Kurt Weill - Death

Death

Weill suffered a heart attack shortly after his 50th birthday and died on April 3, 1950 in New York City. He was buried in Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York. The text and music on his gravestone come from the song "A Bird of Passage" from Lost in the Stars, itself adapted from a quotation from the Venerable Bede:

This is the life of men on earth:
Out of darkness we come at birth
Into a lamplit room, and then –
Go forward into dark again.
(lyric: Maxwell Anderson)

An excerpt from Maxwell Anderson's eulogy for Weill read:

"I wish, of course, that he had been lucky enough to have had a little more time for his work. I could wish the times in which he lived had been less troubled. But these things were as they were – and Kurt managed to make thousands of beautiful things during the short and troubled time he had…"

Read more about this topic:  Kurt Weill

Famous quotes containing the word death:

    At noon, you walk across a river. It is dry, with not this much water: it is just stones and pebbles. But it rains cats and dogs in the mountains, and towards afternoon, the water descends wildly and she ravages all in its path, the madwoman. That is how death comes. Without our expecting it, and we cannot do a thing against it, brothers.
    Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)

    The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.
    —J.M. (John Millington)

    It is not death therefore that is burdensome, but the fear of death.
    Ambrose (c. 333–397)