op. 8, on June 24, 1923. In December 1923, Weill finished his studies with Busoni.[18]
In 1922 he joined theNovembergruppe, a group ofleftist Berlin artists that includedHanns Eisler andStefan Wolpe.[19] In February 1924 the conductorFritz Busch introduced him to the dramatistGeorg Kaiser, with whom Weill would have a long-lasting creative partnership resulting in several one-act operas. At Kaiser's house inGrünheide, Weill first met the singer and actressLotte Lenya in the summer of 1924.[20] The couple were married twice: in 1926 and again in 1937 (after their divorce in 1933). She took great care to support Weill's work, and after his death she took it upon herself to increase awareness of his music, forming theKurt Weill Foundation. From November 1924 to May 1929, Weill wrote hundreds of reviews for the influential and comprehensive radio program guideDer 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.[21]
Although he had some success with his first mature non-stage works (such as the String Quartet, Op. 8, and the Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, Op. 12), which were influenced byGustav Mahler,Arnold Schoenberg andIgor Stravinsky, Weill tended more and more towards vocal music and musical theatre. His musical theatre work and his songs were extremely popular in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Weill's music was admired by composers such asAlban Berg,Alexander von Zemlinsky,Darius Milhaud and Stravinsky, but it was also criticized by others: Schoenberg, who later revised his opinion, andAnton Webern.
His best-known work isThe Threepenny Opera (1928), a reworking ofJohn Gay'sThe Beggar's Opera, written in collaboration withBertolt Brecht. Engel directed the original production ofThe Threepenny Opera in 1928. It contains Weill's most famous song, "Mack the Knife" ("Die Moritat von Mackie Messer").[22] TextuallyThreepenny Opera—like theBeggar's Opera before it—is satire and social commentary;[23] but for Weill, coming from a musical perspective, it was something else as well: "It gives us the opportunity to make opera the subject matter for an evening in the theater",[24] part of what Weill saw as a lifelong process to "reform" opera for the modern stage.[25] The stage success was filmed byG. W. Pabst in two language versions:Die 3-Groschen-Oper andL'opéra de quat' sous. Weill and Brecht tried to stop the film adaptation through a well publicized lawsuit—which Weill won and Brecht lost.
Weill continued to work with Brecht on the musicalHappy End (1929), best known for the songs "Surabaya Johnny", "Bilbao Song", and "Sailor's Tango"; the children's operaDer Jasager (1930); and the operaRise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930), best known for "Alabama Song" (later recorded byThe Doors, among many others).[26] Weill's working association with Brecht, although successful, came to an end over politics in 1930. Though Weill associated with socialism,[22] after Brecht tried to push their work even further in a left-wing direction, Weill commented, according to his wife Lotte Lenya, that he was unable to "set theCommunist Manifesto to music."[27]
While in Germany in the early 1930s, Weill also collaborated with the American virtuoso banjoistMike Danzi in an early production of his operaRise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. During a rehearsal, Weill congratulated Danzi for his accurate interpretation of the chords found in his score while noting that most other banjoists had complained that they were not actually written for the banjo at all.[28]
Weill fledNazi Germany in March 1933.[29] A prominent and popular Jewish composer, Weill was officially denounced for his political views and sympathies,[30] and became a target of the Nazi authorities, who criticized and interfered with performances of his later stage works, such asRise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, 1930),Die Bürgschaft (1932), andDer Silbersee (1933). With no option but to leave Germany, he went first to Paris, where he worked once more with Brecht (after a project withJean Cocteau failed) on the balletThe Seven Deadly Sins.
On April 13, 1933, his musicalThe Threepenny Opera was given its premiere on Broadway, but closed after 13 performances to mixed reviews.[7] In 1934 he completed his Symphony No. 2, his last purely orchestral work, conducted in Amsterdam and New York byBruno Walter, and also the music forJacques Deval's playMarie Galante [fr].[29] A production of his operettaDer Kuhhandel (A Kingdom for a Cow) took him to London in 1935, and later that year he went to the United States in connection withThe Eternal Road,[8] a "Biblical Drama" byFranz Werfel that had been commissioned by members of New York's Jewish community and was premiered in 1937 at theManhattan Opera House, running for 153 performances.
He and Lotte moved to New York City on September 10, 1935, living first at the St. Moritz Hotel before moving to an apartment at 231 East 62nd Street, between Third and Second Avenues.[7] They rented an old house withPaul Green during the summer of 1936 nearPine Brook Country Club inNichols, Connecticut, the summer home of theGroup Theatre, while finishingJohnny Johnson. Some of the other artists who summered there in 1936 wereElia Kazan,Harry Morgan,John Garfield,Lee J. Cobb,Will Geer,Clifford Odets,Howard da Silva andIrwin Shaw.[31][32][33]
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. His American output 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 Americanmusical. In 1939 he wrote the music forRailroads on Parade, a musical spectacular put on at the1939 World's Fair in New York to celebrate the American railroad industry (book by Edward Hungerford). Unique among Broadway composers of the time, Weill insisted on writing his own orchestrations (with some very few exceptions, such as the dance music inStreet Scene).[34] He worked with writers such asMaxwell Anderson andIra Gershwin, and wrote a film score forFritz 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 isStreet Scene, based on a play byElmer Rice, with lyrics byLangston Hughes. For his work onStreet Scene Weill was awarded the inauguralTony Award forBest Original Score.[35]
In the 1940s Weill lived indownstate New York near theNew 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 thehome front. He and Maxwell Anderson also joined the volunteer civil service by working as air raid wardens onHigh Tor Mountain between their homes inNew City, New York andHaverstraw, New York inRockland County. Weill became anaturalized citizen of the United States on August 27, 1943.[8]
Weill had ideals of writing music that served a socially useful purpose. In the US, he wroteDown in the Valley, an opera including thesong of the same name and other American folk songs. He also wrote a number of songs in support of the American war effort, including the satirical "Schickelgruber" (with lyrics byHoward Dietz), "Buddy on the Nightshift" (withOscar Hammerstein) and – with Brecht again as in his earlier career – the "Ballad of the Nazi Soldier's Wife" ("Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib?"). Intended for broadcast to Germany, the song chronicled the progress of the Nazi war machine through the gifts sent to the proud wife at home by her man at the front: furs from Oslo, a silk dress from Paris etc., until finally, from Russia, she receives her widow's veil.[5]
Apart from "Mack the Knife" and "Pirate Jenny" fromThe Threepenny Opera, his most famous songs include "Alabama Song" (fromMahagonny), "Surabaya Johnny" (fromHappy End), "Speak Low" (fromOne Touch of Venus), "Lost in the Stars" (fromthe musical of that name), "My Ship" (fromLady in the Dark), and "September Song" (fromKnickerbocker Holiday).
Weill suffered a heart attack shortly after his 50th birthday and died on April 3, 1950, in New York City.[29] He was buried in Mount Repose Cemetery inHaverstraw, New York. The text and music on his gravestone come from the song "A Bird of Passage" fromLost in the Stars, itself adapted from a quotation from theVenerable Bede:[36]
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)
An excerpt from Maxwell Anderson's eulogy for Weill read:
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Weill's music continues to be performed both inpopular andclassical 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 byLouis Armstrong andBobby Darin as a jazz standard. His music has since been recorded by many performers, ranging fromNina Simone,Judy Garland,Frank Sinatra,The Doors,Ella Fitzgerald,David Bowie,Robbie Williams,Judy Collins,John Zorn,Dagmar Krause,Steeleye Span,The Young Gods, andPJ Harvey to New York'sMetropolitan Opera and theVienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Singers as varied asTeresa Stratas,Ute Lemper,Gisela May,Anne Sofie von Otter,Max Raabe,Heinz Karl Gruber,Dee Dee Bridgewater andMarianne Faithfull have recorded entire albums of his music.
In 1985,Hal Willner producedLost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill, atribute album in which Weill's songs were interpreted by a variety of artists, includingTodd Rundgren,Tom Waits,Lou Reed,Charlie Haden andSting.[37]
Amanda Palmer, singer-pianist of the Brechtian Punk Cabaret duoThe Dresden Dolls, has Kurt Weill's name on the front of her keyboard (a pun on the name of the instrument makerKurzweil) as a tribute to the composer. In 1991, the seminalSwissindustrial bandThe Young Gods released an album of Kurt Weill songs,The Young Gods Play Kurt Weill. Weill has also been often cited as an influence onGoldfrapp'sFelt Mountain. In 2008, Weill's songs were performed by Canadian musicians (includingSarah Slean andMary Margaret O'Hara) in a tribute concert as part of the first annual Canwest Cabaret Festival in Toronto. In 2009Duke Special released an EP,Huckleberry Finn, of five songs from an unfinished musical by Kurt Weill based onthe novel byMark Twain.
Kurt Weill is a member of theAmerican Theater Hall of Fame.[38]
The Kurt Weill Centre (German:Kurt-Weill-Zentrum) in Dessau was founded in 1993. It provides a museum, library, archive and media centre and organises an annual festival celebrating the composer's work. It is housed in the Feininger house, a house designed by the architectWalter Gropius which was originally lived in by the artistLyonel Feininger. The property is part of the World Heritage site theBauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau. The centre, with its collection of material on Weill, is listed as a cultural memorial of national importance.[39] The centre is one of the "Beacons of light" of theKonferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen (Conference of National Cultural Institutions), a union of cultural institutions in thenew states of Germany i.e. area that was formerlyEast Germany.[40]
Founded byLotte Lenya in 1962, the non-profit, private foundation is dedicated to promoting understanding of Weill's life and works and preserving the legacies of Weill and Lenya. The foundation administers the internationally recognized Lotte Lenya Competition, a grant program, various sponsorships and fellowships, the Weill-Lenya Research Center, and the Kurt Weill Prize, and publishes theKurt Weill Edition and theKurt Weill Newsletter. Trustees of the New York-based organization have includedHarold Prince,Victoria Clark,Jeanine Tesori,Tazewell Thompson, andTeresa Stratas.[41][42][43]
Weill's grandmother was Jeanette Hochstetter of Liedolsheim inBaden-Württemberg.[44] Weill was one of four members of the same Hochstetter family to lead distinguished careers in the fields of music and literature. His first cousin once removed wasCaesar Hochstetter (born January 12, 1863, inLadenburg, a suburb ofMannheim – his date and place of death are unknown but this was probably duringThe Holocaust), a composer and arranger who collaborated withMax Reger and who dedicatedAquarelles, Op. 25, to him.[45]
Caesar's younger brother wasGustav Hochstetter [de] (born May 12, 1873,Mannheim – died 1942,Theresienstadt concentration camp), Professor of Literature at the University of Brussels, writer and poet and friend ofWilhelm Busch. His second cousin was the childhood prodigy pianist,Lisy Fischer (born August 22, 1900, Zürich, Switzerland – died June 6, 1999,Newcastle upon Tyne, England).[citation needed]
Notes
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