Joseph Pasquale Goldberg

Joseph Pasquale Goldberg was born on 1 January 1825 in Vienna (Austrian Empire). His musical training seems to have been largely private and began at an unusually early age. He studied the violin with Joseph Mayseder and counterpoint and composition with Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried. At the age of twelve, Joseph Goldberg was already sufficiently advanced to appear in the Great Redoutensaal in Vienna, where he performed a violin concerto of his own composition with orchestra; the work was dedicated to Louis Spohr. He subsequently began a career as a young violin virtuoso and travelled to Italy.
From Italy Goldberg went to Paris, where his career took an important new direction. The tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini and the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer are said to have encouraged him to cultivate his singing voice professionally. Goldberg studied singing first with Rubini and Marco Bordogni in Paris and later with Francesco Lamperti in Italy. He developed into a bass singer and was engaged for several years as primo basso assoluto at Italian opera houses. His operatic début took place in 1843 in Donizetti's Alina, regina di Golconda.
Goldberg did not remain long on the operatic stage. He returned to Paris and concentrated increasingly on concert singing and vocal teaching. In 1847 he travelled to London for a six-week engagement with the conductor and impresario Louis-Antoine Jullien, and between about 1850 and 1861 he made a number of concert tours in Britain. In 1861 he settled in London, where he established himself as a singing teacher and later taught singing at the Royal Academy of Music for many years. Among the pupils attributed to him are the tenors Antonio Giuglini and Pasquale Brignoli, Mme Gassier, Mme Rabatinsky and his sister Catherina Goldberg-Strossi. He was also appointed singing teacher to Princess Louise, one of the daughters of Queen Victoria.
An important episode in Goldberg's later career occurred in 1871. Cesare Correnti, the Italian Minister of Public Instruction, commissioned him to examine the Italian conservatories and to propose reforms to their system of musical education. Goldberg's proposals were approved by Lauro Rossi, then director of the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella in Naples, and he was subsequently made a Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy.
Goldberg was also active as a composer throughout much of his life, although his output is today only incompletely documented. His earliest known substantial work is the violin concerto which he performed in Vienna at the age of twelve. Vocal music later became the central part of his surviving oeuvre, but he also wrote a Marcia Trionfale, associated in the biographical literature with the entry of the Italian troops into Rome in 1870.
After his long career in Britain, Goldberg eventually returned to Vienna (Austria-Hungary), where he spent his final years. He died there on 20 December 1890.

In my possession is the autograph manuscript of a song by Joseph Pasquale Goldberg as well as some copies of some of his other songs. In my archive are:



• Musikalischer Wunsch
  For four-part female chorus and piano. Autograph manuscript, signed and dated “Baden am 8. August 1872”. Inscribed: “eigens componiert zum Geburtstage der lieben Celestine Schloss von ihrem Großonkel / J. P. Goldberg”. Apparently unpublished.
• Zur Antwort
  For voice and piano. Copyist manuscript. Text: Adelbert von Chamisso, beginning “Dir ist sonst der Mund verschlossen…”. The manuscript bears the unexplained attribution “aus dem Englischen des George Linley”. No printed edition traced.
• Il Lamento. Barcarola
  For voice and piano. Copyist manuscript. Published in Vienna by Haslinger, 1848, as No. 3 of the Collection des Romances françaises et italiennes.
• L’Été. Chanson
  For voice and piano. Text by Victor Hugo. Printed edition: Paris, G. Flaxland, 1869, plate no. G.F. 1168. Dedicated “Composé expressément pour Mademoiselle Krauss”.
• Appelez-moi toujours ma soeur! / Chiamatemi mia suora ognor. Romance
  For voice and piano. Printed edition: Paris, Léon Escudier, 1866, plate no. L.E. 2547.
• Liebliche Maid, Op. 32
  For voice and piano. Printed edition: Vienna, Spina, 1853, plate no. C.S. 9490.
• Il Brindisi. Canzone
  For voice and piano. Printed edition: Vienna, Haslinger, 1848, plate no. 10802. No. 2 of the Collection des Romances françaises et italiennes.
• La Perla d’amore. Romanza
  For voice and piano. Printed edition: Vienna, Haslinger, 1848, plate no. 10805. No. 5 of the Collection des Romances françaises et italiennes.