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Volume 25 Kurt Weill Number 2 Newsletter Fall 2007 Volume 25 . Volume 25 Kurt Weill Number 2 Newsletter Fall 2007 In this issue Note from the Editor 3 ISSN 0899-6407 Caring for a Composer: © 2007 Kurt Weill Foundation for Music Looking Back on a Quarter Century 4 7 East 20th Street Kim H. Kowalke New York, NY 10003-1106 Kurt Weill Newsletter, 1983–2007: tel. (212) 505-5240 A Chronology 4 fax (212) 353-9663 For the Record: Books, Recordings, and Manuscripts 9 Published twice a year, the Kurt Weill Newsletter features articles and reviews (books, performances, recordings) that center on Kurt Letters 12 Weill but take a broader look at issues of twentieth-century music and theater. With a print run of 5,000 copies, the Newsletter is dis- Books tributed worldwide. Subscriptions are free. The editor welcomes the submission of articles, reviews, and news items for inclusion in Ein Aparter im Unaparten: future issues. Untersuchungen zum Songstil von Kurt Weill 13 by Tobias Faßhauer A variety of opinions are expressed in the Newsletter; they do not Stephen Hinton necessarily represent the publisher's official viewpoint. Letters to the editor are welcome. Videos The 3Penny Opera on Criterion 15 Staff Foster Hirsch Elmar Juchem, Editor Carolyn Weber, Associate Editor Recordings Dave Stein, Associate Editor Brady Sansone, Production LoveMusik original cast on Ghostlight Records 17 Alan Rich Kurt Weill Foundation Trustees Kim Kowalke, President Paul Epstein Violin Concerto on Calliope 18 Annegret Klaua Milton Coleman, Vice-President Walter Hinderer Guy Stern, Secretary Welz Kauffman Performances Philip Getter, Treasurer Julius Rudel Der Silbersee in Wexford 19 David Drew and Teresa Stratas, Honorary Trustees Rodney Milnes Harold Prince, Trustee Emeritus Die Dreigroschenoper in Berlin 20 Jürgen Schebera Internet Resources Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny World Wide Web: http://www.kwf.org in Charleston 22 E-mail: David Maves Information: [email protected] Weill-Lenya Research Center: [email protected] Newsletter Reader Survey 23 Kurt Weill Edition: [email protected] Topical Weill 1a–8a Cover image: Letter from John F. Wharton to Lotte Lenya, 25 May 1951. Weill-Lenya Research Center, Series 30, box 3, folder 1 Kurt Weill Newsletter Volume 25, Number 2 3 Note from the Editor Anniversaries are distinctly unoriginal events, in the sense that they arrive with deadening regularity. Spontaneous they are not. Yet it is the origin and, in our case, the longevity that we celebrate. Would Henry Marx, the first editor of the Kurt Weill Newsletter, have thought that the modest six-page “brochure” produced in the fall of 1983 would be the curtain-raiser to a durable “mini-journal” that is still in print a quarter century later? Twenty-five volumes of the Newsletter chronicle the activities of the Kurt Weill Foundation, but also, and more importantly, the activities of countless artists and organizations, writers and publishers, students and teachers that keep the work of Weill alive. We seize the opportunity of this anniversary to look back—and forward: Kim Kowalke, the Founda - tion’s President, has accepted our invitation to revisit the last twenty-five years in this issue. And we ask you, our readers, to voice your opinion. Keeping Weill’s work alive and building its popularity was Lenya’s resolve when she established the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc. in 1962. The idea of a founda- tion that would promote Weill’s music is actually older, dating back to the spring of 1951, just a year after Weill’s sudden death. John F. Wharton, a trusted attorney and theater expert who had been a founding member of the Playwrights’ Company in 1938 (which Weill joined in Twenty-five years ago: The first issue, a six-page fold-out, appeared in 1946), discussed with Lenya the possibilities of such a the fall of 1983, edited by Henry Marx. In the years between 1984 and foundation. In a letter of 25 May 1951, he outlined a 2001, editor David Farneth built the publication into a veritable “mini- structure, suggested tasks, and even proposed three journal” that garnered praise from the press. names, all very similar to the one eventually adopted. As such, the letter—displayed on our cover—may be the ear- liest document in the Foundation’s “prehistory.” There are no documents that tell us why Lenya waited a decade to set up the organization, but we can assume that she thought she could help Weill’s memory more effectively with her own artistic contribution. Considering the sheer Kurt Weill Newsletter volume of her activities in the 1950s, it is small wonder that she got “sidetracked.” Back Issues Online Lenya’s busy schedule also explains why the Foundation’s endeavors during her presidency were nec- essarily limited. Based on recommendations from friends Beginning with the Spring 2003 issue, we have and her own judgment, she awarded scholarships to a posted current issues of the Newsletter online. number of educational institutions and composers, among In 2005, we started to place back issues online them Stefan Wolpe and the young William Bolcom. But as her life came to an end, she took several precautions in an as well: The years 1996–2007 are currently attempt to ensure that the Foundation could operate with- available as searchable full-text PDF files. In out her. This was a far cry from (and yet an ironic twist addition, we have listed the tables of contents for on) the lines sung by the narcissistic hero in The Firebrand of Florence, so ingeniously lampooned by Weill and Ira all back issues. Direct your internet browser to: Gershwin as a shameless self-promoter: “To maintain a Cellini Foundation that will keep alive / My memory for http://www.kwf.org/pages/newsletter/kwn.html generations yet to arrive.” Elmar Juchem 4 Volume 25, Number 2 Kurt Weill Newsletter Caring for a Composer Looking Back on a Quarter Century by Kim H. Kowalke I had no idea what I was getting into. In early November 1981 I had Fortunately, upon learning of her terminal cancer diagnosis, received a phone call in Los Angeles from Margo Harris, Lenya’s Lenya had heeded the advice of Lys Symonette (Weill’s musical friend who was caring for her: “Lenya’s dying, and she wants to see assistant on Broadway after 1945) and Milton Coleman (Lenya’s you. Can you come to New York? She has to talk to you about the accountant since the 1950s) to expand and formalize the Foundation.” I said I’d stop by enroute to the American Foundation’s board of trustees, and in September 1980 Harold Musicological Society’s annual meeting in Boston the following Prince, Julius Rudel, Guy Stern, and Henry Marx had joined me in week. When I arrived at Ms. Harris’s apartment, Lenya was alert accepting Lenya’s invitation to become trustees. Having been but alarmingly weak; she had refused morphine that morning so alarmed by conflicting claims concerning legal misconduct, rumors that her mind would be clear. “Kim, I want you to take over the of confiscated recordings of conversations between Lenya and her Foundation when I’m gone,” she whispered. “I’m leaving every- executors, and thus the extent to which the will reflected Lenya’s thing to the Foundation.” I tried to decline politely: “Lenya, I’m stated intentions, three of us now petitioned for a special meeting deeply honored, but I’m a musicologist and conductor. I know of the board, which convened eight days after Lenya’s death on 27 nothing about publishing, copyrights, contracts, and the music November. The board elected new officers (including me as business. I’m the wrong person.” “You’ll learn,” she insisted. “You President), ascertained that the assets of the Foundation totaled just really care, and you’re the only one I can trust—you’ve never asked $4300 in cash and $15,000 of AT&T stock (which Lenya had donat- me for anything. I’ve made a new will requesting the Board to elect ed previously), and terminated as the Foundation’s legal counsel you as my successor as President. Lys will be musical executive.” the attorney who was now one of two executors of her estate. When My resolve weakened as Lenya’s condition did; I couldn’t refuse the executors finally filed the will for probate, we learned that the her under these circumstances. “Is there anything you want me to Foundation was actually not the beneficiary of “everything,” but do for you now,” I inquired. “Go out to Brook House in New City rather only future income deriving from the copyrights of Weill’s and in my second-floor bedroom there’s a steel file cabinet that music, which would, however, be administered in perpetuity by the contains all Kurt’s and my letters,” she instructed. “You’ll know executors. Ms. Harris was indeed bequeathed the contents of both what to do with them. Margo will give you the key.” But Margo Brook House and Lenya’s apartment, as well as the income deriv- adamantly refused, claiming that everything in the house was being ing from the entire residuary estate (along with Lenya’s sister in left to her. I had lost the first of countless battles to be waged in the Vienna and a close friend in Hamburg). Yale’s Music Library would year following Lenya’s passing over the controversial deathbed tes- inherit all musical manuscripts and memorabilia already on deposit tament—her final act as custodian of Weill’s legacy. there—without any stipulation of the terms of an archival agree- Kurt Weill Newsletter 1983 Lady in the Dark with Gertrude Lawrence 1983–2007 Foundation offices from AEI open at 142 West Weill biographies End Avenue, from Jarman, The following pages list some of the most New York Schebera important topics and events (performances, Yale conference and Aufstieg at publications, recordings, etc.) drawn from the festival (2–5 Gärtnerplatz pages of the Newsletter.