Born 120 years ago: Kurt Weill

"Every work was a new model, a new shape, a new solution to dramatic problems," wrote the composer Virgil Thomson in his obituary for Kurt Weill, who died of a heart attack in 1950 shortly after his 50th birthday.

Thompson's words speak to two characteristics of Kurt Weill: his many styles and his lust for innovation. The composer of The Threepenny Opera also wrote a radio cantata, a folk music opera and a school opera along with works in established genres: a violin concerto, art songs, chamber music and much more.

In its 28th year, the Kurt Weill Fest in Dessau, the city of his birth, is celebrating the diversity of his music in 53 events from February 28 until March 15. Its motto, "What Are Borders?" points to Weill's forced emigration from Germany in 1933, but also to the border-breaching nature of his works.

Read more: Long-lost Weimar-era Kurt Weill song discovered in Berlin

Cantor's son and composer of musicals

Weill is among the artists who enjoy a greater status worldwide than in the country of their birth.

Born on March 2, 1900 as the son of a cantor at a Dessau synagogue, Kurt Julian Weill learned the composer's craft in Berlin with musical Renaissance man Ferruccio Busoni.

In the Roaring Twenties, Kurt Weill and author Bertolt Brecht created masterpieces like The Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. 

In 1933, the Jewish composer went into exile, first to Paris and later, with his wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, to New York and became a naturalized citizen.

Weill's desire to assimilate into American society was complete; he refused to speak German even with his wife. He soon established himself as a successful composer on Broadway and is the source of melodies like "Mack the Knife" and "September Song" that are familiar even to people who can't name the composer.

Selling out to Broadway?

While recognizing Weill's achievements during his second career as a composer of Broadway musicals like Street Scene, Lady in the Dark and One Touch of Venus, the philosopher and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno decried a lack of authenticity in Weill's late oeuvre, maintaining that he'd severed himself from his roots, sacrificed his autonomous creativity in pandering to public taste and essentially sold out to the American theater machinery. "He changed styles more often than countries," wrote an early biographer — and it was not meant as a compliment.

It was his very success in his new homeland that made Kurt Weill a point of contention in the Old World in the postwar years, where the avant-garde of serious music held sway — the greatest imaginable contrast to musicals. That was especially true in Germany, where the distinction between serious and entertainment music was enduring and hierarchical.

The Kurt Weill Renaissance

Today, 120 years after his birth and 70 years after his death, the situation has changed. "I think there is a Weill upswing," Jan Henric Bogen, director of the Kurt Weill Fest in Dessau, told DW. "His American works are being staged more frequently in Germany as well. Works like Street Scene and Der Silbersee are topical again." 

One explanation for this renewed popularity is concerning: "The works were created in circumstances that are being repeated today. We are observing an upswing in nationalism and populism — and for these reasons, can identify more strongly with Kurt Weill's works nowadays," explained Bogen.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, the saying goes. Incorporating the swing and rhythm of American dance music in the Roaring Twenties into his earlier works in Germany, Weill took that experience along with him when he emigrated — not only reinventing himself but having a lasting impact on Broadway too. "He adapted to the circumstances, but in the most positive sense," says Jan Henric Bogen, "and found new sources of inspiration in them. That's what makes him so interesting today."

Writing for the present time

"As for myself, I write for today. I don't give a damn about writing for posterity," the composer wrote.

Nevertheless, posterity is fascinated with Kurt Weill.

The upbeat to the festival in his name was an all-Weill gala featuring, among other performers, the star tenor Rolando Villazon and an array of Weill's works from his times in Germany, Paris and New York.

Three weekends later, it draws to a close with a performance of the Moka Efti Orchestra, which makes music in the style of the Roaring Twenties — also for the successful TV series Babylon Berlin. 

The festival will also explore the theme of borders and border crossing with events as diverse as a reading by women Afghan poets, a Yiddish operetta and elaborate stagings of the Weill-Brecht classics The Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. 

A quest for truth, freedom and justice

In 1936 the composer wrote, "The stage has a reason to exist today only if it aspires to a rarer level of truth." That helps to explain Kurt Weill's enduring popularity, as it points to the "classical" nature of his art in the general sense of the word. As does this oft-quoted statement: "I have never acknowledged the difference between 'serious' and 'light' music. There is only good music and bad music."

Another quotable by the American patriot who supported the World War II campaign against Germany could not be farther from the rhetoric of the current US government: "Those who come here seeking the freedom, justice, opportunity and human dignity they miss in their own countries are already Americans before they come."