1198: TLS OCTOBER 10 1975 The precise point where Weill's are given in the play {)f Lady in''tlze and Brecht's paths diverged is nor Dark, while the unacceptable rund to be found on 1lhe maps of true answet·s at·e hidden, along with Br-echt's career which were made much else, far beneath the surface in the 1950s and early 1960s1, Kurt Weill and his critlcs-----2 of ·the music. The wish for anony· since Weill's path is never· even mity implicit in the character of marked-though sometimes a small the entire score, but fortunately and misplaced an-ow with the · By David Drew - not fulfilled in it, is best under· legend "to Broadway" points to­ stood in the cont-ext of the events war-ds the margin. The vagueness 1them on .rhe map with so me care if Wherea Knickerbocker· Holiday old intelligence meet the new which took place in E urope during was characteristic of a time when we ar·e to benefit from the old directly concemed poliitical issues demands in a somewihat d.isooncen­ the six months Weill devoted to the musical world was not inclined insights while avoiding the old of the day, and thus belied the ing way. It is almost as if Weill the work. While the play belong to question the natural assumptions ,errors. imp-lications of its -title, the dram-a had now---<at the &tart of t':te war in to the per•iod of the so-called of Brecht scholar-s about the com­ So!ne such aerial survey was the of Lady in the Dark explored a Europe - decided that he had " phoney war ", the first sketches posers (apart from ·Hindemith) ,or·ig.inal objec.tive of my recent p seudo-psychoanalytical dre-am­ nothing to lose and perhaps some- for the music were made shortly who had worked with Brecht. The aul<tlho,Jo gy, Uber Kurt Weill world ~n which the symbols are not . thing to gain by playing the kind a.f.ter · the war began in earnest-in of role that Adorno h ad wri vten for assumptions were twofold, and in­ ,(F1-ankfur.t: Suhrkamp). But when sexual but lf·rankly and indeed faN, almost immediately after 'th e terdependent : f.irst, that Brecht .a representative selection of the "outrageously" commercial. Many him ten years ea-rlier. For it is destruc·tion of Rotterdam ; and by created Weill in his own image, .most imporrant articles wr.itten in of Weill's old admirers were so surely in Lady in the Dark (rat her the time the scor·e was C{) mplete, then bec-a me dis-appointed in him, Weill's lifetime had been an-anged ~ ~locked t'h at 'they ha~ tened ~.way . thaJL Die Dreigroschenoper or the C•Ontinent of E urope, as and create-d Eisler; secondly, •that in an ordet· determined mainly by fro~ the .scene o~ hts American Mahagonny) that the destruction Weill had known it, was no more. the a.ctivi•ties o.f these composers ,dle chroHology of his compositions,- wot k '?ev~L to re.tur n. And yet, had of transitions, connexions and 1 associations becomes a creative How far Weill was aware of the outside nhe region of the collabora­ fortuitous effe.ots of con<tinuity .they • emu~d_e ~ . !themselves. of ~o~ self-censoring processes in the tion were not of any significance2 . ,became dange-rously deceptive, in ,often _m ~ntlctsm sho_c_l.ced 1 eactlons principle, while traditional" values" are ignot·ed or mocked. The music of music is bard to judge exactly, and .that they concea'led the inevita-ble h-a_ve mdr·cated the atnval of some-. in any case ne>t important. What Such wa the u·ap from which gaps and hence the fact . that cer· thwg new, and bad they !mown_ Lctdy in the ·Dark is no stranger to the discovery of Eisler has released what Adot·no calls the " Nachbat·· matters is the astonishing s ubcon­ us. Now 1Jhat Eisler is firmly estab­ ,tain important works or even ho~ , deep!~ sho~k~~ . c~r.tam o·f scious activity set in motion by whole groups of works were not WeJI~ s. ea!ltest . admu er s had been schafr des Wahnsinns ". Inileed it is lished in his own right, interest in discussed. by D1e Dre.rgr!JscheJ:t_oper_ and an almost clinically accurate analy­ those processes. A score fashioned Weill's career hefore and after the Mahagonny, they mtght have sis of the reaction-formations and with superb science from nothiJlg collaboration with Brecht has sig­ 'Dhe largest of these groups were ,paused long enough to recover the localized amnesias chat·ac-teristic but the s:ili.cates of contemporary nificantly increased, and is mani­ popular music becomes a weirdly at the beginning and at the end. use of dteir ears.. - nor only of the drama's heroine festing itself in the performance The earlier gap was inevhable, and the .consumer-society which she coloured distol'ting mirro-r- in which and enthusiastic reception of major since Weill's con temporaries had They were, however, justified in (and 1Jhe dramatist) admires, but the playwl'ight's indomitably banal works dating from both those l-ittle oppor-tunity of d-isc()vering remarking that tthe . G{)rnpo•ser of also of the ·comp{)ser's own- defen­ fantasies and the ly.ric-wri-ter's periods. A spontaneous and gradual rhe unpublished works of 1920-24, Die Dreigrqscheno.per was. now-here s·ive ttactics in that yea.r of decision. clever cocktail-party jokes take on development of this kind was some of which were much super·ior iden.l!ifiable in Lady in the Da,·k, the aspec-t of scenes from the f<i nal always more appropriate to Weill's to the first works to reach print, and ni,istaken only in assuming that . If Lady in ·the Dark is outwardly chaptet·s o.f Steppenwolf rewritten case than any sudden revelat~on, and all of which showed extra­ .such an observation already cousti-· the least " persona·] " score Weill by Nathanael West and staged by and also more to be expected. For ordinary promise. The final group ,tuted an indic.ouen-t: Stravitisky, had yet written, inwardly it is the Adrian Leverkiihn's favourite what was once considered sensa­ presented quite ano-ther problem. rhe supreme master of self.. affinn­ nearest to being a subconscious director. Now that time has tional in Weill may no longer seer'n W ith one exception (and even that ing "disguises", was anotthet· old form of autobiogt·aphy, Aftet· seven· stripped the scot·e of its show-busi· so ; while much that is of enduring is discouragingly and mislead· admirer of Die Dreigroschenoper; hard yeat·s in which-try as he ness ac.ruality; the gaiety begins · to value lies beneath the surface and ingly) entitled Love Life, Weill's and yet he saw fit to go on stage ,would---'he had never quite been sound ··hellish-which is to say, is only to be discovered by the Broadway works of the 1940s did and congratu·la.te the composer able to forget his inalienable links characteristic of a composer whose patient and attentive ear. af·te·r the premiere of Lady in the with the land where he had been at·t, like Mahler's, had, at a very ·not invite the kind of critical ar-ten­ Dark5. · A quarter of a century can be a "t.ion which even ll!he slightest of his born and where his forebears had eady stage, acquired from its Chris· painfully long time for friends works of the 1920s and 1930s had It is never more dangerous to J.ived since vhe fourteenth century, tian contexts a lively sense of the waiting in hope, but is a very short generally received; and even if underestimate Weill's intelligence he had now succeeded at last in ban­ purgatorial. one in the dispassionate view of they mel'i'ted such a-ttention, 11he than when it is applied to forms ishing from his music almost every Yet the ohange was profou~1d , history. It may be that we have intelligentsia were not inclined to that have enjoyed a long and inti· trace of his musical background and not just another of Weill's now reached a point where it is give it. True, their dismay at hi s mate association wi-th foolishness. .and upbringing. Hi•s farewell to his many changes of manner. As Her­ possible to recover the kind of first work for the Broadway stage, Un·like Knicker·bocker Holiday, ~1ative to.ngue was already corn· ben Fleischet· suggests (in Uber perspec-tive on Weill which was Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), had which still has many roots in ,posed. Dated December 22, 1939 it Kur.t Weill) , Weill's various Euro- lost after 1933 and &ttill missing <tt les.s -to do with ·the score itself than Europe, the music of Lady in the takes the fonn of a setting of the . pean manners (like Stravinsky's) the time of his death. An with the fact that the admired Dark seems to have been snatched lyric from Brecht's Die Rundkopfe 1 were aspects of a central style a~temp: ted re.turn t·o the original composer of Die Dreigroschenoper from the very air of Broadway and und die Spitzkopfe whose refrain is which never changed once it had positions would of course be .fut-ile, seemed to have made his peace Hollywood.