Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch with children

Ernest Bloch (July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a 20th-century Swiss-born American composer.

Biography

Bloch was born in Geneva to Jewish parents[1] and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon after. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. He then travelled around Europe, moving to Germany (where he studied composition from 1900–1901 with Iwan Knorr at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt), on to Paris in 1903 and back to Geneva before settling in the United States in 1916, taking American citizenship in 1924. He held several teaching appointments in the U.S., with George Antheil, Frederick Jacobi, Quincy Porter, Bernard Rogers, and Roger Sessions among his pupils. See: List of music students by teacher: A to F#Ernest Bloch. In 1917 Bloch became the first teacher of composition at Mannes College The New School for Music, a post he held for three years. In December 1920 he was appointed the first Musical Director of the newly formed Cleveland Institute of Music, a post he held until 1925. Following this he was director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music until 1930.[2]

In 1941, Bloch moved to the small coastal community of Agate Beach, Oregon[3] and lived there the rest of his life. He taught and lectured at the University of California, Berkeley until 1952. He died in 1959 in Portland, Oregon, of cancer at the age of 78. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered near his home in Agate Beach.[4]

The Bloch Memorial has been moved from near his house in Agate Beach to a more prominent location at the Newport Performing Arts Center in Newport, Oregon.[2]

Works

Stage

Orchestral

Concertante

Vocal and choral

Chamber

Instrumental

Piano

Organ

Family

Ernest Bloch and his wife Marguerite Schneider had three children: Ivan, Suzanne and Lucienne. Ivan, born in 1905, became an engineer with the Bonneville Power Administration in Portland, Oregon. Suzanne Bloch, born in 1907, was a musician particularly interested in Renaissance music who taught harpsichord, lute and composition at the Juilliard School in New York. Lucienne Bloch, born in 1909, worked as Diego Rivera's chief photographer on the Rockefeller Center mural project, became friends with Rivera's wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, and took some key photos of Kahlo and the only photographs of Rivera's mural (which was destroyed because Lenin was depicted in it).

Photography

The Western Jewish History Center, of the Judah L. Magnes Museum, in Berkeley, California has a small collection of photographs taken by Ernest Bloch which document his interest in photography.

Many of the photographs Bloch took—over 6,000 negatives and 2,000 prints—are in the Ernest Bloch Archive at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson along with photographs by the likes of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Richard Avedon.

Some of the pictures that Bloch took in his Swiss residence are visible here. The snapshots have been donated to the Archivio audiovisivo di Capriasca e Val Colla by the Associazione ricerche musicali nella Svizzera italiana.

References

  1. ↑ "Pittsburgh Post Gazette". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. June 1, 2009.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ginell, Richard S. (June 17, 2013). "Los Angeles Times".
  3. ↑ Bloch Festival Program
  4. ↑ "Ernest Bloch". Find a Grave.

Sources

External links