Kurt Julian Weill ( / w aɪ l / ; German: [vaɪl] ; March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950) was a composer born in Germany who later became an American citizen. He worked in Germany during the 1920s and later moved to the United States. Weill was a well-known composer for plays and musicals, and he had a successful partnership with the writer Bertolt Brecht. Together, they created his most famous work, The Threepenny Opera, which includes the song "Mack the Knife." Weill believed in creating music that could help people or serve a purpose in society, a type of music called Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote music for concerts and pieces that explored Jewish culture. In 1933, he left Germany to escape the dangers of Nazi rule and arrived in the United States two years later. After settling in New York, he made important contributions to American musical theater through works like Lady in the Dark and Street Scene.

Family and childhood

Weill was born on March 2, 1900, as the third child among four siblings to Albert Weill (1867–1950) and Emma Weill (née Ackermann; 1872–1955). He was raised in a religious Jewish family in the "Sandvorstadt," the Jewish quarter of Dessau in Saxony (now part of Saxony-Anhalt), where his father worked as a cantor. At twelve years old, Weill began piano lessons and started writing music. His earliest known composition, written in 1913, is titled "Mi Addir: Jewish Wedding Song."

In 1915, Weill began private lessons with Albert Bing, the music director of the "Herzogliches Hoftheater zu Dessau." Bing taught him piano, composition, music theory, and conducting. Weill performed publicly on the piano for the first time in 1915, both as an accompanist and a soloist. In the following years, he composed many songs set to the poetry of writers such as Joseph von Eichendorff, Arno Holz, and Anna Ritter. He also created a cycle of five songs titled Ofrahs Lieder, based on a German translation of a text by Yehuda Halevi.

Weill graduated from the Oberrealschule of Dessau with an Abitur in 1918 and enrolled at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik at age 18. There, he studied composition with Engelbert Humperdinck, conducting with Rudolf Krasselt, and counterpoint with Friedrich E. Koch. He also attended philosophy lectures by Max Dessoir and Ernst Cassirer. In the same year, he composed his first string quartet in B minor.

Musical career

Weill’s family faced financial difficulties after World War I. In July 1919, he left his studies and returned to Dessau, where he worked as a répétiteur at the Friedrich-Theater under Hans Knappertsbusch, the new Kapellmeister. During this time, he composed an orchestral suite in E-flat major, a symphonic poem based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke, and Schilflieder ("Reed Songs"), a set of five songs to poems by Nikolaus Lenau. In December 1919, with help from Humperdinck, Weill became Kapellmeister at the newly opened Stadttheater in Lüdenscheid. There, he directed opera, operetta, and singspiel for five months. He also composed a cello sonata and Ninon de Lenclos, a one-act opera based on a 1905 play by Ernst Hardt, which is now lost. From May to September 1920, Weill lived in Leipzig, where his father worked as director of a Jewish orphanage. Before returning to Berlin in September 1920, he composed Sulamith, a choral fantasy for soprano, female choir, and orchestra.

In Berlin, Weill met Ferruccio Busoni in December 1920. After reviewing some of Weill’s compositions, Busoni accepted him as one of five master students in composition at the Preussische Akademie der Künste in Berlin. From January 1921 to December 1923, Weill studied composition with Busoni and counterpoint with Philipp Jarnach in Berlin. During his first year, he composed his first symphony, Sinfonie in einem Satz, and two lieder, Die Bekehrte (Goethe) and two Rilkelieder for voice and piano. Busoni, who was nearing the end of his life, greatly influenced Weill. While Weill’s early works reflected the Romanticism and Expressionism common in German classical music, Busoni’s Neoclassicist style shaped Weill’s later vocal and stage works, which shifted from expressing characters’ emotions to using music as ironic commentary. This approach aligned with ideas of Epic theater and the Verfremdungseffekt (distancing effect) later promoted by Brecht.

To support his family in Leipzig, Weill worked as a pianist in a Bierkeller tavern. In 1922, he joined the November Group’s music faction. That year, he composed a psalm, a divertimento for orchestra, and Sinfonia Sacra: Fantasia, Passacaglia, and Hymnus for orchestra. On November 18, 1922, his children’s pantomime Die Zaubernacht ("The Magic Night") premiered at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm. This was the first public performance of any of Weill’s works in musical theater.

Because of financial need, Weill taught music theory and composition to private students from 1923 to 1925. His students included Claudio Arrau, Maurice Abravanel, Heinz Jolles (later Henry Jolles), Nikos Skalkottas, and Esther Zweig. Arrau, Abravanel, and Jolles remained friends with Weill. Jolles’s only surviving composition before the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 was a fragment of a joint work for four pianos he and Weill wrote together.

During his final year of studies, Weill composed Quodlibet, an orchestral suite version of Die Zaubernacht; Frauentanz, seven medieval poems for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon; and Recordare for choir and children’s choir, based on words from the Book of Lamentations. Other premieres that year included a performance of his Divertimento for Orchestra by the Berlin Philharmonic on April 10, 1923, and the Hindemith-Amar Quartet’s performance of his String Quartet, Op. 8, on June 24, 1923. In December 1923, Weill completed his studies with Busoni.

In 1922, Weill joined the Novembergruppe, a group of leftist Berlin artists that included Hanns Eisler and Stefan Wolpe. In February 1924, conductor Fritz Busch introduced Weill to dramatist Georg Kaiser, with whom he formed a long partnership, creating several one-act operas. At Kaiser’s home in Grünheide, Weill met Lotte Lenya, a singer and actress. They married twice, in 1926 and again in 1937 (after their divorce in 1933). Lenya supported Weill’s work and later founded the Kurt Weill Foundation to promote his music after his death. From November 1924 to May 1929, Weill wrote hundreds of reviews for the radio program guide Der deutsche Rundfunk. Hans Siebert von Heister, who had previously worked with Weill in the November Group, offered him the job after becoming editor-in-chief.

Although Weill had success with his early non-stage works, such as the String Quartet, Op. 8, and the Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, Op. 12, which were influenced by Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky, he increasingly focused on vocal music and musical theater. His stage works and songs were very popular in Germany during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Weill’s music was admired by composers like Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Darius Milhaud, and Stravinsky, but criticized by others, including Schoenberg and Anton Webern.

Weill’s most famous work is The Threepenny Opera (1928), a reworking of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, written with Bertolt Brecht. Engel directed the original production. The opera includes Weill’s most famous song, "Mack the Knife" ("Die Moritat von Mackie Messer"). The work is a satire

Death

Weill had a heart attack not long after his 50th birthday and passed away on April 3, 1950, in New York City. He was buried in Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York. The words and music on his gravestone are from the song "A Bird of Passage" in Lost in the Stars, which was based on a quote from the Venerable Bede:

"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 by Maxwell Anderson)

An excerpt from Maxwell Anderson's eulogy for Weill reads:

Influence

Kurt Weill's music is still performed in both popular and classical settings. During his lifetime, his work was most linked to the voice of his wife, Lotte Lenya. After his death, the song "Mack the Knife" became a popular jazz standard, performed by artists like Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin. Many musicians have recorded his music, including Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, The Doors, Willie Nelson, Ella Fitzgerald, David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Judy Collins, John Zorn, Dagmar Krause, Steeleye Span, The Young Gods, and PJ Harvey. Additionally, major orchestras such as New York's Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra have performed his compositions. Singers like Teresa Stratas, Ute Lemper, Gisela May, Anne Sofie von Otter, Max Raabe, Heinz Karl Gruber, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Rufus Wainwright, and Marianne Faithfull have also recorded full albums of his music.

In 1985, Hal Willner produced Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill, a tribute album featuring Weill's songs performed by artists such as Todd Rundgren, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Charlie Haden, and Sting.

Amanda Palmer, a singer-pianist in the Brechtian Punk Cabaret group The Dresden Dolls, has Kurt Weill's name on her keyboard as a tribute. This is a play on the name of the instrument maker Kurzweil. In 1991, the Swiss band The Young Gods released an album called The Young Gods Play Kurt Weill, which included his songs. Weill's music has also been cited as an influence on the band Goldfrapp's album Felt Mountain. In 2008, Canadian musicians such as Sarah Slean and Mary Margaret O'Hara performed Weill's songs in a tribute concert during the first Canwest Cabaret Festival in Toronto. In 2009, Duke Special released an EP called Huckleberry Finn, which included five songs from an unfinished musical by Weill based on Mark Twain's novel.

Kurt Weill is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.

There is a statue of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in Dessau, located at the intersection of Kurt-Weill-Straße and Karlstraße.

Kurt Weill Centre

The Kurt Weill Centre (German: Kurt-Weill-Zentrum) in Dessau was established in 1993. It includes a museum, library, archive, and media centre, and holds an annual festival to celebrate the composer’s work. The centre is located in the Feininger house, a building designed by architect Walter Gropius. This house was originally home to artist Lyonel Feininger. The property is part of the World Heritage site known as "Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau, and Bernau." The centre, which holds materials related to Kurt Weill, is recognized as an important cultural memorial at the national level. It is one of the "Beacons of light" of the Konferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen (Conference of National Cultural Institutions), a group that includes cultural organizations in the new states of Germany, which were formerly part of East Germany.

Kurt Weill Foundation for Music

Founded in 1962 by Lotte Lenya, the non-profit, private foundation works to help people learn about Weill's life and works and keep the legacies of Weill and Lenya alive. The foundation manages the internationally recognized Lotte Lenya Competition, a grant program, various sponsorships and fellowships, the Weill-Lenya Research Center, and the Kurt Weill Prize. It also publishes the Kurt Weill Edition and the Kurt Weill Newsletter. Trustees of the New York-based organization have included Harold Prince, Victoria Clark, Jeanine Tesori, Tazewell Thompson, and Teresa Stratas.

Relatives

Weill's grandmother was Jeanette Hochstetter of Liedolsheim in Baden-Württemberg. Weill was one of four family members from the Hochstetter family who had important careers in music and literature. His first cousin once removed was Caesar Hochstetter, born January 12, 1863, in Ladenburg, a suburb of Mannheim. Caesar's date and place of death are unknown, but it is likely he died during the Holocaust. He was a composer and arranger who worked with Max Reger and who received a musical piece called Aquarelles, Op. 25, dedicated to him.

Caesar's younger brother was Gustav Hochstetter, born May 12, 1873, in Mannheim, and died in 1942 at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Gustav was a professor of literature at the University of Brussels, a writer, poet, and friend of Wilhelm Busch. Weill's second cousin was Lisy Fischer, a child prodigy pianist born August 22, 1900, in Zürich, Switzerland, and died June 6, 1999, in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Compositions

• 1920: Sulamith, a choral fantasy for soprano, female chorus, and orchestra (lost)
• 1927: Der neue Orpheus, a cantata for soprano, solo violin, and orchestra, Op. 16 (text: Yvan Goll)
• 1927: Der Tod im Wald, a cantata for bass and band (originally part of Das Berliner Requiem)
• 1928: Das Berliner Requiem, a cantata for tenor, baritone, male chorus (or three male voices), and wind orchestra (text: Bertolt Brecht)
• 1929: Der Lindberghflug, a cantata for tenor, baritone, and bass soloists, chorus, and orchestra (text: Bertolt Brecht. First version with music by Paul Hindemith and Weill. Second version, also 1929, with music only by Weill)
• 1940: The Ballad of Magna Carta, a cantata for tenor and bass soloists, chorus, and orchestra (text: Maxwell Anderson)
• 1946: "Kiddush," commissioned by cantor David Putterman. Premiered at a Kiddush on May 10, 1946, at Park Avenue Synagogue

• 1918: String Quartet in B minor (no opus number)
• 1923: String Quartet, Op. 8
• 1919–1921: Sonata for Cello and Piano

• 1917: Intermezzo
• 1937: Albumblatt for Erika (transcription of the pastorale from Der Weg der Verheissung)

• 1919: Suite for orchestra
• 1919: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod, a symphonic poem for orchestra after Rainer Maria Rilke (lost)
• 1921: Symphony No. 1 in one movement for orchestra
• 1922: Divertimento for orchestra, Op. 5 (unfinished, reconstructed by David Drew)
• 1922: Sinfonia Sacra, Fantasia, Passacaglia and Hymnus for orchestra, Op. 6 (unfinished)
• 1923: Quodlibet, a suite for orchestra from the pantomime Zaubernacht, Op. 9
• 1925: Concerto for violin and wind orchestra, Op. 12
• 1927: Bastille Musik, a suite for wind orchestra (arranged by David Drew, 1975) from the stage music to Gustav III by August Strindberg
• 1929: Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, a suite from Die Dreigroschenoper for wind orchestra, piano, and percussion (premiere conducted by Otto Klemperer)
• 1934: Suite panaméenne for chamber orchestra (from Marie Galante [fr])
• 1934: Symphony No. 2 in three movements for orchestra (premiere by Royal Concertgebouw orchestra under Bruno Walter)
• 1947: Hatikvah, an arrangement of the Israeli National Anthem for orchestra

• 1919: "Die stille Stadt," for voice and piano (text: Richard Dehmel)
• 1923: Frauentanz, Op. 10, a song cycle for soprano, flute, viola, clarinet, horn, and bassoon (after medieval poems)
• 1923: Stundenbuch, a song cycle for baritone and orchestra (text: Rainer Maria Rilke)
• 1925: "Klopslied," for high voice, two piccolos, and bassoon ("Ick sitze da un' esse Klops" – Berliner Lied)
• 1927: Vom Tod im Wald (Death in the Forest), Op. 23, a ballad for bass solo and ten wind instruments (text: Bertolt Brecht)
• 1928: "Berlin im Licht-Song," slow-fox (text: Kurt Weill). Composed for the exhibition Berlin im Licht. First performance in Wittenbergplatz (with orchestra) on October 13, and on October 16 in the Kroll Opera (with voice and piano)
• 1928: "Die Muschel von Margate: Petroleum Song," slow-fox (text: Felix Gasbarra for the play by Leo Lania, Konjunktur)
• 1928: "Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen" ("In Potsdam under the Oak Trees"), a song for voice and piano, or male chorus a cappella (text: Bertolt Brecht)
• 1928: "Das Lied von den braunen Inseln," text: Lion Feuchtwanger (from the play by same author, Petroleum Inseln)
• 1930?: "Lied vom weißen Käse" ("Song of the White Cheese") – unpublished. Discovered in Berlin at the Free University of Berlin in 2017
• 1933: "Der Abschiedsbrief," text: Erich Kästner (intended for Marlene Dietrich)
• 1933: "La complainte de Fantômas," text: Robert Desnos (for a broadcast of Fantômas in November 19

Select discography

Berliner Requiem, Violin Concerto, Op. 12, and Vom Tod im Walde. Performed by Ensemble Musique Oblique and conducted by Philippe Herreweghe (Harmonia Mundi, 1997).
Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, Mahagonny Songspiel, Happy End, Berliner Requiem, Violin Concerto, Op. 12, Ballade vom Tod im Walde, Op. 23, and Pantomime I (from Der Protagonist, Op. 14). Performed by London Sinfonietta, with David Atherton conducting, and featuring Nona Liddell (violin), Meriel Dickinson (mezzo-soprano), Mary Thomas (mezzo-soprano), Philip Langridge (tenor), Ian Partridge (tenor), Benjamin Luxon (baritone), and Michael Rippon (bass) (Deutsche Grammophon 4594422, 1999).
Kurt Weill à Paris, Marie Galante, and other works. Performed by Loes Luca and Ensemble Dreigroschen, directed by Giorgio Bernasconi (assai, 2000).
Melodie Kurta Weill'a i coś ponadto. Performed by Kazik Staszewski (SP Records, 2001).
Complete String Quartets. Performed by Leipziger Streichquartett (MDG 307 1071–2).
Symphonies 1 & 2. Performed by BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gary Bertini (EMI, 1968).

Lotte Lenya sings Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins and Berlin Theatre Songs (Sony, 1997).
Speak Low – Songs by Kurt Weill. Performed by Anne Sofie von Otter, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (Deutsche Grammophon, 1995).
Youkali: Art Songs by Satie, Poulenc, and Weill. Performed by Patricia O'Callaghan (Marquis, 2003).
The Unknown Kurt Weill. Includes tracks such as "Nanna's Lied" (1939), "Complainte de la Seine" (1934), "Klops-Lied" (1925), "Berlin im Licht-song" (1928), "Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib?" (1943), "Die Muschel von Margate: Petroleum Song" (1928), "Wie Lange Noch?" (1944), "Youkali: Tango Habanera" (1935?), "Der Abschiedsbrief" (1933?), "Es Regnet" (1933), "Buddy on the Nightshift" (1942), "Schickelgruber" (1942), "Je ne t'aime pas" (1934), and "Das Lied von den Braunen Inseln" (1928). Performed by Teresa Stratas (soprano) and Richard Woitach (piano) (Nonesuch LP D-79019, 1981).
Georgia Brown: September Song – Music of Kurt Weill. Performed by Georgia Brown, conducted by Ian Fraser (Decca LP SKL 4509, 1962).
Dee Dee Bridgewater: This is New (2002).

Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill. Produced by Hal Wilner, featuring performances by Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Sting, Marianne Faithfull, Carla Bley, Charlie Haden, John Zorn, and others (A&M Records, 1985).
September Songs – The Music of Kurt Weill. Produced by Hal Wilner, featuring performances by Elvis Costello, PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, William S. Burroughs, and others (Sony Music, 1997).
Gianluigi Trovesi / Gianni Coscia: Round About Weill (ECM, 2005).
The Young Gods Play Kurt Weill. Studio recording of songs performed live in 1989 (Pias, April 1991).
Ben Bagley's Kurt Weill Revisited and Kurt Weill Revisited, Vol. 2. Features performances by Chita Rivera, Ann Miller, Estelle Parsons, John Reardon, Tammy Grimes, Nell Carter, Arthur Siegel, Jo Sullivan, and others (Painted Smiles Records).
An Evening of Kurt Weill. Starring Bebe Neuwirth, Roger Rees, and Larry Marshall. Performed in New York City at Alice Tully Hall, with Rees directing the production.