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TOPICALITY AND THE UNIVERSAL: THE STRANGE CASE OF WEILL'S ‘DIE BÜRGSCHAFT’

1958; Oxford University Press; Volume: XXXIX; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ml/xxxix.3.242

1477-4631

David Drew,

Music History and Culture

KuRT WEILL's 3-act opera 'Die Burgschaft' was composed in 1931, first performed in I932 , banned by the Nazis in I933', and not heard again until the autumn of I957, when it was revived, in a so-called new version, by the Stadtische Oper, Berlin. These are the bare facts of a story which warrants a place in the cultural history of our time. The story has a prologue. By I927 W eill had produced three one-act operas and miscellaneous instrumental and orchestral works, all in a fairly advanced style. These had established him, with Hindemith and K renek, as one of the leaders of the younger generation of German composers. A first-rate technique, evolved during his four years of study with Busoni, and an alert and enquiring mind helped him along a path that might well have led to his adoption of some form of the twelve-note method. But in fact he achieved full maturity and independence with a single, radical change of direction-a tangential movement which, on a lower level, was as daring and as rewarding as Stravinsky's renunciation of the style of his early ballets. Weill's first thoroughly mature score is 'Die Dreigroschenoper' (I 928). Most musicians know something of the work, and a detailed description of its stylistic features would doubtless b e superfluous. But the implications of the style are still not fully a ppreciated. However ·simple, or even primitive, Weill's language became in I 928, the musical effect is definably revolutionary : that is to say, it is vigorously opposed to academic conventions and to the stock response. The precariousness of this situation is one of its most remarkable features; for the genre of contemporary popular music is defined by the most rigid conventions (or formulae), and if these are ignored, the music misses its aim. Yet, as an artist in revolt, Weill was bound to challenge every one of these conventions, and as a musician he had to escape their malignantly anti-musical implications. In the circumstances, an inability to sustain the challenge at any point would have resulted not in bad art, but in non-art.