Help me Weill away the hours with things like Kurt and Bertolt's Baal

March 12, 2015 2:08 PM

I love the songs from Bowie doing his turn as Baal. Particularly The Drowned Girl. I have pretty much everything Bowie has ever done. So if I wanted to hear more songs like those from Baal what else would I like? More similar Kurt Weill? Anyone else?
posted by merocet to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Michael Nyman wrote some songs to poems by Paul Celan that have a similar format. Here's one sung by Ute Lemper. Search 'nyman celan' for the rest.

As for Weill, he wrote a Requiem that is much is the same mood as the Baal song.

There's a mini version of the dramatic Brecht / Weill opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in a recording I like a lot with moments like the Baal song. (Has the song Moon of Alabama, which Jim Morrison recorded.) Full opera is here.

Happy End is more cabaret-like, less operatic, and has lots of great tunes. Another good recording is in this set.

All these recordings are in the German language.
posted by bertran at 5:01 PM on March 12, 2015

Also, you might like French classical chansons, some of which is melodic in the same way as the Bowie clip. Try Gabriel Faure. Or Debussy.
posted by bertran at 5:09 PM on March 12, 2015

Lost in the Stars is an album of covers of Weill songs featuring Marianne Faithful, Tom Waits, Lou Reed and many others.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 5:09 PM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

(Actually, old fashioned German lieder might do it for you too. Weill was no doubt raised on Lieder. There's the monumental, mostly very still and desolate Winterreise from Schubert. And Hugo Wolf wrote some just great meditative songs, like Der Mond hat eine schwere Klag' erhoben. Look for recordings of the "Morike" songs, if you like that, to start.)
posted by bertran at 5:31 PM on March 12, 2015

Lost In The Stars (mentioned above) was later re-interpreted as a video performance documentary called September Songs (with some of the same artists, but some different). It's quite impressive..

If we like the music of Kurt Weill (yeah, we do) then the next thing to check out is Bertolt Brecht's next music partner, Hanns Eisler, who also composed angular bouncy cabaret music with experimental touches, but in his own way. And one of his most well-known interpreters has also appeared in Lost in The Stars: German singer Dagmar Krause..

(We're up on Bowie, so we'll assume that we've all heard him singing Brel and acting in other decadent-German-style movies.)
posted by ovvl at 9:57 AM on March 13, 2015