Music in the Holocaust, Jewish Identity and Cosmopolitanism

This event occurred on:  The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College is presenting a special series of concerts titled, “Music in the Holocaust, Jewish Identity and Cosmopolitanism,” featuring music composed and performed by Jewish prisoners in Nazi territories during World War II. Three concerts will feature an introduction by a noted scholar in the field placing the music within the context of the larger social, historical and political background out of which it developed.

These events are made possible through the generosity of a grant from the Bertha Effron Fund of the Community Foundation of the Hudson Valley. 

The third concert on Saturday, April 27, “Kurt Weill and the Modernist Migration: Music of Weill and Other Emigres” will focus on the work of Weill and his contribution to the American Songbook, as well as the reverberations of the Weimar cultural legacy in the United States. Weill was a resident of the Hudson Valley during his last decade and was an important figure in the German-Jewish exile community that took root in New York and Hollywood. The evening will feature songs from several of Weill’s American musicals including “Knickerbocker Holiday” (set in the colonial Dutch Hudson Valley) and the 1941 musical “Lady in the Dark,” as well as several of Weill’s works from his collaboration with Brecht. The lecture will touch upon the legacy of the Weimar Republic, the setting in which Weill’s collaboration with Bertolt Brecht took place, and its role in creating a culture that diverged from both the universalizing humanist and romantic nationalist strains of German cultural identity.

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations are needed.