Kurt Weill

Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950), born in Dessau, Germany and died in New York, was a German composer active from the 1920s until his death. He was a leading composer for the stage as well as a composer of concert wo

Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950), born in Dessau, Germany and died in New York, was a German composer active from the 1920s until his death. He was a leading composer for the stage as well as a composer of concert works.

After growing up in a religious Jewish family, and composing a series of works before he was 20 (A song cycle Ofrahs Lieder, a String Quartet and a Suite for orchestra), he studied music composition with Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin and wrote his first symphony. Although he had some success with his first mature non-stage works which were influenced by Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky (such as the String Quartet op.8 or the Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, op.12), Weill tended more and more to vocal music and music theatre. His music theatre work and his songs were extremely popular with the wider public in Germany at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s. Weill's music was admired by composers such as Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Darius Milhaud and Stravinsky, but it was also critized by others - by Schoenberg, who later revised his opinion, and Anton Webern.