Note on My First Love (or One of Them)

Hey’ here’s a find: Palookaville’s finest used bookstore just yielded up a copy of Speak Low (When You Speak Love) (1996), the large and lovingly edited collection of letters between Kurt Weill and Lotta Lenya. It’s a twofer: a monument to their affection for (and long attachment to) each other, and a kind of a mini-history of 20^th Century musical theatre.

I can remember being electrified by my first hearing of Weill’s September Song, in a movie about 1952 (and being aware of the irony that the lyrics had just about zero to do with the life of a 16-year-old). And just a few years later Threepenny Opera emerged one of the first pieces of grownup music I ever really enjoyed or understood—I liked it so much that I even acquired a copy of Dreigroschenoper, the German original.

I was tempted to spring for a copy of the letters when UC Press brought it out in 1996 but it seemed like a bit of an indulgence: less of an indulgence today at half of face price, and in depreciated dollars (but quaere, do I still want it as much now as I did then?). I accused Josh at the bookstore counter of assuming that he would never sell it, but Josh was noncommital: he has long since learned the first rule of retail book sales, which is never, ever, comment on the customer’s taste.

Read the jacket notes and you can see that this was the labor of a lifetime for Lys Symonette and Kim H. Kowalke, the editors. The book cries out for excerpting, but I think I’ll wait until I hit on something sufficiently special to be deserving.