34 Facts About Kurt Weill

Kurt Julian Weill was a German composer, active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States.

Kurt Weill was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht.

Kurt Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik.

Kurt Weill wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes.

Kurt Weill grew up in a religious Jewish family in the "Sandvorstadt", the Jewish quarter in Dessau in Saxony, where his father was a cantor.

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At the age of twelve, Kurt Weill started taking piano lessons and made his first attempts at writing music; his earliest preserved composition was written in 1913 and is titled "Mi Addir: Jewish Wedding Song".

In 1915, Kurt Weill started taking private lessons with Albert Bing, kapellmeister at the "Herzogliches Hoftheater zu Dessau", who taught him piano, composition, music theory, and conducting.

Kurt Weill performed publicly on piano for the first time in 1915, both as an accompanist and soloist.

Kurt Weill's family experienced financial hardship in the aftermath of World War I, and in July 1919, Kurt Weill abandoned his studies and returned to Dessau, where he was employed as a repetiteur at the Friedrich-Theater under the direction of the new Kapellmeister, Hans Knappertsbusch.

In December 1919, through the help of Humperdinck, Kurt Weill was appointed as Kapellmeister at the newly founded Stadttheater in Ludenscheid, where he directed opera, operetta, and singspiel for five months.

Kurt Weill subsequently composed a cello sonata and Ninon de Lenclos, a now lost one-act operatic adaptation of a 1905 play by Ernst Hardt.

From May to September 1920, Kurt Weill spent a few months in Leipzig, where his father had become the director of a Jewish orphanage.

Back in Berlin, Kurt Weill had an interview with Ferruccio Busoni in December 1920.

From January 1921 to December 1923, Kurt Weill studied music composition with him and counterpoint with Philipp Jarnach in Berlin.

Where Kurt Weill's early compositions reflect the post-Wagnerian Romanticism and Expressionism common in German classical music of that era, Busoni was a Neoclassicist.

Out of financial need, Kurt Weill taught music theory and composition to private students from 1923 to 1925.

Arrau, Abravanel, and Jolles remained members of Kurt Weill's circle of friends thereafter, and Jolles's sole surviving composition predating the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 is a fragment of a work for four pianos he and Kurt Weill wrote jointly.

In February 1924 the conductor Fritz Busch introduced him to the dramatist Georg Kaiser, with whom Kurt Weill would have a long-lasting creative partnership resulting in several one-act operas.

At Kaiser's house in Grunheide, Kurt Weill first met the singer and actress Lotte Lenya in the summer of 1924.

Kurt Weill's 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.

Kurt Weill's music was admired by composers such as Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Darius Milhaud and Stravinsky, but it was criticized by others: Schoenberg, who later revised his opinion, and Anton Webern.

Kurt Weill's working association with Brecht, although successful, came to an end over politics in 1930.

Kurt Weill worked with writers such as Maxwell Anderson and Ira Gershwin, and wrote a film score for Fritz Lang .

Kurt Weill himself strove to find a new way of creating an American opera that would be both commercially and artistically successful.

Kurt Weill was active in political movements encouraging American entry into World War II, and after America joined the war in 1941, Kurt Weill enthusiastically collaborated in numerous artistic projects supporting the war effort both abroad and on the home front.

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Kurt Weill became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1943.

Kurt Weill had ideals of writing music that served a socially useful purpose.

Kurt Weill was buried in Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York.

Kurt Weill's music continues to be performed both in popular and classical contexts.

Kurt Weill has been often cited as an influence on Goldfrapp's Felt Mountain.

In 2008, Kurt Weill's songs were performed by Canadian musicians in a tribute concert as part of the first annual Canwest Cabaret Festival in Toronto.

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

The centre, with its collection of material on Kurt Weill, is listed as a cultural memorial of national importance.

Kurt Weill was one of four members of the same Hochstetter family to lead distinguished careers in the fields of music and literature.