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Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya

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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.

`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.

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 the burgeoning 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!

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