Kurt Weill
| Kurt Weill was a German jewish composer who worked with marxist Bertolt Brecht to create Epic Theatre or Dialectical Theatre with alienation effect (marxist concept of alienation described by Erich Fromm) in the nihilist program Modernism (phase of nihilism after the death of God, announced by Friedrich Nietzsche). He was a friend of mason Alexander von Zemlinsky, Walter Benjamin,.. Like Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Bertolt Brecht, he was funded by Edward James (S&B family Forbes), whose house was used to film The Wormwood Star of Curtis Harrington with Marjorie Cameron.He was a student of Max Dessoir and Ernst Cassirer. |  |
He composed music for The Threepenny Opera of GW Pabst, Fritz Lang's You and Me of Paramount Pictures with Sylvia Sydney (Antichrist movie The Omen II), One Touch of Venus of Universal Pictures with Ava Gardner (NAACP, The Blue Bird with Will Geer, relationship with Howard Hughes, married to Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra), Where Do We Go From Here? with Ira Gershwin and Anthony Quinn and Knickerbocker Holiday with Shelley Winters (Lolita).
He wrote cantate Der Neue Orpheus and music to a poem of Rainer Maria Rilke and the work of August Strindberg, Lion Feuchtwanger, Robert Desnos, Walter Mehring, Jean Cocteau and Richard Dehemel (Young Vienna with Karl Kraus).
In 1933 he was transferred to Paris. In 1935, like Brecht, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Thomas Mann and Theodor Adorno, he was transferred to California to create the Group Theatre with Sanford Meisner, Elia Kazan, Lee Cobb (The Exorcist), Howard da Silva and Will Geer (partner of Harry Hay of the OTO). Meisner taught at Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, taught the 'Meisner technique' to Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall,...
He was related to Caesar Hochstetter and his brother who died at Theresienstadt Ghetto.
He married actress Lotte Lenya (MI6 propaganda James Bond) who played in Warner Bros movie The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone with Jill St John, Coral Browne (married to Vincent Price), Bessie Love (related to Mary Astor), Warren Beatty, Vivian Leigh,..
Jean-Luc Godard used the alienation technique in French cinema (Nouvelle Vague, producer Zali Rosenberg).
His songs were performed by The Doors, Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull, John Zorn, Lou Reed, Sting,..
In 1993 the Kurt Weill Center was founded.
born 3/2/1900.
died 4/3/1950.