Karol Rathaus

Karol Rathaus studied at University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is film score. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are classical music. Employment is recorded with Berlin University of the Arts and Queens College.

Born in the Ukrainian city of Ternopil (part of Austria-Hungary in 1895), Rathaus began composing at an early age, beginning his studies in 1913/1914 at the Academy of Performing Arts and Music in Vienna. His studies were interrupted by military service during the First World War. As one of the favorite pupils of Franz Schreker, Rathaus followed him to the Academy of Music in Berlin, where he continued to study music and composition. After graduation, Rathaus accepted the position of a teacher of composition and music theory at the Berlin University of the Arts. Rathaus lived in Berlin from 1922 to 1932, during which time his first compositions caused a sensation and achieved great success. After his 1930 opera Fremde Erde, Rathaus created film music and was among the artistically outstanding film composers in Germany before 1933. He wrote the music for three films by Fyodor Otsep. In 1933 he went to Paris and lived in London from 1934 to 1938, before he finally settled in New York.

In 1940 he became a professor of composition at the recently founded Queens College in Long Island. In this position he achieved prestige and popularity. In addition, he was also successful as a composer, writing many commissioned works and several film scores. He died at the age of 59 in the Flushing neighborhood of New York City's borough of Queens. Handwritten manuscripts, published works, and correspondence to and from Rathaus are available for research at the Queens College Special Collections and Archives. However, as Michael Haas has pointed out, Rathaus mostly lost the artist prestige and reputation he had enjoyed in Berlin between the wars. He took the low-paid position at Queens College to escape the threat of war, and in 1940 his worldly possessions, still in London, were destroyed by a V2 bomb. From then on he devoted himself to teaching. He "never spoke of his past to any of his students, and avoided contact with former colleagues and friends who were successfully conducting concerts and opera performances in nearby Manhattan". His compositional output includes mostly instrumental works: symphonies, orchestral works, serenades, sonatas and ballets. He saw his compositions in the tradition of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Igor Stravinsky and his teacher Franz Schreker.

• The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (1931) • The Brothers Karamazov (1931) • Here's Berlin (1932) • The Dictator (1935) • Let Us Live (1939)