This entry could have gone in a different category (indeed the original iteration is a stage/musical work/play, but it seems to be most remembered for it's film versions in 1931, and 1990, and for the jazz singers and 'crooners' renditions that crossed over into classic 'pop' music).
It seems only fitting that we introduce and credit all involved with the work, original music, original words/lyrics, and translated (popular) versions).
Music composed by
Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill.jpg
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900[1] – April 3, 1950[1]), was a German, and in his later years American, composer active from the 1920s until his death. He was a leading composer for the stage. He also wrote a number of works for the concert hall.
Weill was born the third of four children to Albert Weill (1867- 1950) and Emma Weill née Ackermann (1872 - 1955). He grew up in a religious Jewish family in the “Sandvorstadt”, the Jewish quarter in Dessau, where his father was a cantor.[1]. At the age of twelve, Kurt Weill started taking piano lessons and made first attempts at writing music; his earliest preserved composition was written in 1913 and is titled Mi Addir. Jewish Wedding Song.[2]
In 1915, his parents sent Weill to private lessons with Albert Bing, Kapellmeister at the “Herzogliche Hoftheater zu Dessau”, who taught him piano, composition, music theory, and conducting. Weill performed publicly on piano for the first time in 1915, both as an accompanist and soloist. The following years he composed numerous Lieder to the lyrics of poets such as Eichendorff, Arno Holz, and Anna Ritter, as well as a cycle of five songs titled Ofrahs Lieder to a German translation of a text by Yehuda Halevi.[3]
Weill graduated with an Abitur from the Oberrealschule of Dessau in 1918, and enrolled at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik at the age of 18, where he studied composition with Engelbert Humperdinck[1], conducting with Rudolf Krasselt, and counterpoint with Friedrich E. Koch, and also attended philosophy lectures by Max Dessoir and Ernst Cassirer. The same year, he wrote his first string quartet (in B minor).[4]
Original German Words by
"Bert" Brecht (for the stage)
Bert Bercht short bio.jpg
English Words by
Marc Blitzstein
Marc Blitzstein.jpg
Marc Blitzstein (March 2, 1905 – January 22, 1964) was an American composer.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Jewish parents, among his works were The Cradle Will Rock, whose premiere was directed by Orson Welles, the opera Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, the Broadway musical Juno based on Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, No For An Answer, and his off-Broadway translation/adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera. He also completed translation/adaptations of Brecht’s and Weill’s Mahagonny and Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, with music by Paul Dessau. Blitzstein also composed music for films such as Surf and Seaweed (1931) by Ralph Steiner and the documentary The Spanish Earth (1937).
The dramatic premiere of the pro-union The Cradle Will Rock was at the Venice Theater on June 16, 1937. The cast had been locked out of the Maxine Elliott Theatre by the WPA, the government agency which had originally funded the production, and so a performance without sets or costumes took place, with actors and musicians performing from the audience (to evade union restrictions on their performance) and Blitzstein narrating at the piano. In 1939, Blitzstein’s close friend Leonard Bernstein led a revival of the play at Harvard, narrating from the piano just as Blitzstein had done. The 1999 Tim Robbins film Cradle Will Rock was built around this somewhat-fictionalized historical event.
Additional major compositions include the autobiographical radio song play “I’ve Got the Tune,” The Airborne Symphony, and Reuben Reuben.
Mack The Kinfe from "The Threepenny Opera"
Three Penny Opera Film Poster (German).jpg
Mack The Knife.pdf
extensive website dedicated to the work with detailed history and related information
http://www.threepennyopera.org/
One of the more widley known renditions by Bobby Darin (though Frank Sinatra also did much to bring this to a wide audience, and I love a great deal of Frank's work, but I think Bobby just nailed this a bit more)
http://youtu.be/2g1hkeZm5a8
**TMK=to my knowledge
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Many of them sometimes give a page or two from a publication as a 'preview', usually the first page of a few selections, sometimes random ones, and / or the covers and contents pages. Every so often, one of the of selections happens to be only a single page long and it also happens to be the one they preview. Below is a link to Hal Leonards website with the above mentioned scenario. The lovely short work "The Grey and Blue" from the film "Lincoln" is given to us in its entirety.