Ernest Bloch
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- This article is about the composer. For the philosopher see Ernst Bloch.
Ernest Bloch (July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a Swiss-born American composer.
He was born in Geneva and studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included Eugène Ysaÿe; and later he also studied at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. He travelled around Europe before settling in the United States of America in 1916, taking American citizenship in 1924. He held several teaching appointments there, with George Antheil, Frederick Jacobi, Bernard Rogers, and Roger Sessions among his pupils. In December 1920 he was appointed the first Musical Director of the newly formed Cleveland Institute of Music, a post he held until 1925. Following that he spent most of the 1930s back in Switzerland before returning to the United States.
He died in Portland, Oregon, of cancer at age 78.
His daughter, Lucienne Bloch, worked as Diego Rivera's Chief Photographer on the Rockefeller Center mural project and famously took the only photographs of the mural before it was covered up and destroyed.
[edit] Composition
Bloch's early works, including his opera Macbeth (1910) show the influence of both the Germanic school of Richard Strauss and the impressionism of Claude Debussy. Mature works, including his best-known pieces, often draw on Jewish liturgical and folk music. These works include Schelomo (1916) for cello and orchestra, the Israel Symphony (1916), Baal Shem for violin and piano (1923, later version for violin and orchestra) and Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service, 1933) for baritone, choir and orchestra. Other pieces from this period include a violin concerto written for Joseph Szigeti and the rhapsody America for chorus and orchestra.
Pieces written after World War II are a little more varied in style, though Bloch's essentially Romantic idiom remains. Some, such as the Suite hébraïque (1950) continue the Jewish theme; others, such as the second concerto grosso (1952), display an interest in neo-classicism (though here too the harmonic language is basically Romantic, even though the form is Baroque); and others, including the late string quartets, include elements of atonality.
[edit] Location of Source Materials for Research on Ernest Bloch
The Western Jewish History Center, of the Judah L. Magnes Museum, in Berkeley, California has a small collection of photographs of Ernest Bloch which document his interest in photography.
