Rubin Goldmark
Rubin Goldmark (1872), is known as the best toastmaster in the music world! Born in New York, he was one of Dvorak’s most talented pupils and inherits his gifts from his noted uncle Carl Goldmark (1830–1915), a Hungarian composer of the overture Sakuntala and the opera The Queen of Sheba, the symphony The Rustic Wedding and much else. Rubin Goldmark has written several important tone poems,—Samson, Gettysburg Requiem, Negro Rhapsody, based on negro themes, and other fine things for orchestra, chamber music, piano and violin numbers and as a teacher he has laid the foundations for several American composers among whom are:—Frederick Jacobi, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. Each score from Goldmark’s pen is an addition to American music.
Henry Hadley
Henry K. Hadley (1871) by right of birth and training belongs to the New England group of composers, but most of his life was spent in Germany where he got his orchestral experience, and in different parts of America where he has conducted orchestras—Seattle, Washington, San Francisco and New York. Hadley is one of the few Americans who has conducted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
Hadley has taken many prizes for opera, symphony, cantata and an orchestral rhapsody. To this he has added numerous other orchestral and chamber music works and over 100 songs.
Albert Mildenberg’s “Michael Angelo”
In these days when the cry is for American opera, it seems regrettable that an opera ready for production should lie idle because of the death of its composer. Perhaps no work in history has had a more tragic story than Michael Angelo by Albert Mildenberg (1878–1918). In 1908, Mildenberg signed a contract in Vienna for the production of the opera. The following year on the way to Europe, the ship, Slavonia, was wrecked, and although the composer escaped, his entire orchestral score and parts went to the bottom of the sea. Courageously he rewrote the work, and sent it to the Metropolitan Opera House in competition for the $10,000 prize, won by Horatio Parker. Before it had reached the judges, in some way, still unexplained, the major part of the score disappeared! Again, Mildenberg set to work with the sketches he had, and made a third score, but it cost him his life, for though the opera was completed before his death, he was too ill to carry it further.
In addition to this grand opera, Mildenberg, a pupil of Rafael Joseffy, wrote many piano pieces. He also composed The Violet, I Love Thee, and Astarte, songs that had a popular vogue and are still found on many programs, and romantic comic operas, The Wood Witch and Love’s Locksmith, besides a cantata and many choruses.
Two other operas which had Metropolitan Opera House productions were The Temple Dancer by John Adam Hugo (1873) and The Legend by Joseph Carl Breil (1870).