Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill came out of Busoni's masterclass in Berlin and within a few years was writing songs that could leave the theatre and survive on their own. Born in Dessau in 1900, he studied with Engelbert Humperdinck and then with Ferruccio Busoni, and composed for the theatre in the Weimar Republic. The partnership with Bertolt Brecht produced the Mahagonny-Songspiel, The Threepenny Opera, Happy End and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. He left Germany in 1933 and reached the United States in 1935, where he composed for Broadway — Knickerbocker Holiday, Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, the operatic Street Scene and Lost in the Stars. He became an American citizen in 1943 and died in New York in 1950. Among his early teachers was Albert Bing, assistant conductor at the court theatre in Dessau; Weill's father served as cantor at the city's synagogue. His early instrumental works include the String Quartet Op. 8 and the Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra Op. 12; in 1922 he joined the Novembergruppe of leftist Berlin artists. He left Germany in March 1933 for Paris, where he worked with Brecht once more on the ballet The Seven Deadly Sins, and his death in New York followed a heart attack shortly after his fiftieth birthday. Elisabeth Hauptmann wrote the book of Happy End, with lyrics by Brecht.