Musicians - Karl Goldmark

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	Musicians - Karl Goldmark

Karl Goldmark, also known originally as Károly Goldmark and later sometimes as Carl Goldmark, (born in Keszthely, Hungary on May 18, 1830; died in Vienna on January 2, 1915) was a Hungarian composer from a large Jewish family, one of 20 children. His early training as a violinist was at the musical academy of Sopron (1842-44). He continued his music studies in the nearby town of Ödenburg and two years later was sent by his father to Vienna, where he was able to study for some eighteen months with Jansa before his money ran out. He prepared himself for entry first to the Vienna Technicsches Hochschule and then to the Conservatory to study the violin with Joseph Böhm, with Preger for harmony. The 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 plied 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.

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 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. First performed in Vienna 10 March 1875, the work proved so popular that it remained in the repertory of the Vienna Staatsoper continuously until 1938. He wrote six other operas as well (see list).

His Violin Concerto in A minor, Op.28 was once his most frequently played piece. The concerto had its premiere in Bremen in 1877, initially enjoyed great popularity and then slid into obscurity. A very romantic work, it has a Magyar march in the first movement and passages reminiscent of Dvořák and Mendelssohn in the second and third movements. It has been championed and recorded by the violinist Joshua Bell. The Ländliche Hochzeit (rustic wedding) Symphony, Op.26, a work that was kept in the repertory by 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.

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. He also seems to have written a second violin concerto, but it too appears not to have received an opus number or to have been published.)

Goldmark's chamber music, in which the influences of 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 Piano Quintets 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).

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