European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Annotated Score and Parts for Kurt Weill’s Zaubernacht Turns Up at Yale

Jan. 01, 2007

More than eighty years after its world premiere, the lost instrumental parts for Kurt Weill’s first professionally produced stage work, Zaubernacht, or Magic Night, have resurfaced at the Yale University Library.

A pantomime utilizing a version of the timeless Tchaikovskyan theme of children’s toys coming to life at night, the story of Zaubernacht was written by Russian theatre impresario Vladimir Boritsch. During the summer of 1922, Weill composed music to this story for nine instruments: flute(pic), bassoon, percussion, piano, 2 violins, viola, violoncello and bass. Then, in November of the same year, Zaubernacht premiered at the Theater am Kurfürstendamn in Berlin to favorable reviews as critics praised the young composer’s “power of illustration that evoked changing moods.”

Weill signed his contract with Universal Edition in April 1924, and included Zaubernacht as one of the works he proposed to the publisher. At that time Weill had already formulated plans for a New York production, and the American premiere soon followed at the Garrick Theatre on December 27, 1925, with Boritsch directing. Following the fifth and final performance at the Garrick theatre on December 30, the full score and parts inexplicably vanished save Weill’s piano reduction, which was later deposited at the Yale Music Library in 1981.

The materials for Zaubernacht recovered this summer at Yale consist of the nine original and complete instrumental parts as well as an incomplete copyist’s manuscript of the piano reduction containing Boritsch’s name. Almost all of the parts have corrections and emendations in Weill’s hand. Numerous non-autograph annotations, cancellations and paste-ins strongly suggest that the parts were used at the Garrick Theatre.

Finally, with the composer’s original instrumentation and extension annotations, Weill’s true intentions for Zaubernacht will return to the stage.

For more information on Kurt Weill and Zaubernacht, please visit www.kwf.org and www.eamdllc.com.

News