Kurt Weill (redirected from Kurt Julian Weill)

Weill, Kurt 

Born Mar. 2, 1900, in Dessau; died Apr. 3, 1950, in New York. German composer and conductor.

Weill studied composition with E. Humperdinck and F. Busoni. During 1919-20 he presented operas as a conductor and producer in Dessau and Lüdenscheid. His satirical Threepenny Opera (a modernized version of The Beggar’s Opera by J. Gay and J. Pepusch with poetry by B. Brecht, 1928), which exposed contemporary bourgeois society, achieved worldwide fame. It marked the beginning of his collaboration with Brecht, for whose plays Weill wrote incidental music—ditties and ballads. Later, he composed operas for Brecht’s librettos (The Happy End, 1929; The Man Who Always Says “Yes” and The Rise and Fall of the Town of Mahagonny, 1930; and the ballet with songs The Seven Deadly Sins, 1933) and many other works.

In 1933, Weill immigrated to France. He lived in England and then, from 1935, in the USA. He worked for the Broadway theater (New York), writing so-called musicals (a form of musical comedy prevalent in the USA that has elements of variety stage and everyday music, choreography, and operetta). Weill attempted to introduce social criticism into this genre (the folk opera Street Scene, 1947; the opera Lost in the Stars, 1949; and others). He created a genre of sharply satirical topical drama with music. Attempting to establish a new type of opera for the mass audience, he introduced conversational speech, popular songs, fashionable dances, and elements of jazz music and urban folklore into opera. In addition to theater music, he wrote orchestral, chamber, and choral works, as well as music for the motion pictures and radio. Weill influenced Hindemith, Britten, Gershwin, and other composers.

REFERENCE

Leont’eva, O. “Kurt Vail’.” Sovetskaia muzyka, 1963, no. 1.