He collaborated with Brecht on The Threepenny Opera (1928), The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929) and Happy End (1929), all of which use the corrupted diatonicism of commercial music as a weapon of social criticism, though paradoxically they have beome the epitome of the pre-war culture they sought to despise.

In 1935 he moved to the USA, where he devoted himself to composing for the Broadway stage. He was married to the singer Lotte Lenya, who was to be the finest interpreter of his music.