|
|
Karl Goldmark, also known originally
as Károly Goldmark and later sometimes as Carl Goldmark ; May 18, 1830,
Keszthely – January 2, 1915, Vienna) was a Hungarian composer.
Life and career
Goldmark
came from a large Ashkenazi Jews|Jewish family, one of 20 children. His
father, Ruben Goldmark, was a chazan to the Jewish congregation at
Keszthely, Hungary. Karl Goldmark's older brother Joseph Goldmark became
a physician and was later involved in the Revolutions of 1848 in the
Austrian Empire|Revolution of 1848, and forced to emigrate to the United
States. Karl Goldmark's early training as a violinist was at the
musical academy of Sopron (1842–44). He continued his music studies
there and two years later was sent by his father 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 University of Music and Performing
Arts, Vienna|Vienna Conservatory to study the violin with Joseph Böhm
and harmony with Gottfried Preyer. The Revolutions of 1848|Revolution of
1848 forced the Conservatory to close down. He was largely self-taught
as a composer. He supported himself in Vienna playing the violin in
theatre orchestras, at the Carlstheater and the privately supported
Viennese institution, the Theater in der Josefstadt, which gave him
practical experience with orchestration, an art he more than mastered.
He also gave lessons: Jean Sibelius studied with him briefly. Goldmark's
first concert 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. "His writing
is distinctive for his even-handed promotion of both Brahms and Wagner,
at a time when audiences (and most critics) were solidly in one
composer's camp or the other and viewed those on the opposing side with
undisguised hostility." (Liebermann 1997) Johannes Brahms and Goldmark
developed a friendship as Goldmark's prominence in Vienna grew.
Goldmark, however would ultimately distance himself because of Brahms'
prickly personality.
Among the musical influences Goldmark
absorbed was the inescapable one, for a musical colorist, 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
Eötvös Loránd University|University of Budapest and shared with Richard
Strauss an honorary membership in the Accademia Nazionale di Santa
Cecilia|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. First performed in Vienna on
10 March 1875, the work proved so popular that it remained in the
repertory of the Vienna State Opera|Vienna Staatsoper continuously until
1938. He wrote six other operas as well (see list).
The Rustic
Wedding Symphony ( Ländliche Hochzeit ), Op. 26 (premiered 1876), a work
that was kept in the repertory by Thomas Beecham|Sir 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.
His Violin Concerto No. 1 (Goldmark)|Violin
Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 28, was once his most frequently played
piece. The concerto had its premiere in Bremen (city)|Bremen in 1877,
initially enjoyed great popularity and then slid into obscurity. A very
romantic work, it has a Magyars|Magyar march in the first movement and
passages reminiscent of Antonín Dvorák|Dvorák and Felix
Mendelssohn|Mendelssohn in the second and third movements. It has
started to re-enter the repertoire, through recordings by such prominent
violin soloists as Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell. Nathan Milstein also
championed the work and Milstein's recording of the Concerto (1963) is
widely considered the definitive one.
Goldmark 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.
This 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|Schumann and Felix
Mendelssohn|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 Piano Quintet s in B-flat major Opp. 30
and 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).
Goldmark
also composed choral music, two Suites for Violin and Piano (in D
major, Op. 11, and in E-flat major, Op. 43), and numerous concert
overture s, 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
jungendtagen 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.
Karl Goldmark's nephew Rubin
Goldmark (1872–1936), a pupil of Antonín Dvorák|Dvorák, was also a
composer, who spent his career in New York.
Goldmark died in Vienna and is buried in the Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery), along with many other notable composers.
Many
of his autograph manuscripts are in the collection of the National
Széchényi Library, with "G" catalogue numbers attached to various works
(including those without opus number.) |
|
|
