Vally Weigl belonged to a Jewish merchant family from Vienna. Between 1913 and 1918 she studied musicology, music teaching, psychology and philosophy in her home city and took private lessons to acquire additional musical skills in piano playing, music theory and composition. She was a pupil of Richard Robert and Karl Weigl whom she later married. Due to the persecution resulting from the Nuremberg Race Laws she fled with her family to the USA where she worked as a pianist and music teacher.
Her Old Time Burlesque composed in 1937 was originally scored for either the cello or trombone with piano. The warm tone of the viola lends the work a fascinatingly wistful timbre.
