Kurt Weill, the Jewish composer of Bolshevik music, had sense enough to get out of Germany after the Nazis stole power in 1933. He wound up in Paris, which, in typical French fashion, greeted him rapturously and then completely ignored him. Fortunately, cabaret singer Lys Gauty commissioned him to compose a song for her, and Weill, in typically warm-hearted fashion, responded with a dirty little march on the horrors of French life, Complainte de la Seine (Lament of the Seine). The poem by Maurice Magre is ugly, repellent, and repulsive—images of vomit, cadavers, and abortions abound—and the music by Weill is dark, despairing, and sentimental—after the climax of the verse, the march that starts the piece gives way to a sappy chanson accompanied by harp-like chords alternating from major to minor. Needless to say, it was one of the big hits in France in 1934 that Gauty frequently performed and later recorded.

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