Don Satz:

>I came across a quote from Schoenberg concerning Kurt Weill: "his is the
>only music in the world in which I can find no quality at all".
>
>I was wondering if anyone had insight as to why Schoenberg felt this way
>about Weill's music.

It's a very interesting question.  Alan Chapman's essay "Crossing the Cusp:
The Schoenberg Connection" (in The New Orpheus, ed.  by Kim Kowalke) goes
into the question at length.

One thing I'm convinced of is that it had nothing to do with the quality
of Weill's music.  Schoenberg, after all, had earlier nominated Weill for
admission to the Prussian Academy of Arts.  Weill himself always thought of
Schoenberg as the first among contemporary German composers and commented
to Lenya that no one could understand his (Weill's) violin concerto
without knowing something of Schoenberg.  The vilification of Weill -
the excommunication of Weill from serious discussion of modern music by
Schoenberg and certain of his disciples - seems to have stemmed from a
satirical article Weill wrote that Schoenberg thought mocked him.  I also
suspect that Schoenberg was quite jealous of Weill's extraordinary success
at a very young age.  Other villains include Adorno and Webern.  Berg kept
tactfully silent and, indeed, bought Weill scores as soon as they were
published.  Adorno, a toady with a large vocabulary, boosted Weill's music
as long as Schoenberg liked it and damned the same music when Schoenberg
decided he didn't like it.

As much as I love Schoenberg's music, I think he would have made an equally
good chief of the Comintern.

Steve Schwartz