Bloch in America

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1959, the Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch died in Portland, Oregon, about a week short of his 79th birthday.

Bloch first came to America in 1916, when he was 36 years old. His music made an immediate impression, and a year later an all-Bloch orchestral concert in New York presented the premiere performance of his most famous work, a rhapsody for cello and orchestra entitled “Schelomo,” after the Hebrew name for King Solomon.

The success of that concert led to a contract with the publisher G. Schirmer, who published Bloch’s compositions with what was to become a trademark logo—the six-pointed Star of David with the initials E.B. in the center, an imprimatur that firmly established for Bloch a Jewish identity in the public mind.

In 1924, Bloch became a naturalized American citizen, and taught in Cleveland and San Francisco. In 1928, he composed this music: an orchestral piece entitled “America,” which was selected as the winner of a Musical America competition for the best symphonic work glorifying American ideals.

In the 1930s, Bloch returned to Switzerland for a time, but, with the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany and Italy, Bloch returned to America, and eventually settled in Agate Beach, Oregon. He lived in semi-retirement, continued to compose, and to pursue his lifelong hobbies of photography and mushroom collecting, plus a new Oregon coast hobby: collecting and polishing agates.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ernest Bloch (1880 – 1959) America Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, cond. Delos 3135

On This Day

Births

• 1921 - American composer Jack Beeson, in Muncie, Indiana

• 1934 - English composer Harrison Birtwistle, in Accrington, Lancashire

• 1949 - English composer John Casken, in Barnsley

Deaths

• 1789 - French composer and harpsichordist Jacques Duphly, age 74, in Paris

• 1857 - Austrian composer and piano teacher Carl Czerny, age 66, in Vienna

• 1959 - Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch, age 78, in Portland, Oregon

Premieres

• 1852 - Spohr: opera "Faust" (2nd version in Italian), in London at Covent Garden

• 1942 - Villa-Lobos: "Chôros" Nos. 6, 9 and 11, in Rio de Janeiro, conducted by the composer

• 1945 - Antheil: "Heroes of Today," by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting

• 1965 - Bernstein: "Chichester Psalms" at Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) by the New York Philharmonic conducted by the composer, with The Camerata Singers and boy alto John Bogart; On July 31, 1965, Bernstein attended the U.K. premiere of thiswork (performed by a male-only choir) at Chichester Cathedral in England

• 1988 - John Harbison: Piano Sonata No. 1 ("In Memoriam Roger Sessions"), at the Dorothy Taubman Piano Institute in Amherst, Mass., by pianist Robert Shannon