The days grow short : the life and music of Kurt Weill / Ronald Sanders.
| Author/creator | Sanders, Ronald |
| Format | Book |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Publication Info | New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ©1980. |
| Description | viii, 469 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Prologue: In search of Kurt Weill -- Two cornerstones -- In times of tumult and war -- Ferruccio Busoni -- Young modernist -- New turnings -- Composing opera -- Enter Bertolt Brecht -- Birth of The Threepenny Opera -- On The Threepenny Opera -- 1929 -- Mahagonny Opera -- School opera: Der Jasager -- Threepenny trial and film -- Goodbye to Berlin -- Paris interlude -- Road to New York -- Taking on Broadway: Johnny Johnson -- First Sally into Hollywood -- Back to old New York: Knickerbocker Holiday -- Looking for niche -- Success on Broadway: Lady in the Dark -- Composer in wartime -- Broadway sophistication: One Touch of Venus -- Last efforts with Ira Gershwin -- Broadway opera: Street Scene -- Promised lands -- Musical tragedy: Lost in the Stars -- Bird of passage -- Epilogue since 1950: Legacy of Kurt Weill -- Source notes and bibliographies -- Kurt Weill's principal compositions -- Kurt Weill discography. |
| Abstract | He was born in 1900, the son of a cantor in Dessau. By his early twenties, he was recognized along with Hindemith as one of the most promising composers of his generation, He is Kurt Weill--known to millions as the musical genius behind The Threepenny Opera and to countless others for such theater gems as One Touch of Venus, Lady in the Dark, and Knickerbocker Holiday. Critics have long appreciated his German period--the operas and symphonies that early established his reputation. Too often, however, they have discounted the later American period. With the current Weill revival, all his work is at last gaining the serious attention it has so long deserved. This is the first biography of Weill that brings together all the musical phases in the composer's career and sets these in the context of his life and times. Knowledgeably and with great skill, the author traces Weill's origins and their contribution to his music, describes the student days with Busoni and Humperdinck, portrays the creative ferment of Weimar, and re-creates the Berlin theater world to which the young composer gravitated and which led him to his collaboration with Brecht. That collaboration was to produce some of the major artistic works of this century and to introduce and entirely new vein of musical drama. But it was not without its tensions, and the author treats the sources of their differences with great sensitivity. By the time Brecht and Weill were forced to flee Hitler's Germany (Weill barely escaping in time), the collaboration was, to all intents and purposes, at an end. Weill's last years, spent in America, involved him deeply in the Broadway theater. The works he produced in random with Gershwin, Lerner, and Anderson, among others, have to this day a freshness and originality that account for their continuing appeal, and the author is deft and imaginative in his presentation of them. He is as knowledgeable about the world of classical music as about the world of Broadway, thoroughly familiar with Jewish cultural history and the Europe of the interwar years, fluent in German, and has produced a biography that is a fitting tribute to a great composer. |
| General note | "Kurt Weill's principal compositions": pages 434-441. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliography (pages 405-433) and index. |
| Bibliography note | Discography: pages 442-449. |
| LCCN | 79017331 |
| ISBN | 0030194113 : |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Music | Closed Stacks - Ask at Circulation Desk | ML410.W395 S2 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |