[f_minor] Gould's Remarkable Haydn

[Robert Merkin]

Huh? Somebody nodding at me?

Kurt Weill's "September Song" is from the 1930s Broadway musical "Knickerbocker Holiday," and his librettist was the Pulitzer-Prizewinning playwright and screenwriter Maxwell Anderson.

You've stolen my thunder! I'm preparing a blog post about a Huge Event in the Kurt Weill Universe -- a rare Broadway-quality production of Weill's 1943 musical/operetta "One Touch of Venus," at the Shaw Theatre Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. It runs through 10 October. 

For this one -- a museum statue of Venus comes alive and falls in love with an Average Joe -- the book is by the humorist S.J. Perelman, who wrote Marx Brothers screenplays, and the librettist is poet Ogden Nash. Marlene Dietrich turned it down as too vulgar, which gave the Venus role to young Mary Martin. The show includes the Weill tomantic standard "Speak Low" and the show-stopper "I'm a Stranger Here Myself."

Here's "Venus" in rehearsal, Weill at the piano, the legs are Mary Martin's, and I think the woman in the middle is Weill's wife Lotte Lenya.



Bob


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: maryellen jensen 
  To: f_minor at glenngould.org 
  Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 6:12 PM
  Subject: [f_minor] Gould's Remarkable Haydn


  Good evening Michael. Why did I choose 'Presences'? I didn't. It chose me.
  Let's see what sort of forward this 'end of heatwave' lyric ellicits:

When I was a young man courting the girlsI played me a waiting gameIf a maid refused me with tossing curlsI'd let the old Earth make a couple of whirlsWhile I plied her with tears in lieu of pearlsAnd as time came around she came my wayAs time came around, she cameOh, it's a long long while from May to DecemberBut the days grow short when you reach SeptemberWhen the autumn weather turns the leaves to flameAnd you ain't got time for waiting gameWhen days dwindle down to a precious fewSeptember November,And these few golden days I'd share with youThose golden days I share with youWhen you meet with the young girls early in the SpringYou court them in song and rhymeThey answer with words and a clover ringBut if you could examine the goods they bringThey have little to offer but the songs they singAnd the plentiful waste of time of dayA plentiful waste of timeOh, it's a long, long while from May to DecemberBut the days grow short when you reach SeptemberWhen the autumn weather turns the leaves to flameOne hasn't got time for the waiting gameOh, the days dwindle down to a precious fewSeptember, NovemberAnd these few precious days I'll spend with youThese precious days I'll spend with you- A special nod to Bob Merkin.



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