One of the first standards that I learned to play from memory was Mack the Knife. For some reason both the name of the musical, The Three Penny Opera, as well as that of its composer, Kurt Weill (1900-1950) stuck in my mind. And so for nearly 30 years this was all I knew about this accomplished creative artist.

When I was 39, I returned to school to work on my Master of Music degree at New England Conservatory. An important part of my graduate work for the two Masters degrees (Jazz Studies and Classical Composition) that I subsequently received from NEC was the four year period that I studied privately with William Thomas McKinley. It was as a result of these lessons that I began to discover the connection between the standards from the American Popular Songbook and the concert music (classical music) that I came to know and love.

Although most 20^th century composers focused on writing either concert music or popular songs, there were a few who achieved notoriety in both genres. George Gershwin‘s concert music compositions, e.g. Preludes and Rhapsody in Blue, came after the writing of his sensational songs. On the flip side of this, there were three European composers who later became famous in the USA by making the transition from writing classical music to composing American popular songs.

I’ve written about each of them in my previous blog posts: Josef Myrow Autumn Nocturne, Vernon Duke Autumn in New York and Kurt Weill September Song. Five years after composing September Song, Weill wrote this week’s song Speak Low as part of the musical score he composed for the Broadway show, One Touch of Venus.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog post that featured Cole Porter’s What Is This Thing Called Love?, the composer was far from being an overnight success. The same can be said of Kurt Weill. In 1935, after more than a decade of being a successful composer of concert music in Germany, Weill immigrated to the United States, married actress/vocalist Lotte Lenya, took up residence in New York City and began to study the compositional components of American popular song and stage music.

Piano students take heed…..

Once again, we have an example of a knowledgeable, experienced and successful professional musician who continued his musical growth by studying and learning. Weill wanted to be authentic. He wanted to write his music with integrity. In fact, Weill insisted on writing all of the music for the scores of his musicals. Not only was this commitment unique among his contemporaries, it’s still unusual today.

It may surprise you to know that even John Williams does not orchestrate all of his wonderful film music. In Hollywood, professional orchestrators are hired to create the full score that the orchestra actually plays for a movie by expanding the composer’s condensed score to include parts for all the instruments..

Three years after making the major life and career change, September Song debuted as part of Knickerbocker Holiday.  But it was another five years before Kurt Weill composed Speak Low. The concept of overnight success could not have possibly crossed the composer’s mind!

Speak Low is often performed as a swing tune, occasionally as a ballad as well as a piece in Latin rhythm (although the bridge sometimes switches to swing rhythm). As I mentioned in last week’s blog, I wanted to continue my beguine blog series by following the four songs by Cole Porter with standards by other composers. In keeping with this focus, I used the beguine bass throughout my performance of Speak Low.

As I prepared for writing this post, I listened to a variety if interpretations of Speak Low on Rhapsody Music. I found it gratifying to hear how many performers opted for the Latin rhythmic flavor for their renditions of this great standard. This made for inspiration of the first order, because even within the Latin genre, there were a variety of tempos being explored. Since each speed suggests stylistic shifts, Speak Low provided plenty of room for the artistic voices to speak.

In fact, that is precisely what we at the Ed Mascari Piano Studio believe. We encourage and teach all of our students to develop their piano playing skills and musical knowledge in such a way that they can play the songs they like in the way that that like to play them.

As with Kurt Weill, there’s always something to learn. Perhaps you love piano music and have always wanted to play, but didn’t know how to get started. Contact us today and we’ll show you how.

Whether you live near our Natick or our Hudson Piano Studio location, we at the Ed Mascari Piano Studio are dedicated to giving you the tools, techniques and even some tricks to help you Learn to Play the Music You Love!