Wie lange noch?

Wie lange noch? - the song (and ballet) that made me fall in love with Kurt Weill's music. I later discovered Teresa Stratas' album "The Unknown Kurt Weill" whilst searching for Wie lange noch? and enjoyed her interpretation as well as many other Weill songs...


‎I will confess there was a night when I willingly gave myself to you.
You took me and drove me out of my mind.
I believed that I could not live without you.
You promised me blue skies, and I cared for you like my own father. 
You tormented me -- you tore me apart. 
I would have put the world at your feet!
Look at me.
When will the day come that I will be able to tell you: it's over.
When that day comes... I dread it. How much longer? How long?

I believed you. I was in a daze from all your talk and your promises.
I did whatever you wanted.
Wherever you wanted to go, I was willing to follow.
You promised me blue skies, and I -- Ah! I didn't even dare to cry.
But you have broken your word and your vows.
I have been silent and tortured myself.
Look at me!
When will the day come that I will be able to tell you: it's over.
When that day comes -- I dread it.
How much longer?
How long?

Author: Weill, translations via.


*About Wie lange noch?

Kurt Weill’s “Wie Lange Noch,” with an enigmatic text by his fellow German-Jewish emigré Walter Mehring, was written for broadcast behind enemy lines on Radio Free Europe during the Second World War. Reworking a tune he had set previously to a French text, in“Wie Lange Noch,” Weill speaks of lost trust and the betrayal of a man who had promised and inspired a nation with dreams of hope in the guise of a torch song. The sparse opening begins with a painfully beautiful duet between Julie Baumgartel (violin) and Paul Pulford (cello), which is marked by starkness and quiet desperation. With the change in tonality from minor to major, a sense of light and hope glimmers in the distant future. The accordion here becomes musical portrayal of a sorrowful memory while the intensity of this text explodes in the questioning of time, as Mehring desperately asks: Wie lange noch—how much longer. The underlying meaning of the words cannot possibly have been lost on Germans listening to this song in 1944.

{info from Radioindy.com}

Listen to a beautiful rendition of this song by L'Accordéoniste here...

Kurt Weill at the piano, Dessau, 1916.

Ballet choreographed by Krzysztof Pastor (director of the Polish National Ballet) and set to Kurt Weill's Wie lange noch?