Born on 27 April 1941 in Siegmar-Schönau (today a part of Chemnitz), Goldmann's music education began in 1951 when he joined the Dresdner Kreuzchor.
At age 18, he received a scholarship by the city of Darmstadt to study composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in 1959, who further encouraged him over the following years.
Around this time, he worked as a freelance music assistant at the Berliner Ensemble where he befriended other composers and writers, including Heiner Müller, Luigi Nono and Luca Lombardi.
Their collaborations included a tour of Russia, the French and West German premieres of Luigi Nono's Prometeo, as well as performances and recordings of Goldmann's own works.
[6] Recordings of his and other composers' music have been released by Nova, Wergo, Deutsche Grammophon, Academy, Edel Classics, RCA, BMG and other labels.
[7] Other conductors who have performed his works include Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Michael Gielen, Mark Elder, Ernest Bour and Ingo Metzmacher.
[9] There, he headed the Institute for New Music from 2003 until 2005[10] Among his students were Enno Poppe, Helmut Oehring, Nicolaus Richter de Vroe, Steffen Schleiermacher, Chatschatur Kanajan, H. Johannes Wallmann, Jakob Ullmann, Charlotte Seither, Arnulf Herrmann, Paul Frick and Sergej Newski.
Within the resulting consistent shapes formed from transitions between tones, microtones, and noise, assumed parameter boundaries are meant to dissolve perceptually—thus challenging the concept of musical material as a set of stable entities.