Product Description
Alfred Music Publishing is the worlds largest educational music publisher. Alfred produces educational#44; reference#44; pop#44; and performance materials for teachers#44; students#44; professionals#44; and hobbyists spanning every musical instrument#44; style#44; and difficulty level. From Kurt Weills oThree Penny Opera#44;o Jack Bullock has arranged the revered theme composed for the character Macheath#44; the swashbuckling thief nicknamed Mack the Knife. Charming! ... Read more

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Volume 2 of this great 2-volume centennial tribute to one of the greatest composers of the 20th Century. From The Threepenny Opera to his Last Great Masterpiece Lost in the Stars. This volume contains 54 songs. Highlights include: Pirate Jenny * The Saga of Jenny * September Song * Sing Me Not a Ballad * Speak Low * What Good Would the Moon Be * cover graphics include original sheet music covers. Text contains bio of Weill and special introductory notes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Better than Volume I
The songs in Vol. 2 are much more familiar to me than the ones contained in Vol. 1 (and I'm old!) Lot of German songs in Vol. 1.Intermediate players will be more comfortable with this songbook.Fun to play!

Jones ... Read more

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They were an unlikely couple. Kurt Weill was a German cantor's son, cerebral, well-educated. Lotte Lenya was two years older, an Austrian Catholic coachman's daughter, waif-like, less than beautiful but always appealing to men. She survived the abuse of an alcoholic father, escaping to Zurich and finally Berlin, working as a would-be dancer turned actress. When they met, she was a domestic worker in the home of the playwright he had come to recruit as a librettist. Much to his family's dismay, they married in 1926.
Fiercely independent and yet codependent, Weill and Lenya spent twenty-five years discovering a way to live together after realizing that they couldn't live apart. Weill gave music to her voice, Lenya gave voice to his music. Their correspondence--first in German and later, after their move to America, in highly flavored English--is uninhibited, intimate, and irreverent. It offers a backstage view of German music and theater, the American musical theater in the late thirties and forties, and Hollywood. The letters are candid, vivid commentaries on world events, the creative process, and the experience of exile.
Never before published, this collection reflects the vibrancy of Weimar culture in the Golden Twenties and the vitality that èmigrès brought to American culture. Lenya's unfinished autobiographical account of her life before Weill is also included, along with a prologue, epilogue, and connective commentary. Immensely touching as well as informative, Weill and Lenya's letters preserve a portrait of a memorable love that somehow survived its turbulent surroundings.Amazon.com Review
Different workplaces often kept Austrian singer Lotte Lenya andher husband, composer and conductor Kurt Weill apart,but the two shortened the distance through lively, often humorouscorrespondence. An unlikely couple, Weill came from an upper-classfamily and long line of German rabbis, while Lenya was the daughter ofa washerwoman and an abusive cabby father. He studied with suchmasters as FerruccioBusoni and ArnoldSchoenberg; she worked as a child prostitute, dancer; and thensinger, without any formal training. Despite their differences andnumerous affairs they had profound affection and devotion for oneanother as this collection of letters, with annotations, explanations,and references by the editors, attests. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Tenderness, Ego, Passion
The letters of "Speak Low," between Kurt Weill & Lotte Lenya, reveal the private side of the couple's successes first in Germany, Austria and France, then during their years as refugees in the U.S.Determination, pluck and the enormous gifts of both raised their reputations to the top of U.S. musical theatre during the war and postwar periods.

Tenderness, passion and creativity flow through the letters dating from the pair's meeting in Germany in the 1920s until Weill's premature death a quarter century later. Both major talents, this great theatrical couple lived richly, if often stormily, from their first rise to success in theburgeoning efflorescence of post-World War I German music & theatre, through dark and threatening intolerance brought by National Socialism.Weill emerges as a preoccupied genius, truly "lost in the stars" of his own talent and obsession to create, whereas Lenya reveals herself deeper and broader, yet still a genuine manifestation of her stage persona: the vamp whose bawdy bravura hides a child-woman's fragile and yearning heart.Both cannily manipulate each other and those around them into recognizing and appreciating their rich talents, especially as they gain entree and climb a path to the top of U.S. musical theater.

Always lively and at times moving, these letters create a sense of the passionate engagement of Lenya's and Weill's minds as well as their emotions. Lively insights into other giants of American music, theatre and film of the time are no small embellishments to the correspondence. Well worth the read!

Speak low
This is a beautiful book, a great bargain. For someone who has had a passion for Kurt Weill's music and Lotte Lenya's singing for many years it was great to read some of the details of their life. It's a substantial book so I haven't finished it yet, it also has some great photos. What I also liked was the documentation that showed that it had come from the Public Library at Queens, along with a note that I would be fined if it wasn't returned on time.

The price was very reasonable and there were no problems with the delivery to Australia.

Elaine Cornell

Superbly Interesting Correspondence. Read it!
`Speak Low (When You Speak Love) The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya' edited and translated by Lys Symonette and Kim H. Kowalke is the very first book of letters I have actually been able to read from cover to cover, and that includes attempts to read letters by some of my very favorite authors, such as H. L. Menchen, J. R. R. Tolkien, Ernest Hemingway, and Harold Ross (founder of `The New Yorker'), and all of these people, especially Menchen and Ross were no slouches when it came to writing correspondence.
Like Menchen and Ross, much of my interest in these two correspondents lies in their not being well known in the modern American pantheon of cultural heroes. I get a certain pleasure in `having them to myself', just as I felt some loss when Tolkien was elevated to that pantheon in the mid-1960's, when `The Hobbit' and `The Lord of the Rings' came out in mass market paperback.
Weill and Lenya was the model of a successful show business marriage, similar to that of singer Kitty Carlyle and playwright George S. Kaufmann, long before such pairings became staples of gossip columns and pop magazines and TV shows. To remind us of their background, Weill was the composer half of the team of Weill and Berthold Brecht who wrote three major hits for the Berlin musical stage in the late 1920's. The most famous became known to American audiences as `The Threepenny Opera'. Lenya, at this time, was a rising star actress and singer on the Berlin musical stage, and they were married on 26 January 1926, before Weill's first successes.
The book's subtitle does not make this clear, but all the letters in the book are between the two principals. There are no other correspondents. They run from 1924, when they first met, to about 15 months before Weill's death, dated 25 November 1948.
One may wonder how a correspondence between husband and wife could be so voluminous. Of course, their professions had a lot to do with it, since Lenya was often away from Berlin doing stage performances. Later, when the couple moved to the United States, the same condition held, as both were involved in different projects in different places.
What is surprising is that for all the parts Weill wrote for Lenya in Germany, he wrote no similar parts for her in his English musical plays such as `Lost in the Stars', `One Touch of Venus', and `Johnny Johnson'. I suspect the libretto writers such as Maxwell Anderson and S. J. Perelman had a far greater say in character development.
The editors have done a terrific job of assembling, annotating, and indexing all this material. The contents give a truly superb look at a major piece of the cultural history of both German and American musical stages in the first half of the 20th century. One envies their relationship and, like H. L. Menchen, who lost the love of his life, one is just a bit jealous of the fact that one can only live this relation vicariously.

Remember Letters?
Can you imagine a book subtitled: "The Email and SMS Exchanges of ____and ____?"
Remember letters? Actual pieces of paper held in and written by the hand of the sender? Remember the thrill of seeing the return address in the upper left hand corner, the familiar writing of a loved one on the front?
Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya wrote each other almost every day they were apart. They are a veritable clearinghouse of the first half of 20th century history, having lived in Berlin of the 20's, Weill in French exile in the 30's then New York after that. It is a fascinating account--their impressions of Broadway and Hollywood are insightful (Weill) and hilarious(Lenya). Buy it. And write a letter to someone you love. ... Read more

Product Description
28 songs from his 12 American shows and films with complete information on each musical, photos and a discography. Selections include: Girl of the Moment ¥ Lonely House ¥ Lost in the Stars ¥ Moon-Faced, Starry-Eyed ¥ My Ship ¥ One Life to Live ¥ September Song ¥ Speak Low ¥ ThatÕs Him ¥ Thousands of Miles ¥ and more. Features photos and extensive notes on each show. ... Read more

Product Description
16 of his compositions arranged for easy piano: Alabama Song * Here I'll Stay * It Never Was You * The Little Gray House * Lonely House * Lost in the Stars * Mack the Knife * Moon-Faced, Starry-Eyed * My Ship * One Life to Live * The Saga of Jenny * September Song * Sing Me Not a Ballad * Speak Low * Surabaya Johnny * What Good Would the Moon Be? ... Read more

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Der Erwerb des Buches enthält gleichzeitig die kostenlose Mitgliedschaft im Buchklub des Verlags zum Ausprobieren - dort können Sie von über einer Million Bücher ohne weitere Kosten auswählen. Das Buch besteht aus Wikipedia-Artikeln: Leonard Bernstein, Konstantin Wecker, Kurt Weill, Peter Kreuder, Irving Berlin, Elliot Goldenthal, Burt Bacharach, Cole Porter, Noël Coward, Alexander Kuchinka, Benny Andersson, Michael Jary, Friedrich Hollaender, George Gershwin, Wjatscheslaw Ganelin, Frank Nimsgern, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Franz Grothe, Richard Rodgers, Norbert Schultze, Stephen Sondheim, Johannes Nitsch, John Lewis, David Shire, Alan Menken, Marvin Hamlisch, Hal David, Jerome David Kern, Burton Lane, Björn Ulvaeus, Vincent Youmans, Ralph Burns, Harold Arlen, Hugh Masekela, Karel Svoboda, George M. Cohan, Lotar Olias, Martin Lingnau, Ivor Novello, Frederick Loewe, Sammy Fain, Frank Wildhorn, Billy Byers, Harold Rome, Vernon Duke, Harold Faltermeyer, Frank Loesser, Richard O'Brien, Carole Bayer Sager, Jeff Wayne, Al Dubin, Franz Hummel, John Kander, Jerry Herman, Stephen Schwartz, Jason Robert Brown, Jim Steinman, Arthur Schwartz, Jule Styne, Fred Ebb, Leo Robin, Jerzy Husar, Jimmy Van Heusen, Gene De Paul, David Klein, Lionel Bart, Eric Woolfson, Béla Szakcsi Lakatos, Sylvester Levay, Carlisle Floyd, Urs Blöchlinger, Don Black, Raimund Rosenberger, Gerhard Schnitter, Wolfgang Mader, Richard Geppert, Erik van der Wurff, Meredith Willson, Rodgers und Hammerstein, Lennart Ginman, Rodgers und Hart, Buddy Bregman, Dan Goggin, Thomas Zoller, Robert Friedl, Ralph Rainger, Viola Engelbrecht, Richard Adler, Howard Ashman, Lerner und Loewe, Harry Warren, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Jerry Ross, Cy Coleman, Marc Schubring, Gerhard Siebholz, Andreas Härry, Anton Coppola, Raimonds Pauls, Ann Ronell, Guido Masanetz, Örjan Fahlström, Maury Yeston, Janusz Stokłosa, Hinrich Franck, Luther Henderson, Galt MacDermot, Waldo de los Ríos, Jerry Bock, William...http://booksllc.net/?l=de&id=22785 ... Read more