Ernest Bloch Studies

Alexander Knapp, Norman Solomon

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781107039094
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316685075
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

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book provides scholarly analyses as well as a full chronology, list of online resources, catalogue of published and unpublished works, and selected further reading.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• List of Figures
• List of Music Examples
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword: Reminiscences of My Grandfather
• Chronology
• Alphabetical List of Bloch’sPublished and Unpublished Works
• Bloch Resources: Recordings in the Age of the Internet
• Introduction
• 1 From Geneva to New York: Radical Changes in Ernest Bloch’s View of Himself as a ‘Jewish Composer’ during his Twenties and Thirties
• 2 The ‘Suffering and Greatness’ of Ernest Bloch: Concepts of the Composer as Genius
• 3 Bloch, Wagner and Creativity: Refutation and Vindication
• 4 Sacred Service: the Mass Bloch Never Wrote, the Two That Leonard Bernstein Did Write, and Shulamit Ran’s Credo/Ani Ma’amin
• 5 Oregon Years: the Man and His Music
• 6 ‘The Future Alone Will Be the Judge’: Ernest Bloch’s Epic Journeys between Utopia and Dystopia
• 7 The Reception of Bloch’s Music in Palestine/Israel to 1948
• 8 Bloch’s Reception and His Standing in Israel since 1954
• 9 A Performance History of Bloch’s Opera Macbeth: Paris 1910-Manhattan 2014
• 10 King Solomon and the Baal Shem Tov: Traditional Elements in Bloch’s Musical Representation of Two Iconic Personalities from Jewish History
• 11 Postscript: the Legacy
• Select Bibliography
• Index