The relative obscurity of Weill’s chamber music can be partially explained by the overshadowing success of his first stage works, beginning with the acclaimed one-act opera Der Protagonist. However, the compositional quality and musical significance of these works of “absolute music” have also been obscured by their uneven publication and performance history, which partly explains their absence from the mainstream of the concert repertoire. This is regrettable, as some of these pieces are of considerable ingenuity and aesthetic appeal and may rank among the outstanding German musical works of this period. The ailing Ferruccio Busoni, for example, was so taken by Weill’s Frauentanz (seven medieval poems for soprano, with flute, viola, clarinet, horn, and bassoon) that he undertook the task of creating the piano reduction for one of the songs, which turned out to be the last musical project he completed before his untimely death in July 1924.

Edited by Wolfgang Rathert, a full professor of musicology at Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, and Jürgen Selk, former Managing Editor of the Kurt Weill Edition, the new edition of Weill’s chamber music makes this body of work available now in a single volume: two string quartets (as well as two separate movements for string quartet); a sonata for violoncello and piano; the song cycle Frauentanz; and the vocal-instrumental miniature Ick sitze da—un esse Klops also known as “Klopslied” (meatball song). While comprising only a small portion of Weill’s oeuvre, the works played a considerable role in his formative years (1919–1924).