A Voice In The Wilderness

.....by Jeffrey Dane - © 2000

The Hebraic titles of certain musical works indicate the religious origins of the composers (such as Felix Mendelssohn and Aaron Copland) who wrote them. Others, like Max Bruch and Leonard Bernstein, represented their Hebraic lineage and upbringing more evidently, by basing some of their compositions on biblical subject matter. In the case of Ernest Bloch, however, the Hebraic elements, treatment and titling in many of his compositions were a literal feature not only of his musical output but also of his life. He very consciously indicated and actually symbolized his origins perhaps more fervently than other composers, making him operatively a musical conduit for his own rich ancestral tradition.

He seems to have an unusual place in the musical pantheon. He's considered by some to be among the lesser of the greater composers and by others among the greater of the lesser composers. Though his position leans toward the latter while retaining a solid link with the former, both views have merit.

Born in Geneva on July 24, 1880, he studied violin with the great Belgian virtuoso Eugene Ysa˙e. He continued his studies for several years in Munich and at the Frankfort Conservatory (where Clara Schumann herself had taught), but even in his teens he knew what he really wanted to do: to be a composer. For a time he conducted orchestral concerts in Lausanne and in Neuchatel, and in 1915 he joined the Geneva Conservatory as professor of composition. Very revealing of him, and of the directors' insight, is that he was also appointed professor of esthetics.

Ernest Bloch, at work on a composition

The work which first established his reputation was his opera Macbeth, written between 1903 and 1909 and first performed in Paris in 1910. Clearly Bloch, not yet 30 when he completed the piece, already had his own distinctive musical voice. Wrote Marion Bauer, "The score reveals a definite musical personality with a driving sense of drama and emotional intensity; rhythmic figures which seem to picture the hand of fate; the use of harmonic dissonances which heighten the effect of drama; a melodic line of beauty when the occasion demands; and great choral numbers which reveal Bloch's contrapuntal skill." When the opera was produced in Naples in 1938, despite its artistic success it had to be withdrawn, not only because of national conditions in Italy at that time but also because of anti-Semitic hostility.

In addition to secular and purely abstract musical pieces for orchestra, solo instruments, chorus, piano and chamber music, Bloch composed many works with clearly religious overtones: the "Israel" Symphony (1912); Three Jewish Poems (1913); the Hebraic Suite for viola and orchestra; Psalms (1912-1914); Ba'al Shem; Three Pictures of Hassidic Life (1923); Abodah, a Yom Kippur melody (1929); Hebraic Meditation (1925); Three Sketches, "From Jewish Life" (1925); Six Preludes for the Synagogue (1946-1950); and Five Hebraic Pieces (1951).

It may be more than coincidence that the work whose title corresponds to the Hebrew name for Solomon became what is effectively the best-known of Bloch's major works for large forces: Schelomo, a Rhapsody for Cello & Orchestra. Bloch initially intended to use a text from the book of Ecclesiastes but he didn't at that time have enough command of the Hebrew language to set it to music. (A similar obstacle didn't bother Igor Stravinsky when he was planning his own Symphony of Psalms: he chose Latin texts without overmuch regard to what the individual words and phrases meant, focusing instead on how they corresponded rhythmically to the music he was composing). Bloch continued sketching and revising Schelomo. Then, in Geneva late in 1915, he met a man who was to be the catalyst that sealed the work's fate: the cellist Alexander Barjansky. His request for a major work prompted Bloch to re-cast Schelomo and score it for cello and orchestra, thereby making the entire rhapsody more abstractly musical than textually descriptive. Schelomo remains one of Bloch's most important, representative, and deservedly famous works.

Ernest Bloch's signature

Bloch visited America in 1916, eventually settled here, and became a citizen - and ultimately one of the country's best-known teachers. He taught successively at the Mannes College of Music in New York, became director of the Cleveland Institute of Music, and then the head of the new San Francisco Conservatory, a position he retained until 1930.

At that point a providential incident soon enabled him to devote himself exclusively to composition. The benefit extended to Bloch would be the envy of any composer: from the San Francisco family of Jacob and Rosa Stern, he was graced with a full ten-year subsidy, the sole stipulation being that he engage only in creative work. (Five thousand dollars per annum seems like little today, but in that time's purchasing power it was a handsome sum indeed; with money left over, a fine home could have been bought for that amount, which in turn would hardly cover even a down-payment now). Though not entirely unique in the annals of human consideration and thoughtfulness, fortunately the Stern family, in what they did, followed the admirable example set by the wealthy Nadezhda von Meck, who decades earlier had graced Tchaikovsky himself with a similar kind of endowment, providing posterity indirectly with innumerable musical treasures by providing the composer directly with a consistent and comfortable income.

Also in 1930 Bloch was commissioned to compose a musical setting for performance at New York's Reformed Synagogue. This commission came from Gerald Warburg, whose wife, Fanny, remembered Gustav Mahler from his years, ca. 1909, as conductor at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Bloch spent the years 1932-1934 working almost exclusively on this new work, which he titled Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), scored for baritone voice, chorus, and orchestra. Assiduously studying the Hebrew language for the setting of the piece's text, Bloch himself regarded this work as a musical and personal pinnacle of his life.
**

Bloch settled in Oregon in 1943, though for several summers he taught at the University of California in Berkeley. Soon he devoted himself exclusively to composition. A lover of nature (like Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and so many other composers before him), he lived at Agate Beach to be near the ocean, perhaps as a contrast to the landlocked country of Switzerland, where he had grown to young manhood. He died in Portland, Oregon, on July 15, 1959, nine days shy of his 79th birthday.

Bloch approached his art not from without but from within. His spiritual convictions were, in a word, manifest in his mature work, and his distinctive mode of musical articulation has been likened to the voice of a Hebrew prophet crying out in the wilderness. Indeed, "Voice in the Wilderness" is the very title of a 1936 Bloch work, a symphonic poem scored for orchestra with cello obbligato. Aaron Copland, for decades called the Dean of American Composers, related of having been told by countless people how his Pulitzer Prize-winning ballet, Appalachian Spring (written for Martha Graham, with only a working title "Ballet for Martha") conjured up in their minds the most vivid and moving images of Americana and all that goes with it. They weren't aware, of course, that the music had already been composed before a title for the piece had even been thought of, and which was chosen by Martha Graham herself, who had found the phrase in a poem by Hart Crane. The titles of Bloch's works, on the other hand, were not merely tacked on: they were woven into the entire tonal tapestry of his music as an integral part of it, and were truly prompted, even dictated, by the music's actual content.

Bloch's rationale and view of his art can best be summed up in his own words: ". . . a voice which seemed to come from far beyond myself . . . which surged up in me on reading certain passages in the Bible, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, the Prophets . . . I have but listened to an inner voice, deep, secret, insistent, ardent . . . This entire Jewish heritage has moved me deeply. It was reborn in my music . . . It is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul I feel vibrating throughout the Bible."

Ernest Bloch
in the autumn of his life.

We can gauge Bloch's influence not only by what he wrote but also by those he taught. The roster of composers who studied with him reads like a veritable Who's Who in American music education. They include Quincy Porter, Bernard Rogers, George Antheil, and Randall Thompson, who became one of Leonard Bernstein's teachers at Harvard.

Ernest Bloch's daughter Suzanne was, like her father, born in Geneva, on August 7, 1907. She studied with him and later with one of his own students, Roger Sessions, who eventually taught Elmer Bernstein, composer of the music for Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" and literally scores of other films. Her interest in the music of previous periods prompted her to learn to play the instruments - lute, harpsichord and others - for which the earlier music was written. She performed and lectured widely, and was for many years on the faculty of the author's alma mater, The Juilliard School in New York, where he met and spoke with her on several occasions. It was she who had organized the ear-training department there during the tenure of William Schuman as the School's president. Though approaching her sixth decade, her vitality, enthusiasm, and still jet-black hair made her look and even sound much more youthful. The natural charm and genuine personal sparkle she exuded made her remarkably attractive to much younger male students, whose emotions could be aroused as much by her smile as by her father's music. The author acknowldges he was one of them.

Ernest Bloch infused his music with a quality that can easily be characterized as "Hebraic." As an adjective, it is certainly an apt one and perhaps even the best one, the more so as it's as much an actual defining feature as it is descriptive. It's a musical property that is genuine and unmistakable. It's also impossible to define, difficult to explain, and fruitless to imitate - but it's very easy to recognize.

---

Author's Biography

Jeffrey Dane is an independent historian, researcher and author whose work is widely published, in print and online publications, in the USA and in several languages worldwide.

Initially trained in musicology, most of what he writes for publication has a musical focus, but as a pleasant, relaxing and fulfilling diversion from the norm of routine he researches and writes on other subjects as well - any subjects that interest him - ranging from antiques to the Alamo, from Goethe to George Washington.

His article, "James Bowie: A Historical Perspective" was published in the Spring, 2000 issue, Vol.39, Nr.2, of the Journal of the West (a print publication brought out by the Dept. of History, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas). His most recent book, "Beethoven's Piano," was published by New York's Museum of the American Piano.

His personal Remembrance of Leonard Bernstein (whom he knew when a student) appeared in The Musical Performance Journal, London, and he has been a contributor to several books, including "Leonard Bernstein - A Life" by Meryle Secrest (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1994). He is a contributor to several books, including "The Alamo Story: From Early History to Current Conflicts" by Western historian J.R. Edmondson (Republic of Texas Press, Plano, Texas, February 2000), for which Dane was asked to write the Foreword, and "On The Crockett Trail" by artist and author Rod Timanus (Pioneer Press, Union City, Tennessee, November 1999).

His goal is to make a contribution to the sum of human knowledge. He prefers to let his work speak for him rather than he for his work, and he views researching and writing as a reason for living, not just a means of earning a living. He is perceived by some as being overly confrontational and thusly a real idealist, and by others as being insufficiently engaged and thusly an ideal realist. Both of these views have merit.

---

If you haven't used the Inditer.com 'Response Section', get started! Send in your comments and critique on Jeffrey Dane's Essays. Inditer.com is a community of like minded writers. Each wants and deserves the help of the other. Do it! It won't cost a dime! You'll be glad you helped!

Inditer dot Com Index - - - Inditer dot Com Main Page