Ernest Bloch Studies

This comprehensive study of Bloch's life and works draws on recollections of those who knew and worked with the composer.

Alexander Knapp (Edited by), Norman Solomon (Edited by)

9781108792622, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 February 2020

311 pages, 12 b/w illus. 1 table 34 music examples
24.5 x 17 x 1.5 cm, 0.7 kg

Ernest Bloch left his native Switzerland to settle in the United States in 1916. One of the great twentieth-century composers, he was influenced by a range of genres and styles - Jewish, American and Swiss - and his works reflect his lifelong struggle with his identity. Drawing on firsthand recollections of relatives and others who knew and worked with the composer, this collection is the most comprehensive study to date of Bloch's life, musical achievement and reception. Contributors present the latest research on Bloch's works and compositional practice, including studies of his Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), violin pieces such as Nigun, the symphonic Schelomo, and the opera Macbeth. Setting the quality and significance of Bloch's output in its historical and cultural contexts, this book provides scholarly analyses as well as a full chronology, list of online resources, catalogue of published and unpublished works, and selected further reading.

Foreword: reminiscences of my grandfather Ernest Bloch, II
Chronology
Alphabetical list of Bloch's published and unpublished works Alexander Knapp
Bloch resources: recordings in the age of the Internet Stanley Henig
Introduction Norman Solomon
1. From Geneva to New York: radical changes in Ernest Bloch's view of himself as a 'Jewish composer' during his twenties and thirties Alexander Knapp
2. The 'suffering and greatness' of Ernest Bloch: concepts of the composer as genius Klára Móricz
3. Bloch, Wagner and creativity: refutation and vindication Malcolm Miller
4. Sacred service: the mass Bloch never wrote, the two that Leonard Bernstein did write, and Shulamit Ran's Credo/Ani Ma'Amin David Schiller
5. Oregon years: the man and his music David Z. Kushner
6. 'The future alone will be the judge': Ernest Bloch's epic journeys between Utopia and Dystopia Philip V. Bohlman
7. The reception of Bloch's music in Palestine/Israel to 1948 Jehoash Hirshberg
8. Bloch's reception and his standing in Israel since 1954 Zecharia Plavin
9. A performance history of Bloch's opera Macbeth: Paris 1910-Manhattan 2014 Stanley Henig
10. King Solomon and the Baal Shem Tov: traditional elements in Bloch's musical representation of two iconic personalities from Jewish history Alexander Knapp
11. Postscript: the legacy Norman Solomon.

Subject Areas: Society & culture: general [JF], Art forms [AF], The arts: general issues [AB]