Download Little Threepenny Music for Wind Orchestra

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Notes on the Program
By James M. Keller, Program Annotator, The Leni and Peter May Chair
Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (Little Threepenny Music) for Wind Ensemble
Kurt Weill
A
lthough Kurt Weill is most remembered today for the sophisticated stage
works he wrote, first for the “alternative
theater” and then for Broadway, he started
out as a classically trained composer, more
or less in line with the Expressionist mode
of his German contemporaries. But he was
also susceptible to influences outside the
sphere of his principal teacher (Ferruccio
Busoni) or other figures active in German
circles. Almost no composer who came of
age during the second and third decades of
the 20th century went uninfluenced by
Stravinsky, and Weill was no exception.
Some of his most acclaimed achievements,
such as Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) and Aufstieg und Fall der
Stadt Mahagonny (Rise Fall of the City of
Mahagonny), exhibit a clarity that has
much in common with a theater work like
Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale). But if there was one decisive influence that led Weill to find his unique
voice, it was not from a musician but rather
with the playwright Bertolt Brecht.
In the late 1920s both Brecht and Weill
were prowling about Berlin’s jazz-age bohemia. The two met in 1927, recognized
shared aesthetic sympathies, and embarked on their first collaboration, the Mahagonny-Songspiel. Brecht provided bitter
cynicism, wealth-scorning social commentary, and the ability to elevate the lowest of
the downtrodden to the level of universal
human myth. Weill responded with masterful scores of generally scaled-down
proportions, rhythmically nervous, jazz-
tinged, and rich in cabaret-inflected
melodies. The combination proved captivating — even risqué — and over the course
of three years their collaborations included
such further masterpieces as Der Jasager
(The Yea-sayer), Die sieben Todsünden (The
Seven Deadly Sins), and Happy End.
The most enduringly popular of their
pieces, The Threepenny Opera was a modern re-thinking of The Beggar’s Opera, a
1728 collaborative stage piece by librettist
John Gay and composer Johann Christian
Pepusch. A tale of London low-life told and
sung in popular “ballad style,” it had rocked
the opera world in its debut and was still
delighting audiences through revivals two
centuries later. Brecht and Weill intended
IN SHORT
Born: March 2, 1900, in Dessau, Germany
Died: April 3, 1950, in New York City
Work composed: December 1928 and
January 1929, based on music composed
earlier in 1928
World premiere: February 7, 1929, at the
Berlin Staatsoper am Platz der Republik with
Otto Klemperer conducting the Preussisches
Staatskapelle; the theatrical work from which
this score is derived opened on August 31,
1928, at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in
Berlin, with Theo Mackeben conducting
New York Philharmonic premiere and most
recent performance: June 23, 1977, Erich
Leinsdorf, conductor
Estimated duration: ca. 22 minutes
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to simply adapt the earlier work, which
they would present under its original title.
But the project took on a life of its own, and
by the time it was done it had been transformed into an original work, retaining
only one of Pepusch’s tunes and acquiring
its new name a week before opening night.
The Threepenny Opera logged more than
350 performances in the next two years,
and by 1933 its publisher had licensed 133
new productions internationally.
Weill scholar David Drew summarized
the work’s plot concisely:
The gangster Macheath “marries” Polly
Peachum, whose father is boss of London’s
beggars; flees Peachum’s wrath; is betrayed
by the whore Jenny, captured, and imprisoned; escapes; is recaptured, taken to the
gallows, and miraculously reprieved.
The theater work included about 55 minutes of music distributed among 21 numbers,
the first song (following the Overture) being
the most famous of all, “Mack the Knife”
(“Moritat der Mackie Messer”). After Brecht
had a falling out with Weill, he claimed that
he himself had invented the melodies. The
matter remains unresolved, but there is no
question that at least the lion’s share of the
musical glory redounds to Weill.
A few months after The Threepenny
Opera’s premiere, Weill built on its popularity by arranging a handful of its numbers into a 22-minute suite for wind
ensemble, the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
(Little Threepenny Music). The first seven
movements follow songs in the theater
work’s mordant, menacing score to a
greater or lesser degree, with the instruments adding considerable elaboration.
The Threepenny Finale is a more
complex bit of composition, drawing
together three numbers that stand as
separate items in the original score.
Instrumentation: two flutes (one doubling piccolo), two clarinets, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone (doubling soprano
saxophone), two bassoons, two trumpets,
trombone, tuba, banjo (doubling guitar),
bandonéon (ad lib.), timpani, snare drum,
tenor drum, bass drum, cymbal, wood
block, tom-tom, bells, and piano.
In the Composer’s Words
Shortly after the premiere of The Threepenny Opera, Kurt Weill shared some thoughts on the
work’s aesthetic intentions:
The success of our piece does indeed prove that the creation and realization of this new genre not
only came at the right moment for the situation of art but that the audience seemed actually to
be waiting for the renewal of a favorite type of theater. I’m not sure that our type of theater will
replace operetta. … More important for all of us is the fact that for the first time
a breakthrough has been achieved in a consumer industry previously reserved
for a completely different kind of musician and writer. With The Threepenny
Opera we are reaching an audience which either did not know us at all or, at
any rate, never considered us capable of interesting a circle of listeners much
wider than the average concert- and opera-going public. …
At the very beginning of the piece the audience is told: “Tonight you are
going to see an opera for beggars. Since this opera was intended to be as
splendid as only beggars can imagine, and yet cheap enough for beggars
to be able to watch, it is called The Threepenny Opera.”
Kurt Weill, in the 1920s
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