Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill (1900–1950) was a German-born American composer for the stage, known for blending popular idioms with serious craft so that theatre music could speak to a wide public.
He held the ideal of music that served a socially useful purpose, and he wrote for the concert hall as well as the theatre, including works on Jewish themes.
His best-known stage work is The Threepenny Opera, which includes the ballad Mack the Knife. After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933 he settled in New York, where he made a substantial contribution to American musical theatre through works such as Lady in the Dark and Street Scene. He remained able to assimilate popular song without intellectual or technical compromise, bringing serious theatre music down to earth and elevating cabaret into a more refined form.
Compositions by Kurt Weill appear on
Lest We Forget: A Manifest of Struggle and Hope
Welcome to the world’s first “classical” protest CD. The music ranges widely across Germany, France, England, Austria, Poland, Chile, the USA and Australia, touching world wars, the Holocaust, dictatorships and the stolen generation. It is a no-holds-barred plea for humanity to recover humanitarian values before it is too late.