Curt Wylde

Rating: 10/10 (14 June 2005)

swinging_rose_hips wrote, "Curt Wylde...This is one of the several scenes in which Oscar Wilde is referenced subtly, seamlessly and beautifully...Curt is not simply Iggy Pop. He is Oscar Wilde." Please read the entire commentary. It is very insightful.
I am compelled to mention the other reference, that to KURT WEILL, since no one seems yet to have done so.
Also, I have read no mention of David Bowie. Perhaps that is too obvious, but, after all, the title of the film IS _Velvet Goldmine_.
Kurt Weill was born on 2 March 1900 in Dessau, Germany. The son of a cantor, Weill displayed musical talent early on. By the time he was twelve, he was composing and mounting concerts and dramatic works in the hall above his family's quarters in the Gemeindehaus. During the First World War, the teenage Weill was conscripted as a substitute accompanist at the Dessau Court Theater. After studying theory and composition with Albert Bing, Kapellmeister of the Theater, Weill enrolled at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, but found the conservative training and the infrequent lessons with Engelbert Humperdinck too stifling. After a season as conductor of the newly formed municipal theater in Lüdenscheid, he returned to Berlin and was accepted into Ferruccio Busoni's master class in composition. He supported himself through a wide range of musical occupations, from playing organ in a synagogue to piano in a Bierkeller, by tutoring students (including Claudio Arrau and Maurice Abravanel) in music theory, and, later, by contributing music criticism to Der deutsche Rundfunk, the weekly program journal of the German radio.