"The Eternal Kurt Weill," class by Neil Levin, YIVO, NYC, begins 21 Feb 2018
The Eternal Kurt Weill: His Road from Jewish to American Music and Back
Six-session class taught by Neil Levin, Anne E. Leibowitz Visiting Professor-in-Residence in Music
Begins Feb 21, 2018, 6pm – 8pm
YIVO
15 W. 16th St.,
NYC
Much of Kurt Weill’s theatrical, operatic, film, and concert music is widely familiar. It continues to fascinate in its sui generis juxtapositions of styles and often seeming artistic contradictions. Less known, however, are consciously incorporated musical reflections of his pride in Jewish heritage, his Jewish persona, his early exposure to cantorial and other synagogue melos, his related inner conflicts, and his ultimate dedication to Jewish causes. This course will explore general European as well as Jewish/Judaic influences on his aggregate oeuvre. It will consider exemplary, religiously impartial, as well as deliberately Jewishly-related works in their political, historical, cultural, and social contexts, while highlighting his evocations of Hebrew poetry, traditional liturgical melodies and chants, and Jewish folk motifs....