Ernest Bloch Studies

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book provides scholarly analyses as well as a full chronology, list of online resources, catalogue of published and unpublished works, and selected further reading.

Foreword: reminiscences of my grandfather Ernest Bloch, II; Chronology; Alphabetical list of Bloch's published and unpublished works Alexander Knapp; Bloch resources: recordings in the age of the Internet Stanley Henig; Introduction Norman Solomon; 1.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.

Alexander Knapp was the Joe Loss Lecturer in Jewish Music at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, until his retirement in 2006. His numerous articles on Jewish music, and Bloch, have been published in journals including Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, the Journal of the American Musicological Society and Musica Judaica. His Anthology of Essays in Jewish Music (Youtai Yinyue Lunwenji) was published by the Chinese Academy of Arts in 1998. A trustee of the Jewish Music Institute, his awards include a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship to North America to study religious art.
Norman Solomon was Lecturer in Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford until his retirement in 2001. Prior to that, he spent 22 years as a rabbi and 11 years based at the University of Birmingham involved with international activity in inter-religious dialogue. His publications include Judaism and World Religion (1991), The Analytic Movement (1993), A Very Short Introduction to Judaism (2nd edition, 2014), Historical Dictionary of Judaism (3rd edition, 2015) and Torah from Heaven (2012). His honours include the Sir Sigmund Sternberg CCJ Award in Christian-Jewish Relations (1993) and the Distinguished Service Medal of the University of San Francisco (2000).