Cannon song

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The Kanonensong is a song from the first act of the Threepenny Opera, which premiered in 1928 . The text is by Bertolt Brecht , the music was composed by Kurt Weill . The song was premiered on August 31, 1928 in the Berlin Theater on Schiffbauerdamm and has since been part of the classical modern concert repertoire in numerous versions. Kurt Weill published the extremely successful song in 1928 as an instrumental piece in his Little Threepenny Music for brass ensemble , percussion, banjo and piano, a suite that consists of the well-known songs from the Threepenny Opera. In the time of National Socialism , the opera, the film adaptation and the music of Kurt Weill were forbidden.

Text history

The text of the three stanzas first appeared in 1926 in the Taschenpostille , the forerunner of Bertolt Brecht's house postille , under the title Song of the Three Soldiers ; the refrain was still missing there. Brecht took him barely changed in the Piety itself. The text of the chorus was before the Threepenny Opera before, and indeed already under the title Kanonensong (without verses), he is in the song list for the Berlin premiere of Man is 1,927 printed. Brecht adapted the personal names in the text to the characters in the plays. Brecht gave a preliminary study of the piece a few notation abbreviations, which Weill evidently did not take up.

Musical structure

For the canon song Kurt Weill has given the piano reduction and score of the Threepenny Opera Foxtrot - Tempo , in the separate edition for piano and voice Charleston - Tempo . The Charleston was a popular fashion dance widespread throughout the 1920s. As the metronome value , Weill gives in the first case (Foxtrot) 1/2 note= 92, so there are 92 half notes to be played per minute, a fairly fast tempo, in the second case (Charleston) 1/2 note= 88, i.e. slightly slower. The piece is notated in 4/4 time and takes about two and a half minutes. In the canon song there is no unambiguous key , but incomplete chords , sometimes without intervals such as fifths or thirds .

Text and interpretations

Bertolt Brecht's text consists of three stanzas , after which the refrain , soldiers live on the cannons ... , is sung. It is written for two voices, Macheath called Mackie Messer and Tiger Brown as the chief police officer of London, two characters from the Threepenny Opera who perform the song alternately and in a duet.

Brecht was inspired by Rudyard Kipling's ballad Screw-Guns , named after the mountain gun used by British-Indian troops at the end of the 19th century. Kipling's poem is written from the perspective of a soldier of the occupation. Tobacco smoke, morning fog and camaraderie with a strong Indian accent make up the atmospherically dense description.

In Brecht's song, the two opponents remember their military days together. In the performances in Berlin Harald Paulsen sang the role of Macheath and Kurt Gerron as police chief Tiger Brown sang the cannon song.

The cannon song has been played in numerous instrumentations and arrangements since 1928. In the first performance in 1928 and the subsequent performances until 1933, the ensemble of Lewis Ruth intoned it under the direction of Theo Mackeben ; he brought the acclaimed breakthrough of the Threepenny Opera to the audience. Soon played dance and jazz ensembles as the Jazz Symphonians of Paul Godwin successful piece to, or more recently, among others, the Berlin Philharmonic , the Ensemble Modern and the London Sinfonietta .

Between 1946 and 1948 Brecht wrote new lyrics for some songs in the Threepenny Opera, such as a new canon song in 1946 , which he hectographed and sent to Germany from his exile in the USA. In the edition of the songs from the Threepenny Opera in 1949, both texts were printed one after the other; when the pieces were printed in 1955, Brecht went back to the version of the first edition of the Threepenny Opera from 1931. The new canon song locates events in the Third Reich and World War II and looks back at the beginning of the Cold War .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bans, censorship and ratings in the Nazi state , at Filmportal.de
  2. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht song book . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1985, pp. 391-393.
  3. ^ Fritz Hennenberg (ed.): Brecht Liederbuch , Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 1985, p. 391.
  4. ^ Sy Feldman: Kurt Weill - A Centennial Anthology , Volume 1, Alfred Publishing , Los Angeles 1999, pp. 170 f.
  5. ↑ Rudyard Kipling: Screw-Guns (poem on Petry Lowers' Page)
  6. ↑ Recording from 1929 with the Lewis Ruth ensemble
  7. ↑ Elias Canetti : The torch in the ear , life story 1921–1931, 2nd part of the autobiography, 1980
  8. ↑ Recording from 1928 with Paul Godwin and his Jazz Symphonians
  9. ↑ Universal Edition website
  10. ^ Bertolt Brecht: Pieces 2. Large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1988, Vol. 2, pp. 435f.