Product Code Database
Karl Goldmark (born Károly Goldmark, Keszthely, 18 May 1830 – Vienna, 2 January 1915) was a Hungarian-born Viennese composer.Peter Revers, Michael Cherlin, Halina Filipowicz, Richard L. Rudolph The Great Tradition and Its Legacy 2004; , p. 227; "During the late nineteenth century, Karl Goldmark was among the most internationally celebrated of Viennese composers."
In 1844, Goldmark was sent to Vienna, where he was able to study for some eighteen months with Leopold Jansa before his money ran out. He prepared himself for entry first to the Vienna Technische Hochschule and then to the Vienna Conservatory to study the violin with Joseph Böhm and harmony with Gottfried Preyer. Until he became a member of Vienna's Carl Theatre in 1850, Goldmark was impoverished, surviving on menial odd jobs and handouts.Douglas Townsend, liner notes to Columbia Records MS7261, Rustic Wedding (Leonard Berstein, NY Philharmonic) The Revolution of 1848 forced the Conservatory to close down. Goldmark was largely self-taught as a composer. After the Conservatory's closing, Goldmark played violin for theaters and taught music to make ends meet. During this time, he honed his compositional talents. Goldmark's first concert, a self-organized show in Vienna (1858) met with hostility, and he returned to Budapest, returning to Vienna in 1860.
To make ends meet, Goldmark also pursued a side career as a music journalist. Johannes Brahms and Goldmark developed a friendship as Goldmark's prominence in Vienna grew.
Among the musical influences Goldmark absorbed was that of Richard Wagner, whose anti-semitism stood in the way of any genuine warmth between them. In 1872 Goldmark took a prominent role in the formation of the Vienna Wagner Society. He was made an honorary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Budapest and shared with Richard Strauss an honorary membership in the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome.
Goldmark's opera Die Königin von Saba ("The Queen of Sheba"), Op. 27 was celebrated during his lifetime and for some years thereafter. Though he had begun working on it after he first permanently settled in Vienna in 1860, it was first performed in Vienna on 10 March 1875. the work proved so popular that it remained in the repertoire of the Vienna Staatsoper continuously until 1938. He wrote six other operas as well (see list).
The Rustic Wedding Symphony ( Ländliche Hochzeit), Op. 26 (first performed in 1876), a work that was kept in the repertory by Thomas Beecham, includes five movements, like a suite composed of coloristic tone poems: a wedding march with variations depicting the wedding guests, a nuptial song, a serenade, a dialogue between the bride and groom in a garden, and a dance movement. It was very well received, including by Brahms.
His Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 28, was the piece of his played most during his lifetime. The concerto had its première in Bremen in 1877, initially enjoyed great popularity and then slid into obscurity. The concerto has started to re-enter the repertoire with recordings by such prominent violin soloists as Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell. Nathan Milstein also championed the work.
He wrote a second violin concerto, but it was never published. A second symphony in E-flat, Op. 35, is much less well known. Goldmark also wrote an early symphony in C major, between roughly 1858 and 1860. That work was never given an opus number and only the scherzo seems to have ever been published.
Goldmark's chamber music, in which the influences of Robert Schumann and Mendelssohn are paramount, although critically well received in his lifetime, is now rarely heard. It includes the String Quintet in A minor Op. 9 that made his first reputation in Vienna, the Violin Sonata in D major Op. 25, two in B-flat major, Op. 30 and C-sharp minor, Op. 54, the Cello Sonata Op. 39, and the work that first brought Goldmark's name into prominence in the Viennese musical world, the String Quartet in B-flat Op. 8 (his only work in that genre). He also composed choral music, two Suites for Violin and Piano (in D major, Op. 11, and in E-flat major, Op. 43), and numerous , such as the Sakuntala Overture Op. 13 (a work which cemented his fame after his String Quartet), the Penthesilea Overture Op. 31, the In the Spring Overture Op. 36, the Prometheus Bound Overture Op. 38, the Sappho Overture Op. 44, the In Italy Overture Op. 49, and the Aus Jugendtagen Overture, Op. 53. Other orchestral works include the symphonic poem Zrínyi, Op. 47, and two orchestral scherzos, in E minor, Op. 19, and in A major, Op. 45.
Goldmark's nephew Rubin Goldmark (1872–1936), a pupil of Dvořák, was also a composer, who spent his career in New York.
|
|
