Goldmark, Rubin (EN)

Goldmark Rubin, *15 August 1872 New York, †6 March 1936 New York, American composer and pianist of Hungarian origin; nephew of Károly. 

He studied music in the years 1889–91 at the Vienna Conservatory with J. N. and R. Fuchs (composition) and A. Door (piano), and continued his studies in 1891–93 with A. Dvořák (composition) and R. Joseffy at the newly opened National Conservatory in New York, where he simultaneously engaged in teaching (theory, piano). In the years 1895–1901 he was director of the conservatory in Colorado Springs; in 1902 he returned to New York, where until 1924 he gave private lessons in piano and music theory; during this time Goldmark gave approx. 500 piano recitals combined with lectures on music in various cities in the USA and Canada. In 1909 he received the Paderewski Foundation prize for his Piano Quartet. In 1924 he became director of the composition department at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. 

Among contemporary American composers, Goldmark was one of the most technically assured; he achieved particular success with his orchestral works (Requiem). Taking up the task once set before Dvořák of creating a national American music, he incorporated into his works – like Dvořák and Delius – elements of Negro spirituals and early jazz within a late-Romantic aesthetic and musical language (Negro Rhapsody); this direction was continued by many of Goldmark’s students, including G. Gershwin, A. Copland and F. Jacobi.

Literature: E. T. Rice Address Delivered in Memory of R. Goldmark, New York 1936.