The Ballad of Mack the Knife

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The Moritat by Mackie Messer is a Moritat from the theater play The Threepenny Opera from 1928, written by Bertolt Brecht and set to music by Kurt Weill . The popular petty song is now the most famous and most “ covered ” piece of the Threepenny Opera . Internationally it is also known under the title Mack the Knife in the English text version by Marc Blitzstein .

History of origin

The Moritat von Mackie Messer is part of Bertolt Brecht's opera persiflage Dreigroschenoper with music by Kurt Weill, which is based on the Beggar's Opera ("Beggar Opera") written by John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch . The Beggar's Opera was first issued on August 29, 1728 in London's Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater premiered.

Almost exactly 200 years later the Threepenny Opera premiered . The Moritat is the opening track of this work, in which a Moritat singer enumerates the crimes of the gangster Macheath , called Mackie Messer . The song was only added to the play shortly before the premiere in 1928, because the actor of Mackie Messer , Harald Paulsen , wanted a more effective exposure of his role.

Harald Paulsen - The Threepenny Opera

Together with the Threepenny Opera , the Moritat was premiered for the first time on August 31, 1928 in the Berlin Theater on Schiffbauerdamm . The performance was musically designed by Theo Mackeben and his band. At the world premiere, the morality singer was portrayed by Kurt Gerron , who also played police chief "Tiger" Brown . The first record of the song was made by Harald Paulsen ( Homocord # 4-3747) in September 1928, Brecht himself recorded the title for the first time in May 1929. Another version is by Kurt Gerron, who recorded the song on December 7, 1930 with Mackebens Orchester.

Brecht initially wrote nine stanzas of the song, of which Weill only set six to music for the play. In 1930, Brecht wrote three additional closing stanzas for a planned threepenny film. The film was not made in the form requested by Brecht and Weill, but the final stanzas were included in Georg Wilhelm Pabst's 1931 film.

On February 19, 1931, the film Die Dreigroschenoper (with Rudolf Forster as Mackie Messer), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, premiered in Berlin and was shown in the USA from May 17, 1931. In the film, Ernst Busch portrayed the morality singer, who subsequently contributed a lot to the spread of the song. After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 which was Threepenny Opera banned in Germany, both authors had to flee Germany.

In 1948 Brecht wrote two further final stanzas for a production of the Münchner Kammerspiele . These two stanzas were also used for a poem version of the Moritat under the title The Moritat by the robber Mackie Messer ; since the original third and seventh stanzas were deleted, this version also consists of nine stanzas. It is also included in the complete edition of Bertolt Brecht's poems .

instrumentation

Kurt Weill wrote a fully composed setting of six stanzas of morality. The line-up of the orchestra includes: alto saxophone , soprano saxophone , tenor saxophone , trumpet , trombone , drums , harmonium , banjo and piano . Weill precedes the notes with the performance instruction “In the manner of an organ organ ”, and in fact the first two stanzas are only orchestrated with a harmonium, which imitates the sound of an organ organ. With each additional stanza the instrumentation changes (usually more instruments are added), whereby the initially very even rhythm of the accompaniment is loosened up and the “organ music” gradually gives the character of an elegant foxtrot . Weill's music for the Threepenny Opera has in many places echoes of the dance music of the time it was composed, the "Moritat" as the opening number after the overture thus guides the listener into the musical sphere that will dominate the piece.

The stanzas of morality are orchestrated differently, namely:

  • 1: harmonium
  • 2: harmonium
  • 3: trombone, cymbals, tamburo piccolo, banjo, piano
  • 4: banjo, piano
  • 5: Alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trombone, cymbals, TomTom, piano
  • 6: Alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trombone, cymbal, TomTom, piano; Soprano saxophone, trumpet, tamburo legno, bass drum, banjo
  • 6: (repeat): tenor saxophone, cymbals and piano

Text (excerpt)

  And the shark, he has teeth
  And he wears them in his face
  And Macheath, he has a knife
  But you can't see the knife.

  […]

  On a beautiful blue Sunday there is
  a dead man on the beach
  And a person walks around the corner who is
  called Mackie Messer.

  [...]

In 1930 Brecht added the following final stanza for the planned film adaptation:

  Because some are in the dark
  and the others are in the light.
  And you see them in the light
  You don't see them in the dark.

Successful cover versions

At the suggestion of Leonard Bernstein , the Threepenny Opera was translated into English by Marc Blitzstein under the title Three Penny Opera . Bernstein first conducted the English version on June 14, 1952 with Lotte Lenya as Jenny . An off-Broadway performance in New York sparked the real world success of Mack the Knife . Gerald Price recorded the song on March 10, 1954 for a screening at the De Lys Theater, Greenwich Village / New York, conducted by Samuel Matlowsky, and thus presented Brecht's work to the English-speaking world for the first time. Since the theater was only rented for three months, only 96 performances took place. On September 20, 1955, the new premiere took place with Lenya, which now brought it to the record of 2,611 performances until December 17, 1961, thus breaking the previous record of the longest running musical .

Louis Armstrong - Mack The Knife
Ella Fitzgerald - Mack the Knife

Especially in jazz was Mack the Knife frequently taken up, which is why the piece as a jazz standard applies. The first reinterpreter was Louis Armstrong , who recorded the title on September 28, 1955 with Edmond Hall (clarinet), Trummy Young (trombone), Billy Kyle (piano), Arvell Shaw (bass) and Barrett Dreems (drums) in New York. His version reached number 20 on the US pop music charts. Johnny Johnson recorded the song in November 1956, Bing Crosby took over the title for his LP Bing With A Beat , which was made on February 19 and 20, 1957 . Even Bobby Darin grabbed the title for a record on (That's All) , but because of intense airplay he was extracted under pressure from the radio stations as a single. Together with the orchestra of Richard Wess, a jazz-influenced version was created on December 19, 1958, which after publication in August 1959 sold a total of 3.5 million copies. The swing- style version by Bobby Darin is the most successful version of this song, which reached number 1 on the singles charts in both the USA and Great Britain .

Musically significant versions are still by Ella Fitzgerald (live on February 13, 1960 with the Paul Smith Quartet in the Berlin Deutschlandhalle : Paul Smith - piano, Jim Hall - guitar, Wilfred Middlebrooks - bass and Gus Johnson Jr. - drums) or by Coleman Hawkins in an 8:49 min long version from August 13 and 15, 1962, life from the Village Gate in New York (with Coleman Hawkins - tenor saxophone, Tommy Flanagan - piano, Major Holley - bass and Ed Locke - drums). Caterina Valente released the song in April 1957 as the B-side of Tipi tipi tipso . Frank Sinatra took over the song relatively late for the first time on April 16, 1984. Coverinfo lists a total of 48 versions, Mack the Knife ranks 14th on the Billboard Hot 100 list and received a Grammy for 1959 record.

In 1962 the Threepenny Opera was made into a film again by Wolfgang Staudte and was released in cinemas on February 28, 1962 (see main article Die Dreigroschenoper (1962) ). For the US release of this film, scenes were shot in which Sammy Davis Jr. sings the Moritat.

More artists

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Plagiarism allegation

In the summer of 2007, the daughter of the Saarland composer Albert Niklaus accused the press that Kurt Weill had taken the melody of the piece from an advertising song composed by her father in 1927. In 1929 Niklaus saw the Threepenny Opera in the Berlin Kroll Opera and recognized the melody. Ulrich Fischer points out in the Kurt Weill newsletter, however, that the Threepenny Opera was never performed in the Kroll Opera; only Weill's Kleine Dreigroschenmusik had its premiere here on February 7, 1929 under Otto Klemperer . In addition, neither the intervals of the four-note opening motif are the same, nor do the melody and rhythm match.

Discography

  • Just Mackie Knife. 19 versions, including an original recording with Bertolt Brecht. EFA Medien, Frankfurt am Main. CD EFA 01616-2.
  • More Mack the Knife. 20 versions. EFA Medien, Frankfurt am Main. CD EFA 01610-2.

literature

  • Fritz Hennenberg: Brecht song book . Suhrkamp pocket book 1216.Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1985, ISBN 3-518-37716-7 .
  • Siegfried Unseld (Ed. :) Bertolt Brecht's Dreigroschenbuch. Texts, materials, documents. Two volumes. Brecht's texts on Threepenny Opera, Threepenny Film, Threepenny Trial, Brecht-Giorgio Strehler conversation, John Gay's The Beggars Opera, Threepenny Novel and works on Threepenny Opera from Adorno to Lotte Weill-Lenya. With a picture part. Suhrkamp taschenbuch 87.Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1973, ISBN 3-518-36587-8 .
  • Bertolt Brecht: The Threepenny Opera . edition suhrkamp 229.Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1968, ISBN 3-518-10229-X .
  • Bertolt Brecht: The Threepenny Opera. Text and comment . Cornelsen Switzerland, Aarau 2004, ISBN 3-464-69067-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dietrich Schulz-Köhn: I Got Rhythm - 40 Jazz Evergreens and Their History , 1990, p. 222.
  2. ^ Dietrich Schulz-Köhn: I Got Rhythm - 40 Jazz Evergreens and Their History , 1990, p. 223.
  3. ↑ Kurt Weill Foundation on Lotte Lenya
  4. ↑ Fred Bronson: The Billboard Book of Number One Hits . 3rd revised and expanded edition. Billboard Publications, New York 1992, p. 59.
  5. ↑ Al DiOrio, Bobby Darin: The Incredible Story of An Amazing Life , 2004, p. 72
  6. ↑ The title was at the top of the US singles charts for nine weeks; Joel Whitburn: Top Pop Singles 1955-1993 . Record Research Ltd., Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin 1994, p. 150.
  7. ↑ Dafydd Rees, Harry Lazell, Roger Osborne: 40 Years Of NME Charts . Boxtree Ltd., London 1992, p. 79.
  8. ^ Cover info about Mack the Knife
  9. ↑ "To whom you can't prove anything", in: the daily newspaper of July 29, 2007
  10. ↑ Kurt Weill Newsletter from autumn 2007, Volume 25 No 2, p. 12 (PDF; 993 kB)