Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch (1880–1959) was a Swiss-born American composer whose best-known music draws on Jewish cultural and liturgical themes. An eclectic modernist, he shaped a dramatic, original language especially eloquent in writing for strings and orchestra.
Bloch was born in Geneva on 24 July 1880 to Jewish parents. He began the violin at nine and was composing soon afterwards. Studies in Brussels brought him under the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe; he then moved through Germany—composition with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, 1900–1901—Paris in 1903, and Geneva again, before settling in the United States in 1916 and taking citizenship in 1924.
The successful Boston Symphony premiere of his Trois Poèmes Juifs in 1917 encouraged that American settlement. In December 1920 he became the first Musical Director of the newly formed Cleveland Institute of Music, remaining until 1925; he then directed the San Francisco Conservatory of Music until 1930 and also taught at the University of California at Berkeley.
Most of the following decade was spent in Switzerland, where he composed Avodath Hakodesh (“Sacred Service”), before he returned to the USA in 1939. Later teaching appointments there numbered George Antheil, Frederick Jacobi, Quincy Porter, Bernard Rogers and Roger Sessions among his pupils.
He folded established and novel musical means into highly dramatic scores, often shaped by philosophical, poetic or religious themes. A masterly writer for strings, he left four string quartets, Schelomo—A Hebrew Rhapsody for cello and orchestra, and A Voice in the Wilderness for orchestra with cello obbligato—deeply emotional works among the distinguished achievements of early twentieth-century neo-classic and neo-romantic music.
He died of cancer in Portland, Oregon, on 15 July 1959, aged 78.
Compositions by Ernest Bloch appear on
Night Thoughts
During the long still nights of the Covid pandemic, pianist Len Vorster, well-known as a thoughtful accompanist, spent most of his evenings listening to a wide array of music ranging from Schumann to Copland. He also spent a lot of time thinking about the music. These ruminations developed into the wide ranging, fascinating and beautiful program of 15 deep-rooted works.
Ernest Bloch: Viola and Piano
Barbara Hornung and Danaë Killian have played as a duo for a number of years, with the viola and piano works of Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch (1880–1959) forming the heart of their musical collaboration.