Kurt Weill: Composer in a Divided World - Hardcover

Taylor, Ronald

9781555531478: Kurt Weill: Composer in a Divided World

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555531474 ISBN 13: 9781555531478

Publisher: Northeastern University Press, 1992

In this well-researched and balanced account, Ronald Taylor examines the emotional and intellectual forces that fueled Kurt Weill's unique contribution to twentieth-century music, tracing the shifting career of the enigmatic and underappreciated composer who was forced to trade Berlin for Broadway by the burgeoning Nazi terror of the 1930s.

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Review:

"This is the first full-length biography of Weill to benefit from the unexpected release of family letters in the early 1980s. . . The author's description of the cultural and social factors that contributed to Weill's metamorphoses as a composer makes this account of his life more compelling than any previous one." --Choice

From the Back Cover:

In this first full-length biography of Kurt Weill to incorporate his unpublished family letters and early compositions, as well as testimony from those who knew him, Ronald Taylor traces the turbulent path that led this intriguing composer from Berlin to Broadway. Taylor considers the successive phases of Weill's life and work against the background of his Jewish roots and Germany's agitated, tragic interwar years. The son of a cantor and schoolteacher, Weill began his career as an avant-garde enfant terrible in Berlin in the 1920s. In 1928 his Threepenny Opera exploded upon the world, thrusting him into the limelight. Hitler's rise to power five years later forced Weill into exile, first in Paris, then in New York, where he began a new career and wrote such successful Broadway musicals as Lady in the Dark, Street Scene, and Lost in the Stars. Taylor examines the emotional and intellectual forces that fueled Weill's unique contribution to twentieth-century music. With great skill and historical understanding, Taylor weaves the colorful thread of Weill's early career into the fascinating cultural and social tapestry that was Berlin in the 1920s, documenting the dramatic changes in his life. Included are accounts of his studies under Ferruccio Busoni; his relationships with men such as Otto Klemperer, Claudio Arrau, and his collaborator and polar opposite Bertolt Brecht, who provided the politico-dramatic framework for many of Weill's best-known compositions; and his life with actress and singer Lotte Lenya, whom he married, then divorced, then married again. This book gives new insights into the composer who created such a wall around himself that Lenya, at his death, commented, "Ilooked at him and asked myself, did I ever really know him?"

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