Cut off from Germany, his audience and his bank accounts, Kurt Weill was in quite a fix when he left the country after the Nazis seized control of the German government in 1933. Finding himself in Paris in 1934, Weill was at aesthetically and financially loose ends. Fortunately, cabaret singer Lys Gauty commissioned him to compose a song for her and Weill responded with Complainte de la Seine (Lament of the Seine), a filthy-minded celebration of French life. Amazingly enough, it was one of the big hits in France in 1934 and Gauty, recognizing a good thing when she heard it, hired Weill to write another deathless ditty for her, Je ne l'aime pas. A dirge setting a text by Maurice Magre, Je ne l'aime pas has few of Weill's dirty fingerprints on it. For one thing, it conspicuously lacks irony and instead concentrates almost exclusively on mawkish and morbid sentimentality. For another, its contrast of a minor-keyed verse with a major-keyed chorus has less to do with Weill's favorite alternation of major and minor and more to do with the French cabaret tradition. But the dramatic climax of the work distinctly recalls the dramatic climax of Weill's Surabaya-Johnny as the parlando coda distinctly recalls the heartbroken codas of so many of Weill's Berlin songs.

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