A Quote by Kurt Weill

It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater… it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content.

Kurt Weill

Quote Topics

American American Music Basis Content Fill Folk Folk Music Form Gradually Growing Legitimate Me Music Musical Musical Theater New New Music Out Popular Popular Song Quite Seems Song Theater Use

Quote Author

Kurt Weill
German - Composer
March 2, 1900 - April 3, 1950

Musical theater is an American genre. It started really, in America, as a combination of jazz and operetta; most of the great musical theater writers in the golden era are American. I think that to do a musical is a very American thing to me.

Rachel Bloom

Popular music of the last 50 years has failed to keep in step with advances in musical theater, namely Stephen Sondheim. But the two have grown apart so that popular music is based more than ever on a rhythmic grid that is irrelevant in musical theater. In popular music, words matter less and less. Especially now that it's so international, the fewer words the better. While theater music becomes more and more confined to a few blocks in midtown.

Stephin Merritt

I think at times the very strong feelings I have about my country coincide with my musical ability, and I'm able to actually turn it into music, a song or even hopefully a memorable song, sometimes. You may find it surprising, but I'm a very intense, proud American. I love being an American.

John Fogerty

Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz.

Terry Teachout

Most of our American musical heritage is based on European models, but the folk hymns and spirituals are one of the most fertile and unique of our American musical traditions.

Mack Wilberg

The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.

Alan Lomax

I don't think theater is dying, and musicals are a great American art form. We've got apple pie, jazz and musical theater.

Laura Benanti

The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization.

Fredric Jameson

Music was in the air when I was growing up. My siblings Katy, Dave and Phil were musical; my dad worked in inner-city New York where a musical revolution was taking place - folk music, rock n' roll, gospel music. My sister taught me to sing. My brothers taught me to play.

Sam Barry

Progressive music probably wouldn't even really exist if not for the people of the United States having picked up on it and nurtured it in the way they did. It really is an American form of music in the sense that it was nurtured here. So it belongs here. It has become part of the fabric of American musical culture.

Greg Lake

I started out really into musical theater. So you can imagine I was super popular. I wasn't awkward looking at all.

Allison Williams

The idea of an isolated American painting , so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd... And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country.

Jackson Pollock

All roads lead to 'American Pie.' 'As American as apple pie' was the saying. It was some kind of a big American song that I wanted to write, which would be a conclusion for my show and bring all the songs home, which it still does. I can go anywhere I want with American music and come home to that. And it all makes sense.

Don McLean

Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.

George Gershwin

I think there's a weird self-affirmation thing that happens in popular music in general. It seems like every song I hear on the radio is like, "Listen to me roar!" or "This is my fight song!"