After growing up in a religious
Jewish family, and composing a series of works before he was 20 (a song cycle
Ofrahs Lieder with a text by
Yehuda Halevi translated into German, a string quartet, and a suite for orchestra), he studied music composition with
Ferruccio Busoni in
Berlin and wrote his first symphony. 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.
He met the actress
Lotte Lenya for the first time in 1924 and married her 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.
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, 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. He 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. 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.
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 and
Haverstraw, New York in
Rockland County.
Weill died in New York City in 1950 and is buried in Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw. The text (with music) on his gravestone comes 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)
Apart from "
Mack the Knife" and "Pirate Jenny" from
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).
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