Edward was born on April 29, 1858 at Hohenems, Austria, to Josef and Josepha (Pollak) Stark. From his father, a synagogue cantor who had been a pupil of the world-famed Salomon Sulzer, he derived his knowledge and love of Jewish religious music.
Young Stark received his musical education in New York City and in European conservatories, whither he was sent by a wealthy friend.
On his return to America from Europe, Stark spent a short time in business before becoming cantor in the Beth Elohim Synagogue in Brooklyn, New York. This position he held until October 1893, when he was called to be cantor in Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco. He served in this capacity until, in August 1913, owing to failing health, he was made honorary cantor emeritus. His was the uneventful life of a synagogue cantor and composer devoted to his calling.
His numerous sacred compositions include the four collections (each under the Hebrew title Sefer Anim Zemiroth) Musical Service for Sabbath Evening (New York, 1911, third printing 1931), Musical Service for Sabbath Morning (1909, second printing 1926), Musical Service for the Eve and Day of New Year (1910, third printing 1930), Musical Service for the Eve of Atonement and for the Day of Atonement (1913), besides anthems, adaptations, and a number of unpublished works.
While his principal works are in the field of sacred music, Edward Josef Stark also wrote light operettas for the Progress Club and the Germania Quartett Club in New York, and for celebrations in the Sunday School of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. His anthem "The Lord Is My Light" won the Schirmer prize in the national contest of 1905; "Day of God, " sung on the eve of the Day of Atonement, is often regarded as his finest composition.
His synagogue music, especially that for the New Year and the Day of Atonement, using Jewish modes and showing both the influence of Sulzer and of the classic oratorio, disciplines Jewish traditional motifs and modes by the constraints of the organ and of Western musical conventions.
This combination of traditionalism and modernism makes his compositions particularly well adapted for reform Jewish temples. He aimed to preserve the traditional character of the synagogue service in which the main elements of the ritual are rendered by the cantor in recitatives and solos, with the choral and hymnal elements constituting a superstructure on this foundation.
His influence in this direction was the greater and more needed because he came into the field at a time when the tendency in American reform Judaism had been towards the entire elimination of the plaintive, emotional Eastern Jewish traditional motifs in favor of operatic airs, or the stately devotional Western music borrowed, or at least copied, from that of the dominant Church.
He possessed a rich, magnetic, baritone voice which he used with dramatic feeling. He was a prolific worker, sometimes sitting all night composing at the organ.
Quotes from others about the person
According to Idelsohn, "Stark was gifted with considerable creative talent, and with power and depth of Jewish expression".
On April 1, 1884, in New York City, he married Rosa Weinberger, who bore him two sons and two daughters.
