Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill (1900-1950), German-American composer whose stage works on contemporary subjects skilfully integrate advanced musical techniques with elements of popular music.

Born in Dessau, Germany, Weill studied with the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni and the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck. With the German poet and dramatist Bertolt Brecht, Weill created a new form of musical theatre in two satiric-didactic, musically brilliant works, both of which won international acclaim: Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; English production, The Threepenny Opera, 1954), a modern paraphrase of The Beggar's Opera (1728) by the British writer John Gay; and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1929; English production, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, 1970). In the 1920s and 1930s he also composed a number of instrumental pieces, including two symphonies (1921, 1934), a string quartet (1923), and a violin concerto (1924) which exhibit a tougher, nearly atonal idiom, influenced by the Expressionist works of Schoenberg.

After Weill's works were termed subversive and banned by the Nazis in Germany, Weill and his wife, the actress and singer Lotte Lenya, went to Paris in 1933 and then to the United States in 1935. For the Broadway theatre Weill composed several musicals, including Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), Lady in the Dark (1941), One Touch of Venus (1943), Street Scene (1947), and Lost in the Stars (1949), as well as the folk opera Down in the Valley (1948).