Ernest Bloch (July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a
Swiss
Swiss may refer to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
*Swiss people
Places
* Swiss, Missouri
*Swiss, North Carolina
* Swiss, West Virginia
*Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
* Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports
* Swiss Internation ...
-born
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
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composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Def ...
.
[ Bloch was a preeminent artist in his day, and left a lasting legacy. He is recognized as one of the greatest Swiss composers in history. As well as producing musical scores, Bloch had an academic career that culminated in his recognition as ]Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
at the University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
in 1952.
Biography
Bloch was born in Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...
on July 24, 1880 to Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
parents. He began playing the violin at age 9, and began composing soon after. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe
Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (; 16 July 185812 May 1931) was a Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar".
Legend of the Ysaÿe violin
Eugène Ysa ...
. He then traveled around Europe, moving to Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
(where he studied composition from 1900–1901 with Iwan Knorr
Iwan Otto Armand Knorr (3 January 1853 – 22 January 1916) was a German composer and music teacher.
Life
A native of Gniew, he attended the Leipzig Conservatory where he studied with Ignaz Moscheles, Ernst Friedrich Richter and Carl Reinecke. I ...
at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...
), on to Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
in 1903 and back to Geneva before settling in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
in 1916, taking US citizenship in 1924. He held several teaching appointments in the US, where his pupils included George Antheil, Frederick Jacobi
Frederick Jacobi (May 4, 1891 – October 24, 1952) was a Jewish-American composer and teacher. His works include symphonies, concerti, chamber music, works for solo piano and for solo organ, lieder, and one opera.
He taught at Juilliard School ...
, Quincy Porter, Bernard Rogers, and Roger Sessions.
In 1917, Bloch became the first teacher of composition at Mannes School of Music, a post he held for three years. In December 1920 he was appointed the first Musical Director of the newly formed Cleveland Institute of Music, a post he held until 1925. In 1919 the San Francisco Symphony gave two of the earliest performances of his ''Schelomo
''Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque for Violoncello and Orchestra'' was the final work of composer Ernest Bloch's ''Jewish Cycle''. ''Schelomo'', which was written in 1915 to 1916, premiered on May 3, 1917, played by cellist Hans Kindler. Artur Bodan ...
'', receiving high praise from multiple critics. Ada Clement and Lillian Hodghead of the newly named San Francisco Conservatory of Music visited Bloch in Cleveland in 1923 and invited him to teach at the Conservatory the following summer. He had previously been encouraged to come to San Francisco by Alfred Hertz
Alfred Hertz (15 July 1872 – 17 April 1942) was a Prussian-born conductor.
Early life
He was born in Frankfurt, Province of Hesse-Nassau, Prussia (in present-day Germany). As a child, he contracted infantile paralysis and walked with a c ...
and Temple Emanu El cantor Reuben Rinder. In 1925 Bloch resigned from the Cleveland Institute, where he had not been happy, and relocated to San Francisco. He was named the director of the Conservatory and remained in that position until 1930, when the school was running low on funds. He returned to Switzerland, where he composed his "Avodath Hakodesh" ("Sacred Service") before returning to the US in 1939.
Bloch joined the music faculty at Berkeley in 1941 and taught there one semester each year until his retirement in 1952. He and his wife lived primarily in the small coastal community of Agate Beach, Oregon
Agate Beach is an unincorporated community in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States. Agate Beach is named for the agates that are found on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean between Newport and Yaquina Head. Agate Beach post office was establish ...
(now Newport). In 1947 he was among the founders of the Music Academy of the West summer conservatory.
In 1952 he was named a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, even though he had not been a full-time faculty member. He composed "In Memoriam" that year after the death of Ada Clement.[
He died on July 15, 1959 in ]Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous ...
, of cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...
at the age of 78. In keeping with a special tradition, his daughter, Lucienne Bloch, and her husband, Steve Dimitroff, prepared several death masks of Ernest Bloch. This once-common practice was usually undertaken to create a memento or portrait of the deceased, but it is unusual for an immediate family member to make the death mask. The Center for Creative Photography and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music each have a copy of Bloch's death mask. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Pacific ocean near his home in Agate Beach.
Music
Bloch's compositions are often described as reflecting his Jewish heritage, yet had many other sources. "Perhaps what is at the heart of the question is his genius for evocative color in music. If some of his works evoke the atmosphere of the Old Testament, they operate elsewhere with equally telling and totally different effect: the Gauguinesque South Seas in the slow movement of the first Quintet, and the Chinese of the Episodes are examples. Beside Israel stand ''Helvetia'' and ''America''; beside ''Scenes from Jewish Life'' stands ''Nirvana''."
Bloch's musical style does not fit easily into any of the usual categories. He studied variously with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Iwan Knorr
Iwan Otto Armand Knorr (3 January 1853 – 22 January 1916) was a German composer and music teacher.
Life
A native of Gniew, he attended the Leipzig Conservatory where he studied with Ignaz Moscheles, Ernst Friedrich Richter and Carl Reinecke. I ...
and Ludwig Thuille, as well as corresponding with Gustav Mahler and meeting Claude Debussy. Many of his works - as can be seen from their Hebrew-inspired titles - also draw heavily on his Jewish heritage. Bloch's father had at one stage intended to become a rabbi, and the young Ernest had a strong religious upbringing; as an adult he felt that to write music that expressed his Jewish identity was "the only way in which I can produce music of vitality and significance".
The music of Bloch uses a variety of contemporary harmonic devices. These are enumerated in Vincent Persichetti's book ''Twentieth Century Harmony''. According to Persichetti, these include the use of the Dorian mode and of harmony with extensive alterations in his Concerto Grosso No. 1, tone clusters in his Piano Sonata, the percussive use of harmony, as well as serial harmony, in his Piano Quintet No. 1.
Family
Ernest Bloch and his wife Marguerite Schneider (1881–1963) had three children: Ivan, Suzanne and Lucienne.
Ivan, born in 1905, became an engineer with the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous ...
.
Suzanne Bloch, born in 1907, was a musician particularly interested in Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...
music who taught harpsichord, lute and composition at the Juilliard School
The Juilliard School ( ) is a Private university, private performing arts music school, conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely ...
in New York.
Lucienne Bloch, born in 1909, worked as Diego Rivera's chief photographer on the Rockefeller Center mural project, became friends with Rivera's wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, and took some key photos of Kahlo and the only photographs of Rivera's mural (which was destroyed because Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
was depicted in it).
Photography
The Western Jewish History Center, of the Judah L. Magnes Museum, in Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...
has a small collection of photographs taken by Ernest Bloch which document his interest in photography.
Bloch's photography was discovered by Eric B. Johnson in 1970. With the encouragement of Bloch's children, Johnson edited and printed hundreds of his photographs.
Many of the photographs Bloch took—over 6,000 negatives and 2,000 prints many printed by Eric Johnson from the original negatives—are in the Ernest Bloch Archive at the Center for Creative Photography
The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American pho ...
at the University of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first ...
in Tucson along with photographs by the likes of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston
Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..." and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." ...
and Richard Avedon.
Some of the pictures that Bloch took in his Swiss residence are visible online. The snapshots have been donated to the Archivio audiovisivo di Capriasca e Val Colla by the Associazione ricerche musicali nella Svizzera italiana.
Legacy
Ernest Bloch's home in Agate Beach was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 9, 2009. The Bloch Memorial, which was dedicated by Oregon Governor Bob Straub with Ernest Bloch's three children at his side on April 10, 1976, was moved from near his house in Agate Beach to a more prominent location in front of the Newport Performing Arts Center in nearby Newport, Oregon
Newport is a city in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States. It was incorporated in 1882, though the name dates back to the establishment of a post office in 1868. Newport was named for Newport, Rhode Island. As of the 2010 census, the city h ...
. In 2009, the City of Newport City Council designated the intersection of NW 49th Street, Woody Way and Gilbert Way as Ernest Bloch Place. In 2016, the Oregon Department of Transportation Board of Commissioners officially designated the Ernest Bloch Memorial Wayside in the area of Agate Beach where the original Ernest Bloch Memorial was dedicated in 1976. The Ernest Bloch Memorial Wayside, the 1976 monument and a new Monument were formally dedicated in 2018,. The informal Ernest Bloch Legacy Project was created by Dr. Frank Jo Maitland Geltner in 2003. The Ernest Bloch Legacy Project affiliated with the Lincoln County Historical Society in 2021.
References
Further reading
''Ernest Bloch: Composer in Nature's University''
by Nancy Steinberg. Oregon Coastal Council for the Arts. July, 2006; Edited by Frank Geltner and members of Bloch family, 2007, 2008; Edited by Frank Geltner, Alexander Knapp, and members of the Bloch family, 2013.
* Strassburg, Robert. ''Ernest Bloch: Voice In the Wilderness'', California State University & Trident Shop, Los Angeles, 1977 ASIN #B001LO4X86
* Grove, Gregory Alan. ''The Life and Music of Ernest Bloch''. Thesis (M.A.), San José State University, 1976). San Jose, Calif. San Jose State University, Department of Music 1976.
* Eric B. Johnson prepared ''Ernest Bloch: A Composer's Vision'' for an independent study thesis at the University of Oregon in 1971. Johnson researched, edited and printed many of Bloch's photographs. 40 of these prints from Bloch's negatives are now in the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson AZ along with the entire collection of his negatives and prints. Johnson is currently Professor of Art and Design at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo Ca. An account of his discovery and many of Bloch's images can be found on his website. ricjohnsonphoto.com* Simmons, Walter. ''Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers,'' (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004)
* Kushner, David Z. ''The Ernest Bloch Companion'', (Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2002)
* Kintner, Helen Johnston. ''The Ernest Bloch I Knew'' (Published by Helen Johnston Kinter, June 2009)
* Werlin, Joella. ''Suzanne Bloch: Recollections'' (Familore, Portland, Oregon, 2007)
* Bloch, Suzanne. ''Ernest Bloch: Creative Spirit: A Program Source Book'' (Jewish Music Council of the National Jewish Welfare Board, 1976.
* Johnson, Eric B. ''A Composer's Vision'' (Aperture 16:3, Millerton, New York, 1972)
External links
*
*
Art of the States: Ernest Bloch
''String Quartet No. 2'' (1945)
Ernest Bloch's maximum card from Israel
at the Belknap Collection of Performing Arts, University of Florida
The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...
.
Images of the Ernest Bloch House
from the University of Oregon digital archives
*
Ernest Bloch Collection
Ernest Bloch Online Collection
an
Eric Johnson Collection of Ernest Bloch Photographs
at the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...
Ernest Bloch Collection
an
Bloch Festschrift Collection
at Sibley Music Library, Eastman School of Music
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloch, Ernest
1880 births
1959 deaths
19th-century American composers
19th-century American male musicians
19th-century classical composers
20th-century classical composers
American male classical composers
American classical composers
Cleveland Institute of Music faculty
Deaths from cancer in Oregon
Hoch Conservatory alumni
Jewish classical composers
Jewish American classical composers
Jews and Judaism in Oregon
Musicians from Geneva
People from Lincoln County, Oregon
Pupils of Iwan Knorr
Pupils of Ludwig Thuille
San Francisco Conservatory of Music faculty
Swiss classical composers
Swiss emigrants to the United States
Swiss-German people
Swiss Jews
Mannes College The New School for Music faculty
20th-century American composers
Classical musicians from California
20th-century American male musicians
Music Academy of the West founders
20th-century Swiss composers