Composers Datebook

It was on this day in 1929 that the first performance was given of a radio cantata—not on the radio, oddly enough, but at a concert in Baden-Baden, Germany, as part of that city’s “Musiktage” festival. It was entitled “Lindbergh’s Flight,” with a text by Bertolt Brecht, and music by both Kurt Weill AND Paul Hindemith. This radio cantata was designed to illustrate both the literal and philosophical aspects of Charles A. Lindbergh’s first-ever solo flight across the Atlantic on May 21st, 1927. Today, when hundreds of planes whiz back and forth across the Atlantic every day, carrying thousands of passengers, we have to remember that less than 75 years ago, the number of people crossing was just ONE, namely Charles A. Lindbergh, and the feat made headline news around the world. Three decades after Lindbergh’s flight, composer Franz Waxman would write the film score for “The Spirit of St. Louis,” a 1957 Hollywood version of the Atlantic crossing starring Jimmy Stewart. And speaking of Atlantic crossings, Waxman, Weill and Hindemith—all German-born composers—would emigrate to the U.S. in the 1930s, their flight a result of the racial laws and the artistic repression that followed the rise of Nazi ideology in Europe. Waxman would become one of Hollywood’s leading film composers, Weill would achieve fame on Broadway, and Hindemith, adding to his fame as a composer and conductor, would become an influential teacher of composition at Yale.