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