Gisella Selden-Goth


Gisella Selden-Goth was a Hungarian author, composer and musicologist who became an American citizen in 1939. She composed at least four string quartets and donated her large collection of original music manuscripts to the Library of Congress.

Biography

Selden-Goth was born in Budapest to Michael and Rosalia Schlesinger. Her music teachers included Béla Bartók, Ferruccio Busoni, and István Thomán. Her set of piano compositions, Vier Präludien, was one of 10 winners in the 1910 Signale für die musikalische Welt competition in Germany. She married Ernst Goth and they had a daughter, Trudy Goth, who became a dancer and journalist.
Selden-Goth lived in Berlin and Florence, Italy, before emigrating to America in 1938. She returned to Florence in 1950 and remained there until her death in 1975. She served as a music critic for newspapers in Berlin, Prague, Switzerland, and Budapest, most notably for Prager Tagblatt, a German newspaper in Prague. She also wrote books about Busoni and Arturo Toscanini and edited a collection of Felix Mendelssohn's letters. She maintained a lengthy correspondence with the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, often discussing their mutual interest in collecting original music scores. After Zweig's suicide, Selden-Goth commented that, "A chamber group in a house or the opportunity to hear a good orchestra might have relieved the tension of that mind tortured by personal forebodings and by the vision of mankind in agony." She also corresponded with composer Ernest Bloch and musicologist Hans Moldenhauer.
Selden-Goth's music is published today by Universal Edition. Her prose works and musical compositions include:

Selected literary publications

Articles

Selected music works

Chamber music

  • Quintet, Op. 35
  • String Quartets No. 1, 2, 3, and 4
  • String Trio
  • Suite for Violin and Piano

Piano

  • Prelude and Fugue for Two Pianos
  • Vier Präludien, Signale competition winner

Vocal music

  • Vom mönchischen Leben, Op. 44, song cycle
  • Cantata
  • Songs
  • ''The Pilgrim''