{"id":2349,"date":"2022-09-11T18:08:30","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T22:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2349"},"modified":"2022-09-11T18:08:33","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T22:08:33","slug":"did-kurt-weill-look-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2022\/09\/did-kurt-weill-look-back.html","title":{"rendered":"Did Kurt Weill “Look Back”?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My favorite recording of any Kurt Weill song \u2013 as I have occasion to remark at the close of my recent NPR<\/strong> documentary<\/strong> <\/a>on Weill\u2019s immigrant odyssey \u2013 is Weill\u2019s own rendition of \u201cThat\u2019s Him.\u201d Re-encountering this remarkable performance,<\/a><\/strong> with the composer accompanying himself at the piano, I feel a need to ponder what makes it so special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I observed on the radio: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a song from his 1943 show One Touch of Venus<\/em>, originally sung by Mary Martin. So it\u2019s supposed to be sung by a woman. . . . It\u2019s yet another face of Kurt Weill \u2013 that of the worldly immigrant, of the New York cosmopolite. It magically evokes the sophistication of Broadway 80 years ago. And the words couldn\u2019t be more distant from the sardonic political wit of Weill\u2019s Berlin partner Bertolt Brecht. They\u2019re by the poet Ogden Nash, who specialized in urbane nonsense rhymes. So this is a love song unlike any other \u2013 it achieves romantic effusion via whimsical understatement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nash begins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know the way you feel when there is autumn in the air<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way you feel when Antoine has finished with your hair<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s him.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nash rhymes about the way you feel \u201cwhen you smell bread baking . . . The way you feel when a tooth stops aching\u2026. \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The song peaks with a veritable paean of understatement. The romantic object of desire is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not arty, not actory<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s like a plumber when you need a plumber<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s . . . satisfactory.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As sung by Weill, this love song is not a love song. You can hear that it\u2019s supposed to be by listening to Mary Martin sing it <\/a><\/strong>\u2013 a beautifully calculated interpretation, with its calibrated dynamics and sweet portamentos. (She was a trained soprano.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is Weill\u2019s interpretation that\u2019s \u201cnot arty, not actory.\u201d Its keynote is the first sentence: \u201cYou know how you feel when there is autumn in the air.\u201d For Weill, \u201cThat\u2019s Him\u201d becomes a personal expression of twilit serenity. And it\u2019s about Weill himself: a self-portrait.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more: the same twilight tone inflects Weill\u2019s two most popular Broadway tunes: \u201cSpeak Low\u201d and \u201cSeptember Song.\u201d Like \u201cThat\u2019s him,\u201d \u201cSpeak Low\u201d comes from One Touch of Venus<\/em>, with words by Ogden Nash:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speak low when you speak love
Our summer’s day withers away too soon, too soon
Speak low when you speak love
Our moment is swift like ships adrift
We’re swept apart too soon<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speak low, darling speak low
Love is a spark, lost in the dark
Too soon, too soon
I feel wherever I go that tomorrow is near
Tomorrow is here and always too soon<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time is so old and love so brief
Love is pure gold and time a thief
We’re late, darling, we’re late
The curtain descends, everything ends
Too soon, too soon
I wait, oh darling, I wait
Will you speak low to me, speak love to me and soon?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The words for \u201cSeptember Song\u201d are Maxwell Anderson\u2019s:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was a young man courting the girls
I played me a waiting game
If a maid refused me with tossing curls
I’d let the old Earth take a couple of whirls
While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls
And as time came around she came my way
As time came around, she came.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you meet with the young girls early in the spring
You court them in song and rhyme
They answer with words and a clover ring
But if you could examine the goods they bring
They have little to offer but the songs they sing
And a plentiful waste of time of day
A plentiful waste of time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short
When you reach September
When the Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days
I’ll spend with you
These precious days
I’ll spend with you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it happens, Weill recorded \u201cSpeak Low\u201d \u2013 and it sounds like this<\/strong>.<\/a> He never recorded \u201cSeptember Song\u201d \u2013 but he should have, because he would have been the perfect interpreter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long ago, when a music critic for the New York Times<\/em>, I had the privilege of interviewing Weill\u2019s widow, Lotte Lenya, in her Manhattan apartment. She said: \u201cThe old-timers were always talking about the past. And Weill never did. Never. Because they would always talk about how marvelous it was in Berlin. And Kurt was always looking ahead. He didn\u2019t want to look back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly \u201cSpeak Low\u201d and \u201cSeptember Song\u201d explicitly \u201clook ahead\u201d \u2013 to \u201cprecious days\u201d to come. But the affect of these songs, and of \u201cThat\u2019s Him\u201d as rendered by Weill \u2013 is autumnal. It would be imprecise to call them \u201cnostalgic.\u201d But they convey a journey\u2019s end. They register, retrospectively, a crucible now mainly past \u2013 fleeing the Nazis, skimming Paris and London, tackling the Broadway hegemony of Rodgers & Hammerstein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who was Kurt Weill? Judging from his correspondence with Lenya<\/a><\/strong>, his personality wasn\u2019t exactly becalmed. The letters allude to frustrations and rivalries. In one (June 4, 1944), Lenya writes (in her acquired English): \u201cMaybe after the war you will have a chance to write operas again and then see what will be left of that Hillbilly show ‘Oklahoma.’ That music sounds dummer and dummer every time I hear it. There is something about tradition and it cant be pound into people. It has to grow trough centuries. Evidently. So lets be patient and be grateful for the little white house we got out of spite of them not knowing your real value.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But \u201cThat\u2019s Him,\u201d \u201cSpeak Low,\u201d and \u201cSeptember Song\u201d transcend every second thought, every regret and sorrow. They exude reconciliation. And this autumnal dimension enlarges these songs in special ways. As Lenya testified, Weill didn\u2019t wish to \u201clook back.\u201d But he could not wholly ignore his tumultuous past. Weill died young \u2013 at the age of fifty. Whence his twilight tone? His fraught saga of flight, immigration, and assimilation, I believe, can be read into \u201ctime is so old, and love so brief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A footnote: Weill\u2019s delivery seamlessly mates speech and song. That\u2019s part of its magic. Artur Rubinstein, summarizing the supreme art of Feodor Chaliapin, observed that he sang with the same voice with which he spoke. Cf.: \u201cThe Greatest Vocal Recording of All\u00a0Time.<\/a><\/strong>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My favorite recording of any Kurt Weill song \u2013 as I have occasion to remark at the close of my recent NPR documentary on Weill\u2019s immigrant odyssey \u2013 is Weill\u2019s own rendition of \u201cThat\u2019s Him.\u201d Re-encountering this remarkable performance, with the composer accompanying himself at the piano, I feel a need to ponder what makes it so special. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-BT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2349"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2358,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions\/2358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}